Birthday Card

Hi all,
It was my wife's birthday last week so I painted her a birthday card. I didn't paint it to save money, I did it just because I knew she would appreciate somebody making an effort. And let's face it, buying a decent birthday card these days isn't easy. I sometimes wonder what sort of person decides what makes a good card, certainly a lot of the ones I see on the shelves range between being thoughtless and damn right offencive.

Anyway, my wife has a taste for cards that lean a bit towards naive art, so that is what I did. It is based around some lovely partridges that used to visit our garden. There was about eight of them to start with and I took some photos of them. However, during the next few month their number began to reduce. Slowly but surely over a period of about 9 months, one at a time, they finally disappeared all  together.

We live on an housing estate so they could have been killed by cats or perhaps run over, but I like to think that they decided that the woods were a better place to be and that is where they are now.

My wife loved to watch those partridges so I thought she'd like this card.

Thankfully she did like it and she was so pleased it is now hanging on our wall in a frame.
If you would like to see how I painted it here is a link to the short video I made showing how it was done.

If you like it, please consider subscribing and you can see how I progress now that I have changed to digital art. Thanks.

Blue Butterfly

Hi all,
Just finished another digital painting. This one is of a blue butterfly on a Bird's foot trefoil flower. The composition of the flowers came out of my head, which to be honest isn't my preferred way of working. I'm not good at imagining scenes, so find it much easier to work from a photo. From now on that is what I'm going to do.
Here is the painting.

It looks very complex and time consuming composition, but due to the fantastic medium of digital art, it was easier than it looked. If you watch the video that is linked below, you will see how I did it.
I only had to paint one trefoil flower, the one the butterfly settled on later, and from that I cut and pasted the same flower onto the ends of the green stalks that I'd left waiting. They were done on a seperate layer so I was able to reduce the opacity slightly, which made them sit a little further back in the painting. The effect increases the focus on the flower with the butterfly on it.

The small white flowers were all done with 3 different stamp brushes that a created for a previous painting so yet more time was saved there. If I'd been using traditional methods and painted each flower individually it would have taken weeks to complete.

I can't say enough good thinks about digital art because it really does tick all the boxes. If you have any questions please let me know. Meanwhile, I will leave you with a link to the video. If you enjoy it please subscribe and another one will be along shortly.

Lady In Red

Hi all,
I'm here again with another digital painting and to give you inspiration if you have ever thought of going digital.

The painting came about after I took some photographs of bees in my front garden. You may have gathered by now that I like painting flowers and, as beautiful as flowers are, I think they look better with a bit of life on them. So, I was photographing bees to give me reference material for future paintings.

When I looked at the images that I'd taken on the computer screen, this one jumped out at me and was asking to be painted.

Quite a daunting task you are probably thinking and you'd be right if I was doing it in traditional materials. Doing it digitally made the whole thing a lot easier. I tried to make this one look a bit more painterly than my recent efforts and I think it went well.

Here is the finished painting that was, as usual, done on my ipad using a app called Procreate.

Overall I think I did it justice although I'm not 100% happy with the bee. You may be wondering how long it took to paint all those tiny flowers and leaves. The answer is 13 hours. I know that because Procreate records how long you have been working on a painting, in fact, it tells you how many brush strokes you have taken too, why you want to know that I don't know.

If I'd been painting each one of those flowers individually, like I would have done when using traditional material it would have probably taken over 100 hours.

Doing the painting digitally meant I was able to create a brush in the shape of one small flower. I used this in various colours and levels of opacity to place flowers on the screen very quickly. I created 3 brushes in total with 3 different planes and this allowed me to get the rounded shape of the full bloom.

It sounds complicated but in reality it is very simple. If you would like to see how I did this painting, here is a short video which will show the method in more detail.

If you like the video please consider subscribing and I will have another one coming along on few days. If you have any questions about the video or digital painting please let me know.

A Robin

Hi all,
One of the things I could never master when doing traditional art, was painting leaves. I knew what I wanted them to look like, but I could never achieve anything like a satisfactory result.
Here is an example.

Okay, they probably aren't the worst leaves you've ever seen, but they are not as good as I would like. The big issue for me is the veins. Because it isn't possible to paint a fine light line over dark paint, there were only two options. The first was to use masking fluid to mask out the lines, but it never worked for me because the masking fluid wouldn't go on fine enough. I tried using just about everything from a bent nail to a spider's leg but it was still no good. The other method I tried was to paint around the veins. If ever you've tried that method you will also know that life is far too short.

