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h2g2guy

I (try to) draw ponies.
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WOOO NATG VI

3 min read
With the exception of a few brief hello's here and there, I've still been dead, despite my previous...counts... three posts over the last two years saying otherwise? Wow. Sorry. (Do you care? I don't think so, honestly, with the exception of the one or two of you who are consistently happy to see when I reappear. The one I'm thinking of knows who he is. Thanks, man. I truly appreciate it.)

My excuse is a little different from most of my previous ones this time -- I was lucky and fortunate enough to land an internship....at Microsoft. 

Lots of stuff's been going on, needless to say. 

Not a good enough reason to stop drawing though!

Fortunately, I never make a move without my drawing supplies, so I've been touching pencil to paper on and off for a while now and I'm super excited to get back into it! And what better time to try to mount another deviantArt appearance than an NATG?!

Preemptive thanks to the amazingly awesome and dedicated Calpain-EqD for hosting this year, and also (as always) a great thanks to PhoeKun for the awesome amount of work she did oh so long ago in the first few NATG events. You guys, as well as the whole EqD crew, continue to put forth so much for this fandom that I honestly don't know what I'd do for random news-ish stuff about the fandom without you guys, and these events really give people like me a reason to stay engaged and continue to come back to the fandom. 

Here's to the next 15 days! Who's with me?!

(A final, interesting tangent to leave you (and myself) with: Despite having a full-time job, I feel like I have way more free time now than I did in college, or high school, or any time previous to now. Even summer vacations and whatnot felt almost constrained and devoid of opportunity. Yet, even with a solid 6-8 hours lopped off my waking hours each day, I've probably done more in my personal life this week than I've done in an average month of summer vacation. Very interesting how time and constraint can provide for a very different perspective.)
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I mean, it's been a while, but I haven't missed mu--

Capture by h2g2guy

--oh.  Well, not much has changed in my life, at lea--

Capturre by h2g2guy

--hmm.  I see. 

Yeah, I've been neglecting art, and very much neglecting dA. AGAIN. It's quite a shame. 

Haven't been neglecting MLP, though; really enjoying the last few episodes! What about you guys?

So, basically, I'm just here to mention two things: 

One: I'm slowly, but with some momentum, picking up art again. Due to some recent developments in my life, I've got a bit more self confidence and willingness to get up and try again than I did before, and I've picked up yet another medium of art: oils. I've just been experimenting around with them at the moment and trying some test paintings, but we'll see; maybe something oily will show up here eventually...?  I'll also try to visit dA more often to see what you all have been doing. Looking at what you all do is part of where I get my inspiration, and I think it's obvious that there's a correlation between visits to dA and my inclination to do artistic and creative stuff. So, onwards and upwards!

Two: As you may have noticed in my second screenshot above, I've been playing a lot of Destiny lately!  If any of you want to hang out and fight space aliens with me on PS4, shoot me a message; I'm h2g2guy on PSN, too. (Just mention who you are from dA; I don't usually add random people to my friends list :) (Smile) )

And with that, let's hope that we see more of each other in the future!
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Wheeeeee...

8 min read
As my Business and Legal Aspects of FOSS professor would say... holy business.  (Get it?  It's funny because the class is about business stuff!)

It's been what some would call "quite a week", what others would call "quite a semester", and what I would call "quite a lifetime", but let's get to an issue in the fandom of late -- respect.  

This discussion is spurred on by several events that I've been witness of, and in some cases, party to.  If you're a member of the fandom, you almost surely know of one of these events.  But my goal here is to talk in broad terms about respect in general, and not about any one particular incident, so let's not resort to any sort of name calling or specific-situation-bringing-uping.  

As an artist, you implicitly are part of the community of artists around the world.  You should always do your best, when taking any sort of action relating to your position as an artist, to do no harm to the community of artists to which you belong.  I feel that the responsibilities you have as an artist can be easily summed up as respect toward a number of different areas.  

First off comes respect to your fellow artists.  This means understanding that art is hard and takes time, and that anyone who endeavors to make the human experience better by creating art is taking time and effort to do so.  The easiest and most common way to violate this respect is to misuse other people's art, most commonly by copy-and-paste or tracing without citation (I would also include referencing an entire image verbatim without citation, as well, but I know this might be contentious).  Honestly, I feel like this is a no-brainer, because by failing to disclose the nature of your work, you are essentially taking credit for the work that the other artist did in creating the source that you copied.  It's also important to mention that violating this respect can often put us in the realm of copyright infringement.

