Digital and traditional art

I did this lineart piece quite some time ago, and used it for colouring it in with copics. At the moment I am not so much into copics and markers but into painting with acrylic inks, and so I wondered whether I could use this piece for colouring with said inks. I did it, here is the result:

As you can see I only used a part of the lineart piece - the piece of watercolour paper I had was much smaller than the sheet with the lineart on. I also kind of simplified the lines. I am much better with a brush than when I was at the beginning of my painting adventures, but I am still not good enough to master tiny details.

However what I find interesting is the possibility to connect digital art and traditional art in one piece. I could even do a series with several colour combinations, thus learning more about which colours fit and which not. Very exciting!

Moving Greens

I thought about using another blogpost-title: "Moving Greens or the importance of White paint." I decided against it because it is too long, However all the greens you can see on the painting above have some white in them.
I only recently discovered the importance of adding white to paints - be it paints from the tube or paints out of the bottle. Schmincke has got a mixing cheat sheet on their website for AERO-Color acrylic inks, and almost every hue and shade has got white in it.
I remember my art lessons at school when we used white paint in order to paint snow - usually in wintertime before Christmas - or to paint pastel colours. Of course white paint can be used for such things, but that is far more you can do with this paint,
Of course you have to be careful not to use too much of it, especially when you add it with the eyedropper from the bottle onto an already existing paint on your palette. It takes some practice to get the relationship right - and I am practising, practising, practising....

Opaque watercolour paints

When I was searching for some artist tape in my cupboard I found an old box with opaque watercolour paints. I didn't know I had them actually. I had to try them out although this kind of paints reminds me of art lessons at school when I was a kid. I must say that that experience wasn't very encouraging! However I digress. In Germany this kind of paints is called "Deckfarben" which could be translated with "opaque watercolours". They are really cheap, and I was keen on trying out what could be done with them.
Well, of course they are not very richly pigmented, and I doubt whether they are lightfast or not. They are not so strong coloured as my acrylic inks or the watercolor inks. I used markers and coloured pencils to make the colours pop. It was fun painting with themm though!

Circles

No, this painting is not a watercolour painting. It has been painted with acrylic inks (a medium which is used by airbrush people, but you can apply the paint also with a brush). You can apply the ink in a wet-in-wet technique: wet the paper with one brush and then apply the colour with the other, and water it down with the first brush. You have to be quick because this medium dries quicker than you think it does. The less water you use the more opaque the paint is, and the more water you add the more translucent it gets. Because of the high pigmentation the colour is still very vivid and strong.

Landscape in Red

This time I tried painting in wet-and-wet technique. I used my colorex watercolour inks and two brushes - one for wetting the paper with clear water and smoothing out the paint and the other one for applying the paint. When the paint had dried I took one of my alcohol-based markers and added the frame and some parts of the silhouettes.

My Inks

Here you can see some of the art materials I am using: on the left is a stack of lids left over from my yoghurts. They are plastic and I use them as palettes for my acrylic paints - the inks as well as the tube paints. When too much dried paint covers the lid I simply put them into the bin. Eating yogurt is good for your bones - so with every yoghutt I eat I do something for my health and for my art activites!

Then there are my inks - first the colorex inks which I bought as a starter set together with one bottle of ecoline, and then my acrylic inks from Schmincke. These inks are mostly used for airbrushing but you can also use them with a brush.

Digital fish

Here I took one of my colorex paintings and transformed it into a digital painting. I used photoshop 7, quite an old version of photoshop but nevertheless one which does everything I want it to do.

The big advantage when painting digital is that you can really play with colours and shapes. You can work on it up the point when you are satisfied with it, erasing lines, going over it with another colour and another brush.

Red

With this painting I switched again from digital to analogue - or in other words - to tradtional art. I used acrylic paints and acrylic inks here, trying to mix various shades of red. 

Colouring in the digital way

After having kind of digitalized some traditional artwork of mine I felt like doing a colouring page the digital way. It's a very fun way of playing around with colour combinations!

Ring of Stones - Digital

It has been a long time ago since I did a digital painting. However, I have subscribed to a lot of channels which do digital art, and just a few days ago I actually watched one of these videos. I not only watched more than one but also felt the urge to do something digital myself.

As I didn't want to begin from scratch I had a look at one of my scanned paintings and thought "why not try to enhance that painting digitalloy?" And I did. Doing this I learnt two things:

1. Digital art takes at least the same time as traditional art - if not even more. It is important to give onself time to experiment and play. 
2. Look for your lightest lights and your darkest darks - something that is important for traditional art - but also for digital art. And the advantage of a digital painting is that you can darken your paintings without having to fear to darken them too much - if that is the case just go over the spots again. 

