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DEREK COOPER
MARCH 2007

I (still) live in Birmingham UK with my family and pets where I scratch a living as a graphic artist with periods of time spent in Javea, Spain to get out of the drizzle. In truth I prefer English weather to the Spanish variety as we at least have some, rather than just hot. Hot is nice for a while but gets a bit samey.

This is a little collection of drawings, nothing you won't have seen before if you're a TalkGraphics regular, but the only criteria for me was to find something I'm not too ashamed of that had been produced since my last, (first), time as 'artist of the month' and which required the minimum amount of finishing off.

I enjoy drawing very much, both with traditional tools and using Xtreme but I try not to take myself too seriously; I'm not producing 'Art' here, I just want to enjoy myself until such time as I get bored with the picture or at least until I feel I've done enough to have got an idea down, which is why so many drawings I looked at for this show needed 'finishing off' a little. 

Most of the time I like to just sit down and start drawing what's in front of me, whatever catches my eye around the house which is where I find most of the objects I draw, which is handy when your using a computer. I'll draw on 'traditional pub media' such as beer mats or napkins when out, which is where my 'man in a pub' drawing originated and again these are always very unfinished rough sketches which I'll scan as the basis for a drawing on the PC if they have promise. I'm also taking a lot more photographs than I have done for a long time as I'm enjoying the instant results you can obtain with a digital camera.

Sometimes I'll sketch straight into Xtreme and develop the resulting mess into something with a little luck and uncharacteristic perseverance. Drawing in Xtreme is obviously a different discipline to using a pencil on paper but the way a very rough sketch is gradually transformed into a finished piece of work is constantly fascinating and the results often surprising and difficult to predict.

I'm a bit of a recycler so I reuse various bits of drawing, for instance the wheels on the only two cars I've ever drawn are the same and various other bits and pieces of detail are reused but that's just one of the advantages of using a computer to draw as it saves having to repeat some of the repetitive tedious detail and so hopefully allows you to concentrate on the good bits.

To end I'll reiterate what I said last time I was Artist of the Month:

I hope you enjoy looking at and get something from this little collection of pictures. If it inspires anyone to go away and have a go and / or do better, then that justifies them being posted here…

I think that was it, more or less.

Derek

Xara makes several graphics products and all of them are fun and easy to use. And Xara makes this site possible so it would be nice if you just went to these pages and had a look see. Thanks.

You are probably aware of Xara Xtreme but have you downloaded Xara Xtreme Pro? All the tutorials in this Workbook are done in Xtreme Pro, so if you don't have it, get it now.

Here are some other products made by Xara and links to the Xara.com Website.

• Xara Xtreme Pro Xara's flagship product. Now with full PDF import and export support and Flash animation capabilities which you can see demonstrated in the upper left corner of this page. Xara is the world's faster vector drawing program and as the artwork in the Featured Artist Gallery attests, one heck of a program. Click here to download your FREE trial version or to upgrade to Xara Xtreme Pro today!
   
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• Xara Screenmaker 3D A 3D screensaver maker that's fast, fun and easy to use. Create animated 3D text or tumbling picture cube screensavers. (This application will make you a hero in your office or home. And it is embarrassingly inexpensive!)
   
• Xara 3D-6 Xara 3D is the Number 1 tool for creating stunning, professional-quality 3D web graphics. See why for yourself. You can use a 3D program and drive yourself nuts trying to figure out all that X Y and Z axis nonsense, or you can make your life easy (and fun) with Xara 3D. It's up to you.
   
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©2007 Gary W. Priester
All art is copyright of the artist and may not be used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the author.

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