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. 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. 51

It's a good thing to go through your images from the prior year.
1. To delete unnecessary space hogs.
2. For rekindling memories.
3. To see your progression throughout the year.
4. Take note of your experiments and why you may not have pursued them further.
5. Make a collection of favorites.

I like using Flipagram to make quick videos of such.
First I'll go through my iPad since that is where most of my editing is done and select all my favorite images for the year and put them in one album called "Best of 2016". After that I can easily just pull from that album to create other 'category' albums like 'still life'. This makes it so much quicker to pull images into Flipagram to create a slide show.
Later if I go through my phone I may come up with a whole new slide show of things I missed. (I must do this.)

Here are a few tips for using Flipagram.
You can format it to landscape, portrait or square.
To get a title on your first image, click the pencil icon to edit it.
To change sizes of images, go to edit also.
You can add music but I chose not to this year. If it's copyrighted and you post it to Social Media it may get removed.
By changing the speed you can see just how long your slide show will be. If posting to Instagram they must be 15 seconds or less. If longer it will just get cut off.
Even after saving your video you can go back and edit it and save another version.

Give Flipagram a try and if you have another app you like that does something similar I'd love to know about it. One thing I do not like is they leave their logo on every slide.

UPDATE

After trying to view this on my computer in Safari it said Flash was out of date. Updated, still not working. Opened in Firefox, it works but the quality sure stinks. Tried on my iPhone and it said the address is invalid for the videos. AUUGHHH! Guess I'll try and load to Youtube and try that.

Here's looking forward to another year of mobile edits.

Merry Christmas

I sit here 2 days before Christmas enjoying a freshly made breakfast burrito and drinking my (own) coffee at the market. It's 7:30, far early for me to be out getting groceries. I've surprised myself this year that holiday anxiety has not been a part of the picture. It's a true miracle because I really can't put my finger on it. (I could guess but won't.) I think about the last 2 Christmases that I wrote about on this blog and I know I don't even want to revisit them. Somewhere along the way I took a giant chill pill this year. 

The past 2 weeks I've even done some art. Just for the fun of it. And plan to do more today, right before I clean house and start making pecan pie. The kids will be over tomorrow and I need to figure the menu for sure before I leave the market this morning. Last year the lines were clear to the back of the store and I don't plan to participate. (Although it was fun chatting with the other shoppers.)

A little art to bid you a very Merry Christmas. 

(iPad, Repix, Snapseed, Retouch, Facetune, Image Blender, Over)

A little Lightroom and Photoshop for you. Supplies by Anna Aspens and Dawn Inskip.

Love my iPad Pro!

Sarah asked how I liked my new iPad Pro, the large one. So I thought I'd write a bit about it.

I actually love ‘working’ on my new Pro. Seeing is much better especially if you’re scrutinizing your work for print. 

I LOVE, LOVE LOVE the Pencil. Totally.

Now the only thing I’m not thrilled about is the cumbersome size for toting around. Which I don’t do often, but the old one went everywhere with me. (Which is for sale.)

I’m trying to get the courage up to go buy a ‘tiny’ purse. Yeah, like I think I can survive with that. I know what will end up happening… I’ll get a tote bag of sorts that the iPad will fit in along with my extra personal belongings and end up sticking the tiny purse inside. I seriously need to get a smaller purse though. My back is bothering too much.

I inherited my hubby’s iPad mini that has a crack in the corner but I leave it at work for appointment scheduling and swiping credit cards. It has no cellular data plan so it doesn’t do much good to tote around. Perhaps I should switch my data plan from my Pro to the mini. Then I’d be tempted to edit on the mini more (on the run) and that would be going backwards. Besides, it already drives me crazy having stuff on a desktop and laptop and now I’ll spread it around on 2 iPads? 

Do you see my hair getting thinner? And grayer?

By the way, here is a great case my friend Kathy turned me on to. Mostly because of the pencil holder, and the price is quite right.  Which brings up another thing about that pencil. No-one told me you had to charge it which could be a problem sometimes. It comes with an adapter that you plug into your iPad charger. My question is where am I supposed to keep it and not loose the darn thing? It is very small. So far it's staying at the house but I may need to invent something that attaches to that case. Here's another thing you need to know.... How do you tell how much charge the battery has in that pencil? Swipe down from the top to reveal the notifications and it will show there. I hope on the next update they will add it to the menu bar like the other battery. No reason they can't. (Well I guess I don't really know that do I?)

