Mobile Art Monday 8-13-18

This is a lengthy edit, as it took me several days to work through the process. Hope you'll be inspired to create something beautiful.

The original photo, shot in the Cortex Cam app.

1st edit, done in Repix to paint up the background. I used the chalk brush. (Tip: your brush gets smaller when you zoom in and larger when you zoom out.) (Tip 2: use the undo brush to ‘erase paint’ from petals that may have gotten hit.)
2nd edit, using TouchRetouch to clone out stems in upper left.

3rd edit, Brushstroke using S3 preset.

4th edit, with the original photo in iColorama, I chose Style/Edges no. 7 and lowered the size.

5th edit,  a layer stack in Leonardo consisting of first layer original, second layer was the Brushstroke layer opacity reduced to 78%. Third layer, line drawing from iColorama multiply opacity at 75%.

6th edit, Stackables cropped to square and a custom formula added.

7th edit, Procreate app to enlarge and add hand drawn lines and 2 more masked layers of the iColorama line drawing which also lightened it a bit.

8th edit,  back to Repix to paint the background again with Chalk and some of the petals with Van Gogh and the flower center with Drips.

9th edit, Back into Stackables for a border.

10th edit, I used Superimpose to create colored overlays using my image and black and white overlays.

11th edit, opened this in Leonardo and began adding layers of texts and patterns, masking areas of each layer and duplicating as needed.

12th edit, opened this in Formulas and applied Ethereal at 86%.

13th edit, into Snapseed for a bit of Structure and an 8x10 crop for printing.

This list doesn’t include the rabbit trail edits that didn’t make the cut!
After printing this today I've decided to go back and add a curves layer to increase the light areas.

Have a great Mobile Art Monday!

Mobile Art Monday Poppy Pods

It's time for a mobile edit tutorial of sorts. Life threw me a curve the past 12 months but perhaps I can get back on a more creative track. 

I like using 'real paint' and making 'gelli' prints on paper. I take photos of these and sometimes they will find a place in my photo edits. These are the two images I worked on in Leonardo on my iPhone.

After a little experimenting with blend modes on the two prints, I ended up duplicating the red layer and set the blend mode to hard light on the second copy and shifted its position. Then I turned the yellow/green layer into black and white (Under Fx-Threshold), moved it to the top and set the blend mode to multiply. Shown in this screen shot of the Leonardo app.

 I opened it in Snapseed to crop and save for future use.

While playing around with this image of poppy pods in Snapseed,,,

I discovered the app now did double exposure. That basically means you can add an image layer and change the blend mode to get a new look. So I imported my edited gelli print and played with the blend modes til I found one I liked.

I wanted to ‘outline’ the pods a bit for more definition, so I opened the original in iColorama. Style>Edges>#8 Apply. Adjust>Levels adjusted the Gamma and Max Input to lighten any gray areas. Saved to camera roll.

In Procreate I layered the Snapseed double exposure and the iColorama ‘sketch’, setting that layer to multiply causing the white to disappear. I reduced the opacity some and on a new layer drew in additional lines and erased what I didn't want.  I also did my version of cloning which was cut and paste on areas that should have been cloned out before editing.

I found a quote that I wanted to add so in the app Over, I added the text layer.

Not quite satisfied, I imported that image back into Procreate and moved the whole thing to the left. Then duplicated it and moved the left to the right side and flipped part of it horizontally. After many more duplications and moving pieces around (including the text), I ended up with this.

A couple days later I decided to add the falling seeds in Procreate using the stipple brush. (I felt it was quite appropriate for the quote and I love their little seeds.) Then I added the extra piece in the lower right corner which was also made from several gelli prints.

Next time I'll show you some editing tricks with gelli prints. Can't wait!

Have a great Mobile Art Monday!

Expensive Equipment

As I once again click "order" at the bottom of the Dick Blick page, I'm reminded of the fact in photography that it's not the equipment that you use but the 'eye' that you have or your ability to turn it into something afterward.
Oh well, too late, I've already clicked the button.
I've been collecting art supplies for a couple years now. Have I done much with them? No. But I have made an attempt this year to play. As long as I can follow along in a class or watch a video I can produce some work. Most of these find their way into digital work because they're not good enough for anything else except maybe a journal page but then when do I ever do that?
I have a nice stack of papers now that I'd love to make into a book. But I'll probably wait till I have more of a variety and it'll be a someday thing.
I signed up for an abstract flower class on Ivy Newport's site awhile back and figured I'd better review the supply list. Oh my, it was watercolor and I was thinking acrylic... Since I just made a few bucks at my last show, I'm determined to spend it on more supplies for my collection. Besides watercolors, I ordered some pan pastels that have been on my list forever. Some inks and a few encaustic paints also found their way into the shopping cart.
It will arrive just 2 days before class so in the mean time I will play a bit with the few watercolors that I do have. I ordered Golden's Qor because a teacher friend says she like those best and I love Golden's others paints.
Now back to that 'equipment' issue. I passed on the Daniel Smith and Holbein paints that were on the supply list although those were tempting but oh so pricy. That at least made me feel somewhat good about my purchase. Now to just use what I have and not let it sit in the closet.