Dancing Sea Snakes

Isn't it amazing how many shades of blue exist? And how many can be created by either adding white to blue, or black to blue, or thinning the paint with water, or put a thin layer of blue ink over the painting?

The only thing is: Be careful when shaking the bottle of ink - make sure that the lid is tight... Otherwise you'll get the same result as you get when changing the ink cartridges on your inkjet printer - paint or ink all over your fingers. And: Whereas I found acrylic paint can removed quite easily from your hands by giving them a scrubbing up with your soap, it is far more difficult to remove acrylic ink. I still got some under my nails...

Preparations for the Group Show in July #1

This year again I will participate in the group show in Buckow (Markische Schweiz, near Berlin) in July. And I will participate with new paintings. Last year I didn't manage to hang new paintings due to the amount of work I had to cope with at the Berlin University of the Arts.
Due to the fact that I have been pretty creative during the last year I asked my friend Claudia to help me select a certain number of paintings. It was fun sitting there and going through all the stacks of paintings, and in the end, after quite a reasonable time, we managed to get a selection of paintings, some acrylic, some watermedia, and all very colourful!
Now I have to find frames for them (I already got some ideas), and to frame them. This is quite a challenge for me. I'm not very good with my hands. At least, this is what I think. My friend Claudia had framed my paintings two years ago, and she did it in such a quick time that I almost could not believe my eyes. However, things can be learnt, and there is enough time till the beginning of July.
However, time runs, and so the first thing I'll do is to set up a plan. I'll keep you posted about how things proceed!

Rhapsody in Blue and Green

This painting was done with Acrylic paints, acrylic ink and - in the end - some strokes with a PITT Artist Brush pen. I was aiming for as many different shades of green I could do with mixing the green I had (Hookers Green) with white and blue ink.

Jumping dolphins

This pair of jumping dolphins was painted on a piece of cardstock which I had "primed" with two coats of white acrylic paint. I used the paint because I don't have gesso in my flat. It worked to some extent and stopped the cardstock from sucking in too much paint. However I didn't apply smoothly enough and thereby the texture was a bit too rough.
The other thing which went quite well was mixing a nice strong red colour out of the magenta acrylic ink and the yellow acrylic paint. And it was fun playing with paints and experimenting - even if the result was not perfect. It is a way to learn and to practice!

Under the Sun

When I did this painting I had a certain scene in mind: Sitting in a kind of bamboo hut, with the sun shining through the roof and the spaces between the single bamboo stems.

In order to get that red I mixed the magenta and the lemon yellow. As the magenta is quite strong it takes a lot of yellow to get that orangey-red. I finished the painting with inking some of the lines with my staedtler pigmentliner, a fineliner which has waterproof ink.

Hot and Cold

I used cyan (acrylic ink) and vermillion (acrylic paint) for this painting. It is amazing how many shades of blue you can get when you mix those two colours. 

I had a very rough sketch on the watercolour paper, but during the process of painting I more and more digressed from the original sketch.

Puma

It has been a long time since I did the last drawing or sketch. Somehow to draw means to leave my comfort zone. I love to sling colours, be it with gouache paints, acrylic inks combined with acrylic paints or liquid watercolours. Actually it is one of my art goals to do more drawings - but having goals is one thing and having fun with paints and colours is the other thing. Well...

Green Koi

Acrylic ink creates a very smooth surface - ideal for going over with coloured pencils, as I did here. Acrylic ink also can be used in a wet-in-wet-technique, which I did with the water in this painting. I used one clean brush only for wetting the paper, and a second one for applying the paint. As acrylic ink dries up very fast on the paper, you have to be quick if you want to prevent sharp edges, and you have to be careful with your brush strokes, but then you can achieve an effect similar to ones you can achieve with watercolours. 

Tent in the Storm

I used three colours for this painting: magenta, black and lemon yellow. I changed between using the paint / ink as it came out of the bottle and adding water to it. In the beginning I had some geometric shapes, and then while working on the painting something like a tent in the storm emerged. I learnt that adding yellow to magenta makes a very strong red, and that it takes a lot of yellow to turn it into something slightly orange!

Blue Violet

First there was the blue violet and the two leaves. I did the sketch, transfered it via transparent paper and my window pane onto the watercolour paper and blocked the colour in. I tried to get a nice violet mix by adding some drops of magenta to my cyan blue, but, as you can see, the amount of red is still too little.

