Tag: Painter Digital Art

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Drawing Every Day Matters

Bread: Everyday Matters Challenge #84

Sourdough 2
Sourdough 1

Last week’s challenge for the Everyday Matters group was “Draw bread.” This delicious sourdough loaf (a specialty of the San Francisco Bay Area) was sketched from life using Painter’s digital pencil and paint tools.

My cats were very confused finding bread on my drawing table and my little calico, Fiona, tried to snatch a slice and make a run for it when I wasn’t looking. She has a thing for grains–I left a plastic bag of granola on the counter while I was drawing the bread and when I brought the bread back to the kitchen the granola bag was ripped open on the floor and piles of granola were everywhere. She also opens the cereal cabinet door, climbs in and shreds open the Cheerios box (doesn’t touch the Special K low-carb cereal though). She also steals my socks if I put them down when I take them off but I don’t think that’s related.

Even though this came out looking more like a marker drawing than pencil (I’ve since solved that problem and now pencil draws like pencil), I had great fun doing it. It’s exactly like drawing in a sketchbook, but somehow more freeing in a funny way. I’m going to make a “sketchbook” to hold my digital sketches too.

I used to feel judgmental about digital art, thinking it was somehow not “real” art–and maybe easier. It’s definitely not easier, or better or worse, just another art tool to explore and play with. I hope you don’t feel disappointed to find digital art here from time to time, not just watercolor. Watercolor is my true love, but an occasional dalliance with digital is fun too.

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Animals Drawing Illustration Friday

Illustration Friday: Change (Diaper)

Diaper Change

Here’s my second Illustration Friday idea for the topic Change. This was fun to draw in Painter but I used my laptop so I could sit at my drawing table instead of standing at my desktop computer. But the desktop monitor is callibrated and the color stays the same regardless of the viewing angle. Unfortunately that’s not true for my laptop. So when everything was finished on the laptop and I transferred the file to my desktop computer to use Photoshop’s “save for web” feature before uploading, I discovered that the colors were horrible. Half of the picture was piss yellow and hideous.

An hour later, mucking around in Photoshop, and it’s sort of fixed. It’s all a learning experience but I’m going to have to figure out how to work comfortably and still have the color turn out right. Any tips greatly appreciated!

(Here’s my other Illo Friday submission this week.)

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Illustration Friday

Illustration Friday: Change (Climate)

Climate Change

This is the first of a few ideas I want to play with for this week’s Illustration Friday topic: CHANGE. I’m trying to learn how to use Painter IX and each time I do I find another level I know nothing about. I’m starting to get some basic understanding but it’s really challenging. So here’s this post…now on to the next drawing. (And here’s a link to it if you’re interested.)

Categories
Animals Illustration Friday Life in general Sketchbook Pages

Illustration Friday: (Ant) FARM

Illustration Friday

Before this week’s theme (Farm) was posted Friday morning, I was trying to take close up photos of some ants that were carrying around a chunk of kitty kibble on the bathroom sink. I don’t think they carried it there–maybe the cats dropped it? So when I saw that the topic of the week was “Farm” I immediately thought of those Ant Farm kits that I always wondered about when I was a kid.

My whole house is really an ant farm. The bathroom ants are the stupidest since usually there’s nothing for them to eat but toothpaste. The living room ants are travelers. They come in through one crack between the wall and the floor and go out through another nearby. The ones in the yard travel around managing their herds of aphids on the roses and bushes. The kitchen ants stay away from food or trash and instead hang out by the sink which makes it quite convenient to wash them away. The ant problem is minimal these days, since I discovered Ortho Home Defense (doesn’t smell and safe for kids and pets). Before that I felt like I was living in an ant farm! You just spray the stuff around the perimeter of the house once a season and the ants are gone. I guess it’s the end of a season (sadly).

I did this in Painter, which I’m trying to learn. It’s taking some time to get used to drawing on a piece of plastic that you can’t turn to draw in different directions. And when I moved the file from my laptop to my desktop computer I discovered that the colors were appearing much lighter on the laptop than they really are. My desktop monitor is big and calibrated and the laptop isn’t, but I can use it on my drawing table.