Created in the Figurescapes class by Tricia Dewey on IvyNewport.com.

Mobile Art Monday No. 56

Hope you don't mind as I stray far from my normal editing path. I've been watching a lot of painting videos lately. Jodi Ohl has gotten my total attention. Last week I went to the university book store and bought $150 worth of art supplies. They have a fabulous art department. (About the only thing missing is encaustic supplies.) I re-watched and painted on three at the same time to get some techniques down. They aren't quite finished, probably practice some more on them.

But, in the mean time.... I'd taken a photo of some oil paint left on my palette paper that I'd folded up and trashed. I needed to retrieve it to check a color and loved what I found when I opened it! So I had been playing with it in Superimpose, masking it over a textured background. This is what I ended up with that I decided to take into Procreate and have a play. It doesn't look anything like my finished piece, does it? You may be able to pick out a few light/dark areas is all.

One thing I did that you can see from these layers, is that I duplicated that texture and set the second layer to exclusion. Then I added a lime green layer over it and set the blend mode to Add at 50%. This of course totally changed the color and got me excited. 

Here are a couple of in-progress shots.

I had picked a canvas sized 4000x3000 when I meant it to be square. That's why you are seeing brush marks beyond the edge of the image. I cropped after finishing.

Check this Vimeo link to see the fast motion 25 second video from Procreate.

Hope you're having a great Monday whether you're 'arting' or not.

If  you want to take a cool class, my friend friend Tricia Dewey is starting an iPad class Monday over at Ivy Newport's online class site. I think there may still be spots left... Figurescapes class.

Mobile Art Monday No. 55

Today is a Procreate day! Once you learn what this app is capable of, you can do just about anything with it. (I'm hoping to do some video recording to explain parts of it in the future.)

This week I did a little art journaling piece. I had written this in my 'journal' (Notes App) last week and was trying to figure out what I would do for a ballerina to turn it it some art.
I have always wanted to turn some flowers into skirts so when I saw the dill in my camera roll I figured it might work.
You can find my Procreate video here on Vimeo. You'll be able to see the photos used, a paper I stenciled and progression of my 'painting'.
Originally I did all the writing in Procreate and was so proud of myself. (You can see in the video that I used a grid to help keep the writing straight and uniformly spaced. Then later deleted the grid layer.)

But I just wasn't happy with it.

I knew Snapseed had added text in a recent update so why not try it.
I exported a version from Procreate without the writing.
I felt this looked much better. I liked the font, the only thing I didn't like was that I had to do each line separate because it would not do a return. Since you can go back and edit each 'edit' in Snapseed, it made a long list of text 'layers'. This is good if you need to reposition something or change it's size or color. I also added a touch of Image Tuning to the final piece.

Does it bother me that she has no arms? 

No. She's probably still working on that restraint issue.

Have a great Mobile Art Monday!

Mobile Art Monday No. 54

This week's Mobile Art Monday brought to you on Wednesday.

Apps used: Procreate and iColorama.

This was supposed to be a simple test to see how my last tutorial would work on a building.
I got carried away and couldn't give it up. I had to try and make something of it.

In the first part of this edit, I followed the steps in the last tutorial here using these images in iColorama.

The only thing I did different was the blend mode was set to Color Burn when I imported the 'sketch'.

*I saved this to camera roll and eventually used it later in my workflow. 

At this point I went on to play... (be sure to click Apply to save your changes.)
In Form>Mirror Preset 17. I saved this edit to camera roll to use later. (You never know what you might need.) Did NOT click Apply.

Still in Form>Mirror but with Preset 11. I applied this edit and moved on.

In this step I did 2 things.

A. Effects>Blend.  I imported my original cropped photo because I wanted more of the windows brought back. Masked out the other areas. Clicked Apply.

B. Effects >Blend. I imported the sketch again to give more definition to the roof. Blend mode was set to Multiply and masked out most of the lower area. Clicked Apply.

The sky was too blank so I imported the other 'mirror' photo that was saved previously. Effects>Blend>Multiply. Rotated it and masked out all but the corner. Clicked Apply.

I went back to Style>Tensor but used Preset 4. I imported the sketch photo and got this streaky effect.

One more photo import... Effects>Blend. This time I imported the first saved edit.*

I saved one version with a Color Blend Mode and another with Hard Light.

Switching gears, I started importing images into layers in Procreate.
I started with the last two, reducing the opacity on the Hard Light layer.
Next came the sketch image at Color Burn.
A new blank layer to add sketch lines of my own.
A previously edited image for texture in the sky area.
Tiny evergreen trees.
A large leafless tree.
And a paint layer for enhancements and dodging and burning.
All it seems to be missing is a few birds so I added them today.

Hope you're having some fun with mobile art no matter what day it is.