For the loose landscape I diluted the permanent green with some drops of water, wetted the paper a bit and let the paint flow in. Same with the sky. I then added some strokes with polychromos coloured pencils in the middle. 

After having done all this I took a step back and wasn't totally satisfied with the result. Would some ink lines help? Or would they destroy the whole painting? I took a scan of the painting as it was and then proceeded with applying some loose inkstrokes.Well, I felt better after that...

Rainbow Rectangles

I did these colourful rectangles with my new acrylic inks, using cyan. lemon yellow, and magenta. Besides playing with various geometric shapes I tried to practice colour mixing and adding ink lines with my staedtler pigment liner.

The green patches which you can see are not painted with a green but created by putting yellow on blue.

The Mystery in the Jungle

This painting is the result of colour mixing experiments - this time, as you may guess, lemon yellow with cyan. I made the mistake of dropping the cyan into the yellow - should have done it the other way! It needs a lot of yellow to get green with the cyan. At the very end I added some red spots with an alholobased marker.

Fire and Ice

This is the second painting I did with the acrylic inks. Here I mixed magenta and cyan. The big advantage of those acrylic inks is that you can layer them - not only in an opaque way but also diluting the paint as you do with "normal" acrylics when you do a glaze. 

While I was doing this I more and more had a certain picture in front of my eyes - hot lava flowing down an icey and stoney mountain.

A new Adventure: Acrylic ink

I have been wanting to try them for quite some time. But there's always been the thought: "You've got so many art materials, you don't need those acrylic inks!" So I focussed my curiosity on all the videos on YouTube. But when Easter was coming I decided to allow myself an Easter gift - four acrylic ink bottles from Lucas. I selected cyan, magenta, lemon yellow and black. They would give me the chance to mix quite a range of colours. I bought them and carried them home.

I don't know why but it took two days for me to open two of the bottles and try them out. I really had been afraid to do something terribly wrong with them. But then I overcame my angst and did the piece you can see above. It is a simple geometrical shape which provided me however with the opportunity to test those inks, especially the colour range you get when you add more water to them. I find it fascinating how many shades of blue I got out of one drop of cyan!

Golden panes - Acrylics again

I always thought that Acrylics and me would never become friends. A long time ago I bought a Daler-Rowney System 3 set and gave it away half a year later. One year later I bought a very cheap acrylics set of no-name paints and tried again. Well, it went a bit better but I was having far more fun with other mediums.

This time I tried again - and to my surprise, I was having a bit of fun. I had the feeling that with some practice I could even have more fun. Here I used them together with my colorex liquid watercolours: Whereas the panes are acrylics all the rest is colorex.

Green Vines

This time I wanted to do a monochromatic abstract painting with my colorex paints, and as I had opened the bottle with the green hue a short time ago I went for green. I added some yellow for the lighter greens, and some black and blue for the darker ones. 

It was fun doing it and I am pleased to see what can be done with a limited palette. 

The only sad thing however is that the colorex paints are not lightfast at all. They are not based on pigments but on dye. In this aspect they behave like markers do - and the good thing is that I've got a marker painting which I put framed behind glass and I have it for over three years now and cannot see any change in the colours. Of course I would never sell it.

Ring of Stones

I opened another one of my new colorex liquid watercolour bottles - the green one. It is a very vivid green, especially if you add yellow to it as I did here. For the red-orange stones I went to the palette with my leftover Neocolor II paints, created from the shavings of the watersoluble crayons. As you can see you can work with different watermedia in one painting! 

Troll

This troll is a variation of the pink monster. It has got clothes, and a head, but otherwise the pose is almost the same. However a new colour is used - I opened the colorex bottle with yellow in it and mixed it with magenta. I got a nice vibrant red this way. 

And I tried another thing - producing a kind of liquid gouache: I took a tiny piece of indian red out of the tube into a small container and added drops of water to it, mixing it, so that I got a kind of liquid gouache. Then I grabbed one of my brushes and applied the liquid gouache on top of the yellow red stones. It worked like a glaze. Interesting!

Pink-blue Diamond

I painted this diamond with two colours: ultramarine dark from Ecolline (Royal Talens) and cyan from colorex. I used two brushes - a waterbrush to put the paint on and a watercolour brush to wet the paint. 

Once again I was fascinated by the intensitiy of the liquid watercolours - the ultramarine I took out of the lid of the bottle after I'd given it a bit of a shake, and the cyan was still on my palette from the day before. 

