Category: Sketching

Digital portraits

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I’ve posted A few digital drawings here, and one website, now defunct, was called sketchfu where I drew many of them. (I found out today its domain name is up for sale!).

The tools at sketchfu were quite crude, only 5 or 6 sizes of pen, a colour picker and a colour palette together with a slider that allowed you to change the opacity. But it was surprising what results people could get. There were various little competitions and challenges to copy various pictures and portraits.

I did some of the challenges, and I drew some portraits. You could not draw as well as in Photoshop but they came out OK……

 

You might notice the final drawing here is meant to be of professor Stephen Hawking. This was drawn on my tablet in an app called sketcher free. I did it a few weeks ago following his death. Instead of a stylus I used my middle finger to draw on the tablet screen.

I cannot tell you how uncontrolled and disappointing this last drawing feels in relation to the previous ones. If anyone is aware of a good drawing website, please let me know!

Fork candles

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the confusion of words, such as The two Ronnies sketch: four candles or fork handles…..a poem.FB_IMG_1524173502338

Can you hear the difference?

Fork….or Four…Candles…or handles….

See the word, unheard, the difference.

Imagine a fork shaped candle?

Or four spade handles…

Words change, morph, but stay the same.

Homophones, it sounds like, confusion, illusion.

Playing games to gain our trust,  learn the difference, yes we must.

So four is not fork and candle is not handle but together they mangle talk (not tourque).

The Same, But Different

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Someone looked at the twisted tree photos and said they were lost in the intricate tangle of branches.

So I decided to use a sketch of a tree I did to show how each picture changes depending how it is twisted. …IMG_20180418_124018_988IMG_20180418_124209_725IMG_20180418_124355_473IMG_20180418_124517_484

Twisting each of the 4 images to end up with 4 separate designs…….

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So which would you prefer? A close curved centre, spread out branches, accidental perforation or parallel lines?

Each has its merit. Some of them remind me if my blood vessels at the back if my eye, visible when a strong light shines. Others with the indentations remind me if a postage stamp.

Add colour and we are in a whole new realm.

Art, design, abstraction…it makes your mind work and stretch…

The problem with web based drawing sites!

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Join an art based website at your peril!

I joined a site  and happily drew there for years. The site tools were simple to draw with, a colour picker, variable sized pens and opacity,  lovely,  no layers to mess with. I and many others enjoyed the site which saw a steady rise in use…

The problem as it got too popular. What was meant to be an art site got a lot of attention from bloggers who would write stories under the drawings. The moderators found it difficult to control, and the owners, who had started up another site, were giving less and less attention to it.

I enjoyed drawing challenges there, some of which are shown above. Honing my digital drawing skills. I was happy with what I was doing and made many friends. Sadly though, the site was eventually closed. The owners tried to transfer people across to the new site, but it had too many tools,  there were lots of things to do, but the site did not have the same feel as the old place. It seemed aimed at a younger audience. Eventually it too closed, to reappear as a different site where you could search for your old drawings but they were hard to find, and you coukd not add new work.

Luckily I had downloaded some of them before this happened. As with other sites, be careful to back up your drawings or they may be lost.

#digitallydoodling

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It’s time to show you some of my recent digital drawings posted to my instagram account…

 

While I usually draw and paint in traditional materials like paint on canvas, or ink and pencil on paper, I regularly draw on various apps aswell.

This started when I found a web site called Youdraw around 10 years ago. At that stage I did not have a drawing tablet so I went out and bought a small one with the pen attached by a wire. I was really pleased with what I could do, and I eventually progressed to a bigger tablet but still with a pen that was attached by a wire. I used it so much and did so many drawings I wore the knib of the pen down!

Then I was offered a second hand wacom tablet, it was a revelation. I had got a photoshop programme and I was learning about layering and cropping, basically all the little things that help you morph pictures. In the meantime I had found various drawing web sites, like 2draw and wetcanvas and floating ginko. I was using their apps, which were quite complicated, but the results were fun. I frequently got told off on one site for drawing too fast. I was not allowed to be an expert on it because I didnt take enough time!

It was then that I came across a site called sketchfu. (Now closed) this had the simplicity I was looking for, large, medium and small pens, an ability to change the opacity and a colour picker, but the way it worked meant that you could create really interesting drawings without all the finicky bits.

This site and its sister Muzy were closed by its owners a few years ago. I think they were getting too much traffic and not enough revenue.

I decided to do more drawing, I got a bamboo tablet, and for a short while posted on line on instagram and Facebook. But then I got another tablet, a computer…I downloaded a few apps like sketcher free, ArtRage oils, kaleidoscope, and others, all free. The only problem then is having to draw by finger. It’s not as smooth and clean as a tablet pen. I have used stylus pens, I think I will do that again.

Currently I have lots of art on instagram, and some if the digital art has the hashtag #digitallydoodling if you want to find it.

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Today’s Life studies.

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It’s Wednesday again, and so have just finished Life class.

Tonight we had a musician called Mark sitting for us. He is an accomplished singer and accordion player, and we had the pleasure of drawing and painting him while he played and sang.

Two hours of hearing music such as the Stoke hornpipe and cajun tunes ensued.

It did make drawing him difficult but that was part of the challenge.  I did a couple of sketches and a close up drawing and a small acrylic on canvas portrait .

Good way of spending an evening.