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Bri Mercedes Art

@brimercedesart-blog / brimercedesart-blog.tumblr.com

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A note about my Tumblr blog:

I'm now automatically pushing blog posts from my website's blog to Tumblr, so if the formatting or wording is funny, that's why! Hopefully you all can see my daily doodles and news updates without too much hassle. Check them out in their full glory and subscribe to my email newsletter here:

http://brimercedesart.com/blog

You can also find me and my art at these websites:

http://twitter.com/BriMercedes http://brimercedes.deviantart.com http://weasyl.com/~brimercedes http://instagram.com/brimercedes http://patreon.com/BriMercedes http://brimercedes.storenvy.com

See ya!

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Gift Idea: Pokemon Card Pins!

With the holiday release of the Pokemon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire games, Pokemon is once again on everyone's minds. Fortunately, there is no shortage of unique Pokemon gifts.

I went through my old collection of Pokemon cards and made pin-back buttons out of the ones that were no longer collector-quality. They're now listed for sale on my online shop. Check out a small sample of the buttons available below, and head over to my Storenvy to claim your favorites- there are an extremely limited number of each! Order as many as you like and pay one flat shipping fee.

Source: brimercedes.storenvy.com
#pokemon#pokemon cards#buttons#sale#storenvy#oras
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Book Signing December 12th in Elkton, MD

On Friday, December 12, 2013, I will be hitting up The Palette & The Page in Elkton, Maryland to participate in a book signing with my 2013 picture book, Bird Boy. I'll be joined by these other spectacular local authors:

Michele Chynoweth Walter G. Deecki, Sr. William Francis Lois Hoffman Don Hurst Dalen Keys Ken Lang Carol Larese Millward Pat Valdata

Worth noting, they always coordinate this event with the Cookie Throwdown, a cookie-baking contest held by all the small businesses and galleries on Main Street, where YOU are the judge! Last year's Mexican Hot Chocolate cookies were amazing!

For more information, please visit The Palette & The Page's website. Hope to see you there!

Source: thepaletteandthepage.com
#book signing#bird boy#children's book#kidlit#local author
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Daily Doodle & Encouragement: December 4

If you're an artist, are you not quite sure why you're doing what you're doing? Can't decide what field of art you want to get into? Haven't yet found your personal style? Afraid of letting people down or starting a project you know you'll drop in a couple weeks? Are all these fears preventing you from creating anything at all?

That's me every day. But here's how I'm getting over that.

From what I've seen, everyone is indecisive and fearful like this to some degree! But the worst thing we can do is stand still and stop creating when we're doubting ourselves. If you don’t create anything at all, you won’t create anything worthwhile. Don’t let the fear of failure paralyze you, you have nothing to lose! Put pencil to paper and go wild, and most importantly: don't try and please anyone but yourself, and don't let other people tell you what you can and can't do.

Today's Musical Encouragement (via NIIC The Singing Dog):

#thoughts#music#encouragement#gryphon#daily doodle
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A small sample of the images I'm producing for my current freelance project (posted with permission). They've been keeping me pretty busy, but it's great to have work (I kinda sympathize with the dizzy guy). All done with my new Monoprice tablet monitor.

#illustration#art#photoshop#monoprice#healthy
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A Couple Hours with the Monoprice 19" Interactive Pen Display

I got this tablet based on Frenden's wonderful review of this piece of hardware and a need to replace my aging Intuos. I carefully read and compared reviews and models and settled on this one for a couple reasons: it was the cheapest in the category I wanted ($200 more would get me a Yiynova 19u+ which has more consistent reviews), and though the product has mixed reviews, some of the complaints can be worked around. The issues that couldn't be worked around were quality control-related and therefore subject to its 30-day return policy. You can't really go wrong with a $400 Cintiq competitor with a return policy.

I saw the UPS truck come down the road and stop at another house in our development, drop off a package, then drive away. It took me 10 minutes to realize my package had been delivered to the wrong address (after checking my tracking number online, which had said "DELIVERED" with nothing on my doorstep), and fortunately I had the guts to go knock on the neighbor's door. They gave me an (opened, they must have been curious) box with my tablet inside- fortunately the tablet's packaging was undisturbed. I got lucky. I emailed UPS support to report their wrongdoings. An honest mistake.

Anyway, off to the tablet itself! Setting up was easy despite all the mixed reviews: I simply had to uninstall the Wacom drivers, download & install the Monoprice drivers, and then plug it in: in that order. It did not come with a DVI cable or DVI to mini display port adapter (for my iMac) so fortunately I already had those. Something to consider. Once plugged in and set up properly in the Displays control panel, it worked wonderfully. The pen feels a little stiff so I have to press hard to get full pressure, but that can be adjusted for and the pen just may need to be broken in (and believe me, it will be). In the time I used it I got a few "blips" (like full-pressure blobby things) in the pen pressure but nothing that would interrupt my workflow. A concern in the reviews was the bad viewing angles, and that is definitely present. When calibrating the monitor it is SUPER important that you're looking at the monitor the exact way you'll be when drawing with it. But I figure that can be compromised for by 1) using premade color pallets and 2) just dragging your working image to a correctly calibrated monitor (my iMac screen for instance) every once in a while. The last thing that really makes me scratch my head is a little speck of dirt between the glass and LCD panel, which was a complaint that I found often in the reviews. WHY and HOW does that get past quality control? Anyway, it's in the upper right area of the screen outside of my work area, so it isn't worth complaining about but it's good to know if you decide to purchase one. A couple reviewers complained about the distance between the pen tip and the cursor, but I didn't find that to be a problem probably because I've used normal non-screen tablets all my digital art life.

Pros:

PRICE Functional Good size Pen feels good, comes with 4 extra nibs Pressure sensitive Zippy compared to Wacom tablets Can be used purely as a regular tablet if you disable the screen (screen uses VGA or DVI cable while tablet digitizer uses a separate USB)

Cons:

Dirt particle in screen Color accuracy and bad viewing angles No DVI cable or Mac adapters- must be bought separately Pen's buttons can only be mapped to left, right, and middle click No hotkey buttons (but you were going to use your keyboard for hotkeys anyway) No eraser on pen (but you weren't going to use that anyway)

Not perfect, but considering you can get five of these puppies for the price of one equivalent Cintiq, it's a steal. Would recommend because of its 30 day return policy as I get the feeling quality control isn't the best. Worth a shot if you're in need of a tablet upgrade and on a budget. I'm completely happy with my purchase.

With Love, Bri

#tablet#monoprice#review#tablet review#cintiq#digital illustration#text
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