Not gonna post the results here because all I really did was put paint on paper and mix some colors and see what happened, but I got a few bottles of Dr. Ph. Martin's Synchromatic liquid watercolors over the weekend to test drive and see if I wanted to spring for a whole set. I like ink. I like how ink stays where the fuck you put it forever once it's dry. But sometimes I need the transparency of watercolor, and I've been dying to try this stuff.

They are bright and smooth and beautiful. They mix like a dream.  And they are strong. Ridiculously strong. I had equal parts water and paint in the pans, and this stuff was like "lol, what water?" These shits are going to last me forever. 

More testing is necessary, particularly testing with ink. Maybe testing mixed with ink. Don't think I'm going to blow 80bux on a set, but I might get a couple more colors. 

Sitting at the day job doing a bunch of glass pieces that take 20+ minutes each to engrave so I'm doing sketches with room pix from Ikea's website as reference while they run. Mostly this is going okay, and then things go pear-shaped. Like in this kitchen--counters, fridge, cabinets, all fine. Then there's a piece like one of those cabinets that sits in the corner of the room and my brain just bluescreens.

fucking perspective, how does it work

(yes, I know, just do it, practice moar, git gud son, etc. etc. but shit on a stick this drawing thing frustrates the hell out of me sometimes)

My day job is in the awards and recognition industry. Trophies and plaques and such. Sometimes customers want their artwork on stuff...

What we ask for:

Some sort of vector format like .eps or failing that, a nice big clear .jpg. (of course we can work with other actual image formats but prefer to offer the fewest options possible so as not to scare or confuse our largely non-designer customer base)

What we get: 

• Word document with poor quality artwork pasted into it 
• Word document with the "logo" as word art 
• Same, except with some weird ass font we don't have; almost always a pay font that costs more than the customer is paying us and customer will not want to pay
• Powerpoint presentation 
• Excel spreadsheet 
• Tiny .jpg with more artifacts than the Smithsonian 
• 20x20 gif 
• Thumbnail from pay stock site complete with watermark; license almost always costs more than the customer is paying us and customer will not want to pay
• Logo from company or other entity we know damn well a) has draconian logo usage policies, b) has not authorized customer to use their logo, and c) will sue the absolute shit out of us if they find out we accepted money from someone they didn't authorize to use their logo to put that logo on a thing they didn't authorize either of us to put it on
• Blurry, poorly lit cell phone photo of letterhead, business card, etc., usually taken at a weird angle 
• Blurry, poorly lit cell phone photo of person wearing shirt with logo on it, and the person is almost always standing at a weird angle and is at least one size too large for the shirt
• Blurry, poorly lit cell phone photo of signage, usually at a weird angle with important parts cut off at the top or bottom or obstructed by vegetation, buildings, or someone's head
• E-mail containing link to image on pay stock site; license almost always costs more than the customer is paying us and customer will not want to pay
• E-mail containing link to Google Image Search results
• Same, where search results bring up such a wide variety of completely different things that we have no idea what the hell it is they even want
• E-mail containing link pointing at location of image on customer's local hard drive
• Nothing, followed eventually by angry call telling us they tried to text the artwork multiple times... to our land line

"I give credit to whoever posted the background onto google"

Yeah, that's not how that works. 

"It came up in Google Image Search" does not equal "this image is in the public domain and I can do whatever I want with it." Shit, guys, it says right here:

And even if whoever actually owns that image is cool with you using it in your work, "whoever posted it" is not proper credit. Drop a name and a link. Maybe shoot a "hey I used your cool thing, thanks" e-mail off to the owner. People who make stock art enjoy seeing what other people are doing with their images.

If all this "credit" business is still too much trouble for you, let me introduce you to morguefile.com (not my site, I don't benefit from that link, it's just a resource I use the shit out of). It's full of actual public domain photos you can use for your backgrounds or whatever. Yes, public domain. You don't have to credit or link back or ask permission (though it's still great if you do the first two just for shiggles). It's great. Use that instead of using someone else's work without permission.