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. 

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.

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.