artblog of lois van baarle | www.loish.net
quite a few people asked. my instagram username is loisvb but i don’t really use it at all actually, since i heard some strange things about them taking the rights to anything you upload. i just use the filters from the app and skip the whole uploading part. but if you want to add me go ahead, i might use it sometime in the future :)
ok, so i found out that almost no one was getting my latest deviation in their message centers on deviantart. i found that odd considering that i had 120,000+ waters on there. i double check my watchers count.. and discover that i ony have 572 watchers all of a sudden! what the actual fuck? anyone else ever had this problem? either there’s a huge glitch on the site or i did something to chase away 119,000+ followers overnight hahah.
i really want to plug a close friends’ website right now. not because she asked or anything like that, but because i am just so in awe of her work. i’ve considered her a good friend for a while now, and she recently asked my boyfriend arjen to give her site a bit of an overhaul and they launched it yesterday. what started as just me casually checking out her work to test the functionality of the site and compliment arjen’s coding work became hours of exploring her art and, in a way, her life and emotions. so with that, i want to encourage you guys to visit her website and just browse around when you have the time - i promise it will be worth it. i particularly recommend checking out her graduation project, a project about secrets and trust, which is just so beautiful. no words!
UGH. i logged into my google analytics page (for those who don’t know, it’s a google tool that lets you track visitors and gather statistics for your website with a simple tracking code) and all of my stats were completely messed up by some brazillian website about a folk singer. so after doing some research, i discovered that the asshole amateur ‘web designer’ who made the site copy/pasted a bunch of source code from loish.net into that site, including my google analytics tracking code!! they also direct-linked a bunch of my css pages. seriously what is wrong with people? is it really that hard to just upload your own css file?! so after translating a bunch of portuguese text and trying to find out who was in charge, i e-mailed them and kindly asked them to change it, but they never replied and didn’t do a thing about it. jerks.
so yeah, the analytics thing was solved by making a filter but all of my stats from before the filter are permanently marred by this site. so now it looks like more than half of my visitors are from brazil and the top google search that leads to my site is “luiz gonzaga morreu de que” >___> as for the other issue, their css for ie6 is a file that is hosted on my server. that gives me a fair amount of power over their design. i was considering turning the site’s background image to something obscene, but decided against it (i’m not that evil) and now if you visit the site in exporer 6 the background image is a huge red announcement that the css is stolen. and based on their analytics, they get quite a few visitors with ie6, so HAH! in your face, shady stolen website.
seriously though why are people so lazy and shitty? as if there aren’t other, easier options for web design that don’t involve copy/pasting a random artist’s portfolio site source code. >:(
edit - hah! i found another direct-linked css file that they have linked on their main page. BIG MISTAKE! their index page now looks like this:
muahahah losers.
I have this old sketchbook lying around from 2001, around the time I started drawing the kind of stuff I do today. Before that, I drew a lot of stuff from reference but found that whenever I started drawing from imagination, it was such a huge struggle. I just didn’t know where to start. I knew how things looked but had no idea how to translate this onto a sheet of paper without the help of solid reference material. And most importantly I had no clue what my style was. I didn’t have a drawing technique that helped me to just put something on paper, so most of what I drew around then was kind of weird, random and fragmented.
Every now and then I would dig up this sketchbook and draw the picture again, next to the old one, to see how my approach had changed. Although I initially started doing this just to show how much better the drawing would look if I did it again, it’s become more about seeing how comfortable I’ve become with drawing in general. I can now sketch with so much more ease than I did before and I don’t get stuck as often as I used to.
But there are still tons of things that I just don’t know how to draw. I like to stay in my comfort zone and when I challenge myself to draw something totally different, I feel like I’m back to square one on everything. I feel just like I did in 2001 when I was drawing these weird random poses and unfinished faces. So I guess I’m posting this as a reminder to myself and others that if you stick with it, you’ll grow past that phase, even if you feel like you’re not getting anywhere!
