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!

Red Poppy

I could say a million things but you'd eventually be bored. My life seems to be changing. Perhaps it's actually my priorities.
I'm no longer a servant to the public or an audience. (A creation of my own doing which I know I'm not the only one who's fallen into the cyber world black hole.) Don't get me wrong, I've met many wonderful people. But I feel I've let my 'real' life be robbed.
I've had so much more peace just doing what ever I want (to a degree) or feel like.
More time in the garden this year. (And not even with my camera!)
I've played with dyeing papers.
Making a book of paper and fabric.
Getting a sourdough starter going and making a few wonderful things so far. (Including the best chocolate cake I've ever eaten.)
Built a double compost bin and have begun to fill it.
I pick up 4 trash cans full of horse poop from a friend every week for future garden fertilizer.
Planted tons more flowers than usual this year, unfortunately the heat has been hard on them.
Spent some time going through 'old' things and organizing the junk and tools our 'barn'.
Redesigning part of the garden and working up plans for a 'garden house'.
Since I got out of my usual habit of editing on my iPad in the evenings during those months of working on Blake's parents house, I've done very little art. I kind of miss it but I'm just not real inspired right now. I did this poppy at least a month ago. Never did get around to posting it on Instagram then either.
Lots of questions to be answered. Keep this blog going? What about my website that I haven't updated in about 2 years? A mirror-less camera or just use the phone?
Wish I had a secretary.

Mostly done in iColorama.

Mobile Art Monday No. 57

If you've never picked up a copy of Somerset Digital Studio Magazine, the current issue would be a great one to grab. It is the first of several issues that I hope to have my art featured in. I wrote a feature article titled Digital Mobile Watercolor explaining the steps I use to create some of my work. (I did add some textures from Stackables on the pumpkins at the end.)

I've also uploaded a video I recorded in iColorama showing this poppy edit in progress.

One thing you'll notice is that I constantly use the undo button as I try out different brushes.

Hope this gets your creative juices flowing!
Have a great 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.

Mobile Art Monday No. 53

While playing around in iColorama this week I discovered an interesting thing and just have to share!
Here is my workflow for this piece.

Like most of my edits I start in Snapseed for initial adjustments like Exposure, Ambiance and Tonal Contrast.

At this point I had only made the crop to use on it's own (which I did) but ended up using it in this edit later.

I imported the portrait format image into iColorama.
Style>Coherence>Preset 1 with opacity reduced about 50%. Check Apply.

Style>Tensor 5/5. This is what it looked like before changing any settings.

I chose the photo option at the bottom right To import the square Snapseed edit.

I adjusted the Amount slider all the way to the right which created an interesting offset mask. Saved to camera roll.

I then opened it in Stackables to get some color and texture in the image. (Download link for this formula is below.)

I felt like it was calling for some sketchy line drawing effects. Since I used the the square crop for the 'mask' I decided to use it also for the sketch. Back to iColorama.
Style>Edges Preset 1, reduced size for finer lines. Saved to camera roll.

I imported the Stackables edit and the sketch into Procreate to add in the sketch effect. The sketch layer was set to darken at 50%. It was chopped up into the separate flowers to get things lined up the way I wanted. A new layer was created to add more pencil lines to the piece. I saved this image to camera roll then imported it back in and set the blend mode to hard light and reduced the opacity to 61% for a more dramatic look.

Then in Snapseed I made a little tonal contrast. I have to decide if that tweak was worth it because I went from a 10MB png file from Procreate to a 2MB jpg from Snapseed. I'll have to consider this when I do some future printing.

Here is the link to the Coneflowers2017 Stackables formula. Check out the instructions at the end of Mobile Art Monday No.47 for adding formulas to your Stackables app.

Wishing everyone a great Mobile Art Monday!

Mobile Art Monday No.52

The first edit for 2017...
I've spent a whole week cleaning out my 'studio'. Completely rearranged. Cleaned off shelves. Took stuff off walls. Hauled out three bags of trash. You can even see the 'whole' floor. It's so nice I don't want to mess it up. My still life shooting area is twice as big and I now have a wall to shoot against instead of a window. One big thing remaining is that I'd love to pull out the carpet and put down vinyl wood plank. But I don't need another project right now. My brain is fried. I was just thinking about how many decisions I have made in the past week. Everything I picked up had to go somewhere. I was making decisions every few seconds. No wonder that was so tiring. And the past couple days I've been culling photos from last month. After awhile you just say think "oh heck, keep 'em all." But after reclaiming space in the 'studio' I intend to reclaim space on my computer too. More about that later.
One thing I did while cleaning was take photos of all my dried weeds I've been collecting so I could throw most of them away. (That took a few hours.)
This is the first in my 'weeds series'.

I began layering and in Superimpose. The only downside to this app is you must merge the top layer into the bottom before adding any more. 

The upside of this app is that you can save (upload) your top layer if you've masked away the background and then 'download' it to reuse it again and again. Which is what I did with the hydrangea flowers.

 Next I opened Stackables to add one of my formulas.

 Then in iColorama, under Sketch, I used the image before texturing to get this line drawing.

I opened the two images in Procreate to blend the sketch over the textured image. The blend mode was set to multiply and slightly skewed for effect. I usually don't use procreate for simple 2 layer blending but I wanted to try some hand drawing on it. I wasn't impressed with anything I tried this time.

At this point I opened it in Retouch to eliminate a couple stems that I should have taken care of earlier, resulting in the finished piece.

Hope you're having a great Mobile Art Monday!