Ipad Jesus Icon

This particular ipad painting painting was inspired by icon painting. I choose an icon image from the internet to use as a guide. I trace the main outlines of the face from this image and then proceeded to paint in the colors in my own fashion. Bold dark lines frame the face and break up the value areas. I used some of Procreate's texture brushes to give the back ground a wood grain quality. The second image was created by using Pic Grunger and some of its texture filters. 

Creating art is hard to do lately.

Teaching art at the high school level is both fulfilling and a little exhausting. One of the more difficult aspects to teaching any subject to teenagers is dealing with the lack of motivation. That is my job, the job of motivating students to put forth there best effort, to create quality works of art. But many times that just does not happen. 

During the school year I find it difficult to be an artist myself and neglect my own creative drive because I am frankly tired. But I do like where technology and art meet. Here I am posting two manipulated photographs. One verges on the edge of
total abstraction the other seems to have a poetic quality to it. Anyhow if any readers would be so kind to comment and let me know what you think, I would appreciate it. 

Carving of Woman's Head

I've been working on this carving for a little over a month. It has been a slow and cautious approach towards completion. That is one of the aspects of carving that I like, it is very methodical and in a sense therapeutic. I go to my garage and think about my next move, my next "attack" on the sculpture. Anyways I owe some of my progress on this to the sculptor Ian Norbury whose book I purchased on carving the female form and face. He is a very talented wood sculptor whom I learned much from by using the book. I also used my beautiful wife as a model. I took several pictures of her face to use as reference. I then sculpted a clay model which I further used as a reference. In the end the sculpture came out alright but there are plenty of mistakes that stand out. Looking back I would have done the hair differently, not in a bun. The ears especially bother me as I made them too small and too forward. But I am learning. Mistakes sharpen the artist for the next challenge, the only necessity is that you always keep your eyes out for those mistakes and not dismiss them. 

My next step is to mount the bust on a darker species of wood. I'm thinking coco bolo or dark walnut to contrast the light wood. I will then finish it off with a good oil of some sort. 

A New Commission Completed

I've had this commission to compete for some time now, an oil painting of a fruit still-life. I set the "models" up under an interesting light source and took some reference photos. Then I created some painting sketches on Corel Painter to get the feel and composition I might want to use for the painting. When working in acrylic or oil I usually begin by starting with a quick pencil sketch followed up by an oil sketch, usually with burnt umber and mineral spirits. Then I start blocking in the forms. I like to keep it very loose in the beginning and then work into the details. For this particular painting I wanted the the composition to be loose, quick, and full of brush strokes and energy. The texture of the paint is important for this style as well. Please feel free to comment and critique the work.

Finally Finished!

I have finally finished the ipad painting of my oldest daughter. I have probably spent the last three or so months working on it off and on. It was completed on the app, Inspire Pro, done totally freehand, with the exception of drawing some of the initial line work. It is not a "paintover." A paint over is when someone imports a photo into a computer app or program and just uses various smudge brushes to give the appearance of a painting. A lot of digital paintings on the Internet are done this way. The person pulling the stunt off wishes to receive all of the accolades of completing such a masterpiece but they never took the time to draw it, create the correct shadows,lighting or color. It really is a complete cheat. I'm not saying this type of workflow doesn't have a place in the arts, just be honest about it. What makes for a good painting are those small mistakes and flaws. These give it a human touch while at the same time mastery over the form and media brings credibility. When you can place the painting over the photo and it exactly matches, something is not quite right, it is a copy. Artists need to take the time to do their own research, spend the countless hours learning to draw and paint and then claim masterpiece status. Anyways that is my take on the excesses of computer art. I myself use technology to aid in my artistic endeavors but it needs to be used in such a way to expand creativity and uniqueness not create a plastic and lifeless art. 

The Final Painting, I think.

Painted Carving

I decided to paint a thin oil coat on the sculpture and then rub back a little to the previous color. I'm not sure if I like it. I'm still a little unsure about the overall sculpture, the small chin, the fact the left cheek bone is smaller than the right etc.  Well just as I tell my students, "you have to be willing to make mistakes to learn." And I will chalk this one up to the learning process. I'm in the planning stages of my next carving, which will be in Brazilian Cherry, a very dense hard wood but beautiful.

 

Another Carving

My renewed passion for woodcarving has me thinking of projects to work out. I decided on the classic head of the Native American particularly of the Eastern tribes. I researched images and chose several old photos to work from. I then rendered a digital sculpture on Sculptris, a free program related to the outrageously priced Zbrush. I would like to own  a version of Zbrush but at a nice $700 or so it won't be anytime soon. Besides Sculptris works just fine for me at this point. I wanted to work out any problems I might have in the actual sculpture digitally before I started cutting wood. 

Wood is such an immediate medium. If you mess up there is not much room for forgiveness although it can be done. On the following sculpture I cut too much off the left cheek and decided to make a repair by glueing some extra wood back on. One can tell where the repair is but because of the final finish it is not to apparent. Anyways here is the progression from start to finish. I decided to carve in high relief instead of fully round. 

