New paintings and regular art updates.
Work in progress. Digital drawings of a ‘spotted draon’. I’m thinking of doing something like this for a course project. I thought I’d try and do some working out. It I wanted to make it I would have to learn enamelling techniques and get a kiln to fire it in. But then I would have to cost it and see if its feasible. Or maybe I can design it and then get someone to make it for me? I don’t know. I have a friend who does fused glass, maybe she could help. Life is interesting….
I have to take things further, play around with things, see what happens. I can’t help it. I’m addicted to art. I once saw a spoof warning poster, advising parents to stop their kids learning art… Because it allows freedom and creativity. I wish I could find a copy of it. I will always try to create, I know.
I love doodling and experimenting so the dragon has been morphed a few times in my picsart app. Its still not quite what I was trying to do, but I’ve called this piece “dragon dance”. They seem to be having fun!
I could imagine something like this in a children’s book…crazy little characters all with their own backstories… born from the same clutch. Golden and silver, neon and harlequin…, some bigger than others, I don’t know…I will have to think of a story to go with them.
You know you are bored when you start doodling dragons. Not very good ones at that. I was watching a film, the desolation of Smaug and this came out of my head. My only problem was I drew it on my tablet, which isn’t synced to my phone and some of the apps on one are not on the other, so I have drawings on one device I cant access with the other one unless I take a screenshot for instance. Also wordpress is presented differently on each device. I guess because they have different manufacturers. So this was going to be a lot more complex and layered. I might do more……
Another abstract. Just silver glitter glue swirled around, then permanent markers using blues, greens and purple to create a spiralling pattern. Why? I don’t know. Spirals have always appealed to me. Spiral galaxies, spirals in ammonites, spiral cloud formations, spirals in the seed heads of sun flowers.
Of all the shapes I see in the world, these are my favourites.
I put this through photodirector and the subsequent animated clip is on my Instagram account.
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I wanted to do a colourful sketch of the sunset which was all oranges and purples. I can’t get it exactly right as it is drawn in ArtRage oils, basically it’s a finger painting. I got the idea from a photo by a friend on a Facebook page, but as it’s just an impression there is no point in sharing the photo as this is much more impressionistic than the original.
I’ve got a new tablet and I’ve merrily been uploading some of the apps I used to use. This one was called sketcher free. I played with the various pens in the app and tried to create something a bit more abstract to how I normally draw.
I was also trying out different colours, vaguely graffitiish if that’s a word! Its exciting to experiment with art.
I only have a couple of drawing apps on my phone because they take up too much memory. This app is quite good, it’s called sketcher. There are a lot of textures you can use, plus pens. I only draw using fingers although I have got a stylus somewhere. The image is not very clear but I used leaf shapes, a chalk pen, a crackle pattern and stars. I’d like to make it more accurate and realistic but it will have to do. I kept to a monochrome so that the texture becomes more important. I guess I could put it through different filters to see how that would affect it.
Meanwhile it’s one am in the morning and there is quite lively talk and shouting going on across the road at the local pub. Once that quietens down I will try and get some sleep.
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What’s better than challenging yourself to do something different.
If you draw something often enough you get to know its shape, whether its a drawing of a car, or a landscape, or a face.
If you want to see things more clearly when you are drawing it can be an idea to turn your picture upside down. then you can identify areas you need to adjust.
This is an extension of the idea. Draw the object upside down then turn it the right way up. It’s a way of learning. I find myself talking through what I am doing. Is the nose too long, are the eyes too close together. Just think how you would draw someone if they were standing in their head? How does the hair on their head fall? Where would the shadows be. In this case I can turn my phone round and clearly see that the face is too long, the eyes are too small and the face is too thin. But it doesn’t look as bad from the normal perspective. I think that’s because of foreshortening. Tablets and phones tend to be held horizontally where pc screens are vertical. With phones that means the top of the image is further away from your eyes than the bottom of it. Consequently the top half may be drawn slightly bigger than it should be so that when viewed upside down you can see the distortions.
When I was a child I learned to draw by copying from cartoons and photos, but also by drawing people from life and from memory, the old adage is right, practice makes perfect. I just need to spend the time to learn and hone my work.
The first three drawings are based on a drawing done in a kaleidoscope app. Then I changed them in picsart using the stretch/spiral tool and then the colour curves tool which allows you to change the hues and tones.
The fourth drawing background was done in ArtRage oils which is a free Google play store app. It was then drawn over with sketcher free which allows you to draw with different brushes. I used the ribbon option to draw a masklike face. The fifth drawing was a quick sketch of a face, drawn in a sketching app. In this case I used picsarts colour curves to change the levels of colour, then a stretching app to change the shapes. Finally I used a tool to create an embossed feel and then the mask option to layer up lighting effects.
I’m using my phone a lot of the time and I tend to forget there are more options on my tablet. Then today I realised that there was a drop down menu on the masks option, so I found a whole new section of the app to play with.
What I guess I’m saying is don’t be afraid to play with drawing apps, you learn more when you do, and you can come up with some really interesting ideas.
I used digital art as a sketchbook. I may not use it in the analogue world of oainting, but it fascinates me.
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Mallaband-Brown