When digital meets acrylic painting
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When digital meets acrylic painting
My love for hybrid art continues.
I have read articles and comments by some people who are convinced that any art created digitally is somehow cheating. I don’t believe that … although I have the same concerns as most people when I see how AI has been able to create art in the absence of a human artist.
I create many of artworks in a digital format – from the initial sketch to the finished piece it is all digital. But I also create pieces that start as acrylic painting and then become something more when I finish them digitally.
Is it cheating? I really don’t think so. It is me who makes the digital choices to finish the painting as much as it was me who used the paintbrush on the initial painting. In any case, I like the finished pieces and I hope you do too …
Celebrating 100 hundred days!
Create something, learn something, be better at something for 100 days ... 100 day project challenge accepted. I am delighted to be able celebrate the completion of the challenge! 100 days done and dusted!
I started this project on January 31, 2021, setting myself the goal of drawing people for 100 days. Totally out of my comfort zone and with no idea of whether I would even complete the project, but I figured any drawing is better than no drawing.
I started with a simple sketch in an art journal ... probably the first time I had even thought about using a reference for a drawing. Incredibly obvious now ... but hey, I was 100 days less wise ;-)
Over the 100 days I experimented with pencil sketches, using coloured pencils, gouache, acrylic paints and eventually digital tools as well. The transition across to digital was actually a happy accident. I had been doing a sketch at a coffee shop and just couldn't get it to work. Came home, uploaded the sketch to Photoshop to see if I could do something with it and the fun began from there.
Creating digital drawings from initial hand drawn sketches is such fun. I can have a total "mixed media" moment and incorporate painted backgrounds or even drawings into each piece ... oh yep, sky is the limit!
I also got braver and had more fun with my painted people. It is a totally different approach when I paint instead of draw so that was fun.
Another benefit of the project was the push it gave me to explore drawing in ways I hadn't before. The timing of the project aligned beautifully with a life model drawing class that was being offered at BIA. And so, without no experience in drawing with charcoal and ink and absolutely no experience at all working with a model, I started the class. Wow. once again I was out of my comfort zone and once again I was all the better for the experience.
It took me about 2 more weeks longer than the actually 100 days to get the 100 days of drawing and painting complete (life just gets in the way sometimes) but I am so pleased to have stuck with the project. It was great fun and I think 100 days of deliberate practice has gone a long way towards making me more confident in drawing and painting people!
Summer flowers
This painting is still a work-in-progress ... I am enjoying using bright, cheery summer colours. The days are warmer (ie hot!) and the sun is shining. I am inspired by the weather to go bright.
I still have plenty of detail to add and a few more layer of brights and darks to provide the depth I'm after but this was a fun way to end the semester of painting ... back to the flowers from the start of the semester but a bit freer and brighter.
Negative painting | Canvas #4
The white, blank canvas is intimidating. What do I se there? Where to begin? For canvas #4 I decided to get rid of the white canvas and just splashed lots of paint around (paint that was leftover from other paintings on the go).
There done. Now its a colourful canvas. Still no idea of where I was heading. So the next part in the process? Hello gesso! I started to block out areas and voila I found him ... lurking in the painting ... waiting to be created.
I have stepped back a bit at this point and done some digital work to the image to help me see where I am headed:
I still have some sketching to do before I can see if I am heading in the right direction but I'm loving the ability to work digitally at this point ... let's see what happens next!
Ink, watercolours and digital paint
Jane's challenge in her Miss Quoted lesson this week was to start with a water colour "face" (or at least the underlayer) and then add pen and ink lines to create a face. I had fun trying this technique. Some of my faces worked wonderfully well and some, well some were an abysmal fail ...
One of the sketches I did, really didn't work - I just didn't get the proportions right. But it did prompt me to take that sketch and use the Procreate app to see if I could improve on it. I'm not sure if I improved the sketch but it was an interesting exercise. I'll definitely try some more drawing like this.
This is the original watercolour and ink sketch:
And what if I ... ?
It's hot. Really hot. Make you want to want to "up and move to a colder climate" type hot. I'm hoping my vegetable garden can hold up to the heatwave. Come on little lettuces you can do it!
In answer to the heat I decided that it was a blue ink kind of afternoon. In my mind somehow the blue ink would counter-balance the red hot heat ... maybe?
Anyway I took some inspiration from Pinterest and some of the fantastic artwork found there and decided to do some painting. I then played with uploading my inking to photoshop and going from there. Hybrid work appeals to me. Digital on its own doesn't have enough tactile elements but hybrid? Well yes, I can very much see the appeal. The possibilities are intriguing ... I'm beginning to turn over the possibilities in my imagination ...
Mouse meet brush
The time has come. I love drawing digitally. I love painting with water colours and acrylics. My worlds are about to collide. I know, it would make sense to create on paper, scan my work and enhance it digitally ... and that is one option. But no, I think there is another way.
Mouse meet brush.
Let's turn the process around. Say hello to Beth.
This is my first foray into this hybrid world. Beth was drawn on my iPad, printed and then I played with water colours. This is a first attempt - but opens exciting possibilities. Let the fun and merriment begin!