And while you're at it this is nice to have too. A nifty little jump drive that can plug into your iPad or computer.

And don't forget the pencil!

Hope your summer is going well. It hit 100º yesterday and I'm already picking giant squash.

January 2016

As you may have noticed I haven’t posted to my blog since Dec. 

1. I haven’t had the motivation for much picture taking.

2. I‘ve been working on a digital scrapbook project due the end of this month.

3. I painted some art journal type papers with acrylics to use in the scrapbook kit.

4. I got carried away and ended up making a bunch of digital brushes as a result.

5. I went to the quilt store with Kathy last week and ended up buying two top patterns and have nearly finished one.

As a result I have only posted 11 images to Instagram this month compared to my 25-35 average. Also very few posts to FB and haven’t kept up with my ‘groups’ at all.

Yes I’ve just proven to myself that you can break a habit easily in less than 30 days.

Now…. where will I go from here?

My word for this year is ‘intention’ I won’t elaborate.

I also reserve the right to change it at any time.

I am proud of myself for only signing up for two classes this year. One ends this week but has forever access, so I can get to it next week. I thought the other started this month too but I haven't seen a thing in my email about it so I had better check on it. It's hands-on with paint and I believe it lasts all year.

One of my intentions is to learn OnOne software. No reason to keep paying for updates if I'm not going to use it. Is that high on my list? not really. Perhaps I need to make a priority list. Before I know it, it will be summer.

This was edited totally on the iPad in iColorama and Procreate.

The Plans Begin

I am excited to announce that I was accepted to show my art in the 'Local Color Studio Tour' this year. I finally found the courage to apply. (Thanks in part to a year long art class I've been taking by Sebastian Michaels.) I finally feel focused again and this class has been just what I've needed. Unfortunately the others are taking a back seat for a bit.

I was accepted on my 'digital art' entries so I won't be able to show any of my normal photography. The 'studio' that I will be at is a private home and there will be 6 other artists there. One I know fairly well and a couple I've met before. The nerves are already getting stirred up but I have lots of time to get everything I need lined up and finished.

New business cards, postcards to send to friends as invites, display set ups...

I'm trying my hand at mounting my prints on wood panels and finishing them out with matt medium or possibly encaustic wax. It will be fun to experiment for sure. My first trial is nearly done and so far it's looking good.

This will probably be about 90% mobile art. I hope to have a small display showing the progression of a print so I don't have to try and explain it. A picture is worth thousand words right?

Mobile Art Monday No. 24

At some point you quit going on tangents and stop and get focused on your purpose. Your call. Your call in the world of art that is.

One year can make a huge difference.

Last June I was considering putting in my application to display my art in the Local Color Studio Tour. There are approximately 50 artists featured in 10 studio/homes in November.

I was a little anxious about it and freaking out at the same time. When I finally figured out what all my issues were and why it was scary to me I decided not to do it. This year my feelings are totally different. 

During the past year I made a point to get more of my art printed and hung on my walls at work. This has helped me to visualize better what my style is. As I looked around at those walls this week I also decided I had a good amount ready and wouldn't need to get much more printed. 

Now I just wait for July to hear if there is room for me and the jurors think my art is different enough from the others. If not I will most likely try to do the First Friday Art Trail sometime this fall. 

Then there are days when the tangents lure me like the best dark chocolate. :)

Hope you're having a great Mobile Art Monday!

Mobile Art Monday No. 7

Today's featured app is PicsArt. (Also available for Android) And it's free. 

It was a little confusing at first because it is an "Instagram wanna be" app. In other words it is also a social media community, that is, if you want to join. 

So you may see this screen pop up first, go ahead and go straight to the pencil (edit) tool at the center bottom to pull up the menu shown in the image on the right.

At this point, I used Superimpose to layer a more contrasty version of the original over the top of this PicsArt version using a blend mode so the trees would have more definition and have an over all lighter appearance.

