Iris Painting

Hi all,
Time is flying this February, it only seems like a couple of weeks ago that I was carving the turkey and now its nearly March. At least the weather is nice, I can't remember a better end to winter.

On the painting front, I am still learning my way with the digital art on the ipad. I can't see me ever going back to any sort of traditional art and to that end today I sold all my airbrush kit. The thing is I didn't use it that much because I didn't have enough space to leave it set up. Therefore, there was never enough time to get it all out and when I'd finished I'd have to clean the brushes out etc. When you add to that the fact that you had to wear a protective mask when airbrushing, the whole thing became too much of a faff.

Anyway, it has gone now and I'll stick to the ipad. Here is the latest digital paint that I have done of a couple of irises. I enjoyed doing it and I think it looks pretty good.

If you would like to see how I did this digital painting please go to my youtube channel The Armchair Artist

The programme I use is called Procreate and it can be downloaded for just £9.99 from the app store.
If you like the video please consider subscribing and you will get notification when I upload a new video. I aim to do one every 7 or 8 days and you will be able to see how I get on with this new technology.  If you have any questions or comments please let me know.

Roses are Pink

Hi all,
 In my last post I showed you my first attempt at painting a rose digitally on my newly acquired ipad. It turned out perhaps better than expected but the background was a complete mess. See what I mean.

Anyway, I wasn't very happy to leave it at that so I drew in some leaves and a bud to finish it off more to my liking. Doing this using traditional art methods would be almost impossible, I know it is possible to lift out a certain amount of watercolour paint, be let's be honest, the paper never looks the same again.

Anyway, I erased some of the background and drew in some leaves and a bud which I then painted digitally. Here is the same rose with the new background.

I think this is a great improvement and it has convinced me that the possibilities of digital art are massive. Like I said before, I pondered over trying digital art properly for a couple of years and in that time I wasted a whole lot of money on more and more art materials whilst trying to find the thing that would help me make the images I desired. I think I have found it digitally.

I know that some traditionalist frown at digital art and if that is how they feel, fair enough, but I doubt I will ever go back to real brushes. How many amateur artists have been led down the path of buying better and better quality brushes to improve their art. I was convinced. I finished up buying brushes made from the hair of a squirrel that had been hand fed hazel nuts from the only tree left in a Bolivian swamp. I also purchased the best paper, 100% cotton that was so strong and archivable that my painting would still be here a million years after the last pyramid had been returned to sand.

Don't get me started on artist's quality paint because if you've got plenty of money to chuck about the sky's the limit. One is always left thinking, that if one had used paint with a higher percentage of pigment and less binder, one's paintings would look much better. Thankfully, I didn't go too far down this route.

To put it in a nutshell. Yes, over the years my paintings did improve slightly each time I improved the quality of my materials but that was still tiny when compared with the increase in the costs.

On the other side of the coin, digital art has cost me a huge amount of money up front. However, it has provided the biggest improvement in my art and now that5 I have made in initial investment my running cost are almost zero. No more expensive paints, papers, inks, brushes and other accessories like the dreaded masking fluid

I don't have a mission to convert anybody to digital art, all I'm doing is recording my observations and reporting how I'm getting on and at the moment I'm very pleased. If you would like to see how I got on sorting out the rose above here is the link to my channel, The Armchair Artist .Any comments and questions are welcome

In my next post I will be doing another rose hopefully a a bit better.