Category: iPad Pro

art, best effort, brushes, camera, digital art, flowers, iPad Pro, iPhone, photograph, photography

Roses

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This is an image that was done on my iPad using a great app called iColorama. It is also available for the iPhone. It is difficult to fully explain this app. It works in layers but I think only two at a time. I’m currently taking a class to better understand it. It has tons of effects that you can’t even begin to wrap your head around. Then it has brushes. It’s possibilities are unlimited. But in many ways it is not, to me intuitive. At least not coming from Painter, Photoshop and Lightroom, Plus there is no manual. A really odd thing in my opinion. Previously, the app has left me in tears of frustration.

So this class is proving extremely helpful.

After I got done with this in iColorama, I did put it in Procreate and paint the light areas on the yellow petals.

To be honest, this was a pretty crummy photo. I’m amazed it turned out so well. The upper left was completely blown out. To fix that I did take the piece into an app called Touch Retouch which is an all time favorite app of mine. I cloned the blue background on the upper left. I love technology.

Have a great evening.

abstract, art, best effort, edit, iPad Pro, iPhone, paintings, photograph, photography

Log From the Beach

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Hi everybody! It’s a new year filled with possibilities! I wish you all a great 2018.

Over Christmas Warren and I went to the Washington coast to Copalis Beach and stayed at an awesome place called Iron Springs. It’s several cabins on a bluff overlooking the ocean. Totally awesome.

I haven’t been feeling well, so it was nice to get out of Seattle for a week. Christmas can be a difficult time. For me, sometimes family makes it even more challenging. So my solution now is a quiet time at the ocean.

The two enhanced photos above are of an interesting log that had been washed up on the beach.

I used several various spps to get the effects. I’m a total app junkie and I’ve been letting most of them just sit on my iPad and iPhone. There are just a very few I usually use. Now, I’m branching out.

Last year I had hoped to take my photography to a step further in an abstract way. But we had our house remodeled. It took over six months and threw my life and ultimately my health in a tailspin.

Dealing with a general contractor and an interior designer that I fought with constantly was horrible. The interior designer could draw up plans, but had different taste than me. I think designers are used to just shoving their ideas and colors down the customer’s throats. I had very specific color ideas and design ideas. So we fought over colors, over floor coverings, everything.

All this and then the contractor was to finish in two months and didn’t.

My art work got pushed aside.

So now I am at 2018 and ready to start exploring where I want to go. There are so many kinds of art or photography out there. I try some of the types of photography art to fit in some place. But I never feel like I click. So I need to just explore, and try to figure out what I want to do.

With photography, I feel like I’ve been trying on all kinds of dresses, but none of them fit.

Things are always changing with my painting. But I’m comfortable with that. It feels like growth to me. I feel very frustrated in photography.

Here’s to an art-filled, creative 2018.

💘

abstract, acrylics, art, digital art, iPad Pro, paintings

A New Painting

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Here’s a painting I just finished on my iPad Pro in my favorite app, Procreate.

I had thought I would get back to painting on my computer after a nine month hiatus due to the house remodel. But I’ve entered some kind of computer hell. I tried to get one drive changed to a larger one. They screwed that up. Then the next guy held my computer and wouldn’t work on it. But he refused to return it to me! I finally got it back. But now, it’s taking forever to get it fixed!
All because the first place did not push a button in a software app! Grrr!
I should learn to do this hardware stuff myself.

art, best effort, digital art, digital art academy, iPad Pro, iPhone, Painter

Kaleidoscope Fun In Painter

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Karen Bonaker put up a video at DAA Facebook on using the new selection brushes in Painter.  I took off with her suggestion and made these two pieces.  You can check out the DAA here.

The selection brushes are really interesting.  For those of you familiar with digital art, they are the equivalent of marching ants, but you paint them on.

So, I went to Painter’s kaleidoscope feature and turned that on and painted a kaleidoscope with the selection brushes.  Then I painted into the selections or I chose invert and painted outside the selections, depending on the effect I wanted.

Then when I was done, I took the pieces into my iPhone, and used either DistressedFX, Mextures or Shift and gave them a background to tighten them up.

These were a blast to do, and I thank Karen for giving us this idea to use the selection brushes.

Corel released Painter 2018 about a month ago with some very interesting features. I was not going to update this time around.  Corel did not even wait a year to release this update.  To me that is ridiculous.  Once a year is enough for updates.  But in looking at the new features, I decided to go ahead and update.

I am taking Skip Allen’s class at DAA to learn how to use the new features.  We are having a blast in class.  You can check out Skip’s blog here.

abstract, art, digital art, edit, iPad Pro, iPhone

The Watchers

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This is an edit I did recently. I got my source images from Getty Images.

The question in this piece is who’s watching who?

Are the people watching?  If so, what are they watching?  Or are they just looking down. Or are they being watched by the eyes in the mountains?  Who are the eyes in the mountains and what do they represent?  Are they our conscience, society, the CIA or mother?

Then you will need to figure out if the thing in the sky is actually a Russian spy plane or what?

Then perhaps this is none of the above. You decide for yourself. Wherever your imagination takes you is where you should go.

I did this on my iPad using Leonardo. I have tried to use Union but it only has one layer. Which in my opinion, severely limits it.

The masking brush in Leonardo could use some improvement. I noticed that it’s sister app SuperImpose has recently gotten some big updates. It is supposed to really do a great job on masking hair. Again, this app only has one layer.

Additionally, I worked in Stackables.

camera, digital art, edit, iPad Pro, iPhone, photograph, photography

Some Crocus For You! 

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What is the plural for crocus!  Croci?  I don’t know. If so, then these are croci. My friend in South Carolina, Barbara Harris Sartell took this lovely photo and I did the edit.

I used one of my very favorite apps, Tangledfx. I don’t like the default presets that come with the app. But I love my presets. So far I have about 30 of them that I play around with.

I love to see the first crocus peek its head up because that means that Spring is very near.

abstract, art, best effort, brushes, digital art, iPad Pro, Painter, paintings

Introducing Blue!!!

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I don’t use blue in my paintings. Not ever, not never!

Well, kiss those days goodbye. 

I have slowly been putting little dabs of blue in my abstracts. But now, in this painting, there is bright blue in large areas. 

I did this and the earth is still spinning around. I will note there was the election outcome that was pretty damn weird right after I painted this, however. 

Anyway, this was done on my iPad Pro in my favorite app, Procreate. 

Speaking of favorite apps, most of you know how very angry I have been at Corel, the makers of Painter. My former go-to painting app. 

Well, I just updated to the 2017 version of Painter during their Cyber Monday sale. Although my love affair with Painter will never be the same, I will say that in this version the mysterious brush lag I experienced in 2016 has 99% gone away. 

The app is running very smooth and feels like what one would expect from a top-tier painting app. 

But, Painter, how could you have treated me like you did for a whole year?  And no one at Corel gave a damn. They promised me I could be a beta tester, they told me they would help me. Then they just left me out in the cold with brush lag.  My little heart was broken. I never did or said anything mean to them. 

I’m slowly learning the new features in 2017. I’ll let you know what I think when I get them figured out. Mostly, they’re not really for abstract painters. 

For some reason, I’ve fallen in love with the particle brushes. Those were introduced a couple of years ago, I think. I didn’t like them at all. 

However, I’ve been using some fascinating particle brushes made by Skip Allen. That opened up my mind and got me exploring the particle brushes. 

Also, Jason Maranto has a very nice library of brushes at his blog spot blog. 

I’ve been playing with those and having a blast. 

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