(I know I did a few more edits on this but can't remember what.)

I felt like the trees were just begging for someone to walk among them, so I added an extraction of my niece in Superimpose. I merged the layers, saved to camera roll and re-imported the image as a new foreground to get the multiple effect version you see at the beginning of this post.

Have you tried out any new apps lately? I tend to stick to my tried and true if you haven't noticed. But this app has a lot of potential so I intend to investigate further.

So Many Options

With winter hanging around so long it's kept me in the mood to process my winter shots. I'm still playing in Stackables and have several versions of this photo. It's just too fun to play. I even saved some 'strange' renditions that I hope to use in a collage.

These were my two favorites.

 The formula for this more wintery version is: 

Layer One- Glacial Ice, Overlay 50%

Layer Two- Caldera Dust, Screen 70%

Layer Three- Filter Blue Moon, Overlay 83%

Layer Four- Filter St Louis, Normal 61%

This is the original with a slight drama filter in Snapseed.

There's still time to leave a comment for a free code to Stackables at the iTunes store, on Mobile Art Monday. Winners notified tomorrow!

Join us for a link up at Keeping With the Times today for App Happy Wednesday.

Mobile Art Monday No.2 -Stackables

Welcome to Mobile Art Monday!
One of my favorite apps ever is Stackables by Samer Azzam. Stackables has graciously provided me with several iTunes codes to give away for iPhone or iPad users. Just leave a comment by Wednesday midnight and I'll be announcing some lucky winners on Thursday!

If you are a texture lover like me this is your app. It’s fabulous on landscapes, still life, flowers and I’ve even used it on portraits. It has the most beautiful textures, gradients, filters, patterns and great adjustments that can all be layered over one another.

When you first open a photo in Stackables it has cropping options. Be ware, if your photo is not square the textures do not resize to fit. So some will be noticeably cut off especially if they have ‘edges’.

The app will automatically apply the first texture, Honey, in the Overlay blend mode at 50%. Scroll down to choose from lots of others. Some are locked until you purchase them. Opacity and saturation are controlled with the slider at the bottom. Each layer has the ability to be rotated, bottom right corner. Let's see what we can do with this fence photo.

Let’s add another texture layer by touching the + layers icon on the lower left. Scroll through the textures to find another that looks good. I chose Soft Clouds. 

Touch on Overlay to bring up the 15 other blend modes. I chose Hard Light for this and reduced the opacity.

Be sure to add another layer by touching the + layers icon each time which is what I forgot to do here. But I’ll fix that in a minute. Choose your filter, adjust your opacity and blend mode. Now I’ll add back that texture.

Add a layer, touch back on Textures and re-choose your texture and settings. If you touch and hold on layer three you will be able to move it around in the stacking order.

Add another layer. Click on Gradients. I chose Twilight at Soft Light. If you touch the double arrows at the top corner of the gradient it will change styles from radial to linear. Remember you can rotate any layers too.

The next icon is Patterns. I think you need just the right photo for these to look good. You can also change the scale and color besides the blend mode and opacity.

 Next are the Adjustments. It automatically opens the Color adjust which displays 15 different adjustments like contrast, saturation, sharpness, etc. I chose Grain instead and added a bit. I also switched it from dark to light using the double arrow.

I decided to turn off the visibility of the pattern layer 5. Touch the Eyeball on the layer to toggle it on and off.

It needed another layer to boost brightness and contrast.

Then I added one more texture layer, saved my formula, and saved to camera roll.

The last icon at the top is provided formulas and the ones you have saved.

It has some formulas already made up that you can apply or you can save your own formulas and reuse them. Once you’ve ‘applied’ a formula you can edit every layer by touching the wrench in the lower right. The provided formulas can be a very interesting starting point or may work perfectly for the right photo.

I chose one of my previously saved formulas for my finished photo!

Here's another using that same formula. My background was nearly white so you have a good idea of the colors in the textures.

Here it is with a different edit.

Leave a comment by Wednesday midnight for a chance to win a code for a free iTunes download for Stackables. Include a link to your mobile edits if you'd like some visitors to your blog or Instagram feed. You can check out my Instagram feed here.