“Days like leaves go spinning by
For those of us who stay behind
Your heart I cannot lie
We can but sing or die”
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Woman with Guitar
- variations in Blue and Red
Artistic fuel:
reference – @ivakosic_
music – #courageoflassieband - Sing or Die (quoted above) / Air Du Temps / Kali Mera (in video) and countless coffees + redos
Sketch started back in 2023 using #conceptsapp – recently completed in #Artstudiopro w/ further color tweaking in #affinitypublisher. Video shows one of countless iterations.
My love of Courage of Lassie’s music goes back decades - spanning from university days to parenting days to post parenting days – taking on different nuances at each stage. The song itself took decades of searching record stores and online groups. Seemed like a fitting accompaniment for cold fall days. For many of us singing / dancing / playing music / drawing bring no tangible financial value or makes any blip on social media algorithms but nevertheless nourish our inner being. So for Courage of Lassie and other artists I admire – thanks again for giving me some warmth through the bleakness of these times while I hope to do the same for whoever comes across this little online corner.
ArtStudio Pro practice sketch (updated post) / Homage to #triestebathyscaphe
- First time really diving (pardon the pun) into #artstudiopro toolset – esp using autocomplete lines / arcs and experimenting w/ pigment brush.
- threw down some shapes and saw where this led me.
- departure from typical drawing approach in that this one was getting better understanding as to how digital blending works.
- threw in green light echoing a childhood favorite book cover - #RalphMcquarrie was genius using the red light as focal point in the cover of #splinterofthemindseye
First major foray w/ #heavypaint . Was inspired by recent snow themed posts by some really talented HP users on Discord and also by morning walk in freshly snowed woods where a fox scooted across my path in a millisecond just as I was perusing pawprints. This got me to improvise a snow scene.
This app allows for a very interesting approach to digital painting in that it makes no attempt to disguise pixels as paint strokes but rather uses the pixel as the basis for its strokes. Hard to explain but the mechanics are very similar to real painting where unexpected painterly type color mechanics pop up and you can roll w/ them / work them in. The UI is also unique in that it allows for a very fast drawing flow as you’re not as encumbered w/ the technical overhead as with other apps. That said, there are more bugs in this IOS version of the app than the Amazon but am still pretty jazzed about the end result / grateful for an artist centered app. This app brings me back full circle to the times I first got to try digital painting in the late 80’s and when today’s Microsoft Paint would be considered ground breaking lol.
This piece also brings me back to one of my childhood inspirations – Robert Bateman. Back then my parents would plant me at the local WH Smith bookstore while they shopped – it became my de facto art gallery where I could appreciate the art of Star Wars, the Hobbit along with Bateman’s works - all in good measure.
To this day I marvel at how his pieces have the compositional grace of an Ikebana piece yet have such attention to the details of the environment where the animals lived.
Happy New Year all! Drawing done over the holiday break for folks wanting to remember their lost canine companion… Sketched first in #conceptsapp then color adjusted / cropped in #affinitydesigner .
Greetings all - sharing plein air #conceptsapp sketch (on old geezer 3rd Gen Ipad). Starring snoozing dog and squished sofa which now I’m realizing is quite Rubenesque in its squishiness. Sketch took approx 1 hr. Very interesting to work this way as it was very challenging trying to draw a black dog in a dimly lit room / trying to convey shiny black fur. Not sure if this was a resounding success but nevertheless a valuable practice piece. This was basically a 2 color / 2 brush / 1 layer sketch done in the span of about 1 hr.
Drawn in Concepts / Image Cropping and colour adjustment in IOS #affinitydesigner
This doodle / experiment w/ custom brush w/ hard straight edge on one side had some promise - almost 2 hours and 1 coffee cup later it became a sunrise study.
Granted this is a drawing trope which nevertheless holds a place in my heart for capturing and sharing a moment similar to what Anthony Bourdain stated about a brief post-cooking high – a moment “*That* is irreplaceable. Nothing approaches that. That’s the kind of satisfaction no bestseller can ever beat—no television show, no crowd, no nothing.”
I’ve been fortunate enough to see ocean sunrises throughout my life in different locales and I try not to take these for granted.
Drawn in #conceptsapp / Image Cropping and colour adjustment in IOS #affinitypublisher 2.5
Sketch homage to drawings of the Old Masters era.
Am not sure where the reference photo of girl + deer was originally taken. The sketch was inspired from a recent FB feed from @zero.artholic .
This reference image did bring to mind the sacred deer park in Nara…
Last (2) slides show process from reference image > initial gesture thumbnail > succeeding layers in #conceptapp > gradient adjustment in #affinitypublisher .
Concepts has been my layout tool of choice the last (4) years for its ability to refine / scale up or down pencil strokes with the flexibility of a vector app while still retaining the textured strokes that raster imaging apps typically do better at.
#narapark
#naradeer
"Everything you love will probably be lost, but in the end, love will return in another way."
—Kafka
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“To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd”
—Hamlet
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Mental therapy piece
Took advantage of zoom factors in Concepts to highlight key parts of drawing / tell story
Drawn in #conceptsapp
Laid out in #affinitydesigner
#franzkafka
#hamlet
Quick Sunday sketch done mainly in #conceptsapp + retouched in #procreate . Starting point / reference photo was from cemetary in Merida (MX?) on Flickr / Gaspar Emilio Segura Lopez - a pro photographer who AFAIK doesn’t have an IG account. He does have a fantastic eye - needed a mental break from chores / work so ran with doing my take on his wonderful photo.
