Knit knit knit.

I'll update where I am at but for now I just want to do some knitting. I need to upload 2 pics. Look I have been knitting! Here is a render of it.

Mybloglog and Senator Kay Patterson

Just sorting out mybloglog stuff been at it in little dribs and drabs for some time -- not really sure if it's all worth it - but hey ho! By the way I am Kay Patterson an English Artist aka Blurtsmum and Document Controller - (musn't let your document be unruly - no no no) - I'm not senator Kay Patterson - my hair is bigger and badder than hers! Undergoing MyBlogLog Verification

Seem to have fought all the disaster monkeys that were headed my way

Time has flown with it all being so hectic and so horrid. When you actually don't know whther you can feed and house your family for another month it becomes wildly stressful. It can also be mindnumbingly tedious when applying for jobs almost enough to strike you mad! Anyway, for now I have some respite at least - I went into hospital on Monday and was operated on sucessfully and came out with a few holes on Tuesday with instructions to rest severely for 2 weeks - That of course under present circumstances actually meant strapping down the stitches braising myself and starting the new job today. Today I started my new job - It was great actually I enjoyed it a lot, the offices are very pleasant and the commute not as harsh as the previous 47 miles. More importantly though the work is great and I am really excited about the post they are putting together for me. Really pleasant bunch of Designers and Project Managers to look after who all seem intelligent and dedicated -- it's been a happy first day. I am also pleased to have stayed in the Construction for Rail sector with a company who appear to take their standards and porcedures seriously - I may even knock up a picture of celebration this evening to counterbalance the grief of losing Ford earlier in the month. Hope none of us eat too much before pay day. Blurt seems to have really picked up on the stress and pressure and I don't think the last month has done her much good - hopefully we can start putting things back together and help her too. I doubt employers think of the damage they do when they jot out a three line letter that collapses your family and their hopes of having a normal financial existence. It's going to take over a year to put back together the mess caused by my dismissal last month - what a farce! But I guess we will push on and get by eventually but sometimes it's hard and I mean real hard to keep on going and going. I'll find it hard to forget that when I had to let Ford go I couldn't pay for the way we would had chosen to deal with his death -- I still find that difficult to cope with but and thats on top of missing him - I guess I'll have to get over that though or else become a bitter twisted crone - I have no shoes to go with the bitter twisted crone look so I will stick the way I am for now. Well that is a little more verbose entry than I have had for some time and I am going to take a drink to a brighter year coming!

Eye management for 3D Work

3D Graphics Can Geometrically Guide Your Attention from PhysOrg.com
(PhysOrg.com) -- When you gaze at a painting, the first thing that catches your eye is usually not an accident. Since the beginning of art, painters have used strategic techniques to guide a viewer’s attention through a scene. Still to this day, researchers are investigating ways to persuade attention with the latest technology.
[...]

It's been a tough tough week

It really has been -- I have had everyone I distributed my CV to go silent which is sort of soul destroying worrying and annoying all at the same time -- I thought of rebranding it as a method to cease communication - could have been handy - but then the responses started happening and now I have a further inteview for a place I had a look around on Wednesday so that is good -- and apparently they looked at the CV too - so I don't have to worry about them finding that and then going silent on me! However yesterday was probably the worst day I have had for at least a decade - Hound -- my Ford dog had to be put down and I miss him so much. He was pretty well and active all the way up until Wednesday night - even though he was getting old and quite slow. We took him for his photos in a dog photo competition last Sunday and we have to go back and choose the photos to go through to the competition this Sunday and buy any we want -- I'll put a pic up soon of him because he was truly a fabulous friend and dog and I have many happy memories of him. Sadly though today I still feel a bit shook up and empty but I must press on so I will go and iron my clothes and put some makeup on so I can face an interview properly. I have a picture I have been working on called sadness - at this stage it looks like the one I put in up there.

Nice and useful

Simple tool very useful!

http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/colors.php

Have a guess? Do I like Jazz or hate it?

Although to be fair - whether I like Jazz or not is not the subject of this work - instead this one is supposed to be one that represents jazz on an evening - cool tangled and somewhat jumbly! But do take a guess - love it or hate it?

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Featured work Digital Abstracts and Patterns

Oh look Blurt and I are featured work in the Digital Abstracts and patterns group at redbubble.

