Friday 4 March 2016

Portraits - analogue and digital

Ten months ago I first started using the Sktchy app and so far I've created 80 portraits. Some of them I've shared here as well as on Instagram. It's been a wonderful way to experiment with different mediums and techniques. I've played with ink, graphite, collage, watercolour, gouache and watercolour markers as well as oil on canvas panel. 

The colouring craze is everywhere. Some of the Sktchy artists are collaborating to publish colouring books featuring members of the  Sktchy community. This portrait from a reference photo uploaded on Sktchy as a line drawing was printed on to watercolour paper. Since the ink jet ink is water-soluble, I used gouache and ink.



Portrait with Roses - inspiration from Daniel DePeuter - inkjet print with Gouache and ink


I've had digital art apps on my phone and iPad for a long time and have fiddled around with them, never really coming to grips with the process. Finally about two months ago I decided it was time to learn. Working slowly through the manual for Procreate, I took baby steps discovering how to work in layers and exploring the many, many, tools that are available. It helped to limit myself to one or two tools at a time, trying out different widths of brushstroke and varying the opacity. 


This portrait of Ginnie Chen was done using Procreate for #WAXcubism. The different #WAX Weekend Art Extravaganza prompts are posted each weekend.  

 Ginnie Chen - Procreate digital drawing 

I love drawing in graphite so I thought, why not combine the two mediums? Sophia Olsen's portrait started as a graphite drawing which I scanned. I created a mask in Superimpose which eliminated the background completely, then uploaded the mask into Procreate. This provided the opportunity to play around while preserving the original drawing. New backgrounds and textures were added to various layers in Procreate.




Sophia Olsen - graphite and carbon pencil 

One of the features in Procreate is the video function. each brush stoke is recorded and can be played back. This video is posted in a separate post - Sophia.


Sophia - graphite on watercolour paper with digital layers



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