Today was my first chance to try out the surface pro 3 down at Leith School of Art.
A 4 hour session using Artrage 4.5.4.
Initial impression are extremely favourable. 4 hours work and still had 42% battery left. Stylus is not quite as slick as Wacom ones, but actually very usable and responsive. I7 handled image at 4280 * 2880 without breaking sweat.
Output from tonight’s 3 hour session. Again using Art Rage on Wacom Cintiq
[singlepic id=217 w=600 h=600 float=none][singlepic id=218 w=600 h=600 float=none]
[singlepic id=219 w=600 h=600 float=none]
Had a quick look at Art Rage which is now available for android. The first one used the canvas texture which came out a little chunky at A2 print size, but otherwise worked quite well
The second one used the course canvas and slightly less textures paint. Actually quite pleased with how this prints out at A2. Needs enlarged as Art Rage still has file size limits which are quite small – 2048 pixel max.
Spent 4 hours on saturday 11th October 2014 down at Leith School of Art (LSoA) drawing Michael. this was done on the Wacom Cintiq Hybrid using Artflow. What I like about artflow is that it works very smoothly with high resolution images (up to 4096 by 4096) and has some nice brush categories.
Overall really enjoyable – only downside with artflow is that I can’t record it as a video yet!
focus on roughing out shapes and trying to keep things nice and loose
Trying to get the tonal balance closer and get a bit of detail in the face
Bringing through the form and looking for warm and cool in the flesh
trying to tighten things up without becoming too detailed
It is very nice to be back doing some digital life drawing down at Leith School of Art. this was the first time using a combination of the Wacom Cintiq hybrid and Corel mobile painting program. The first three images above were 15 minute sketches. the one below was a 45 minute sketch. Will hopefully be going back to this next week. for a much longer session.
So this set of digital painting images is a slightly different set – I was playing around with the snap-art plug in for Photoshop that I sometimes use. The idea was to get a sense of what an image might look like when painted, and to use it as part of the workflow to refine the digital image and composition first. Because you can save the settings in snap-art, you can easily go back and edit the original image in various ways and then quickly “re-paint” to see if the idea works better.
So technically these are not #digitalPainting works in the strict sense, but more an exploration of how another digital tool can be used as part of the overall workflow. At this point I started to explore changes in format and spent a bit more time in #Photoshop first, and going back and forward:
Next one is an intentionally erotic and provocative image – but I really like the composition, lighting and colour – I can see this making a bigger painting
So at this point, I found I had got a lot out of the experimenting, so I thought I would see how the snap art digital painting compared to a real painting:
Snap art:
Real Oil Painting 48″ by 24″
This is really interesting looking back at it. I spent quite a long time doing preliminary studies before doing the main painting to explore and find ideas. I could probably have done that in a fraction of the time using snap art in the workflow. I have drifted away from using snap art again, but looking back at these, I can see that I can make better use of it before starting another image.
Back to reviewing the digital painting I have done this year. This #digitalPainting was to play with texture and digital tools but also to bring a slightly surreal element with digital tools. It again plays with the concept of multiple views using mirrors, but also with multiple time elements which was interesting.
Not my usual figurative subject, but wanted a little bit of a change. Again playing with texture and colour. Trying to keep some interest in the darks, a theme that returns increasingly in future paintings.
Obviously didn’t get far with this one. Started with very loose textured photo clone & then recovered some detail, before starting to introduce some colour. Some nice colours emerging, but felt that this was immediately too photographic.
Having fairly quickly abandoned the previous digital painting, I decided to start a similar one in a much more abstract way. It then gradually began to be refined. This is already several stages on. Again I am trying to keep the dark colours “light” and interesting, equivalent to the traditional technique of keeping dark colour very thin and translucent so that they don’t go “dead” on the painting.
I worked on this one for quite a bit longer, and looking back now, this was one of the stronger pieces from the year. I am quite pleased with the general feel – nice balance between neutrals and colours and a better sense of abstract versus realism.