So pleased - Sliky Milk!

Blurt (my 3 year old daughter) and I did some messing around with colours dropped in milk.

A photo was taken quite early on before we dabbled it about too much and then we found a bit of distortion we liked to compliment the milky texture.

The colours mix up a bit more later and you can see some later effects in another picture taken a few minutes later called "Milk Rainbows Eighteen Fifty"

We had some fun collaborating that evening, my Blurt and I.

No need for the construction blues anymore

I have started using flickr more to display my work and enjoy other peoples. So  good so far of eve so far so good. Construction Blues is one of the pieces out there. Of course these are nor relevant emotions anymore as I lost my job on Friday - but that is another blog entirely and one I won't be writing. But I must say this is one of the most content Sundays I have had in a long time. It is a lovely day here and Blurt has had a her little paddling pool out which is actually more like a puddle for an individual. It delighted her - and that was nice.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

TheBloggess inspired some analysis and I am swell

Having watched the TheBloggess twitter on Summize labs analysis on twitter I found it impossible to resist the urge.

Result = swell

Nice happy with that.

My boot pics were chosen to represent the shoe group!

Now this is an honour.

There is a classy group on Redbubble dedicated to artwork and phtotographs depicting shoes.

I submitted my boots like thus



and hey look there they are!

Quite quite proud .. by the way there are some fab pics of shoes in the group and all the art can be purchased at reasonable prices.

If you are an artist redbubble is a great way to begin selling and promoting your work

Added some more works to redbubble

Actually I have quite a bit of good news regarding my redbubble account. Well maybe I have a bit of bragging to do! I'll try and do that later today. It's a bit early in the day for boasting. (Not a theoretical too early in the day - I mean its not much after dawn and besides I could do with going to sleep before i get up again.

I started some modeling yesterday

I haven't pushed this side of the 3d art experience yet!

Last night however I modeled a glass and a spiral and then made a pic. Not especially challenging -- bit It was done and it is a start.

The pic came my way at 4.30am looking like this. Pleased with that but I decided while walking the dog that I needed to actually add to that as an artistic picture and today I'm going to be looking at 2 eyeballs on a cocktail stick and some fingerprints with blood!

Why not!

The twee is not on me today - I must have lost it whole out shopping in Middlesbrough with Blurt yesterday.

I have been playing with twitpic to enhance my tweets

Yeah! Twit pic for my tweets at twitter -- I'll see if I can get a badge added on the blog.

We had a spring Fling over at Vue 6 Group

In the Vue 6 a new Dawn group at Artzone we were required to illustrate some Spring quotes.

I chose
Spring is nature's way of saying, "Let's party!" ~Robin Williams

and you can view the completed work here -


And

In the spring,at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt. ~Margaret Atwood...

you can view that one here

When put these together we had no real spring feeling here in Northern England - however it's really kicking in now and spring has sprung.

I won some contests

A few weeks ago I posted that I was waiting for results to come in for some competitions I had entered - but I never posted the results.

There was 3 I was waiting on

1. Carrara Dynamic Hair competiton - well I didn't manage to get anywhere on that bit I did learn lota nad now I use Carrara lots and lots -- so it was a bit like winning a new software package.

2 shots of the entry I posted are here

and here
These did not get into the final 8 which I think should be getting the results now (ish) the results keep getting delayed its all a bit dazsoon to quote a clever comic writer.

Speaking of comics

I did win the Sunday Funnies

These can be read here

Page 1



Page 2


Page 3


Page 4


Page 5

And the other result I was waiting for was for the april fool promotion problem contest.

My entry was like this

I posted it in the blog like this.

Maybe it was the fact that I added a touch of underarm hair!

So -- yeah pleased to be winning it felt good.

Just completed 2 entries for a Spring Frolic with the Vue 6 a new Dawn at Artzone -- I'll put them up later and explain a bit more about that.

But the judges have been called in.

And I am also working on some Dragonworld pics for another contest at Artzone.

It would seem that I am a bad friend and a bad blogger

I'll beat myself up about this for five minutes and then get on and do something about it.

I need an extra 8 hours in every day or I need to quit my job -- but as watching my family go hungry is not in the list of things I want to get done then I guess I need to stick it out and show up and get paid.

