Tag: Digital drawing

Looking at me

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Research has found that if you have a picture of an eye or eyes looking at you there is less chance that you will do something bad. I heard that someone put a picture of eyes on her packed lunch because her food would go missing from the fridge. It worked and it stopped happening. There are also posters you can put up in shops and offices to reduce petty theft. its funny what influences up,

I wonder if I should do the same in our fridge, I buy nice ingredents, only to find they are gone when I come to make a meal, or have a snack, strangely none of the ingredients that need cooking ever go…..

But eyes in the fridge?  I think it would put me off cooking!

Horses

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Digital red horse…

When I was a child I was fascinated in trying to draw horses and horses heads. At one stage I drew a lovely picture of a dappled grey horse in pencil when I was about 9. I sold  it for sixpence! I just remembered it after all these years after doing this digital drawing of a horse. It’s red because the original drawing in ArtRage oils was a flower, then a poppy, then a heart and now a horse.

Here are two of the previous drawings. I can’t find the heart, but I think that might be on my phone. I seem to be saving things in two places so it depends which I use to create the art.

What I’m getting at is the fun to be had by morphing one drawing into another,  covering your tracks, but being influenced by colour and shape.

Back to horses. I always seem to draw them in profile, and facing to the left. I also seem to do the same thing with profiles of faces, but when I draw people in 3/4 (half way between profile and straight on) the faces are turned slightly to the right. I tried to discuss this with a friend who also drew profiles. She always did faces looking right in profile. I wondered if it depends on if you are right or left handed. She was left handed and drew opposite to me.

One of my main struggles with horse drawings I that I’m not good at their mouths and also their eyes. I don’t use a photo to copy from when I’m drawing them. I try and use my memory.

So there you are, not much about real horses  except obviously I love them.

ArtRage free app

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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.

X

Digital juice

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Every so often I come across drawings I have done on the computer, this was part of a drawing challenge a few years ago. You would work from a reference photo someone posted on line (in this case a site called Sketchfu that has since closed). Then a group of artists would draw the image using the tools on the site, which were a palette of about 100 colours, a colour picker, about 5 different sized pens, a control of opacity, and I think there was also an eraser.

The tools were minimal but enough to be able to create quite good images. I wish the site was still working. I spent a lot of time there. The shock when the owners decided to close it. I know several thousand users were distraught, they had invested so much time in it. I had downloaded a lot of my work but I know a lot if people lost everything.

Cold

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Blue and cold, chill my bones,

Snow falls sifted like icing sugar.

Whorls of wind taking heat away.

to where? Icy fingertips frosted nose,

Ankles and feet lumped with shivers,

Cooled heels , cold arms, breath softly turned to cold fog.

Heating is on but not making a dent in the chilly room.

Yesterday was glorious, brilliant,  sunny.

Now I need thermal clothes to encapsulate me.

It may not warm till spring, when suns return heralds warmth.

Till then, head down, under duvet, I try and stay warm.

Winter begins in Autumns arms.

Weather

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Storms and hooks of cloud.

Hurricanes and tornados, monsoon and typhoon?

The weather worsens and land is submerged.

Subsumed under water, pouring over ground.

The heat is rising, bubbling up.

Jet stream and Gulf stream, stream and steam.

Poor polar bear, starving now the sea is no longer ice.

Ship’s can sale through warm waters,

But is this good? No it cannot be,

The ocean and the sea,

Will rise above our heads if we don’t change.

Carbon dioxide expands, exhaled from life and oil.

Let us hope we can ride out the waves,

Let us survive and make amends.

Love the world, the Earth,

Do not love greed and money.

 

Transitions

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We have an art challenge at Spode studios to come up with an art work which follows the theme “transition” or “transitions”.

I would normally come up with a realistic painting but I’m also toying with something more abstract. These are initial digital drawings, working on the transition from grainy to smooth, straight to curvy, and changes of colour.

I might try and turn one of these into a large painting. In a way it’s also making me think about changing my work practice from quite a straightforward way of working into something more involved.

Watch thus space for possible updates….

I might even enter something into the exhibition….

2007 digital drawings…

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I’ve been doing digital drawings for over 10 years now, here are some from then. I can’t remember what platform I was using, but I think it may have been Sketchfu which is now defunct.

I was a moderator there for several years and it could be quite hard work sometimes. Trying to prevent people upsetting each other, banning trolls, and deleting rude or racist comments. I had to be very diplomatic. I was also moderating another site at the time, so it took up a lot of spare time.

Even so I drew thousands of drawings on both sites. I just can’t help drawing, and I’m very interested in all sorts of art styles.

I would like to find another site to draw at, drawing in apps is OK but you can’t spark off what other people are doing. The camaraderie of drawing with other artists, doing drawing challenges, and drawing to a theme is what I was really interested in.

I downloaded a lot if the drawings and if I can access some of them I will post more here.

Iterations

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Take a drawing, a few dots on a page and turn it and multiply it, change the colour balance, then use another tool to swirl it, crop a shape from it, then place each next to each other to get a final picture.

These are iterations, each one a slight change,  adding to the complexity of the images. Sometimes multiplying can loose detail as the patterns start to merge because the pattern shrinks each time, which is why I like to change the colours and the hues of the drawings.

I don’t have a favourite

I just like the way things evolve.

I copy you,

And change you,

Multiply and stretch you,

Your face changes slowly,

Gives each picture a twist,

A new flavour,

Changing fruit to jam,

Seed to flower,

Growing each time,

Like bacteria, multiplying,

Mutating,

Evolving. ….

 

Portraits

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I think I’m reasonably good at capturing people’s images when I paint and draw both traditionally and digitally. I also enjoy painting animals, and again I need to be accurate in representing them.

There are lots of books and videos to aid drawing and painting techniques. But the biggest thing that helps me is practice. Like anything else the more you do the better you get.

That said, having the book you are drawing in or canvas you at painting on placed at an upright position, either vertical or slightly sloping, helps with the resulting picture. If you draw on a horizontal surface thee picture can end up elongated or distorted. Similarly if you have a canvas in front of you too low down you can end up with a picture where the head may be to big, and thevlegd too small. It’s all a matter of positioning so you see the image equally.

I don’t tend to draw out first, I’m really terrible for starting with the eyes then working my way out! I guess I think the eyes hold the character. If you look at a face eyes are not always level. Because a face is symmetrical does not mean it completely matches on either side. Edgar Allen Poe was photographed, and when you take the two halves and multiply them into two new faces it could be two different men you are looking at…

Anyway it’s too early in the morning to be doing this…

X

P.S. the paintings here are distorted a bit because of the angles they were taken at. I have tried to straighten them up digitally but they are still a bit “off” I will try and get more photos if I can, but some belong to a relative who lives a fair distance away .