Having no clean air left to breathe because of smoke from wildfires made a big impact on me. When the air around us is polluted there is nothing left to do besides, eventually, perish and die. It came too close for comfort this Summer.
These two small paintings are for now titled “Little wildfire no. 1” and “Little wildfire no. 2”. These are letter sized, acrylic on paper. I made them yesterday, after not having painted for a while.
These are two digital drawings of Lake of the Isles in which I used a lot of digital smudging. I think it looks like the effect you’d get when you use oil pastels and do color blending. I think it can be too much. I prefer when it’s just a little and it looks like the edges of a shape are out of focus. Of course, representing something out of focus, only really happens in photography. If you draw from life, a shape, once you look at it in order to draw it, automatically shows up in focus.
Smudging Lake of the Isles Read More »
These are drawings on my tablet (Samsung galaxy note pro, using the app Artflow). It is the same drawing that I adjusted while it went dark during the sunset. Because it’s digital it is of course possible to save several versions along the way.
Sunset at Lake of the Isles, once more. Read More »
This is the result of the second sit at Lake of the Isles. Again it was getting dark. I decided to adjust the colors and save versions of the image along the way. This time I used the “watercolor brush” to set it up and to make it darker in the end. Using watercolor for the set-up was a really good choice because it makes the lake look a bit watery and it works very well to accentuate the contrast with the highlights on the surface of the lake that I did with a more precise brush (forgot which one, I think the round brush). However, I think the watercolor top layer (the very dark blue in the sky and the water) looks a bit too blotchy, maybe a wider size brush could remedy that for next time.
The experience of ending this in the dark made me think back to a time before cellphones and tablets when a friend and I went out to paint at night in the harbor of Kampen (NL). We thought a candle would help us to see our painting while not illuminating the scene and causing our eyes to have to adjust to the dark al the time. Well, we discovered that it was very hard to see in the dark what color paint you put on your brush. Who would’ve thought. But this time, on the tablet, it was incredibly easy to paint because the screen makes it all light up, but not too much that it is intrusive or a hindrance.
Lake of the Isles, day 2 Read More »
After watching a talk by David Hockney, I realized that of course I could do what he does and go paint outside on my tablet. Here is the first one I made. I started before sunset and ended when it was getting pretty dark, so I had to adjust the colors along the way if I wanted to stay true to what I as looking at. This was made on a Samsung galaxy Note Pro tablet, using the Artflow app.
Here’s a drawing of my foot.
I never before sketched in the oldfashioned way on my tablet (I typically use it to draw on photos), but I just watched a lecture on David Hockney who uses his ipad for that, so I realized that this is of course an option…
The toes were almost the same color as the print on the curtain in the background…hard to see where the toes end and the curtain begins, hard to solve.
My foot is kinda dirty; that black isn’t just shadows.
