Ok, back to drawing Tigers again… :D But this time it’s pastel on some rather nice Velour paper, feels very like suede, and the hard and soft pastels from Conte, and Ashby, go on really well.
Approaching Tiger - Pastel on Velour Paper - 9" x 15"
Oh, and if you don’t visit through RonnieTucker.co.uk then you’re missing my new Gallery page which links to Etsy for buying pieces.
I’m on a roll! Another ink and watercolour painting, and this time it’s not a Tiger!
Gorilla - Ink and watercolour.
Tags: animal, ape, gorilla, human, ink, jungle, monkey, portrait, watercolor, watercolour
Since it’s the festive season (presents and all that jazz) I thought it’d be nice to do a painting, but put it up on the site for people to download, print out, and put on their walls. My present to you, the visitors. So, here it is:
Tiger profile - ink and watercolour on cartridge paper
If you click on the preview image (above) it’ll load up a much larger, more detailed, scan of the original. Click print, frame it, and pass it along to your friends if they want one! If you want to make it look extra colourful, try printing it to photographic paper, the colours always look better on photo paper.
Merry Christmas!
Tags: big, cat, feline, free, freebie, gift, painting, tiger, watercolour, wc
Same Tiger image from before, but with watercolour…
Tiger - ink and watercolour on cartridge paper
Tags: cat, feline, ink, paper, tiger, watercolor, watercolour
I’ve had a couple of people ask me how to install brushes to GIMP, it’s quite easy really:
First, download a set of brushes. Try deviantArt.com, they have an excellent selection of free brushes for GIMP, that’s where I got the brushes I use for the digital paintings I’ve been doing.
The brushes will probably come in a ZIP, or RAR, archive. Open the file using winZIP/winRAR (Windows) or arK (KDE), or FileRoller (GNOME). Select all the brushes in the archive and unarchive them to:
Windows:
C:/Program Files/GIMP2.0/share/gimp/2.0/brushes
Linux:
/home/username/.gimp-2.0/brushes
NOTE: in Linux, you may have to ’show hidden files’ to see the .gimp directory.
Your directory structure might be slightly different if you’re using a newer version of GIMP, but dig around a bit and you’ll find the brushes directory.
Now load up GIMP and you should see your new brushes! If not: click the ‘refresh’ button (bottom right) in the brushes tab.
Good luck!
Tags: brushes, deviantart, gimp, install
Since my posts show up on Twitter, I thought I’d try and get them to show up on Jaiku too.
What’s Jaiku?
Jaiku.com - like Twitter, but with SMS working...
Like Twitter, only better, and with SMS in the UK - which Twitter decided to kill off. Boo hissss!
You can download wp-jaiku from: http://code.google.com/p/wp-jaiku/
Here’s hoping it works!
*fingers crossed*
Having seen many a flash desktop with system info, I decided to give Conky a go. Going in to the package manager and installing ‘conky’ was easy enough! With no menu entry I did the old Alt+F2 trick and just entered ‘conky’ to see if anything would happen.
Life!
A small window popped up at the bottom left of the screen with some basic info, but it wasn’t embedded into my desktop, nor was it pretty. Back to the drawing board.
After a quick search at Ubuntu Forums, it seems you need to create a .conkyrc file in the home directory and configure it through that text file.I found a basic conky configuration and pasted it in to my .conkyrc file and gave it a whirl. Progress! Conky was now embedded in the desktop but it was flickering like mad. The almighty Ubuntu Forums then tells me that you need to enable double buffering in the conky config file. Ok, done that. Try again.
What the…
Now my desktop icons are missing! What gives?! But wait, moving my pointer over where the icons were, brings them back. For a flash. Then conky wipes them out again!
Grrr!
Eventually, after many a search, I came across a small piece of code which said:
own_window yes
own_window_type override
own_window_transparent yes
own_window_hints undecorated,below,sticky,skip_taskbar,skip_pager
… and that was it!
My Ubuntu desktop with Conky in the top right corner
Conky seems to work better when it is in a window which is transparent, has no decorations, and is stuck to the desktop.
Once I had conky working I found a more elaborate config file and chopped out some unnecessary bits to give me:
My current conky setup
As conky configs go, mine is pretty standard, you can get really creative and have Gmail alerts, weather reports (my next project) and all sorts in there!
Long live conky!
I’ll post my conky config in the comments below…
Tags: config, configuration, conky, desktop, monitor, system, ubuntu
Four of my paintings are soon to be hanging in the newly established Big Mouth Coffee Co. in Glasgow.
Big Mouth Coffee Co.
Head along and look at my paintings - even buy one! You know you want to!
Maybe even buy a coffee! 
Big Mouth Coffee Co. is at 167 Dumbarton Road, Glasgow.
Tags: big, buy, co., coffee, company, display, gallery, hanging, mouth, shop
