Cat sketches

 

I’m playing with digital sketches to decide whether to paint or draw a card design. After the first set done in a sketching app, I did the last one as an artrage oil sketch – over drawing a picture of a firework exploding that I did last week. I’m happier with that than the others.

I’m only doing these because I’ve got a cold. I was due to go out and go to an art group but I woke up feeling snotty this morning. But you can’t keep me away from drawing or painting for long. I’ve got a large peice of foam board in the car to paint on for something else this week….. But that’s another story.

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I think this looks more refined and handsome.

Scarf design

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Playing with pattern again, I created this digital drawing of what could be a paisley patterned scarf.

I like the idea of an intensely coloured swirl at the center and a red border. But the outer edges would be black so it would appear to be floating in space, in fact if I added a few tiny dots it would look even more like that.

The simple power of computers is amazing. People have such creativity at their fingertips.

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Learning

Instead of just finger drawing in an app I’m trying to get a more realistic portrait using a Sketch app and a stylus . I am finding that using the stylus stops the slipping that makes more irregular lines that happens when I try to draw with my finger alone.

The drawing is being made up from the airbrush tool and I’m changing the thickness and opacity depending on the thickness of the lines I want to draw.

It’s again a work in progress so we will see how it turns out.

 

ArtRage free app

Both these drawings were done as digital finger paintings in ArtRage oils, a free app in the Galaxy play store.

I’ve had the app for ages, so like a lot of things you become blase and don’t remember to use it, but it’s there in the background. Anyway I liked playing with these drawings, there is a metallic option and with the first I gradually dialled down the metallic pen as I worked my way out . This also has the effect of making the colours paler. I only used the thick oil brush on its widest setting.

The second picture, poppy, was drawn over the top of the first. Instead of just using one brush I used the driest brush option and used dots as well as streaking the red colours across the picture.

I’m sure there is much more I can do. I love vibrant colours and this app gets me excited. I love having a 3d effect when I’m drawing digitally.

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Patterns

Oh I love pattern and colour,

I love birds, flowers and trees,

Green men, phoenix, mythical beasts.

Who wants bland and boring?

Who wants pale and wan?

Why not get those colours

Under your skin.

Life is so exciting.

Life can be such fun.

If only we embrace it

Under the sun.

Never give me plain things

Always give me jazz

Living in a coloured land

Magic has begun.

Mark making

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This is a digital drawing that I did of a cave painting, ancient and modern in one picture.

The urge to make marks and create images seems to have been with humans since the stone age. I do wonder if Neanderthals were artists too? Perhaps someone out there knows if they were. Art seems to be intrinsic to humans , a way of visualising the external environment. Whether it was animals they hunted, or eventually farmed, they created images of them that are beautifully depicted.

As the millennia moved forward art continued, but also turned into pictographs, such as hieroglyphs, or other ancient languages. The words I am writing now have there roots in ancient art.

Of course painting continued, and people also created sculpture and invented ink and printing. We are the mark making hominids. Without art and language we would not have science, mathematics, map making, books. Art evolved into design, photography, architecture. Art and culture,  I wonder if music emerged at the same time as art. Possibly earlier as spoken language was probably used in parts of the ape family before home sapiens appeared. But to point at a cave painting and use a word for cattle, or hunt, or flock. Thats interesting …I’m sure there is a lot more information out there.

Whatever happened I feel there must be an “art” or “creativity” gene. I know I cannot do without mark making.

In memory of Tig

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This is a digital drawing I did of my old cat called Tig.

He was a stray, and turned up one day at our back door. Our other cat Casey had died following a road traffic accident so we were happy to give him a home .

Tig was a character, he was very friendly and fun, his one fear was of the window cleaner. He would always run and hide when the man came round next door. Whether it was the rattle of his bucket, or his ladder, Tug would absent himself until the man had gone.

He was a climber and loved the trees in our garden. He would sometimes climb up the goat willow tree on the corner of the garden and jump to a neighbouring roof to sunbathe.

Life was sunny for Tig. He loved a fuss, and he had such a cute face. I even started doing tiny drawings on a website called Youdraw that I called “the adventures of Tig”. I didn’t write it for long but people knew about him and liked him.

Then, well , the day came when he didn’t come home after the window cleaner had been. We had put posters up when Casey went missing, and on the following day when he still hadn’t come back I decided to do some posters and print them off. But before I did them I visited the neighbour because Tig used to go in his house for a fuss…….

As I walked out of his front door I saw Tig curled up outside our front door. I rushed over to him, but he wasn’t moving. As I got close I could see he wasn’t breathing.

I didn’t understand how he got there. Then my partner came out of the house. He had been looking for me. He explained he had found Tig in our garden, and realised he had died. He didn’t want me to see him straight away because I would be upset so he had left Tig outside while he went in to get me.

He did not know I was at the neighbours, and was upset that I had found the cat. It was a horrible, sad, day.

It seems that Tig may have been poisoned. We contacted the vet, but they told us even if they did an autopsy we would not know where he had picked it up.

Tig is buried in our garden, under the goat willow. I still miss him.

Tubes

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I thought I would try and write a quick story for you….

Extruded tubes appeared before me, alien, moving like snakes towards me. Garish colours assaulted my eyes. Where was it from, what was it?

It flowed down from the sky one summer night, plastic, solid, opaque. Hidden from view in the forest until dawn light caught its curves. Like a gigantic chrysalis the shell began to split. Each tube containing an arm or a leg. Crawling out from its cocoon.

The weight and mass of the creature made the ground shake and tremble. Trees toppled around it as it raised its glistening body up to the sky. Woodland animals fled from it as its huge bulk shrieked as it moved. Yellow fluid steamed and it oozed from the monster. No shape like this had ever stood on Earth  before.

I cannot describe it, it did not resemble anything I had ever seen before. The only conclusion I could guess at was that it might be part of an invasion ? But what could it want?

The massive bulk moved closer to me. I had the intense feeling that it was trying to communicate. A gap opened in the side closest to me….

“Got any cheese?” It asked…..