Anyway I have been neglecting my blog so I best get on and update.

I have been neglecting my online friends - facebook, artzone, ecademy etc etc.

But Hey -- I have made some pretty pics and have even got some done up super big and can now be purchased from redbubble.

I need to get some more up there.

But it is developing so at least that is something to be proud of.



http://www.redbubble.com/people/blurtsmum

Save Now

Wednesday Home Day was colourful

I don't go to work on Wednesdays -- normally Blurt and I trot off for a swimming lesson. This week we met Blue after swimming and had some lunch with him.

When Blurt and I got home we attended to a little creativity and messiness -- she used poster colours -- pretty much everywhere and I messed up my own materials and applied them - then I got busy on clothes and hair for two new characters I have called the Chromatic Twins.

I really enjoyed this!

Can you tell?

Gosh I love those shoes - click on the image to get a close view.

neat numbers are great!

hit a thousand on my artzone hits -- its a great site for artists read more | digg story

Remembering Ollie Johnston (1912 - 2008)

Jim Hill asks you to remember this remarkable individual. Who passed away in Washington State earlier today

read more | digg story

Waiting for the results from 3 art competitions.

I am at the moment wiating for the results of 3 art competitions.

The results of 2 will be announced today - I really enjoyed them and
learned so much by taking part so I am already a complete winner.

BUT - sometimes it is nice to win something.

AND I will find out what is available to take part in next -- which is
always fun.

Oh dear how many penultimates

I had thought it was going to be four but I elongated the last two for better pics and more drama so there is now five pages in total.

Penultimate page of competition comic

This is the one before last!

It could of course go on for ever but for the purpose of the competition I must bring this series to an end so i can go and get on with the Vue Competition.

Third page of the Daz comic completed

This is the third and penultimate page of the Daz Comic.

My Daz Comic Strip - for the Artzone Competition.

Another competition I have been enjoying with Artzone.

Here are the first 2 pages

Click the images to view


If you need an insight into some of the comments then do ask and all will be revealed.

More to come tonight and tomorrow.

Competition closes Friday night I think.

Introducing Spikey of the Spikey Project

This is The Spikey Object of the Spikey Project. Please do click it for a closer look.

I am intending to take this object on all sort of adventures through all the software that I use to create my art. There will be some lateral thinking and some fun and a lot of learning for me I hope.

It will be good if I create some interesting pictures on the way too.

This should be the last time I put a man in a dress.

Felt poorly on Sunday -- and in my weakness I couldn't resist the urge to create another entry for the latest competition at Artzone.

This should be my last as I need to focus on my cartoon entry and my Vue Picture for the competititon in the Vue 6 a New Dawn Group

Another chap in a dress

In the spirit of competition at Artzone of Daz3d I rendered another image for the dress challenge.

Dress was retextured and fluff was added using Carrara.

I seem to be getting to grips with the software now.

The illustrate a story competition results.

I can't believe I didn't announce this earlier.

This was the picture




I chose to illustrate the opening scene of My Bunny True Love beautifully written by bridgeport8

One bright morning, a merry bluebird asked Saffron, "Why are you so sad?"

Saffron slowly looked up at the bluebird and rolled onto his back with paws in the air as if he were dying and answered, "I am sick. So sick, that soon I fear I will be dead"

The pic got an honourable mention in the competition - which I was really pleased about. The winning pics were stunners and the other honorable mentions were ones I was very proud to be included with. I enjoyed myself and learned a lot.

Speaking of men dressed in ladies clothes!

Yes - indeed! Speaking of men in ladies clothes (see last post) I have this week contacted some amateur dramatic groups in order to begin expanding my portfolio of work.

I am really excited to see what will become of that.

Men in frocks. A new challenge at Daz Artzone

Daz pulled an April Fool stunt that tied in with a dress for the male Morphed Victoria.

I dismissed the idea for the first 10 minutes after viewing it and then couldn't resist downloading the free morphs for popular new V4.2 dress - one of which I do own.

So then it was play time -- a simple task yet srangely compelling and such good fun.

I have entered 2 men with their new frocks -- you can enter a multiple of times and I do have a couple more in mind where I will be doing my fur/hair thing to the garment to add a bit of pizzazz.

