It seemed like everything was against me today.
I’ve been wrestling with the new setup for some time now, trying to get things situated so that I could sit at my L-shaped desk (something that I’ve wanted for a long, long time, finally got but have never been able to use properly) and draw/paint/vector things for a couple hours at a stretch. In the past it was the factt hat the laptop+keyboard combination took up too much space and now it seems that I don’t have enough space for the screen (as flat as it is), my keyboard, and my Intuos2, which doesn’t make a lick of sense, but I haven’t been able to sit comfortably at my desk since getting all the components in place.
To make matters worse, my overly expensive, somewhat unreliable Eurotech chair has been giving me problems of varied sorts, making my seating arrangement just that much more unpleasant.
On the bright side, I did manage to fix some of the technical issues I was having with Photoshop, though I wish I had stuck with my bootlegged version of CS3; for whatever reason that seems to run more reliably than the next-to-latest version, which saddens me. i’m very strongly considering switching to a standing desk setup until I have another $999.99 +tax to buy a new Wacom tablet, one with a screen in it, so I can at least draw/paint like I’m working on paper- I think that the unnatural setup of drawing without looking at my hand/wrist is contributing with my inability to get comfortable and be as productive as I ought to be. Not that being able to work that way is suddenly going to unlock some hidden part of my brain that readily sees objects as masses of texture and reflected light, but I digress.
Anyway, I had the brilliant idea of working with a sketch that I had already done, to try and save myself the time of rushing through making one up. Some of you might remember this dragon from January 22, 2012, when I was (imagine this!) also frustrated with my work setup and the way that things were going; it seems appropriate, all things considered:
The linework is as solid as it was before, but I should have gone the extra mile and tried to clean it up a bit. The coloring isn’t great, but for whatever reason I don’t hate it. I just wish I wasn’t in such discomfort right now and were willing to “tough it out” to keep trying to puzzle out where more shadows and things ought to go.