Next is respect to your viewers.  We all have different interpretations of the same things, and we all have different preferences for what we like and don't like.  It's perfectly acceptable to voice these opinions, but we can always do so without being disrespectful.  This also applies to viewers -- viewers should have respect for the artist's work, even if they don't agree with the premise or if they dislike the work of art.  This goes doubly for headcanons and stylistic omissions or additions in art, because these things by their nature are things that cannot be confirmed or denied through canon.  And always, always, ALWAYS receive critique with grace and humility.  If you get a bit of critique that you disagree with, either respond with caution, respecting their position, or don't respond at all.  

Another important issue is respect to your buyers.  This is a big one, and manifests in a number of different ways, so I'm going to spend a little extra time on this one.  But it's really a simple concept -- if you're selling your art, you have an ethical obligation to ensure that your buyers understand the nature of what you're selling.  

Let me tell you a story about watercolor.  Watercolors have been around for a long, long time, and they commonly use the same pigments that we see in other media.  There's a big difference with watercolor, of course -- in acrylic and oil painting, the pigment is suspended in plastic or oil, respectively, and it gets stuck in place when that medium dries.  With watercolor, the binding products don't do very much to protect the pigment, and so the pigments are left more vulnerable to fading effects from light, etc.  That said, good watercolor paintings with high quality pigments framed properly have the potential to completely outlast oil paintings (IIRC, there's not enough information to compare to acrylics, since they haven't been around as long).  

So why don't we see watercolor paintings in museums and high price auctions nearly as much as we do oil and acrylics?  Mainly, it's a misconception that watercolors fade, are impermanent, and not of the archival quality of other media.  Where did this misconception come from?  It came from a beautiful pigment with a dark secret called alizarin crimson*.  

You see, alizarin crimson is a beautiful, dark, somewhat unsaturated red pigment with a blue bias.  For years, and continuing to a degree to this day, 'old masters' of watercolors insisted that it was a vital color for every watercolorist's palette.  Great alone, and great to make desaturated neutral colors, it had only one problem -- this pigment fades, and fast.  In modern tests of pigment stability, alizarin crimson regularly ranks in one of the worst categories of lightfastness, indicating that it would fade considerably in under 20 years under properly controlled conditions.  In less controlled conditions, it could start fading in a matter of months.  People who purchased these amazing watercolor masterpieces were shocked and disappointed to find that the works that they bought had no longevity, and watercolors got a reputation for being impermanent.  

Since then, we've come up with a number of similar pigments to alizarin crimson, and a lot of even BETTER pigments for mixing.  These pigments are proven to not even start to noticeably fade for at least 100 years.  But so many artists still use the original, and so paint companies still supply it, and so watercolor buyers must still be wary of the fact that the paintings they buy might have been made with impermanent pigments.  These artists are not only failing to respect the buyer, but they're also tarnishing the reputation of the artform itself, and diminishing the market value of future watercolors!  

I am of the strong opinion that buyers must always be made aware of any factors that may not be completely obvious that may diminish their value of the work.  If the work was made with pigments that are known to be fugitive (non-permanent), the buyer should know.  If the work was not solely the product of the artist (for example, in cases of tracing), approval must be granted by the original artist, with citation provided to prospective buyers upon request from the original artist.  In cases of commissioned work, timelines, expectations, progress, and payment should be as transparent as possible, and all work must be done solely by the artist being commissioned unless agreed to by all parties involved.  When selling your work, it's important to understand that the transaction is not adversarial.  If they like your work enough to buy it, make sure they understand exactly what they're getting so that they're more inclined to buy from you (and other artists!) again in the future -- and respecting them goes a long, long way towards that.  

-----

Phew!  What a wall of text.  Sorry for keeping you guys for so long!

In other news (that you may or may not care more about), I've been active-ish on here, but only to monitor my watch list and whatnot, primarily because this latest art hiatus has caught me in a downward swing of art quality again.  Hopefully that'll soon change for the better -- I miss the days when I could draw a picture and post it, uncertain of whether or not I thought it was 'good', but with enough confidence that myself and others could recognize improvement in myself.  Unfortunately there are projects, finals, and other responsibilities I also have to deal with, so I don't know if I'm really going to have the time to post again in the next few weeks...

