Sunday 26 April 2015

New Digital Painting: A Face, A Breakthrough, & A Recommendation...

So, it's like this. I've been doing digital paintings of flowers and nature for ages now. And I love doing that. But deep down inside, there was a nagging belief in me that said, "You can't really draw, because you're useless at faces..."

Today, that belief received a thwack. Whatever the merits of this picture, it represents huge progress for me, just in challenging that belief, if nothing else. And I did it quickly, with the help of two tuorials that take only 25 minutes to watch *between them*.

The tutorials are by Dina Wakley for the Artists Network, on You Tube, and you can find them here and here.

They're in acrylics in the tutorial, but seem pretty adaptable (the pic above is in digital watercolours in ArtRage4). Have fun, because those tutorials are awesome, and truly easy, even if you've always believed that you're "can't draw faces"...

Friday 17 April 2015

My Pixlr Editing Tutorial: Hilarious for the Wrong Reasons?



Usually I add text to graphics like this one on a program on my machine. But someone asked how to put graphics on a picture, and she owns a Mac. (For reasons to do with inheriting machines free from my husband, I tend to use PCs).

So the hunt was on for a platform-independent solution.

Which led me to www.pixlr.com.

And then to my first ever (probably hilariously bad) attempt at describing a process via screen capture. (Eg, next time, I'll minimize that Huuuuge Google ad on the screen...)

Have a laugh, anyway...


Thursday 9 April 2015

New Digital Painting: Evolution of a Digital Watercolour

I'm loving playing with Artrage 4 again, especially its watercolour settings. (I'm not an Artrage affiliate, by the way, I just love its ease of use). Here are the several stages of a watercolour featuring the purpley-blue flowers from our window box, given lots of artistic licence.

I think they're "pincushion flowers", or have the less-than-lovely name of "Scabious", but they have their own determined beauty, and the bees love them.


Anyway, first of all, I started with the flowers, using Artrage. I chose a watercolour paper setting, and increased the grain slightly, using low-blend and a small brush size for the stems, and the "just a spot" watercolout brush for the petals.

I might yet pop these into a pattern, but as they are, I felt they needed some fixing into the ground.

So Stage Two involved "just a spot" brush leaves...

Again, they might yet have a purpose all their own. But it still felt like they needed fixing into some earth.

So it was onto some flecks, again with the "just a spot" brush....

















 Very definitely, this design on the right would make a card.

But then, using a combination of "low blend" watercolour paint blobs in new Artrage layer, and the spreading around of those blobs with the "Just Water" setting, the final version of this digital painting (for now!) turned into the picture you see below.













Would you have left this here, or earlier? Or would you have added more? Please do leave a comment and let me know what you think. Thanks!

Saturday 4 April 2015

New Digital Painting: A Cute Rabbit for Spring

Right-click and save this bunny if you'd like to send him as an ecard
At last, a new digital painting. I've had to throw off a cold, and as soon as I did, this cute bunny appeared (based on one I saw and photoed in Epping Forest, with The Computer Man last year).

Once again, I've done this rabbit in digital oil pastels, stroke by stroke, with a tablet and pen.

But this time, I changed the background paper colour first and then erased around it. Please do shout if you'd like a video of this process. (I've just bought a new program for explaining and videoing what's going on my screen and am *really* keen to test drive it ;-)

If you're looking for an Easter e-card, do right click and save him, sending him (or her, it might be a her!) wherever you want.

But this rabbit is for any time of year, and also features on a card and other goodies here.

And in any event, happy spring, Easter or whatever else is happening in your part of the world as you read this.