Thing-a-day.com

This last piece was inspired by the results of the last photoshop tutorial I did for yesterday’s post, some of the other artist’s work I’ve seen on thing-a-day, a hand one of my students modeled and my own desire to make new art. Everything was modeled in 3D using Maya and Zbrush and rendered in Zbrush. The shader / material is courtesy of Arran Lewis. No photoshop manipulations although it looks like I did.

Well its over. I never could have predicted or preconceived any of the work I did for this challenge. This was the beauty of thing-a-day for me. The spontaneity that is often suppressed by daily routine and habits has been restored. Thanks to all those who commented on my work and those who inspired and challenged be to pursue new directions. I would like to keep tabs on several artist I’ve come to know from thing-a-day and hope they will continue to keep tabs on me. All of you can always find my work on my website: http://elliottmitchell3d.com/index.php and look for me in a few days on ZBrushcentral.com and CGSociety.org forums. I’ll most likely be posting under my real name, Elliott Mitchell (unfortunately MrT seems to be taken).

Just a heads up, I am looking for freelance work and other employment options as of a few day ago. Please e-mail me if you have any leads, jobs, advice or need of consultation.

One amazing observation I made was the global interest generated by thing-a-day. I have had 1400 visitors to my website since 9 days ago when I put up a counter. I have been randomly sampling visitor’s IP addresses who visit my site after seeing my work on thing-a-day. In the last few days visitors from the following locations have looked at 4 or more pages on my site:

Karlsruhe Germany
Moscow Russia
Kuala Lumpur Malaysia
Curitiba Brazil
Gothenburg Sweden
Dublin Ireland
Osaka Japan
Paris France
Falmouth UK
Chandigarh India
Sarajevo Bosnia and Herzegovina
Seoul South Korea
Lisbon Portugal
Vienna Austria
Tokyo Japan
Macau Macao
Stavanger Norway
MONTREAL CANADA
Vancouver BC
Amsterdam Netherlands
Canberra Australia
Rajkot India
Stockholm Sweden
Hong Kong China
Laxou France
Istanbul Turkey
Athens Greece
Villejui France
Basel Switzerland
New Brunswick Canada
And all from over the USA

“Be well, do good work and keep in touch.” - Garrison Keillor

Yesterday’s sketch colorized by my unsure hand.

Barring any unforseen problems, this sketch will become a watercolor by tomorrow.

the slightly menacing result of being left alone in a room with clay and nails.

http://flickr.com/photos/23386160@N08/?saved=1

still life with ironing board.

http://flickr.com/photos/23386160@N08/2279034066/

I painted this in class. Yep.

Feb. 7 was my first day of Watercolor I at Fleisher. We jumped right in to wet on wet.

Today’s thing is another multi-tasking thing. : ) Ages ago, I volunteered to be interviewed by What Shoes I Wear. I was all set to write up my answers and send them in when I realized…I had no pictures of my shoes. And I didn’t want to do a boring “looking at my feet” shot. So I set it down. Today, I decided, was the day to get that OFF my to-do list. So I thought. And thought. And thought. And wandered around the house. And framed some pictures. And opened the fridge (anyone else find boredom or stress lands them in front of an open fridge?). And closed it. And opened it. And, well you’ve got the idea.

Finally, I decided to play around with my “imagine” letters that I decoupaged a box for the other day. After much playing with placement and shooing of cats (”Noooo, Abby, no, no, come here, no over here..Jack! No! Don’t eat that–Abby!…) I managed to get my pictures taken. So here is today’s “thing”, a still life of sorts. : )

And here are my well meaning helper cats in a less animated state.

Quick Grey Heron from an old national geographic I found in the dentist’s waiting room:

after I broke out from dentist I had about an hour and a half to kill in the east bay. So, naturally, I decided to wander along the railroad tracks with a camera in a dishevelled little town called Fruitvale.  I got some exercise, a busted knee and some seriously amateur photos to show for it:

 more at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/23515585@N05/sets/72157603858182234/ 

I missed posting on Day 1. By the time I was finished my drawing it was nearing 1am, and my need for sleep was settling in. I managed to draw for about 40 minutes, you can tell I started to give up towards the end because the bottom just doesn’t seem to look right. I chose to draw because drawing is not my thing, I never really exclaimed “I love to draw”, in fact, it’s always been “Do I have to draw?”. It was also a little easier than pulling out all my other art supplies to make something else. Frankly, I don’t think it’s that bad for someone who doesn’t normally draw, and I think think it’s weird that it kind of looks like a face which was totally unintentional.