Polar bear and cub

 

During the last weeks I have focussed on creating images with AI Art Generators. I had problems with my heating, and the only room which could be heated sufficiently by an electric heater was the room with my desk and the laptop standing on it.

I am not paying any money for creating with AI Art generators, and in the meantime I do this with Nightcafe Studio, Mage Space, Dreamlike AI, Civitai and Bing. Limewire cannot be used for free anymore, and Playground AI does only design anymore. However I am absolutely content with the AI Generators I can still use for free. 

The results you can get with Bing are amazing. I used one prompt:
"Polar bear and cub are walking over the ice, watercolor style, Daniel Merriam."

As you can see, Bing created two images, showing different interactions between the polar bear and the cub. It would be easy to use these two illustrations in a story telling about the polar bear mother and its cub. 

Using Gouache white with watercolor inks

I know, I know - using white with watercolors usually is a no-go. But I am a person who likes to experiment with no-go's . So I took a bit of gouache white and added some watercolor ink to it. You can see the results on the right side of the image: There is original hue (night blue), and if you go down on the right side, you see how it is changed by adding white. You can also see how you can get a lighter hue by adding water to the paint. 

All in all I am still fascinated by those vivid colors you get when you use liquid watercolors. I keep my originals safely packed away in a binder. I scan them and use the scan for prints or cards or whatever.
 

Layering watercolor inks

I've got a set of pan watercolors from Schmincke, but I never really liked them. I love bright and vivid colors, and I never got into painting with pan watercolors because the colors were far too weak for me. 

So I looked for alternatives and found watercolor inks. They are beautifully bright, and you can thin them down to a very light color. I use Ecoline from Royal Talens and Colorex from Pebeo. You can layer them quite nicely - but you have to wait till they are dry. I must admit that waiting is not one of my strong characteristics. But I noticed that my paintings get better when I am more patient...
I used Forest Green and Pine Green from Ecoline, and Siena from Colorex.

The only disadvantage you have with those watercolor inks is that they are not lightfast. However I do not sell originals - I use my paintings for Greeting Cards or for Art prints. The originals are safely put away in a binder.
 

Paintmarkers and oil pastels

I love to experiment, and I love to use my art stuff in unusual ways. 

I used stone paper for this painting, and I used oil pastels for the background. I dipped a q-tip in a drop of baby oil and blended the colors with it. Then I let it dry for one day. 

Step #2 was to grab my acrylic paintmarkers and to apply them to the paper. Acrylic paintmarkers do not go well with watercolor paper, but with this kind of paper they did. 

Watercolor inks

Some people call them "inks", some people speak of "liquid watercolors" . The most common brands are "Ecoline" made by Royal Talens and "Colorex" made by Pebeo. Both brands are made with dyes and therefore not lightfast. 

Both brands come in small bottles of either 30 or 48 ml. The bottles now have droppers, which makes application easy. I had bought a small selection of Colorex colors more than five years ago and added two bottles in the meantime. I also have a few ecoline colors - fir green, forest green, siena, warm grey and indigo.

Last week I felt like switching to this medium again. As with all liquid mediums color mixing is not that easy. The Ecoline forest green is a real green green - which in my opinion is a bit too much. But add a drop of warm grey, or siena, or chartreuse and it changes to wonderful quite natural greens!

Playing with Paintmarkers

Quite some time ago I had ordered a set of Acrylic Paint pens from Amazon. Unfortunately I hadn't done anything with them since then. In the beginning of October I felt that I would like to try to do something with them (this was before I watched a video about what to do when their tips dry up). I went through them, priming them by pumping a lot. Some of them were dried up. No matter how much I pumped - no ink was coming through the tip. I thought that they were not usable any more and threw them away.

Then I watched this video where a guy told me how to reactivitate dried up acrylic markers. I removed some of the tips and let them soak. I exchanged two tips. And alas - I got all of these paint pens to work again!

The next thing was the paper I chose: I finally focussed on these papers:

• Bristol paper
• Stone paper
• cardboard
• coated paper

Stone paper and coated paper are very, very smooth. The tip glides beautifully over the paper. There is one disadvantage: As the ink does not suck into the paper, it takes some time until it is dry. Be careful not to touch the painting too early, it will smear. Bristol paper and cardboard are a less smooth, but also usable.

I rediscovered PicFinder AI

PicFinder AI was among the first AI Art generators I have been using. But with Nightcafe Studio, Ideogram AI and Mage Space I neglected it because most of the results I got weren't very satisfying. However now, almost one year later, I rediscovered PicFinder again. I found out something very important: PicFinder works best with longer prompts. What I am doing now is to go to Ideogram or Nightcafe Studio and look for one of my images there and then copy the magic prompt:

Here is the prompt:

A photo of an indoor jungle with a variety of tropical plants. There are large plants with big leaves, like palms and ferns. There are also smaller plants with colorful flowers. The plants are placed in pots of different sizes and shapes. The pots are arranged on wooden shelves, crates, and the ground. The background is a white wall with a few holes.

And here are two of the results. PicFinder offers you quite a lot of images, in square format, or landscape or portrait format.

The only disadvantage I see is that the free version of PicFinder only allows personal use. I do journaling, and I love to use stickers in my journal. PicFinder will work absolutely great here!