Monday, August 26, 2002

And now, without further adieu, my first "real" drawing:



Click the image for a larger view...

By "real" drawing I mean, it's not just a copy of somebody else's drawing that I did for practice. I did it from a "real live" view, just by looking at my left hand...

Dave

Friday, August 23, 2002

First, thanks to Mr. Rob Fahrni, for poking and prodding me into actually sharing via a "blog" - he's been very patient with me.

OK, this is an online sketchbook, right? How about some sketches?

I've been learning how to draw by reading the book Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards. And, of course, by doing the exercises she describes in the book. It really is an amazing book - she has convinced me that nearly anybody can learn how to draw - if you can see things and if you can make a pencil scratch a piece of paper, then you can learn how to draw. It's a learnable skill, not just some mysterious talent that a chosen few are born with...

First, my practice drawings (done upside down) from the chapter headings of the first Harry Potter novel, chapters 11 through 14.



Click the image for a larger view...

More to come...
Dave
10 days later...

OK, so apparently, I can't do it at all, so I'll just use blogspot.com...

I've been an AOL customer for 10 years. TEN YEARS! And they still have the same lame ftp rules that they had 10 years ago. You have to be logged on with the AOL client in order to post anything to the lousy 2 Megabytes of web space they give you. Come on!! Like I shouldn't be allowed to post something because I'm working from a computer at a friend's place or a public library or my lunch hour at work? I've got three letters for you people: ftp. Authenticate with my user name and password. Let me post from anywhere I want. I like to roam from machine to machine. I'd like to give permission to some web sites to ftp stuff for me (blogger...)

AT&T's the same. I've had a cable modem for more than a year now and I pay 'em $40+ a month for it. But will they let me ftp to the 10M of web space I get with my user account...? Sure, as long as it's from my home computer attached to the cable modem. Again, not what I'm looking for. As far as I can tell, they won't let me make my home machine into any kind of server either.

Arrrrghhh. All I want to do is write some stuff down and have it show up somewhere that I can share it with folks.

Thank you, blogger/blogspot.com. There might be an ad banner at the top, but at least I can post some stuff up here as the whim strikes. I'd like to use the space I'm already paying for, but AOL and AT&T know better. They're protecting me. Thanks guys, but I really do know how to use computers. And, yes, I really do want ftp read/write rights to all the space that you say I can have as part of my account agreement.

More later. Sketches coming soon... I promise.

Dave

Tuesday, August 13, 2002

"Hello, world."

Well, whadya expect as my first blog post, anyway? This is just a test to see if I've got all the settings entered correctly. Plus, I just had to have my first blog published from my Mac at home. Apparently, they won't let me ftp stuff from behind my firewall at work, so I'll have to do this all from home anyway.

If it all works, you'll see some drawings up here later on...

TTFN