Category: Art (page 11 of 12)

This is my first attempt at doing a 10 minute sketch on location. It’s pretty primitive, but it does capture the idea of the scene. I was trying to get the basic shapes, colors and tonalities. What caught my eye were the interesting shadows of the limbs cast on the lawn and the daffodils. I had two difficulties – keeping an eye on the time and seeing the iPod’s screen in the bright sunlight. Next time I think I’ll set an alarm on my watch so I won’t have to keep checking the time.
 
I discovered something surprising. There’s a lot of detail in the blown up image done in Brushes Viewer. Look at the daffodils for instance. I found I could use this large image to experiment with various cropped versions of the scene.
 
Here’s a version of the same tree done with Oil Canvas, another paint program for the iPhone/Touch. You start with a photo and use different sized brushes to ‘paint’ the image by drawing color from the photo.

I made the soup. My wife made the bowl.

This is an experiment to see if I can post directly from my iPod Touch. Looks like it worked. I first save from Brushes to my Saved Photos. Then I email the photo to Posterous.

This painting took me 2 or 3 hours to complete over a couple of days. I worked by looking at a reference photo on my MacBook while painting on the Touch.

It’s difficult to draw straight lines in Brushes on the Touch. I thought doing a Mondrian would test my skills. I researched several Mondrian paintings on the internet to see which colors he typically used. Believe it or not I started out the painting with a black background. I then blocked in the colors leaving a ragged black line between them and then, using a small, clear ruler I drew in thicker black lines over the ragged ones. I had to do a bit of touch up in the corners of the colors. If you look closely, you can see I left some imperfections in the lines. Also, I discovered that when you paint large sections of color, you have to go over the area several times in order to achieve a smooth, even color. If you don’t, you can see the brush strokes. Look closely and you’ll see some blotches.

In this painting I applied what I learned in Texture Study 1 to a real scene. I worked from a photo that I took in our backyard looking northeast. I spent 3 or 4 hours on this one over the course of two days. As I painted on the Touch I looked at the reference photo on my MacBook. I started by painting the gradated blue of the sky. This was the most difficult part as there is no easy way to make a blended color in Brushes. I then used the #3 brush set to large to paint the clouds. I saved the image at that point and the next day I made a duplicate Brushes document and added the trees. I first did the birches in the middle and then the maple on the right. Finally I added in the three firs on the left. I used an acetate sheet overlay on the Touch and traced (with water soluble ink so I could easily wipe it off) the outline of the three firs from the reference photo on my Touch. Then I went back into Brushes and used the overlay to check the placement and size of the firs. I had started them too small and too far to the left so I had to paint over my original fir trees. I really like the way the trees turned out – especially the birches in the middle.
 
Here’s the reference photo for comparison. I didn’t start with importing the reference photo into Brushes. I started with a blank canvas and just looked at reference
while I painted.

I did this texture study in less than 10 minutes. The technique I was exploring was to use a large #3 brush set to about 30% transparency. I started at the top and worked my way down using the same “cross-stroke” technique. The #3 brush has a ragged start and end to the stroke. So, if you make short strokes it looks like multiple narrow strokes. This works great for clouds and bushes.

One way to start a painting with Brushes is to open an image that’s already stored in your iPod’s Photos. That’s how I started this one. I then filled the image with a transparent white so that it looked like a tracing paper image. You can still see part of the image in the paper that he is holding. I first drew a line drawing of Dad and indicated that background shapes. Then I painted in the colors. I stopped at this point and didn’t add any more detail because I liked the look of the rough drawing.
 
Here’s the original image.

To arrive at the working image I zoomed in on the Touch and did a screen capture (by pressing the Home button and then the On/Off button). Then I opened Brushes and imported the saved image.

We have a very nice book on the complete works of Van Gogh by Jan Hulsker. I used one of his sketches as a reference for this drawing.
 
Here’s the Van Gogh sketch I used as a reference:
 

This is the first painting I did using the Brushes app and a Pogo stylus. I worked on it on and off for about a week refining it as i learned new techniques. I started with a grid that I made in Photoshop. I overlaid the same grid over the original photo and hand drew the basic shapes while looking at the photo on my laptop.

After I blocked in the colors I could not longer see the grid so my proportions got off. The lighthouse is a bit long in the lamp. Since then I’ve made an acetate grid overlay for my iPod so I can check the drawing after the grid is painted over.

I soon discovered the Brushes app which (along with one called Colors) got excellent reviews. I checked them both out and decided to purchase Brushes. This is the first drawing I tried to test out the tools. I drew this with my finger in a few minutes. I like how you can blend colors together.