Category: Digital art

Categories
Art supplies Digital art Drawing

Drawing Random Stuff with iPad, Bamboo Stylus and Paper App

Stuff by my chair
Stuff  on the table by my recliner in the living room

I had my iPad on the table next to me while I was watching TV, too tired to go in the studio. So I doodled these sketches while relaxing in my black leather recliner, my favorite chair for watching TV, napping or reading.

The Red Studio Basket, drawn on iPad
The Red Studio Basket, drawn on iPad

I love this red basket that I use to carry stuff between the studio and house. Today I spilled a cup of tea in it but it seems to have survived OK. It lives on a little table in my living room by the front door.

There’s something about the limited color choices and simplicity of the iPad app Paper by FiftyThree that makes everything you draw look nice. On screen the layout is designed to resemble a Moleskine notebook. Using a Bamboo Stylus is a lot easier than drawing with my finger but not as easy as drawing with a real pen.

My Glasses, drawn on iPad
My Glasses, drawn on iPad

Although I studied and practiced digital painting a couple years ago, and even sold a digital illustration to an airline magazine, I prefer painting by hand to making digital artwork. But every now and then I give it another go, just for fun.

Free Scissors
Free Scissors

These scissors came packaged with something else I bought (but I forget what) a long time ago. I don’t know why they were sitting nearby, but scissors are always fun to draw.

Paper is a fun app, and while not nearly as powerful as other iPad drawing apps, it’s somehow easier to turn out enjoyable sketches with it.

Categories
Animals Digital art Drawing Gouache Sketchbook Pages

Herding Elephants? Rallying Rats?

Elephant & Rider, Ink & Gouache
Elephant & Rider, Ink & Gouache

I drew this elephant to illustrate an interesting blog post for my job last week. The post is about change and uses the analogy of an elephant and a rider. The “Rider” is our rational, analytical side and the “Elephant” is our emotional side and the author explains why you have to work with both to make a change.

Elephant, ink drawing painted in Photoshop
Elephant, ink drawing painted in Photoshop

I drew the elephant in my sketchbook, scanned the line drawing and painted it in Photoshop. That’s the one I used for that post. Later I painted the line drawing at top with gouache in my sketchbook. Which do you like better?

Rats Rally the Herd, Ink & Gouache
Rats Rally the Herd, Ink & Gouache

I did this illustration for the same article, but it got rejected, theoretically because two pictures were too many for the one post, but I suspect it was because rats are a little too creepy, even though it is the acronym of a group that was highlighted in the post (RATS: Reading Apprenticeship Teachers and Supporters).

RA Rats, ink drawing recomposed & painted in Photoshop
Rats Rally the Herd, ink drawing recomposed, painted in Photoshop

I used the same line drawing for the final illustration above, but cloned/altered some of the rats and painted and sketched more in Photoshop. This is the one I proposed for the post and got rejected. I didn’t mind, it was fun to do.

Categories
Cartoon art Digital art Illustration Friday

Illustration Friday: Geeky (Computer Geek/Circus Freak)

Geek

Sketched on paper, traced manually in Painter and then automatically in Illustrator, colored in Painter, converted to Photoshop and “saved for web”.
Click here to see larger.

This weeks Illustration Friday challenge is “Geeky.” The original definition of a geek is someone from a circus or carnival freak show who ate live animals such as mice, including biting the heads off live chickens. How the word Geek came to mean someone who is into computers and nerdy, I don’t know. I guess it’s the social outsider thing. So I just took it a step further and made it a freak show guy who eats computer mice and other computer parts. I made myself stop playing with this illustration so that I’d still have time to do some real painting today, so it’s not as clean as I’d like it to be.

I’m a bit of a computer geek myself, and have recently been studying color management theory and practice between devices and software programs. It’s really complicated. This time I was able to embed my monitor and color profile in Painter so that when I converted it to Photoshop they had fairly similar color.

Refrigerator Update
For someone who prides herself on being a techno-geek, I definitely don’t have it when comes to large appliances. It turns out that whole disaster with my fridge was caused by the dial in the freezer (which I didn’t even realized existed) being turned to OFF. I don’t know how it got turned off, but that’s all that was wrong. The skinny, weasel-faced jerk of a repairman tried to charge me $98 instead of the $65 I was quoted over the phone for a diagnosis, claiming he had to charge for his (5 minutes of “labor” too).

I told him the guy on the phone said there’d be an estimate before any labor was charged and he said, oh yeah, they always tell you that. But I have to charge for my time starting with when I walk in the door.” I called Sears back and the guy on the phone confirmed I was right so I asked him to talk to the repairman. They chatted for a bit, the repairman said “OK” and handed me the phone, which I hung up. He said, “No, you were supposed to talk to him–he was going to tell you to pay the $98 and take it up with Customer Service later.”

I thought for a moment and said, “I’ll tell you what, I’ll give you the $65 I was quoted and YOU take it up with Customer Service” and crossed my arms and stared him down. He realized there was no point arguing any further and gave me a “discount” back to the original quoted price and left. Sheesh! What a scam!

Here’s the original sketch on a decorative notepad.
Original sketch for Geek

Categories
Digital art Illustration Friday

IF: Twist (second version) & feeling twisted

Twist 2

Drawn with pencil, scanned, redrawn and digitally painted in Painter

Apparently I’m suffering from an artist’s form of writer’s block–instead of working with oils or acrylics like I planned to today, I procrastinated by making this crappy illustration instead. I’m feeling sad and annoyed with myself that I spent my painting time today drawing on the computer. At first it was fun. I had another idea for Illustration Friday’s challenge of “Twist” this week that I had quickly scribbled in a little notebook. I intended to only spend an hour on the computer with it.

Skip the next two paragraphs if you’re not interested in boring technical stuff of what went wrong.

