Here's a serious attempt at a self-portrait. I borrowed the idea of adding characters from Griatch. There are four characters from two of my stories: Marcus, Mara, Vasigari (on the desk), and Ry the Squirrel (my wife would be sad if I left him out).



I couldn't forget the one dead pixel on my monitor array.

I'm pretty happy with it. I'm thinking of coloring it. Then I'll need to add the cats. The actual size is 6,000 pixels wide. If I do complete it, I could zoom in on my hand so the characters are more visible. Poor Ry is barely a dot.


Updated 9 April, 2013.

merrak: it's lovely!!! beautiful line work. the characters (small as they are) are a nice detail and the dead pixel too . and i have to add i love the boots!

Looks nice. Very clean linework.

That's a very nice self-study, merrak! From the long hair and beard I'd peg you for a physicist if I didn't know you were into mathematics.
I think it's a nice tradition to put one's character around oneself (or in this case in one's hand), makes for a nice mixture of reality and fantasy. I think it might be time to update my own version of this with some more characters.

I'm envious of your four monitors, that is a very nice way to lay them out.
.
Griatch

That is very nice merrak. Nice clean drawing. I can't get over the 4 monitors, wow.

Thanks for the comments everyone

Might be fun to join in on the WIP series trend with this.




I was wrong, though. It's a "stuck pixel" - a permanent blue dot.

I like them, too. They're pretty much cat teeth proof, which comes in handy since the new kitten hasn't yet learned to stop chewing on things.




I could use a haircut, but there's no way I can cut it now. I'd get too much grief from the students at my college

I thought it would make a good author picture, at least, that's how I'm justifying spending the time on it when I should be working on the books themselves.

My wife used to tease me about the monitors, since she used to be happy with just a 7" netbook screen. She finally got tired of it and got a bigger computer.




"Jonathan Swift" is amusing I'm a big fan of satire.

/ / /

A lot of people comment on the four monitor setup when they visit my house, but it's pretty easy to set one up. Four little screens is also a lot more affordable than one big one.

I remember the first time I bought a 15" CRT monitor in the 90's, thinking it was -huge!- It also weighed more than the four LCD's, and probably used more power than the four screens and the video cards they're hooked up to.

Was this it?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/83/The_king_of_Brobdingnag_and_Gulliver.jpg

Merrak - you should have given yourself an eyepatch and a parrot on your shoulder. Nice work on this. The boots are really cool!

Ahaha! I totally pictured that when I read it! XD

I think this is my favorite image so far tbh.
Oddly I loved your little pixel. It's so funny

Dead Pixel <---
LOL

Odd question but do you put your hair up when you at the collage or keep it down?

Thanks But I think that parrot would last all of two seconds before the cat tried to make it its dinner.




Glad you liked it

I keep it back. Otherwise it'd be flying in my face when I'm looking down at the podium. It has a Cintiq-like screen that I'm always glancing down at. (not nearly the same resolution, and no pressure sensitivity - but it is made by Wacom).

Ah okay, probably an odd curiousity but I just had to ask. LoL

So I think I'll finish this one up. I've never done a real self portrait before, so this will be a bit of an adventure.

I did some very basic coloring. Ideally, none of this will be visible in the final product.



Instead, I'll end up painting over the basic color map. But at this stage it's easy to test various color schemes. I'm not sure I like the gold background. The real walls in this room are white, but they tend to glow bluish when the monitors are on and the overhead bulbs off. (My PC has a ridiculously bright blue light for the power indicator. There is a church across the street from my house, and you can definitely see the blue light from the edge of the church property furthest from the house).

Also, no art tomorrow today! It's my birthday and my wife is taking me out to dinner

Nice experimentation!
Happy birthday, have a nice dinner!

Happy Birthday! And I love the simplicity of the picture, and I like the coloring. It gives it a sort of old look, which contrasts with the modern equipment...thinking an era around 1700 but with today's modern electronics and yesterday's magical little people

Update 2013/12/04 ~



This has been an intensive project, slowed down by that this is the hectic time of the semester for me. I'm up to about 8-10 hours.



Thanks I did!



Thanks

Mixing old and new is fun. I had fun with the picture I did a while back with the biplanes shooting photon torpedoes.

merrak: looking really nice and a belated happy birthday!

amazing detail, and love how it contrasts with the simple background

@AnMal @2-ton

Thanks

This is the most detail I've attempted. So far I'm pretty happy, but I think I may play with the color some.

I have most of the desk finished. I just need to add the knobs. I'm still in "MyPaint mode". I usually use GIMP for texture and lighting.

I like the simple background, too, but I'm thinking about maybe adding some of my worlds back there. I have a few good ones to choose from. The trick will be matching the foreground.

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