One Year In: What I’ve Learned
On Illustrating In my last post , I talked about what I’d learned in my first year of writing for publication. I learned a lot in that first year. I’ve also learned a few things along the way in regards to illustrating. It’s been an exciting time, and I’d like to share my top 6 tips for aspiring artists. I hope they help. Digital art is freaking awesome! As long as you have the right tools, that is. Have you ever tried to draw with a mouse? That’s an exercise in frustration. With a good drawing tablet, it’s sublime. My fabulou…
One Year In: What I’ve Learned
On Writing Well, a tad over. I tackled NanoWriMo in November, 2011. It was a great experience. It provided the impetus to finally finish Three 15 years after I’d started it. I’ve learned a lot since then. I also have a lot left to learn, but perhaps by sharing what I learned over the past year, I can help someone coming up behind me. So, here’s my top 6 tips I’ve learned about writing after my first year. Writing a novel takes a long time. I can type fairly quickly, or at least I think I can (someone in the comments may …
On Outlining
I’d meant to get this out in October, but we got busy with Scouting and popcorn, and then we ping ponged illnesses around the house for a couple of weeks, so this is going to be my November post, instead. I hated outlining. I think I can blame school for that. Most of my teachers who had assigned some sort of writing project (book report, essay, etc.) wanted you to turn in an outline before you ever started writing your paper. I’ve always been an organic, or discovery, writer. The outlines pissed me off for 2 main reasons: I had …
When do you find the time to write?
Writing’s a marathon, not a sprint. English: Chris Derrick at the 2009 United States Cross Country Championships (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Work, commutes, after-school activities , family time, TV , meals, exercise , shopping… what am I forgetting? Oh, yeah, sleep and writing . Doesn’t it seem like there’s never enough time for everything, especially that last? In fact, to get the writing time in, it seems like sleep is often the only place to carve away a little time. Finding the time for the writing job has been tough latel…
Wacom & ArtRage, Part 2
In part 1 , I talked about my Wacom tablet and ArtRage and the first drawing I created from that. It was like an overview. In this part, I’ll break down how I created the drawing. Consider this the tutorial, for those people interested in that sort of thing. It’s not an exhaustive tutorial, though, because I’m doing this from memory several weeks after completing the drawing, so I can’t say that I used this and that exact setting. Disclaimer: I used this as a learning exercise. There are some issues with the drawing, I know, parti…
What’s this site about?
Hello, Brian here. That struck me as a good question to answer (in fact, I probably should have answered it earlier). So, I thought I’d lay it out here, so you can decide if it is worth your time to stick around… or come back. Me First off, let me tell you a little about myself. Poke around the site or one of my social media locales, and you’ll see that I’m an aspiring author and artist. I say aspiring as I am not yet published, because I don’t yet have anything ready to be published. But I’m working on it, and hope to have something …