I do have a bunch of old pictures in my notebooks that are either referenced directly from other artist's work for practice or that I just never got around to posting because I thought the quality was meh at the time.  Let me know if you guys would be at all interested in seeing that stuff, and thanks for sticking around despite my (near constant!) radio silence!

*To be fair, this story is true about a lot of popular, fugitive pigments... but alizarin crimson is perhaps the most well known.  
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...I'm tired.  Bear with me.  Wink/Razz 

I've disappeared for months, as usual.  I'm back at college now after an unfortunate series of events culminating with a leave of absence for last semester.  

So what's going on now?  I'm taking a relatively easy workload this semester, as it will be my last semester of classes.  Kinda weird to think that, really; I got into this whole pony thing about halfway into my first year of college, and now here I am three years later still addicted to pony and coming towards the end of my time at RIT.  Everything's had its ups and downs, as life tends to do, but overall I can honestly say it would have been much harder to get this far without the help of the community.  That means each and every one of you.  So thank you.

The easy workload I mentioned earlier means two things.  First off, I should mention that even though I disappeared from activity on dA, I didn't completely stop drawing -- so now that I have a bit more time to engage with the community, I should be getting back into the swing of producing pony content!  Yay!  

Secondly, I'm taking a calligraphy class.  I really like typefaces and the design of letters and words, so I figured I'd combine that interest with my interest in traditional inking and go for this calligraphy class.  I just had the first class today, and though we only went over supplies and the syllabus and stuff, I think it's going to be a blast.  (Ok, ok, fine, so I also experimented a bit with the materials and wrote the alphabet in a crude Fundamental hoof... but don't tell my prof, I probably wasn't supposed to do that!)  I also think that I might have some stuff to show you stallions from the class, too!  I'll pick pony quotes and stuff like that when it's appropriate, but I'm very likely to dip into some other literary sources as well, so I hope my pony followers won't be too upset Wink/Razz 

SO!  How are you all doing?  I've noticed that a few high-profile artists have returned and/or reaffirmed their commitments to art and pony -- special shout out to Veggie55 , one of the stallions that inspired me to get started in the whole pony art thing -- and that a number of artists I really admire have also left the pony art sphere (sad face, but I still love you stallions and your art!).  I heard that my good friend AquaticSun is having a few ups and downs on his transition to college -- major props to him and his courage to do what he wants to do, go and support him!  What else have I missed, stallions?  Lay it on me! :D (Big Grin) 

P.S.  I know the conversation regarding deviantART => Rabbit hole has died down a ton, but aside from a few frustrating points, I actually kinda like the rebranding.  As much as the old logo and branding had character, the new branding just feels sleek and modern and non-90's web design to me, and I feel cool on this site now xD.  Feel free to debate with me on this... or not; I've just been meaning to say that for a very long time and decided I might as well get it over with now!
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Give It 100

2 min read
I stumbled upon an interesting site called "Give It 100", where you sign up to do something every day and post a 10 second video of you doing it.  It's meant to help you improve in some way.  

Since my biggest problem is consistency, and the best (apparent) solution to that is some sort of a challenge, like the EqD NATG, I'm taking the opportunity to use this service to push myself to draw more often.

And since I need a recording of me doing this, I figured:  why not just livestream the whole thing?

Unfortunately, I can't find a live streaming service that lets me use my phone in anything but potato quality, so I won't be streaming pencil sketching... however, the ink stands out well enough to stream live!  

And if you've happened to catch this journal just as I'm posting it, feel free to join me for my first shot at this! Unfortunately, I'm finished :(.  You can still stop by the linked page to watch the 'replay', though!

And for future reference, here is where the very heavily accelerated, 10 second videos will live.

I encourage you to check out the site, and perhaps even make an account if you think it'll help you!
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Featured

WOOO NATG VI by h2g2guy, journal

Hey, it hasn't been too long, right? by h2g2guy, journal

Wheeeeee... by h2g2guy, journal

All you peoples people-ing away... by h2g2guy, journal

Give It 100 by h2g2guy, journal