It's been a while!  

Back painting again - yay!

I've been working on Lily's portrait on and off since summer so now her picture is finished I'm at a loose end trying to decide what's next.  Probably some pencil sketching practice for a change.  And a subject that has less fuzz

I've managed to kill my monitor so artwork is being annoyingly disrupted lol. I switch to an old laptop in the evenings and it can't handle big graphics files..hrmpf...

On a positive note, I'll get a bigger HD monitor to replace it in a few days. Please excuse the delay in uploading more stuff, I pulled the muscles in my neck so between the monitor popping and my neck aches, I haven't been creating much this week. Hopefully I'll be up to speed again soon

I was all ready to finish this picture [link] yesterday, but I wasn't happy with some of the colouring and detail... I thought I'd sleep on it (not literally!) and look at it fresh today. So it's a day later, but I hope it's better

I've been working this last couple of weeks on some pencil sketches of dogs, and noticing that my MyPaint work has given me new ideas for working detail up with real pencils.  I've uploaded a spaniel portrait that I scanned in today [link]

I'm about to start work on a portrait of my old Golden Retriever, Hamish.  It's really not hard to get him to come up close and sit there - as long as I keep scratchin' him, he'll be parked there.  Bless...

*warning, Linux geek stuff ahead *

Linux Mint 9 is nearly ready for release and well, I didn't want to wait till it was out properly.  It's in my nature to grab new shiny distros the night they're released lol.  True to form with Mint, it installed just fine and I'm using it now.  MyPaint is in the repositories for this version (Mint 9 is based on the Ubuntu Lucid Lynx) so this great little program is even easier to install.  Hopefully more people will try it and get hooked as I have.  

I've recently downloaded the brushes and settings to convert my Gimp to Gimp Paint Studio, so I want to give those a try and see how I get on with some different brushes.  

I guess this week sums up why I love using Linux and open source programs - there's always something new!

I've finally finished a cat picture I've been working on for a while [link] happy with the results, considering I'm still kinda wary of drawing cats.  I pushed myself to really work up the details on this one to get more practice in using MyPaint.  I find the eyes, noses and ears a bit awkward still, but I'm really pleased with the progress I'm making.  

Next up might be one of my own cats, but I haven't quite decided yet.

It's been a long time since I drew any cats, but I like how this turned out.

[link]

It's not often that I'm organized about saving layers and the different stages of a picture, so I thought I'd use the ferret ones for a tutorial.  Especially as there are few MyPaint tutorials and IMHO it's a great little program and deserves more attention.

I'm working on cat drawings now, hopefully there will be more uploads in the next day or so

I thought I'd stop lurking and actually post something here lol.  I'm having a blast learning to use MyPaint, or rather trying to remember all the brushes at my disposal because the program itself is really straightforward.  

My current art hero has to be this guy: [link] now going to sit down and watch this [link] while I have lunch.