I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how I value different technological tools I have at my disposal, particularly those large scale online services I use. And a natural follow up thought is about contributing to those online ecosystems I actually value. For a long time, I’ve held to the stubborn notion that I only wanted to use social media
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There was a point in time, just a few years ago, when I typically referred to Amdall Gallery as both an art and data analysis blog. In fact, I still even have it in the sub-title at the top of the site. I’ve been consistently writing posts every month since August 2017 (almost five years running now), and at the
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Buried deep towards the end of my last post, I posed the question, “which style of time-lapse drawing progression is your favorite?” I embedded a crowdsignal poll with some options I’ve used. I have long struggled trying to figure out which is truly the “best.” The slideshow-style .gif images are the easiest to make, but it seems like videos are
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One of the early pandemic projects I started was to transition from progression .gif slides of my drawing process into full time-lapse videos. I created a YouTube channel to host them, rather than take up my precious WordPress hosting storage space with large video files. I’ve had the YouTube channel now for about a year, and in that time, I’ve
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I’ve been tinkering with this website pretty consistently over the last three-and-a-half years. Throughout that time, I have maintained interest in ways I could make the website pay for itself. Portrait art and web development are hobbies for me, so I have never really sought to monetize them heavily, but I have long believed it would be nice if web
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In a couple of ways, I consider this post to be somewhat of a do-over. Months ago, I shared a YouTube video on my relatively new channel covering some details on outline sketches and measurement. Although I was happy with the discussion portion, I was not very satisfied with the artwork that resulted. I wanted to make another outline/pre-drawing video
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It’s been quite a busy last month or so. The family and I finally made our long-delayed moved to Texas. It’s something that’s been in the works since late February, and we made the leap a couple of weeks ago. It was a bit of a trial though; the movers were late, ran out of room on their truck, and
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As of today, Amdall Gallery’s new YouTube channel is live! Its main purpose is to share some progression videos; if you’re familiar with my typical posts, I often include still frame .gif images to provide a small window into how my portraits come together. Some people find these .gifs useful, but they usually aren’t more than seven or eight images
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If my “archive categories” widget is to be believed, at this point I’ve written 115 art-related posts on this website. That’s pretty surprising to me, but I guess they add up over time. Through all of that text about artwork, it seems I’ve developed a pattern to my writing. I hope it doesn’t come off as robotic, but I do
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June 2020 Update: After about 6 months of daily (or at least nightly) use, the hour hand of the watch appears to have failed. Re-calibrating and resetting the watch doesn’t help; the hour hand is stuck at 2:00 (and occasionally moves to 11:00 for some reason). The minute hand does appear to still keep time. I opened a ticket with
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I try to be as forthright as possible on this blog about my experiences with art. The site didn’t really start with a focused goal in mind, but over time, writing has become as much about sharing the struggles as the victories when it comes to this hobby. I hope it helps someone else to see my learning process along
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Welcome to the grand finale of this series of posts on digital artwork! In the first post, I discussed my past struggle with digital art and resurgent interest due to a new tablet purchase (Samsung Galaxy Tab S4). In the second, I talked a bit more about the app I have been using (Autodesk Sketchbook) and my improvements in technique.
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In the previous post, I discussed my purchase of a Samsung Galaxy Tab S4 and decision to try digital artwork again. My first experience with a tablet designed strictly for drawing in conjunction with a computer screen (XP-Pen Deco 01) did not go smoothly, and I pretty quickly abandoned the experiment. This time though, I felt much more comfortable using
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Just over a year ago, I wrote about my first ever attempt at using a tablet and digital pen to draw. I bought an XP-Pen Deco 01 tablet and downloaded Krita’s open source painting software to give it a shot. As I mentioned in last year’s post, this was quite a bit more difficult than I thought it would be.
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About a year ago, I wrote about my quest for a new smartphone. The general scope of this quest was to satisfy a few parameters; stock/mostly unbloated Android, pocket sized (not a “phablet”), and a good low light camera were the most important considerations. I’ve also always wanted a battery that actually lasts more than a day, but the realist
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