So in the painting I've just completed I set myself the challenge of painting some realistic looking autumnal leaves, and because leaves on their own don't make for a fantastic composition, I added a robin.

I know, summer has hardly arrived yet and I am painting autumnal scenes with a Christmas robin, sorry about that. Anyway, here is a picture of the finished painting.

I think it would make a nice sympathy card. I also think you will agree that the painting of the leaves is much better than the one a above. It is so much easier using digital media, fine lines of the lightest colour will cover even the blackest black so it has to be a winner. All you need to do is concentrate on painting your image not wrestle with ways to achieve it.

If you would like to see how I painted the image I have made a short youtube video. Here is the link.

Please consider subscribing if you like it and another will be along soon.

Creativity

Hi all,
When I created my youtube channel called and called it " The Armchair Artist" I wanted to show how easy it is to do art on an ipad. It takes up less space an it is easier to pick and carry on with a painting than it is with traditional art, because you don't have to get all the paraphernalia out. There's no doubt about it, real art can be a bit of chore especially after a hard days work. The net result is that it is easier not to bother and if you don't bother you can't expect to get any better. Practice makes perfect and that is a fact.

However, I may have confused some people and they have assumed I called it "The Armchair Artist" because I was too lazy to get up and do some proper painting. In this post I would like to dismiss that train of thought by showing that I'm, not a couch potato.

Those of you who follow my other blog http://www.shirewriting.blogspot.com/ will know that I do a lot of creative things with wood like, turning, carving and pyrography.

Here is a short video of a walking stick that I have just finished.

If you enjoyed the video please consider subscribing, I am currently working on a painting with autumn feel which features a robin. Hopefully I will be showing that in my next post.

Lilies

Hi all,
I'm still doing the digital painting on my ipad. I'm not getting as much free time as I would like but I'm setting about an hour aside every night.

I have only been doing the digital art for about 5 months and feel that I have made great improvements. Here is a picture of my latest piece.

I think it is good and beyond anything I could have hoped to have done using traditional painting media.

It struck me the the other day that there are very few digital painters around that concentrate on flowers and nature. Most people who take up digital art seem to think that it can only be used to paint skull, dragons, warrior princesses and manga, whatever that is.

I am trying to redress the balance and prove that traditional style art can be done digitally and whats more it is easier.

I have done video of the me painting these lilies and you can see for yourself how easy it is. I used 2 brushes and 6 colours  only. Please take a look and subscribe if you like it.

Thanks for looking. My next one will be of some autumn leaves and a robin,

Blossoms

Hi all,
I just thought I'd share a couple of my latest digital paintings with you. The first is of some cherry blossom, which I have done against my usual black background. I use a black background to put all the focus onto the flowers.

My wife, who is probably my biggest critic said, "The flowers look like marshmallows and the stalks look like chocolate."
Very nice indeed, I didn't know if I should hang it on the wall or eat it. I like it even though it does look a bit plastic. That is probably the only drawback with digital art, it can make paintings look too perfect and sterile.

I was going to show you the video of how I painted this blossom, but due to trying to save storage space on my ipad, I very annoyingly deleted it by mistake. All I'm left with is the jpeg image you see above,

To put things right I thought I'd have another go at some blossom. It just so happened that the crab apple tree in our garden was just coming out so I took a few photos of it. I had to borrow the bee but I though it would give it a bit of life.

For this painting I decided to do away with the black background and give it a more natural look.

Given that this is my first painting of a bee, I like it a lot. The leaves fade into the background just has I intended and I like the three focal points of the flowers and the bee.
However not everybody thinks the same. A couple of people have commented that they think the leaves should be darker and more pronounced and that the focal point is at the top which makes the composition top heavy.

Now it may have been better if the bee was in the bottom lower third so that it looked as if it might fly into the picture rather than out of it, but then I wouldn't have got those beautiful buds. And does it matter? Do we always have to have the point of focus on thirds. Who's rules are they?

Regarding the leaves. Yes I could have made them darker and made them more prominent, but I was looking for a painterly effect.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not moaning about the comments I love having them it all helps to make us better artists through awareness.

Unlike the blossom at the top of the page, I managed to create a video of how I painted the blossom and the bee, here is the link.

If you enjoy the video please consider subscribing. It is free and you won't even get bothered with notifications if you don't click the bell icon.

I will have another video for you soon.