Book Review : Pen & Ink with Watercolor by George Olson

Simple, Concise and Packed with information

Pen, Ink and Watercolor is a very interesting medium. It fuses the bright and brilliant watercolors with the direct and detail oriented pen and ink, to create some of the stunning illustrations.

This book provides all the information, tools and methods to get one started on a wonderful journey of exploring this medium.

The author is obviously an accomplished artist, showcasing elegant art work, at the same time maintaining a certain simplicity, that is essential to follow the book.

5 stars simply for sticking with Crow quill through out. Nothing can come close to this versatile tool, which is more like a feather made out of metal.

Book deals systematically with drawing, pen and ink and color. 

For pen and ink, it talks about the various nibs, holders, practical tips, warm up exercises, strokes, building tones etc. Though these are specialized topics more extensive covered in few other books, this is very nicely presented in a crisp and essential manner.

Drawing is a vast subject, but well covered composition, proportions, perspective etc. along with capturing the detailed textures.etc.

Colored inks and watercolor wash are taken up next, presented with a lot of variety and application.

Plenty of examples, all made using the tools and methods mentioned in this book, and a very systematic concise approach makes this a great book!

This is an extract from my review at Amazon.com, You can find more of my reviews here.

India's first Open Source Film

Open source content development is increasingly seeing traction in creative areas such as films. The availability of software tools that are comparable to Hollywood Studio class, has created a new possibility for creative content creation.

Blender is a 3d sophisticated 3D software platform that is capable of and has proven to be able to produce 3d Animation films end to end. 

The Blender institute's open movie project has seen the coming together of some brilliant minds, from across the globe and create 3d films and a highly interactive 3D game with stunning quality both in artistic content as well as technical. 

The stunningly spectacular movie the Sintel, is hard to believe to have been shot entirely using open source software, and primarily using Blender.

 Chamba Swathanthra Cinema Project is the first such initiative from India aimed at creating an animated short using open source tools, and social networking and license it according to Open source Initiative.

The project is currently in pre-production, with the script completed. Its a great script well suited for some amazing animation and special effects. 

Folks from all corners of  the world are welcome to contribute and participate in the various departments and creative areas, such as Character design, Environment design, Story boarding, Modelling, Texturing, Rigging, Animation, Sound and Music, Editing etc.. to name a few.

This would offer a great platform to learn the exciting process of animation film making , and the use of sophisticated software such as Blender. Experts in any of these departments can contribute to make this project a success and a showpiece of collaborative creativity.

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Blender Introductory Workshop in India

ICFOSS (International Center for Free and Open Source Software) is conducting a Two-day introductory workshop on Blender.

This is a great opportunity for folks to get introduced to the Blender interface , and get to model, create and render a scene completely hands-on.

Date and Venue
16-17 September 2011
Travancore Hall,
Technopark,Trivandrum

About the Workshop

This introductory workshop is meant for professional animation artistes, digital media professionals, students, and teachers. As a hands-on workshop, participants are expected to bring their own laptops.
A fee of Rs. 1,000 per participant will be charged for the two-day session (Rs. 500 for students). Working lunch and tea will be provided for participants.

About Blender

Blender is a FOSS-based 3D graphics application, available for multiple Operating Systems.Blender's features include 3D modeling, texturing, rigging, skinning, animating, rendering, particle, water, smoke & other simulations, video compositing, and the ability to create interactive 3D applications, video games, animated film, or visual effects. It can be downloaded free of cost for any of the supported platforms. Blender has been used in numerous
applications including full-length movies. It provides an extremely cost-effective, efficient and complete solution to most common 3D animation requirements.

Attending
Seats will be allocated on a
first-come-first- served basis. Kindly
contact ICFOSS for more details.

International Centre for Free and Open Source Software (ICFOSS)
VII Floor, Tejaswini, Technopark
Trivandrum - 695 581, Kerala, India
Tel: +91 471 2700013
Email: info@icfoss.in