Continuing the review of my older work digital painting work. I have been surprised already how useful this has been – reminding myself of some good work done previously as well as many lessons learnt and then forgotten.
This was an attempt to a digital painting focussing on tonal work. I wanted to simplify things a little and just play with tone and texture. In the end I think there are some nice elements of painting interacting with the texture, but I am not sure that overall it doesn’t just look very much like the texture is embossed again. Some bits were photo cloned back in, and ultimately look a bit clumsy. Too much of a different language I think.
A bit like the earlier flowers painting in the previous post, some of the drawing doesn’t sit well – too crisp and not a consistent language, but there are a few bits where the tools are starting to react better with the texture. I think that a consistent theme that is emerging is the balance of drawing versus texture. The stronger the texture the less detailed the drawing can be, or at least the harder it becomes to impose the drawing effectively. Also feeling that there isn’t enough abstract elements here.
This ended up being one of a number of sketches based on this pose. I really like the long format – created from multiple photos stitched together. The tools and the textures are starting to work more effectively I think.
It is a bit of a cheesy theme for a #digitalPainting I will grant you, but again wanted to play with level of detail and balance of texture. I think some of the abstract work is quite nice and some of the looser painting like the little pictures in the background is quite effective. I do like my mirrors but here I don’t think the reflection of the face works.
I thought I would go back and review all the digital painting #digitalPainting work I have done over the last couple of years and do a little bit of introspection. Have I learned anything or made progress? Did I achieve what I was trying to do? Are there good ideas that I have subsequently lost again? All part of the learning process. Of course, your thoughts are most welcome too …
The first one, above was an attempt to think about a digital painting using traditional painting techniques, but in a comic book style. Looking back at this, although I didn’t get very far, I like the idea, and it fits with my theme that I did for an end-of-year show about telling the story of working with a model. I like some of the colours that were starting to come through – the blues and browns and pinks working nicely together. As in many of the earlier works, the texture does start to “fight” a bit with the image.
Some nice colours, particularly in the greys, but feels a little disconnected between foreground and background. Drawing is too sharp in the wrong areas (e.g. dark leaf in background)
Although she was just washing herself I liked the edgy eroticism of this one. I like some of the colours, particularly in the body, although I think the form has been lost a lot. Some of the edge work is a little too sharp in the worng places, but overall there is a better sense of the painting and the texture both existing. Funny how looking back stuff seems better than you remember 🙂
Based on the last one, I think I decided to do a bit more with the drawing (tracing) which has worked in some ways, but I think has too much sharp defined edges for what I am trying to do. Also struggling with the sense of scale between the details (e.g. fingers and toes) versus the texture scale. Also the texture looks a little more embossed and it doesn’t look like the digital tools have interacted with it at all. I do still like the theatrical two point lighting – good form reveal and makes for interesting shapes. Still a strong part of my work.
Do let me know what you think – all comments welcome.
3 hours of digital Life Drawing and #digitalPainting compressed into 90 seconds. (Or maybe I just work this fast 🙂 )
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Having been working on the PC recently to do more digital texture work, which is making good progress thanks to upgrading to Corel X13, I though I would go back and do a little digital life drawing on the #iPad and see whether it could still fit into the workflow or not.
So far things are looking positive
I started with a scanned texture, but this time spent a lot more time working on creating the initial background image working purely digitally to get:
starting background image for digital life drawing iPad work
The digital tools now allow me to work with the texture digitally as well as simply painting using it:
background image for digital life drawing iPad work
This is the result after 3 hours work.
Digital life drawing created on iPad with PreCreate and Jot touch 4
The next steps will be to work on this on the PC to bring back the texture & play around with it. The pose will be repeated this weekend, so I may well continue working on it too. I will post that later, but let me know what you think. Do you like the little videos? happy to do more …
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