The only thing that I found a bit difficult was to take the proper brush which means only using the waterbrush for putting on the paint and only using the ordinary watercolour brush for wetting the paper and the paint. 

Little Pink Monster

Just now I am working on adding small changes to my drawings. This one here was first traced from the blue monster which I did in December last year and then recreated, traced again and then I transfered the drawing to my watercolour paper. I coloured it in with my new colorex paints which I am still enjoying very much!

Orange koifish

At the moment I am focussing on two things:

1. I am still experimenting with mixing my colorex liquid watercolours. I know that many people recommend doing those colour charts with rectangles. I try to do my colour charts the other way: I am using my own drawings, trace them again and then colour it trying new mixes. Of course this is not as "scientifc" as doing those charts with rectangles, but I am having more fun doing it my way. In this case I used magenta mixed with mars orange mixed with sepia. 
2. I am experimenting with changing my drawings a tiny bit. I trace my drawings and then change the shape of the fins, or the directions of the fins, or whatever comes to my mind. In this case I changed the shape of the left fin a bit. Then, when I am satisfied with the new drawing on my tracing paper, I put up my provisional light table and transfer the "new" drawing on my proper paper - in this case drawing cardboard.

Exit to nowwhere

In the beginning of the painting process (I used my colorex liquid watercolours again) I hadn't any particular scene in mind - I just wanted to find out what would  happen if I add black to magenta. Depending on the amount of black and magenta you can get beautiful shades of violet. 

When the painting was finished and I was looking at it I more and more had the impression of a cave with stone pillars. The cave is getting narrower and narrower, and there is a dark hole at the end of the cave which might lead to an exit to the surface, or to an exit to nowhere. 

Two Colours Challenge

By subscribing to the newsletter of Dover publications I have access to free samples of colouring pages. I had printed this one out quite some time ago on copy paper planning to colour it in with my watercolour pencils.

However in the meantime I got hooked on my new liquid watercolours - colorex from Pebeo and Ecoline from Royal Talens. I had used them on watercolour paper only. Well, there's always a "first time", so I unscrewed two bottles: the magenta bottle  and the cyan bottle and put a little drop of both of the colours onto my palette. I had the goal to only use these two and was rather excited how many colours you can mix with them!

Blue Snail Shell

I love my liquid watercolours. I began with a starter set of the colorex brand, but then I discovered ecoline, a lqiuid watercolour made by Royal Talens, a company in the Netherlands. Ecolines doesn't come in round bottles - they are square and resemble inkwells. I bought a bottle with ultramarine dark watercolour ink (it is not real ink but the name "ink" is used quite often).

Of course I had to try it out. I seldom buy something new and do not give it a try on the same day. In this painting i mixed the magenta from colorex with the ultramarine from Ecoline. I must say that mixing colours is not easy with those liquid watercolours - I don't always get the colour I want to have. But I give myself the permission to experiment!

Bird with Roses

Another colouring page I found on Pinterest. Here I used my watercolour pencils together with my Stabilo68 pens which can be activitated with water as well as the watercolour pencils.

Pink Explosion

I did it today - I bought a starter set of colorex watercolour inks and painted this abstract painting with it. 

Colorex paints come in little bottles, together with three eye-droppers, These are used to get the paint out of the bottle and onto your palette. Depending on how intense you want the colours to be you add a bit of water. You can also mix the colours by taking a wee bit of ink with your brush and put it on some other paint in the palette or by directly dropping one paint on the other. 

In this case here I used magenta and cyan, different amounts of water, and mixed them one time taking more magenta and the other time taking more cyan.

It is really an adventure, but a very enjoyable one. I love experiments!

Colourful Dragonfly

I found the lines for this dragonfly on an internet website with free colouring pages. This time I inserted a sheet of drawing cardboard into my printer, being a bit anxious because I was not sure whether it would take it or not. It did! It is not a super heavy drawing cardboard but it was strong enough not to buckle during the process of activitating the watercolour pencils.

I am quite satisfied with the result, but there's one thing I find disturbing: the patch of dark blue on the back of the dragonfly. I think it is too much of a contrast. 

Green Houses

This scene is painted with watercolourpencils on acrylic paper. I just wanted to see whether this strange combination would work - and yes, it did because I applied the pencils' wet tips on the paper. Of course this method is eating up the pencils in a very quick way - which I didn't so much care about because I used the less expensive Mondeluz pencils from Koh-i-Noor, a Czech company. 

