Steps in Painting on My iPad – and a Haiku and Haiga

Recently, I was in the kitchen, (always something to do in there) and a bowl of tomatoes kept catching my attention. The light from the window fell across them, making patterns of lights, darks and various red hues. They looked good enough to draw and paint, as well as eat. Just managed to grab one and my iPad, before they were all gone – and paint it.

The finished drawing above; the process images below.

Just touch on a picture to view the gallery.

Tomatoe 1 — Mapping out the painting, with oil pastel. Using “Art Set Pro”. Chose the green surface; lots of different textures and colours to work on in this app.

Tomato 2 — Adding some colour. As usual, I’m painting with my finger, rarely, if ever use a stylus.

Tomato 3 — Keeping the paint thick and adding more colour.

Tomato 4 — Dabbing down white paint for the highlights and adding some more shadow.

Tomato 5 — It’s easy to enlarge the painting by stretching out the screen with your fingers. Handy for adding more detail.

Tomato 6 — Adding more colour and detail. Also this pallet slides out over the paint tubes, and if you want, you can mix and create more colours in there, good fun.

My haiku and haiga.

When I filled up the bowl with tomatoes again, I wrote about them in a haiku and placed it with a quick painting I did in the “Zen Brush” app – to which I added a splash of red paint in “Art Set Pro”. The combination of a haiku with a quick drawing, which captures the essence of the haiku is called a haiga.

Like my haiku, my haiga are more contemporary English versions of these traditional Japanese forms: though I do aim to capture many of their key elements. Below are my first attempts at writing the tomato haiku, and following is the finished haiga; where I changed some words at the last minute.

Haiku - rough draft — My messy (as is usual) first draft. Just about always use unlined paper. Doing quick sketches and writing at the same time, often helps me think more clearly…I think!

My completed haiga.

Tomato haiga — I did the drawing in the “Zen Brush” app, and added a touch of thinned red paint in “Art Set Pro”. I added the words in “Art Set Pro” using the ink pen, changing some of the words in my haiku in the process. It was difficult to write neatly in the app, however I like the almost child-like handwriting; sort of suited it, and may use this style again.

I like the loose look of this drawing. The painting is a bit too tight, need to loosen up my brushstrokes..

Fruit and vegetables: tomatoes, pears, pumpkins…in endless combinations or one on its own offer so many colours and shapes to draw and paint. A favourite subject matter of many artists. Duane Keiser does this wonderfully – among other subject matter. Sigh..I’ll just keep practicing.

Tacked them up on one of the kitchen cabinets, which means I’m reasonably pleased with how they turned out. 🙂 *Trying out various matte papers to print on lately, as per the caption below.

Art prints on kitchen cabinet — I printed my haiga on our air printer on cover card, which gave it a lovely matte finish, and the tomato painting is a laser print on gloss paper. Often email my iPad art to a local office supply store to be laser printed.

*Updated: 2019 These days, I have with much trial and error, learnt skills in getting a good quality inkjet print. I share more about this here, on my page, “Printing iPad and Traditional Art”.

Conclusion

As I jotted down: notes, ideas, did some artwork; and put together this fortnightly post, I realised I had enough art and words to share a shorter post in the interim week. So I’ll do this sometimes.

I visited some lovely blogs, during this last two weeks and thank you for visiting me here.

Have a great day!

5 thoughts on “Steps in Painting on My iPad – and a Haiku and Haiga”

athursdayschild has a long way to go and much to be thankful for. says:

March 13, 2015 at 2:07 am

Beautiful!

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athursdayschild has a long way to go and much to be thankful for. says:

March 13, 2015 at 2:07 am

I might become your biggest fan.

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Leonie Andrews says:

May 6, 2015 at 8:33 am

Janette
I’m learning a lot about haiku and its realeted forms from you! I love looking at process information so thanks for that as well. Unfortunately I’m on Android so I can’t use some of the programs you suggest. I fall in and out of use drawing on my device. But I tend to use my stylus as I have a relatively small screen.
I am enjoying your posts and thanks for the ‘follow’
Regards Leonie

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1. Janetteartandwords says:
  
  May 6, 2015 at 4:34 pm
  
  Hi Leonie, and thank you for following my blog! Love your artwork; and I see you are a fellow Australian artist. 🙂 I’m down here in Victoria. Glad you enjoy my posts about haiku and reading about the art processes. I don’t know much about android art apps. I did find and download “Zen Brush” in the playstore on my android phone, a very good art app, which I also have on my iPad. Also downloaded a android app called,”Sketch Guru”, not bad…pity “Art Set Pro” (an excellent app, the one I mostly use) is only available on apple devices. Though I do draw and paint with my finger on my iPad it is tricky to do so, on a small phone screen! I may share some drawings from android phone on my blog at some stage. I’m looking forward to seeing more of your lovely work on future posts, all the best ..Janette 🙂
  
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2. Leonie Andrews says:
  
  May 6, 2015 at 5:38 pm
  
  Hi Janette
  I’ll check out zen brush.There is a drawing function on my device and I also use the android version of Photoshop Express and PS Touch. I’ve also played with Draw ans Stick draw for its animation feature.
  
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