Old friends…
Still continuing with Inkpad, I’m working my way through piles of long-simmering ideas. “That would make a cool painting… someday…” Well, now it’s a vector illustration, at least! This one has been a gleam in my eye for six or seven years at least. Now that I’ve sold this Beetle, it’s ironic that I felt like completing the project. (This car never did get up to 120 mph, nor did she ever crash, but the best way to honor her was to imagine her having an action-packed life.)
The title is “Smash Buggy.”
As I continue my iPad art explorations, I’ve fallen hard for Inkpad, the vector app from the folks who make Brushes. I never did enjoy digital painting with Photoshop or Illustrator because, even though I have a nice Wacom tablet, I just can’t get used to the hand-eye coordination needed for working on a vertical screen. The iPad (with a stylus) blows that problem away, so I’ve been having some fun.
It’s also been a neat tool for revisiting some canvas compositions that I wasn’t thrilled with, except now in vector form they can be reinterpreted and rearranged. You can see some of the rest of my Inkpad pictures (from ideas both old and new) on Flickr.
It hasn’t been the most productive year for me, but I really hope to get back on track in 2012. Merry Christmas!
Recently, I bought an iPad for sketching purposes. I’m trying to improve my drawing and freehand skills… And of course, painting with your finger is very difficult so I didn’t expect to be using the iPad for “painting” as much as I have been. It’s comforting to know that David Hockney likes iPads for fooling around, but I have never been all that enthused by painting apps I have tried out.
Until I met Omnisketch.
Omnisketch is basically a typical painting app with a very atypical brush set. It’s meant for sketching fast and funkily, as the type would imply. But I have found it really wows as a painting app just because the brush sets are so bizarre. They are quite difficult to master (and what they can do is not obvious until you start experimenting in earnest), making it actually feel like… real painting or something! The learning curve is what makes this app worthwhile as a user experience, although the brushes themselves can produce some delightfully off-center effects.
I’m findg the iPad best for quick-and-dirty bouts of creativity as I gradually work my way back toward the easel after a long hiatus. If you are looking for a painting app that you can love, though, give Omnisketch a whirl. It’s “different” to say the least.
It’s a beautiful 80-degree day out there. In Syracuse, this is a very big deal for early April, so I don’t expect to get much painting done – but I do hope to get in some photography. Early spring usually looks like a nuclear wasteland no matter how warm and sunny it is, but sometimes a good painting subject can be found if you just pay attention.
I started back on an acrylic project this week (um, a floral) and for the first time I’m using the new W&N Artist colors that I got for Christmas. Man, they weren’t kidding about the lack of color shift. I’m finding that my whole sense of color mixing is slightly off – because I must have learned to unconsciously compensate for the wet-dry shift after seven years of painting with Liquitex Basics. Artist-grade colors also dry out faster. I’m starting to wonder if I should just dance with the one what brung me – do the bulk of painting with the student paints I know well, and use the artist grade paints to correct any issues. (Sounds crazy, though, so maybe I won’t.)
Above is a detail from a recent watercolor done on the Arches hot press block.
Getting more and more detoured by watercolor, I shelled out for a rather expensive Arches hot press block the other day. Unfortunately (especially for my wallet), I think I’m in love. Dedicated watercolorists sometimes seem to dislike hot press paper, but as an acrylic painter (acrylist?) I don’t like to slap on the water so much and therefore hot press isn’t intimidating to me. Pictured: the result of my initial experiments, which turned into a sort of impromptu tribute to Seraphine de Senlis.
I sold another (large) painting over the weekend – another inventory clear-out. Still can’t get over the popularity of that animal/floral subject matter which I no longer really do. I guess I’m going to have to make a little more time for it.
Spring is here, the sun shines more each day, and I feel like I’ll be back on track creating more acrylic work soon.
Acrylic on paper: I don’t get it.
