Art Explorations…and A Bit about Blogging

I drew this with: gesenski ink, wet acrylic, 6B pencil and the smudge tool, in the Procreate app.

Watercolour, ink pen , pencil… From memory and imagination. Hmm, sort of looks like a pond in the background. I’m partial to adding silhouette of birds in the trees lately.

My adventures in drawing on an iPad, began about seven years ago. Much of it, along with some of my art in traditional media, and a few of my illustrated poems, I’ve recorded here. I also built this website/blog on the iPad (with an ever handy keyboard attached) – a challenging, and fun experience!

I can quickly: move from drawing on the screen with my fingertip, back to the iPad key board, use the camera, move in and out of apps, print from the iPad, and so on… and it fits nicely in my handbag – wonderful!

I rarely, if ever, use a computer, and find them rather clunky and slow, but then, I suppose it’s all according to your “know how” with them.

In the past couple of years, I’ve returned to using more of my traditional art media, and sometimes mixing it with art app media. This certainly takes more time to put together a post, photographing, and uploading images etc.. To help with this, below, I’ve used the app, Pic Collage to collect together a few images within one frame, and therefore one upload. I put the light brown border on in it in the “Book Creator” app.

The woman and dog I painted on canvas with gouache. The flowers are a “work in progress” in acrylic and Inktense inks, on an 8” x 10” canvas. Below that is a landscape in acrylic – rather murky, perhaps I’ll add some colour glazes. The fruit in a bowl is A5 size: Pentel brush pen, wax crayon – Neopastel 1, watercolour, pencil…

I’m revisiting my acrylic paints, and had a “not so successful” rendezvous with some water mixable oils (I’ll try again) recently, but I think my main joy in traditional media, is using: watercolour, ink pen, pencil, non-water and water-soluble Neopastels…

Drew this in the lovely, Art Set Pro app. Printed it on non-inkjet cotton paper.

Drawing on my iPad continues to be a valuable way to express myself, and all the more now that I can make my own good quality iPad art prints. I share more about this on my page, “Printing iPad and Traditional Art”.

I’ve been practicing drawing “King Parrots lately, (they often visit us) as you can see top left pic… below is the same pic, with some app media freehand added in Procreate. The top right is a quick vase and flowers, in the Zen Brush app on my phone, then sent it to my iPad, and added colour, and more flowers in the Procreate app. Below a still life, in ink pen, and watercolour…softened round the edges, and a tiny bit more colour in Procreate. And below that a landscape watercolour in one of my handmade sketchbooks.

I began this blog about 6 years ago, to primarily to share the exciting realm of drawing (like to draw with my fingertip) on an iPad (and drawing in general); after 200 plus blog posts, I feel I’ve accomplished much of what I set out to do – though still more sharing to come.

These days, it’s encouraging to see iPads (and android tablets) have for the most part, finally become quite an accepted art tool.

As I return to using more of my traditional art media, and along with other life style factors – including house renovations! – I find I have less time to blog/write about my art. So I may not post as regularly (at least for a while) and thought it polite to make mention of this to those who “follow” my blog – and thank you for your interest! This may sound reminiscent of my last blog departure, which I wrote about, here – but as the saying goes, “I’ll be back”. 🙂

I’ll still be about the place, as I hope to create gallery/portfolio pages (though my whole site is much like that!). I may also open my little Shop again – though selling my art is never a high priority. And I’ll be keeping an eye out for the great posts I enjoy by other WordPress bloggers.

I still enjoy rearranging things on my site – it remains my main online home. I’m yet to try the new block editor; not sure how I’ll like it. Though you can use a block which gives you use of the old “classic editor”. In any case, I prefer to use the Admin dashboard, which I’m using for this post.

For those of you who work in acrylics and oils, here are a few helpful links to a website – willkempartschool.com, where the artist, Will Kemp, offers numerous posts, with some excellent information: you can read about acrylic painting, here, and about using water mixable oils, here, and about varnishing, here.

I occasionally share art snippets on Instagram, you are welcome to visit me there.

Thank you for wading through this rather lengthy post.

Have a great day! Stay safe.