DweezelJazz Art Blog » digital art

A ‘Cow-bus’ in Gex, France: a Digital Painting

DweezelJazz — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 10:33:23 +0000

Jasmine (our African Grey parrot) and I used to go for long walks in the Gex countryside. We saw all sorts of things and took loads of photos, which have since become a source of reference shots for paintings for the Gex book. Well, I took the photos and did the walking, and Jazzy sat and climbed around in her backpack cage on my back, eating and looking around.

During one of our jaunts we came across some cows being transported to the fields for grazing. During the winter the cows around Gex are kept in or near the barn, and during the late spring and summer they’re brought out to the pastures. ‘Cow-Bus’, (13″ x 10″) seems a good name for this painting.

It was fun painting this. Jazzy and I had a great time out that day. It was so pretty everywhere, spring was vibrant with bright new flowers, butterflies, bees, insects buzzing everywhere, fresh air, and sunshine.

Jazzy was chatting away as usual, making impressive hawk sounds and generally commenting on things. She liked to chat, sometimes she chatted in a continuous flow of non-stop, almost unintelligible words. One time we were sitting at a bench and she was doing this. Someone got out of a parked car and crossed the street to ask if I had a radio on, and then discovered Jasmine. Of course, Jazzy was delighted because then she was admired and soon someone else came and she had a crowd talking to her. From then on, whenever she chatted like that (which was much of the time) we called her chatter: ‘radio Jasmine’.

Here you can see a more close-up view of the tractor window. There’s quite a bit of detail in this painting.

I’ve decided that I like detail, and perhaps more of a graphic-type look, rather than an overt so-called ‘painterly’ look, which often seems to translate to a more sophisticated look. I’ve had quite some difficulty trying to understand what style paintings I want to create, because I admire many different styles. But I think I do best with a simpler expression, and it has been such a good feeling, almost a relief, to discover this.

This painting was painted using Corel Painter 11.

Sketches, Digital Painting and Experimentation As Part of the Work Flow

DweezelJazz — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 11:03:00 +0000

Last week I sketched and inked a drawing of the Tower of London, scanned it into the computer and then painted it using Corel Painter Essentials and Adobe Photoshop.

This is the first time I’ve used Painter. The program came as bundled software with the wacom graphic tablet I got long ago and I finally slipped the disk into the computer and installed it.

Painter provides brushes that make it possible to quickly build texture into a painting, which otherwise takes me more effort to create in Photoshop. Painter also has a really nice color wheel that I find very intuitive and easy to use (I’m using version 3, the color wheel may have changed in version 4, it is said to have been improved).

After applying what might be called an ‘underpainting’ in Painter, I opened the file in Photoshop and continued painting, smoothing things, adding more emphasis to different colours and placing the final touches on it. I use a really great set of brushes in Photoshop, that I bought from Portland Studios, designed by Justin Gerard.

I love painting digitally. I don’t find that it takes less time or effort than painting with physical paints, but I love bright luminescent colors, and painting on the computer is very like painting with light.

When I was a kid, about 7 years old, I was often invited to go to a neighbor’s house to play. My friends had a light box with a plastic sheet/screen on it that had tiny holes through it sized to hold colored plastic pegs. The kit came with a variety of drawings etched in white on black paper.

The idea was to place the paper on the screen, push the colored pegs through the paper and the light behind, inside the box, made the peg light up. Punching those colored pegs through that black paper and seeing them light up brilliantly in the otherwise dark room was something I still remember vividly. The thrill of the finished ‘work of art’ gleaming in super bright colors! I guess some things about a person just don’t change with time: painting on the computer nowadays gives me similar delight.

Painting digitally is also a great way to investigate compositions and colors for a painting. I’ve used the computer to create a rough reference for a couple of the egg tempera paintings and also for some watercolor paintings. It’s an excellent way to experiment and learn. From now on I plan to make a digital painting rough part of my routine work flow to use as a reference in painting an egg tempera or watercolor piece.

Here’s one of the sketches, from the movie Chain Reaction, I drew and inked using a Pentel brush pen.

'At Party' Brush Pen Ink Sketch

Painting of the Office de Tourisme in Divonne Les Bains, France

DweezelJazz — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 12:43:05 +0000

At the beginning of May there was a holiday here in France and we took the opportunity to go to Divonne for a photo shoot. We discovered that very few people were out and about and there weren’t many cars on the road either. It was a great day for taking loads of photos around the place.

I’m considering doing a series of paintings of Divonne and so I have started with the Tourist Office. It’s in a pretty area with a stream flowing nearby and the Casino is across the street.

The painting was done in Adobe Photoshop, using brushes in very much the same way I would paint with normal brushes on paper. Painting digitally gives access to different styles of painting that I couldn’t achieve easily, if at all, with egg tempera.

Divonne is a popular place for tourists. There is very pretty countryside all around, the Divonne lake is near the town, and the town has small shops, restaurants and cafes. (If you’d like to see what the Divonne lake is like, I’ve written about it with lots of photos: you can see them by clicking: here.) On Sundays there’s a market from early morning until around 1:30 and there are loads of people. It’s great fun!

How To Make Digital Paintings and Sketches

DweezelJazz — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 19:01:12 +0000

My sister wrote me an email a couple of days ago about the digital paintings posted in Unexpected Development. She said: “I’m not sure I really understand how it was created, but I’ll read it properly again later.” I didn’t explain how I painted them in that post, so I thought I’d do that here.