When I experiment with digital art I always try to learn something new. So today I tried starting with colored “paper” in Painter. Unfortunately, I discovered to late that it would prevent me from working in my usual way: preserving the line drawing as the bottom layer and adding color using the digital airbrush on new layers using “Multiply” as the layer type. The paper color showed through so I ended up working directly on the main layer, which kept erasing the lines. The colors were icky. I redid the colors a bunch of times, then redrew all the lines. Then messed some more with the colors.

I knew it was a losing proposition but I’d already invested a couple hours trying to fix things. Finally it was good enough and I imported it into Photoshop and all the colors turned way too bright. I guess Painter didn’t use the monitor/system calibration I did yesterday. So then I had to tweak it in Photoshop, making things less intense. But when I used the “save for web” command in Photoshop the colors got all too bright again. So then I experimented some more in Photoshop and learned how to use the “Replace Color” command. I’d always wondered how it worked and it’s really cool. But I could have learned that reading the manual, not spending my precious Sunday fixing a stupid drawing.

I’ve been unfocused all week, having finished all my work in progress and needing to start some new paintings–always a difficult time for me if I don’t have a burning inspiration. Clearly I need to stay away from the computer for a while and get some paintings started so I have some in progress. The problem is I have several ideas and couldn’t decide which to start. So tomorrow I’m going to start three of them, as soon as I get up in the morning and then I’ll feel much happier, I’m sure. I’m going to make the most of my last 3 days of vacation!

Categories
Digital art Dreams Sketchbook Pages

Dreams…

Art group turned into dance group

All were drawn in pencil and then ink in my dream sketchbook, then scanned and digitally colored in Painter.
Click here to see enlarged.

(Above) Dreamt that my painting group turned into a dance group.

(Below) Click here to see enlarged. Dreamt I was standing in line to sign up for a race. A big sweaty bald guy without a shirt kept leaning on me and I told him to stop it. Once we started running I realized I could fly so I did, even though I knew it meant I wouldn’t get the race t-shirt. Flying is so much fun!

race dream

dad in NY

(Above) Click here to see larger.  Dreamed I was visiting New York City with my dad and we were walking the streets stopping into jazz cafes and listening to music. I had my flashlight to light our path. I was so happy being in New York I started crying with joy and decided to move there. His wife Linda was there, dressed like Jackie O and neat and trim. Then I remembered how expensive it is to live in Manhattan and that my dad died many years ago. But it was still a happy dream.

If you look at the images enlarged, please tell me if they’re too big for your screen.

Categories
Digital art Illustration Friday People Sketchbook Pages

IF: Suit (Birthday Suit)

Birthday Suit (Illustration Friday: Suit)

The Illustration Friday challenge “suit” really didn’t grab me until I remember it was my birthday this month…

Birthday Suit original sketch

(above) I scribbled the idea for this on a handy notepad with pencil at midnight while I was waiting for my neighbor’s party to end so I could get some sleep. Then I inked over the outline today and followed the steps below to get to the finished picture. The color in the picture above comes printed on the notepad.

Techie notes:

I outlined the sketch in ink and scanned into Photoshop, using Levels to erase the background (paper had designs on it) and improve the contrast. Then I opened it in Illustrator and used “Trace” command to get clean outlines. I imported that into Painter, doing some more drawing and then creating layers defined as “Multiply” to paint it without losing the outlines. I mostly used the digital airbrush. Then I opened it in Photoshop to use the handy “Save for Web” option (Phew!) It took about 2 hours total.

This is my first project on my new electric sit-stand desk/computer workstation. It was a massive project requiring lots of computer and furniture wrangling in my studio to get it all set up and functional and some really late hours. That’s why I haven’t posted the past few days. Tomorrow I’ll post some pics of my new desk and write about the project, my ridiculous goof-ups, the fixes and the complicated but very groovy computer setup that my friend Richard, tech consultant extraordinaire, helped me plan and assemble.

Categories
Cartoon art Digital art Dreams Life in general People Sketchbook Pages

Still Dreaming…

Dream-Movies

Dreamt I was at the movies with my blind husband (don’t have one) and another blind man and they were showing off by walking from side to side on the stage being tricky and funny.

Dream-ShoulderFix

Dreamt I created a company called “Subsidiary” that makes devices to make shoulders more comfortable while sleeping.

Dream-Cereal

Dreamt Cody was a kid again and a funny old grandpa was in the kitchen showing him how to eat cereal from those little fold-open cereal boxes.

Dream-Mom

Dreamt my mom wanted to come live with me but I remembered I had a husband I had to ask first. Then I remembered I wasn’t married anymore but had a roommate (a former friend I don’t see anymore). I asked if she minded and she said she’d inherited a fortune and was going to be buying houses for 13 friends and I wasn’t one of them. Mom was sorting through papers in an envelope marked “Dec 06” that she’d found in her piles of junk stacked around her on her bed.

These are all drawn in ink in my sketchbook, then scanned and colored in Painter.

Categories
Cartoon art Digital art Illustration Friday Sketchbook Pages

Illustration Friday: Sign (on the dotted line)

Illustration Friday

Drawn on paper and digitally colored in Corel Painter

I planned to try to finish two acrylic paintings this weekend but yesterday I spent the day at the San Francisco Sketchcrawl (I’ll post that story and those pics tomorrow) and today I got distracted by this week’s Illustration Friday challenge and this image that word brought to my mind. After tending my roses, getting in some exercise, having lunch and taking a nap in the sun in my backyard, I followed my muse and did this drawing that wanted to come out and play.

Now it’s time for dinner but my lovely neighbors just brought me a beautiful plate of fresh grilled salmon and salad so I don’t have to cook. I can eat and then get to work on those paintings.

Yay! A much needed day of rest and fun!