That is to say, I don’t understand why you would ever want to create an acrylic work on paper. Unless you are doing some kind of rough study for a canvas work. I guess this is because of my feeling that every piece you work on is a potential sale. Obviously, every piece does not turn out to be a sale, or even worthy of being offered for sale. But for the amount of time and expense of paint that you spend creating a decent composition, I don’t know why you’d pour all that money and effort onto a piece of paper. A piece of paper which could likely never sell for as much money as a similarly executed canvas or board.
In fact, one of the main attractions of my diversion into watercolors is the idea that you can (indeed, must) paint on paper — which seems less expensive in terms of prep/working time, supplies (mainly because acrylic paint is harder to mix and easier to waste than watercolor), shipping costs, etc. Less “overhead,” I guess you could say. I’ve heard the watercolor market is very (pardon the expression) saturated and nobody’s making a lot of money at it these days — but then again, you don’t exactly have to spend a lot to make a profit, if you have a finished work that appeals to someone.
Just the way I think… your mileage may vary.
In the midwinter doldrums, both weatherwise and artwise… I’ve been physically under the weather in one way or another since mid-January and haven’t had much energy to do much besides filling up a Canson watercolor pad with scribblings of past camping trips. (I’ve discovered Sakura Pigma pens.)
These took 30 minutes or less to do. I’m not used to being so “spontaneous” but I admit it was very satisfying to have created at least some little thing every evening after work.
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This month I got off track with the Watercolor Fridays, for a couple reasons. I was sick as a dog one weekend and was unable to do much of anything, much less a postcard project. I also devoted some time to a “real” watercolor project – a WC rendition of a previous acrylic painting called Ride on Round Lake. Originally with the acrylic, I didn’t have a large enough canvas to accomodate the full size of the landscape I wanted, so I only painted the right side. This time with the watercolor, I had a pad in the aspect ratio I wanted (6″x9″), so I did the whole scene. I suspect that the right-side-only version is the best choice in terms of composition, but now I’ve satisfied my curiosity about the whole scene.
I did manage to do two postcards though. One of my kitty, and the other of a theater in my neighborhood that was cruelly torn down about a decade ago. (Ugh, loads of perspective problems in that; I was just being quick and sloppy about it.) Onward…
This NPR story discusses, in all seriousness, the mindboggling “choice bloat” in Crayola colors since their inception at the turn of the 20th century. A handy diagram (pictured) shows how the number of available crayon colors has ballooned from a mere eight to 120. But it is indeed a serious matter to the artist.
As someone who has typically felt more comfortable selecting colors than drawing perspective lines, I personally find color guides to be kind of irrelevant. To me, it’s done by intuitive seeing. It seems easy to choose colors, to understand color harmonies and temperatures without being told, to know when a color is or isn’t right (though I hardly claim perfection, since when I’m done I always feel I could have done better). I’m the one who needs “How to Draw” books, which probably seem just as irrelevant to people who like drawing.
I used to chalk up this need for color mixing guides and color charts, simply to innate differences in perception and so-called “talent for seeing.” You are better at this or that, and need help in other areas, etc. But lately I’ve been wondering if the average person is simply overwhelmed with choices. I got a nice set of Derwent watercolor pencils for Christmas, 24 count, and some of the colors seem only marginally different from each other… and that’s just a small set of 24. Does anybody really need 96 different watercolors or 100 different tubes of acrylic?
Anyone who settles into painting eventually gravitates to a certain limited palette, changing colors now and then. There are certain popular colors I have absolutely no use for, such as cerulean blue; whereas I still live and die by ultramarine. But people who are a little less confident with color might be vulnerable to the dizzying array of choices.
Drawing seems… different. Yes, you have to pick between charcoal and pastel pencils and graphite and varying thicknesses of technical pens, but I think people starting out in drawing are less vulnerable to overwhelm with the different products. It’s because we live with writing instruments in our daily lives (ballpoints or pencils) and they aren’t exotic mysterious things like paints and color can be.