I'd also like to get him out and about and into a Vue scene - because I think as I said in a previous post I am missing using it.

Hair dressing challenge.

Here is one I'm not entering into the Carrara Hair competition - it ends today by the way.

I'm not sure if I have explained why I'm not sharing my competition entries for the hair competition - its mainly because I'm not allowed to - it's part of the rules. The prize is quite major on this one so I'm not going to mess with them there rules.

I may have time this evening to correct a black eye problem on one of my final renders for my second hair and then I appear to already be considering the next challenge.

Which goes like this.

I want to see a comic strip showing what a day at DAZ3D is like! It is meant to be funny so feel free to interpret that however you want :O) For inspiration I would look up an artist named Flak (I believe his art is only at Rendo ATM) but he has done some hysterical scenes on this theme and I thought I comic on it by you all would be too too funny and give the people at DAZ3D a good giggle after a long days work :O) You can illustrate anything from comedic things that happen while developing DAZ Studio to Launching the new ArtZone...pretty much anything you would like to poke fun at.

Rules:

1. The Comic Strip has to be atleast 4 Panels but can be longer if you like.
2. It Must stick with the general theme
3. Be sure it is something you could actually see in a newspaper so no profanity or nudity. Inferred is ok and you can use characters for profanity like $#*& etc LOL
4. Entires can be in either Black & White or in Full Color...your choice.
5. Can be done in any medium...2D or 3D
6. Because these could get to be larger files, if your image is larger then the forum can take please PM me and I'll put them on my server and give you a link you can post for your entry so you guys can have more freedom
7. All Entires must be in no later then Saturday, April 12th at 5p.m. MST (GMT -7 DST)


However I do seem to be getting bogged down in this one -- making it a lot bigger than perhaps it need to be and it will take a lot of time. Mind you if I start working with Vue again I might get a bit more done as it doesn't make my machine drag as much so I can multi task.

I have in the last week become a moderator on a group at artzone - a Vue 6 group

This is at http://artzone.daz3d.com/groups/vue6

Membership for the group is steadily growing and we have some great members who are good artists and who are helpful. I feel privileged and warm just being part of it.

Mind you those gushy feelings could be just left over exhaustion from pushing myself to work all night on my hair entry for Carrara.

I probably need more sleep - but mangaged to find a pic of me in the office.

Ha - oh I fought a moment like that yesterday.

Easter Snow Bunny

It snowed on Easter Sunday

Blurt and Blue made the most of it and tried their hand at some modelling.

This reminds me I need to go and download the latest version of hexagon and start using it. Blue said he wanted to try it - it may stop me totally slipping off into another world without him!

I'll keep you posted on how that goes.

My easter slightly messed up by trip to casualty

I had intended to set off super early for work on Good Friday - so I could get in and get out home again as early as possible. This was going to consist of a drive in at 4am after walking the dog. However my gall bladder was against the idea and I had a terrible night of quite irksome pain so I had to get friends up to take molly in and I had to get Blue up to take me to hospital - the doctors after poking me said they needed to admit me. So I stayed the rest of the morning at the hospital but when I realised that no treatment other than not eating was on the absent menu due to the Easter holidays I discharged myself Friday nigh to play computer games and be spoilt at home. Anyway I survived that and now I will need to get to my doctors this week and sort out some scans and things for gall stones. So today I am again messing with hair in Carrara - I am playing with gravity at the moment. The way I have done it seems particularly slow - probably doing it wrong - but it did give me this chance to write a little here. I have submitted my first competition entry for hair but I may go back and improve on it. See how gravity and so on takes me.

Illustration for a short story - Competition at Artzone

Click on the image for a close look.

The Easter Bunny is outside the office - chatting up school girls.

The Easter Bunny was up early in the North East of England. In fact he
was stood outside of his car on his mobile for sometime and then had
some animated chat and giggles with 2 schoolgirls - of the more senior
variety.

I may have an Easter pic coming on!

I entered the Bunny Tale Competition for the second satge - illustration
on Tuesday Night - well dawn - Well just before dawn on Wednesday
evening to be precise - I'll put the picture in later. It turned out fluffy!

The meeting with ooh Betty and mind owner went well.

Betty was introduced to the person she was created for over dinner.