A very important accessory for painting on the computer is a Wacom tablet, or some device that allows you to use a pen on a pad in much the same way you would a pen on paper. This is a photo of the Wacom Intuos 3 tablet I use.

Wacom Intuos 3 Tablet

You can see the pen in the photo; the pen tip facing up and the eraser (just like you’d expect) is at the other end. The pen has pressure sensitivity, so that the harder you press, the thicker the pen or pencil or paint stroke is. The sensitivity of this response can be adjusted to however you want it. For example, if you want to have a quick flow from a thin line to a thicker one, you can set it to be real sensitive to slightly harder pressures to create that thicker line. And you can set a maximum thickness you want it to go. It can also be made to respond to tilting the pen as you draw, so that it responds very much like a pencil or paintbrush would when you tilt them.

If you want to draw something, you just draw with the pen on the sensitive pad in the middle of the Wacom tablet and it comes up on the computer screen. To erase, you flip the pen around and use it just like an eraser. The pads come in a range of sizes, from 4″ x 6″ up to 12″ x 19″; the one shown above is 4″ x 6″.

The Wacom tablet works with Adobe Photoshop, Corel Painter, and many other software applications. I’m using Adobe Photoshop. I saved jpeg snapshots of some of the stages as I painted the Horse Chestnut, so I can use these to show a little how it was done. I don’t have anything saved from the earlier part of creating it, but here’s the first snapshot I have.

1st Stage of the Digital Painting Of Horse Chestnut

I sketched the horse chestnut using a fine simple line that varied a little with pressure applied to the tablet. And then I applied color with different brushes.

2nd Stage of the Digital Painting of Horse Chestnut

The choice of brushes in Photoshop is a huge topic so far as I can tell. The essence of it is that you can choose the brush type, size, and variation of brushstroke.

There seem to be an infinite number of ways to arrange a paintbrush. The idea is that you choose a pattern and size and when you paint with that pattern it repeats itself over and over again as you drag the brush across the page. You can choose from a set of patterns that are delivered with Photoshop, but you can also add patterns of your own. And these can be anything, and I mean anything, you want.

3rd Stage of the Digital Painting of the Horse Chestnut

The amazing thing is, that when you choose a pattern, let’s say of what appears to be completely random dots arranged in a swirl, and then you drag it across the page, it can create a brush stroke that is totally unexpected. By selecting and adjusting, what is at first, a dazzling number of attributes, you can dramatically change the way a particular pattern displays itself when painted on the page. This means that there really are no limits to what can be achieved, but it also requires lots of experimentation to become familiar to the point of making the computer brush more intuitive to use.

4th Stage of the Digital Painting of the Horse Chestnut: leaf closeup

Depending on the type of pattern and attributes you choose, the paintbrush can be made to look like airbrush, watercolor, pastel, oil, acrylic, and anything you care to invent. Figuring out which brushes do what can be quite the inventive part.

6th Stage of the Digital Painting of the Horse Chestnut: leaf close-up

Colors and brushstrokes are added layer on layer just like with traditional painting, until eventually the final painting emerges:

Digital Painting of Horse Chestnut

I’m excited about using the computer because it allows me to experiment with different mediums, such as pastel, oil, airbrush, for example, that I could not otherwise use. My intention is to create art using traditional artistic principles, through the medium of the computer, to produce paintings and sketches in much the same way I would if I were working directly on paper. As I learn more I’ll share my discoveries here. I’d love to hear any comments you have.

A Couple of Sketches In A New Vein

DweezelJazz — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 22:11:37 +0000

‘Thank you’ are the words that keep coming from my mind and heart today: thank you to my dear friends who visit this blog and do me the honor of reading it, and thank you for your encouragement and love. You have made this a very special moment in my life.

I mentioned that I’ve been doing a lot of thinking and rethinking about how it’s possible to look at things and how to illustrate feeling. I looked at the artwork I’d done so far, and it just didn’t capture the movement, joy and magic that I find special in life. So… thanks mainly to a fantastic book, called “The Illusion of Life” by Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston, I have come to understand that the flow and movement in a piece of art can be effectively conveyed when the lines aren’t too precise and detail is not the prime objective.

In fact, detail can in some cases even remove the magic that we’re accustomed to putting in ourselves. Our eye-brain connection does a lot, that we may not be consciously aware of, which apparently gives us pleasure as we fill in details we don’t necessarily see with our eyes. If that opportunity is taken away by providing excessive detail in a painting it can eliminate some of the charm we experience and make the scene appear more static.

Anyway, I’m not explaining it very well, but my previous awareness of what I thought was important in art has been turned upside down by that great book (which my loving Mum-in-law gave me for Christmas!). I’ve never been so excited with a prezzie since I was a kid.

Digital Painting of Snow On Jura

Here are a couple of sketches I did in the last couple of days – totally different from anything I’ve ever done before and a whole great deal more fun too! The one above is a view of the Jura mountains. And below is a sketch based on a photo of Virgina Woolf I found in a biology book. I had heard of Virginia Woolf’s excellent writing (though I haven’t read any, having had a less than stellar introduction to early 20th century writers in high school), but I had no idea how pretty she was.

Sketch of Virginia Woolf

These are the latest in the beginning of a new adventure. I have some ideas what I might like to do with the art, but it seems best for now to take each day as it comes and see what evolves.