The Rose Fairies

This time I used my watercolour pencils first dry on paper and then activated them with a damp q-tip. The colours are not so strong as when I touched the water drop with my pencil, but the colouring looks smoother this way.

What I still find difficult with watercolour pencils is that you really have to do a kind of colour chart with the activated colours - there is such a difference between the colours of the dry watercolour pencils and the activated ones!

The Joy of colours

I love playing around with colours, and I also love abstract shapes. So it didn't take me long to jot down some lines on cardboard which had the size of a postcard, and to fill in the colours. The longer the winter lasts the more I long for vivid and happy colours, and because I can't get them yet in nature I create them with my paintings.

Violet flowers

As I said before I love to include doing colouring pages in my artist activity. Besides the fact that colorouring has a very relaxing side to it it simply means practising with my watercolour pencils. 

Portrait of a Bear - final version

This time I applied my watercolour pencils dry at most places and then blende-tip. d them with a wetted q-tip. I used cardstock as a support. I somehow prefer cardstock over watercolour paper because of its smoothness. I would also like to try out hot pressed watercolour paper, but this is quite difficult to get here.

Flower Egg

I found this colouring page on pinterest and I decided to colour it because it reminded me of the coming spring. The days are longer now, and on last Sunday you could almost smell spring in the air. It was quite mild, and the hazel bushes are in full bloom. Unfortunately I am allergic to hazel pollen, but in spite of that I love spring and I am looking forward to the days when we can see the first spring flowers.

This egg was done with watercolour pencils on simple copy paper. 

Work in Progress: Bear portrait

In case you're asking what the lines are for: In the beginning I intended to do a zentangle bear portrait, but the longer I put colour on the more I digressed and now I am on my way to a not very realistic but also not a zentangle bear - something between. I think you can already see the characteristics of a bear.

After all the lines will almost totally disappear with the colouring of the bear's head. I am having much fun with my watercolour pencils - I can't believe that I have neglected them for such a long time!

Carousel Horse

This is another colouring page found on pinterest which I did with watercolour pencils. I know that horses definitely are not blue, but blue is one of my favourite colours. The meaning of blue is - at least Wikipedia says so - romanticism and mystery. (No wonder the avatar people are blue!)

I painted on regular copy paper - and you can see that it crumpled a bit. However I like the texture which the crumpled paper resulted in. 

Red Tulip

 Tulip. Watercolour pencils on drawing cardboard

A short time ago I rediscovered my watercolour pencils - and I was having very much fun doing this tulip! When I went through my drawing cardboard sheets I found a linedrawing done with pencils and decided to colour my own drawing. I would like to do more colouring of my own drawings, but doing that is taking far more time than "just" colouring. So I can only do that now and then and not on a regular basis.

Abstract colourful wheel

I found that lineart on pinterest and thought that I would like to try my watercolour pencils with them. Actually I have neglected that medium for quite some time (actually I didn't remember which colours I had - shame on me!). I tend to use my mediums not always in the way they are normally used - as it is the case here also. You are not to dip your pencils into the water - at least not as much as I did here. But as I mentioned before: I love those strong, bright, happy colours and I was downright happy when I applied the colours.
I used the rather famous and expensive Albrecht Dürer pencils together with the not so expensive watercolour pencils from Koh-i-Noor which is a Czech company. I cannot see the difference - and I bet you cannot, too. They can be bought in open stock here in Germany, and if the weather were not so bad as it was when I did the painting I would have gone straight off buying additonal pencils.

Fish with golden Ball

You can easily recognise similarities with the fish in the last blog post. There's a reason for it - I traced the first version and in the process did some changes to it. When I was satisfied with the result I put up my provisional light table (just a pane of glass with a lamp below it) and transfered the drawing to my drawing cardboard.
I did this for the first time, but it seems to me that it is a good procedure for playing around with a certain character - changing the way the eye looks, changing the fins and giving the hands something to hold.

Fish Character

Dotted Fish. Coloured pencils on drawing cardboard

I drew this fish after having had a look at quite a lot of fish. Of course this is a fantasy fish character, especially with the two arms and the red lips. The spots were done with stabilo fineliners, but the rest was coloured with polychromos coloured pencils blended with baby oil. 

Running Horse - final Version

This is the final version of the running horse. Yes, I admit, the hooves are one of the weak points of the painting / drawing. I know that some artists are dealing with the problem by placing the horses in high grass where the hooves cannot be seen; I want to get better at drawing them, and so I will be practising the drawing of hooves in the next weeks.