Here is a better view of the final stage. 

Getting Back into Carving

  Several years ago I began carving wood. I find carving to be a wonderful way to express artistry and creativity. Wood is so natural and allows the artist to participate in nature. It is an unforgiving medium which requires much thought and planning if creating a specific image as opposed to an abstract design. There are so many interesting  aspects to wood carving, the various woods and their attributes, the tools and their upkeep. The tools themselves are an art and I enjoy sharpening and honing their edges. The razor edge cuts well, while the dull rounded edge tears the wood. 

  One image that I always return to in sculpture is the head of Christ. It is central to my faith, the Christian faith. The suffering Christ dying on the cross for our sins, the sins of humanity. I think what really draws me is the absolute humility of Jesus when faced with his tormentors. He let evil have its way with him and as the Son of God defeated it and its companion, death. There was nothing left for the devil to do. He had exhausted all of his tactics and Christ rose from death. 

  This sculpture is a small bust carved from solid walnut, a very dense hard wood but one that take detail very well. I love the texture, grain and tool marks which add character. A small amount of sanding was done especially to the back of the sculpture. It was finished with a coat of teak oil.

My Oldest

I've been working on and off on this painting for about a month and a half. I would say I'm a little more than half way through it. It is being completed with Inspire Pro and I am working it the same way in which I would work a traditional painting, perhaps even more carefully. It starts first with a sketch and then I begin laying in the darks and lights, gradually building up to the realism of the image. In this case I am working each area to completion rather than working the image as a whole. 

Chinese Symbols

One of the final projects I am having my students complete is to create a composition based on a word that represents them. They then research the word in Chinese and try to emulate the calligraphy of the Chinese letter styles. Finally they create the design to finish it off. 

Of course I always create finished examples for them and take off on the assignment myself. Here are some of those designs. Most was done on the ipad and developed through various apps. 

Creek side Landscape

Over spring break my family and I took a small vacation in Comfort, Tx. We stayed at a place that had over thirty acres to roam around, including a very scenic creek area. I took the opportunity to take quite a few photos and even get some plain air painting time in. This particular image was originally from a photo and then manipulated in several photo apps. I wouldn't call this a digital painting although it certainly looks like one. But it was created fairly quickly using various apps as opposed to actually physically painting it over several hours or so. There are two ways to create digital paintings or images, one where the artist is the creator and actually paints it using the different painting apps or letting the "computer" paint it for you as you guide it's creation though different creative choices presented in the app. They are both valid ways of creating art. And of course let's not forget the traditional method of painting with real paint.

Study of Picard

Here's a two hour study of Picard using Procreate.

Happy Easter! The Lord is Risen.

What a day this Easter, the day we as Christians celebrate as the day New Life has been given to us through Jesus and His passion on the cross. I don't have much in the way of art to share but my prayer is that those who see this blog will discover the life of Christ in their own life and therefore find hope and salvation.

Jesus Drawing

I tweaked my original drawing in Corel Painter; added some strokes and color. I think the overall result is more powerful and artistic.

Jesus

Here is another quick sketch done on Zen Brush. The original image used as a source was from a Jesus movie in the eighties, I forget the name. The actor was known for his intense eyes and piercing stare. It was quickly sketched from this image and I tried to keep the strokes spontaneous and immediate.

Japanese Style Print

I had fun creating this drawing. I've been practicing a lot recently with the ipad app, Zen Brush. I like the app because of the immediacy of the drawings, no pressure to create a masterpiece, just the pure joy of drawing. And it must be kept simple because the app itself is simple, not much to it like others with loads of tools and layers.
I started with Zen Brush and created the basic ink wash drawing. I then sent it over to the app, Etchings. That gave the crosshatching effect to the image. After that I used PS Touch and played with the color and saturation, I also added the scratches to the image. I finally used Pic Grunger to give some limited texture. I hope everyone enjoys it!

Time Well Spent

I finally finished an ipad painting that I started last month. I probably spent 40+ hours working on this thing, painting the large important areas and tweaking and refining the little details which seemed to go on and on. I did not intend to get so bogged down in the small details but that sometimes happens with us artists. We cannot stop, or we do not know when to stop. But I was confident for the most part on the ending of this painting.
The subject is my youngest daughter at the age of five. I wanted to capture her personality and little facial features with that unique little smile she exhibits. I started with a pencil sketch on paper. I then took a picture of that sketch and loaded into the app, Inspire Pro. This is a fairly good app and excels at smooth paintings, not necessarily textured works. I kept track of my progress and here are a few pictures of the various working stages of the painting.

Another Sunrise

Here are two more paintings created on my ipad. The first is the original, created using Artrage. The second I "tweaked" using Inspire Pro, an app which excels if one wishes to blend tones and colors. It can create a very soft effect as opposed to the rough impasto effect in Artrage. Both techniques are valuable to me as a painter.