About
Nelchee
That's me.
I'm a 26-year old web designer who occasionaly freelances as an illustrator and dablles in anything related to art and crafts for fun.
Apart from basic art class in elementary school and a few months of drawing class in the 2009 (see related posts), I'm self-taught in everything I do, which includes drawing, painting (traditional and digital), web and graphic design, jewelry design, sewing, and crafts in general.
Cwtam
Cwtam is baby-talk for crtam which means "I'm drawing" in Croatian.
This blog is a repository for my sketches, studies and work in progress, anything that doesn't belong to my formal gallery. It is also an attempt to force myself to draw more, because seeing this website outdated should make me feel bad about it, although guilt-tripping doesn't work.
Everything you see on this site has been created by me, including the blogging tool. Which is rather crude, but works fine for me. If you notice any errors, please let me know.
Tools
You'll find tools and materials listed below every work of mine. They include: graphite and charcoal pencils and sticks, mechanical pencil, ink, fineliners, ballpoint pens, color pencils, pastels, conté crayons, acrylic paint, watercolor, coffee, various papers, cardboard, canvas, polymer clay, plaster... and I won't even get started on collage mixed-media.
For my digital work I use a Wacom intuos3 large (A4) tablet (I used a small Genius tablet until July 2007), take photos with a Pentax k100d or Sony Cybershot compact, paint in Photoshop CS3 and draw vectors in Inkscape.
Library
Here is a list of reference books I own, and sometimes mention in my posts. Bold ones are recommended!
Educational
- Ann Baldwin: Creative Paint Workshop for Mixed-Media Artists
- Michael Burns: Digital Fantasy Painting
- Nita Engle: How to Make Watercolor Paint Itself
- Eliot Goldfinger: Animal Anatomy for Artists: The Elements of Form
- James Gurney: Color and Light: A Guide for the Realist Painter
- Robert Hale: Anatomy Lessons from the Great Masters
- Jack Hamm: Drawing the Head and Figure
- Jack Hamm: How to Draw Animals
- Burne Hogarth: Drawing the Human Head
- Burne Hogarth: Drawing Dynamic Hands
- Burne Hogarth: Dynamic Figure Drawing
- Philip W. Metzger: Perspective Without Pain
- Stephen Rogers Peck: Atlas of Human Anatomy for the Artist
- Ray Smith: The Artist's Handbook
- Joseph Sheppard: Drawing the Living Figure
Artbooks and art history
- Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer: M.C. Escher - The Graphic Work
- Michael Gibson: Symbolism
- Gilles Lambert: Caravaggio
- Gilles Néret: Dalí
- Alessandro Parronchi: Michelangelo Sculpture
- Auguste Racinet: The Complete Costume History
- HR Giger Arh+
- Images of the Human Body
Design
- Bob Gordon: The Complete Guide to Digital Graphic Design
- Maggie Macnab: Decoding Design: Understanding and Using Symbols in Visual Communication
- Maggie Macnab: Design by Nature: Using Universal Forms and Principles in Design
- Digital Color for the Internet and Other Media
The books on my wishlist are waiting to populate my library. You can help out if you want! :)
