Art Rage

I'm trying to figure out my next art project, and I'm doodling a bit, not quite sure what direction to take!

Here is one of the doodles, painted with ArtRage on iPad. Still exploring the same range of colours.

It was very soothing. Not sure I can use it for anything, though.

Paper

Paper is a new App I found for my iPad. It's like a lovely little sketchbook you carry with you everywhere. The app is free, but you have to pay for extra pens and tools - they are so lovely you won't be able to resist, though!!

Here is a little sketch I did yesterday (I'm looking at fat-burning exercises, in case you're wondering!):

I have plenty of actual sketchbooks, but I don't tend to carry them with me, so I don't use them as much as I should. Hopefully this new app will help me get back into drawing and sketching. Something I'm not very good at!

Arizona Stripes

I find the iPad is a great tool for doodling - though I spend more time looking at sheep-herding rabbit videos than actually creating original art. That's the problem with Facebook, Flipboard and all those sites - we all end up reading and watching bits and pieces that are of minor interest, rather than finishing a good book. Has anyone looked at statistics of how long it takes the average person to read a book nowadays? I just know that I'll go through my Facebook and Flipboard tidbits before I pick up my book at the end of the evening. I love my Flipboard, where I can find my customized sample of news and lifestyle articles, and I enjoy catching up with my friends and family on Facebook (though some of my best friends are still resisting the lure of social networking!). But an hour has gone by, and it's time to go to sleep. And the beautiful book I'm reading at the moment, The Housekeeper + The Professor, will have to wait another day!

But last night, I did use my iPad for creative purposes. ArtRage is a good app for trying things out. I had in my mind some colours I wanted to experiment with for a Zazzle project. Painting it with ArtRage was the easy bit, actually. I spent a good bit of time after that figuring out a way to make my painting larger to I can use it for a design in Zazzle, without losing in resolution. I haven't found the perfect solution yet, but I got a workaround that will work for the current project. But now that I've found you can design napkins, kitchen towels and even pillows in Zazzle, I'm going to have to design in a much larger size. I don't think that's going to work with an iPad, unless the iPad 3 enables me to work at a higher resolution!

iPad Scrabble

We discovered iPad Scrabble a few months ago. Actually, it was one of our customers who had it on her iPad and she said it was great, so off I went to the App Store. It's so easy to download apps, almost too easy - you don't need to enter your credit card details every time, so there is a disconnect between downloading an app and actually paying for it. Very clever, these guys at Apple! But there are lots of free apps and plenty @ €0.79, it's hard to resist. The Scrabble app was a little more, but still great value.

We haven't played in a little while, but it was great to have when travelling. And the iPad is just the right size for it. The only trouble is that I'm very competitive, and a bad loser!

Desert scene

Inspired by a watercolour I saw. This was done using ArtRage on my iPad2

Mountains in Kerry - Step Two

Step Two:

I added three basic colours in Photoshop. (This is turning into a right multi-media experience!). I was trying to do a value sketch, light, dark and medium, but I couldn't help playing with colours instead!

Mountains in Kerry - Step One

Here is my current project. It's a view of the mountains on the Ring of Kerry, just after we went through a mountain pass on a lonely road between Sneem and Lough Caragh near Glenbeigh last autumn. I'm having difficulty locating it on Google Maps though. We were the only car on the road for a very long time, and we felt we had found a gem, by pure luck, as road works on the Sneem-to-Kenmare road had forced us to re-route across the middle of the peninsula, rather than driving all around.

Step One. 

I'm trying to simplify the landscape. I imported a photograph into Sketchbook Pro on my iPad, created a new layer, which I used to trace the main features of the photograph. Then I shut the eye on the original layer. Here is the resulting drawing:

Abstract - ArtRage

It's so easy to buy apps on the App store - I just found ArtRage for iPad, and, at $4:99 (or was it $5.99?), I couldn't resist. I haven't figured out how to increase the brush size to "really big" so I can do a nice background wash. I like the nice texture effect from the roller tool, though. Of course, it's a new tool I'll have to learn, a distraction from real painting, but it's such good fun, so why not? 

Saint André in the Mist

This one was done on Sketchbook Pro on my iPad. More like a kid's colouring book effort, but I do like the softness of  the hues. And I think that this particular composition works quite well. So, that's a start at least. But I really need to practise more with the tools available on Sketchbook Pro, or I'll never move beyond the basics. So much to do. So much to do.