That actually sounds quite romantic - however it was more like Betty was
laminated in the office and passed on to the birthday boy over a burger
at TGI Fridays in Stockton on Tees.

I heard over the weekend that they got on OK and Birthday Boy's friends
liked Betty too. So that was successful I think. I do need to get some
more prints done of her and get them distributed. I would like to
develop the Ooh Betty Collection a bit more I think and that could be fun.

This weekend has been exhausting as we ditched the TV and two large
sofas out of the lounge and turned it into a doing room. My daughter
appears to be taking it all very well and even helped. She and my
boyfriend were both delighted to have masses of space to put down train
tracks - and the dog got in the middle he seemimgly also recovering
rapidly from the loss of his own sofa.

I made a bit of headway with the digital hairdressing last night and I
think I am grasping some of the concepts.

However I am not exactly following what some of the tutorials suggest
but at this stage I believe that may be to my advantage because I can
actually mix and match parts of my hair dos which could make quite an
interesting product and follow up add ons both in textures and styles.

Anyway I have just slugged down some caffeine in a green tea mix which
hopefully will stop me slumping over my desk and snoring while at work.
Never good - especially if you hit the keyboard because when the buffer
fills up it squeaks! Very alarming.

Ooh Betty Day

I'm up early today! It's the day that Ooh Betty meets her real owner. Sort of nervous that they won't get on.

I'll let you know how that goes on when I get home - I should hopefully be getting home early too which means I may get the opportunity to do some hairdressing.

I had a look at some hairdressing sites quite helpful but I think I will end up making something up.

Vince The Luuurve Hamster

I don't get out much to shop so I have opened my own store online and evryday have a good rummage through it. Todays favourite item is Vince - I am in the mind of all thing hamsteresque at the moment with Robbie our own hamster moving in. Take a look at Vince If a colleague had one of those at your office would you love it and squeeze it - or would you kick it and squish it?

I have submitted my story to the competition.

I completed my short story for the Artzone competition group on the way home from work. i typed it up and have entered it which gets that out of the way now. I now need to get back on with playing with hair dos and I also must not neglect Betty as she is due to be delivered to her mind creator on Saturday - gosh time flies!

My hair for heads is not doing spectalularly well although I am kind of getting the hang of it. I aim to be a Carrara hairstyling queen and no doubt my stubborness will render me at least adequate in the skill. However whether that is going to be soon enough for competition entry at the end of this month then I am unable to tell.

But just so we can establish that I am still week then take a look at the picture here - poor old Vicky is far too polite to say it stinks!

I started a renderosity gallery last night.

I do actually spend a considerable amount of time over at the Renderosity site and I have a profile set up so I thought I should get started in putting together a gallery on that site. I started off with this one late last night. Views of work appear to be high on this site so far. Comments not so forth coming so far.

Ooh Betty! I like the fur!




it can be viewed at My Gallery started at Renderosity

Feel free to leave comments here or at any of the galleries I enter pictures to.

I am writing a story for a competition

I used the commuting time this morning to make a start on a small story
that I am putting together for the Easter Competition at Artzone
<http://www.artzone.com>. It's a rabbit theme in the competition and it
is in 2 parts - a story and an illustration. 3 stories I believe are to
be picked from the first part and will then be used for the illustration
part of the competition.

It didn't take long to come up with the concept and the story telling
seemd to be flowing OK this morning - infact I enjoyed myself a lot. I
should finish the first draft this evening on the commute home ( I don't
do the driving) and then all that is required is to fill in the blanks
where the names of the characters need to go - I thought I'd leave that
until I got to know them and then choose the right names.

Ooh Betty Portrait

I waited quite impatiently yesterday for Betty to have her portrait render done.

Here she is.

Ooh Betty went to Carrara

Betty ended up having an outfit made for her in Carrara last night


Ooh Betty you are furtastic!

I have added this to my gallery at Artzone. http://artzone.daz3d.com/index.php?mode=photo_album&act=view&pho_id=133907&p_id=20308

Please feel free to leave a comment here or at the gallery.

I am becoming more comfortable using Carrara now after working with betty and the little doggy and I am hoping this will help when I try and put a hair do together.

Just waiting for a portrait of Betty to render - also in Carrara.