Dolphin Digital Painting:Work in Progress

If you love dolphins (and who doesn't?) take a look at this work-in- progress digital painting of a dolphin.

He or she is based on the bottle-nosed dolphins we saw on one of the best days ever a few years ago, dolphin watching in a boat off the Portuguese coast. This dolphin is "in progress" because he's destined to be part of a larger project I hope to be able to tell you more about in a few weeks.

Until then (and after!)...enjoy.

PS. Seems I still prefer to paint and draw slowly. Much as all that "fast and loose idea" is appealing, it seems things still work best when something happens over at least a couple of days.

Which do you prefer in general: painting/seeing paintings produced slowly or quickly? Do leave a comment and let us know. Thanks!

New Digital Painting: Poppies by the Stream

At last, another digital painting: Poppies by the Stream.

It's in my favourite digital oil pastels (by Pixarra Twisted Brush) but  also something new: an 8" by 8" landscape, deliberately quicker, looser, and more abstract.

The question I'm asking myself is: why do I leave it so long between paintings. I *love* to paint, but stop myself with all the things I feel I have to do.

To get around this, am attempting more paintings, but with shorter time limits, and a more "broad brush" approach, as you see here.

(This picture is based on some beautiful poppies-and pretty purple flowers-in my inlaws' garden in Devon).


Will "being more casual, more often" this work? Time will tell.

Do you find yourself putting off doing things you love? And/or have you found a way around it? Please comment if you can relate, and/or to say "hi"...and have a great day!

P.S. I posted the original design  to give you the idea. But I'm really excited about how it came out on household goodies like this...

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"...

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...

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!