![madebymoko:
Cleaning up my room. Found one of my (very many) prized art possessions. I traded mini Disney posters with Loish for a sketch, only she went above and beyond and coloured it too!!! This is from ‘05. Thanks again Loish, 7 years later!!! [ #art #trade #furry #cat #girl #catgirl #moko #loish #loisvanbaarle #thankyou ]
yeahhh old artwork! always funny to see, especially since i sorta forgot that i drew this!! for anyone interested in seeing other old drawings of mine, check out these - [1] [2] [3]](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mchiz1Lv3l1qidp4go1_1280.jpg)
Cleaning up my room. Found one of my (very many) prized art possessions. I traded mini Disney posters with Loish for a sketch, only she went above and beyond and coloured it too!!! This is from ‘05. Thanks again Loish, 7 years later!!! [ #art #trade #furry #cat #girl #catgirl #moko #loish #loisvanbaarle #thankyou ]
yeahhh old artwork! always funny to see, especially since i sorta forgot that i drew this!! for anyone interested in seeing other old drawings of mine, check out these - [1] [2] [3]
Best news I ever woke up to. Congrats Obama! Now back to drawing and stuff. :)
this is an interesting blog post worth reading for anyone who works in the commercial art industry (read it here). i do not work in the comics industry necessarily, so fortunately i haven’t ever received critiques of this kind (and hope to never receive them, because i would F R E A K O U T). but i think it’s some pretty good food for thought about female representation in commercial art, also for me personally, since i have the tendency to draw a lot of the same types of people and am aspiring to draw more varied and diverse characters in the future. Not only to improve my skills, but to resist the mindset that there is only one way for an attractive/strong/interesting woman to look!
selkiesiun submitted:
This is not so much a critique post as it is a conformation of how absurd the standards of art in the comic book industry have become.
I traveled to San Diego Comic Con this year and participated in the portfolio reviews they where holding from Thursday to Sunday….
Kolmanskop, an abandoned diamond mining town in Namibia.
Most places I want to go don’t really have a time limit on them. This one does!
visiting this place next month as part of a big namibia trip with my sister. so creepy and awesome! can’t wait to see it!
seeing these guys tonight, i am so excited! i’m such a huge fan 8D
this is artwork by a friend of mine, odile van der stap. when her facebook page hits 1000 likes, she’ll give away a commission to a randomly picked facebook fan! so like her page and spread the word if you’d like a gorgeous drawing of your very own by odile.
if anyone would like a digital portrait of themselves drawn in this style, you can purchase one for 130 euros as part of a fundraising project for KLIK! animation festival (more info here). just visit this link and scroll down, on the right hand side you’ll find the option to buy the portrait (it’s in dutch, but it’s the only option that costs exactly 130 euro and my name is listed next to it)! the fundraising finishes on july 1st, so you only have today/tomorrow if you want it.
all proceeds go to the organization of this festival which is struggling for survival in these sad and depressing times, in which funds and subsidies to cultural activities are being cut on a large scale :(
credit - portrait is of the lovely kaylah from the dainty squid. check out her blog, she recently dyed her hair into basically the coolest color combination i’ve ever seen on a human head.
the cintiq has arrived! i chose a 24HD since the price difference with the 21UX was not that great, yet the quality of the product is said to be much better. it’s gigantic! the package weighed 34 kg. thank god the delivery man was willing to help me drag it up the stairs otherwise i still wouldn’t have it set up by now :]
One downside is that the brightness and contrast of the screen is not as good as my dell screen. it’ll take some getting used to, but is of course worth it! above is a preview of a commission i hope to post soon. and since i was taking pictures of my workspace, i figured i’d show you guys some more:
returned to the mediamarkt to make one more doodle on the cintiq 21UX there… just to test if it is truly compatible with my way of drawing. conclusion? i’m getting one! thanks all for your advice!
diagnosis for the arm soreness: an irritated tendon in my forearm. should be fixed with some rest and medication within a week or two! thanks everyone for the concern and urges to see a doctor, it encouraged me to do the right thing :] not excited about drawing less though, but the break is necessary to be able to draw in the weeks following… and i’ve got a pretty awesome project coming up ;)
