Indian Warrior

In the beginning I just wanted to put into practice the things I had been learning via YouTube, because it doesn't make sense just watching videos. You have to try and do it yourself, then you will notice what you haven't understood. During the process of this digital painting the focus changed - I had a certain image in my head which I wanted to bring on the screen with Inkscape. 

Horse portrait

This horse portrait was done with Inkscape. I admit that I traced the outlines from a photo, but then used the photo only for reference. It taught me to look very closely: Where do the nostrils sit on a horse head, where are the shadows and so on. It took me quite some time, but I learnt a lot about Inkscape!

Green beetle

I've decided to use a big part of my free time at home learning and practising Inkscape. Not that I am using Inkscape for the first time - but I am trying to learn it which means - watching videos, opening Inkscape on my computer, trying to put the things I've been watching into practice. I more than once notice that I haven't understood something properly, so I go back to the video, then go back to the drawing board in Inkscape. One of the results of my learning processes you can see here. There are still things to do better, but I am learning continuously. 

Robot

My Inkscape adventure goes on. This time I was going for a cute robot. I first made a rough sketch with pencil and paper in order to get a general idea. Then I went into Inkscape and drew out the shapes for the body the head, the arms and the legs. I used gradients in order to give the robot a three dimensional look. Now and then I had to watch a youtube video in order to get help for solving a certain problem. I had a lot of fun - however I noticed that drawing and painting digitally takes way more time than doing it traditionally.

Digital Adventures with Inkscape

I have painted and drawn beetles in a traditional way - with markers, with acrylic ink. So I thought: Why not try it digitally, with Inkscape and my Wacom tablet? Well it took some hours to get those two bugs done, problably more time than I would have needed to paint them traditionally. But it was fun, and I was pleased with myself: Obviously I haven't forgotten how to use Inkscape and my graphic tablet!

Pony

As I mentioned before I like to draw horses. But unfortunately I have big problems with drawing the horses' hooves. The rest of the drawing is quite okay, I think. 

Red and Greens

Here's another abstract painting done with alcoholbased markers on a tiny sheet of watercolour paper.

Horse portrait

After having watched some videos on how to paint a horse portrait on Youtube, I chose a reference photo, put a grid on it, selected a paper, put up a grid there as well and began to draw tne horse portrait. I soon noticed how helpful such a grid is. It makes you see - how long is the nose, how small are the ears, where does the eye sit. Yes, it is a bit time consuming to do the grid first and later to erase it, especially if you have no T-square to put up the grid, but it is definitely worth it.

White Dragon Queen

Somewhere in this blog I mentioned that I was planning do more drawings on a regular basis. Well, in the middle of last week I thought I put that plan into practice - but nothing worked. I was deeply frustrated but decided to keep on trying. I remembered the grid technique and tried that. Gimp 2.10 offers the possibility to lay a grid over an image - so I looked for a photo, downloaded it, put the grid over it, put up the grid on paper and began to draw. What you can see above is the result of my first try.

Lines and Shapes

I definitely like these tiny sheets of watercolour paper. I think I would not be able to do a proper watercolour piece on them because they are so small, but drawing and painting with my markers is fine for me. And I love the way the texture of the paper goes with the relatively flat colours of the markers.

Summer Colours

This colourful painting was done with alcoholbased markers on a tiny sheet of watercolour paper. I got this paper together with other material from my dear neighbour. I enjoy using this tiny format especially with markers as it does not take so long as bigger format. When I've finished it and scanned it in I put it in my sketchbook - so I can use it for inspiration with bigger formats.

The Kraken

Just now I am switching between alcoholbased markers and acrylics. This kraken has been painted with acrylic inks and acrylic tube paints, and I tried to mix the one with the other. It works, especially when I tried to get some white into my acrylic inks. In addition to that I found out that with thinning down acrylic inks with water I could produce a background very similar to a watercolour background. 

Surrealistic flowers

When I painted this piece I noticed how relaxing the painting with alcoholbased markers can be. They do not try out as quickly as acrylic paints do - so I could take my time with looking at my markers and selecting the next hue, with thinking about the next strokes I would like to do. It was a very pleasant alternative to painting with acrylic inks!

Anger

This portrait was developped from a mask line drawing and painted with acrylic inks. I then scanned in the finished painting, removed the background, uploaded it to Canva and placed it on the mysterious looking starry background. 

Long, long ago!

In the 60s of the last century Germans loved to spend their vacation in Italy. It was a big adventure then - driving over the Alps down to the Adriatic Coast. A foreign language, something to eat which was called pizza or pasta, and of course: the wonderful town of Venice with its old buildings and famous places.

At that time taking photos as diapositives was the state of the art. My father took this photo, and when he died I got several boxes full with diapositives. Now I am going through the boxes, select the ones I like and have them digitalized. 

Red Mask

This is a true mixed media piece - it contains traditional art and digital design. The mask itself was drawn in Inkscape and coloured in with acrylic inks. I then scanned it in and uploaded it to Canva and put it on the gradient background. 

I am relatively new to Canva and already deeply in love with it. My art consists of abstract pieces and a lot of illustrations on a white background, such as beetles, butterflies and masks. Canva makes it possible to arrange these illustrations in many, many ways, and even to use more than one in one picture.

Sold - Berlin Poster

Berlin, Germany Poster
by ullahennig

I sold this poster yesterday on my Zazzle shop. I took the photo quite a while ago, and although I was not 100 percent convinced, I uploaded it to my shop and put the photo on a postcard. It took some time, but that postcard has been selling very very well. So I decided to offer it as a poster and to put it on a mug. Up to yesterday I had no sales, but then obviously somebody thought it would look nice on her walls. 

Experiences with Canva and Lunapic

In my last post I showed you the green beetle which I had painted with acrylicinks. I had saved it in png format and tried to delete the background in gimp, but as Gimp does not have the magic eraser it is quite difficult and time consuming to do it with it.

I uploaded the file to Canva - unfortunately only Canva Pro has the "remove background" filter, and I use the free version. But there is Youtube - and actually I found a very useful tip: There is an online image editing software which removes the background with one click - You can find it on lunapic.com. 

So I removed the background there, downloaded the file and uploaded it again to Canva and copied the beetle and rearranged the two images till I was satisfied with the result. 

Green Beetle

Just now art adventure for me means mixing adventure. I love to use acrylic inks, but mixing acrylic inks is far more difficult than mixing paints out of the tube. They tend to "run away" and behave rather uncontrollable. Here I tried to mix a green acrylic ink with Payne's Grey out of the tube. You can see that I managed to create quite a range of greens, but I must admit that it wasn't always the kind of green hue I wanted to create...

The rocky Hills of the Provence

This is a photo taken as a diapositive in the 80s during a vacation in the South of France. During all the days we spent there the sun was mercilessly shining from a blue sky. It was very hot, but it was a dry heat, so it was bearable. I like the composition of this photo - the road leading to that big rocky hill, and so I had it digitalized a few weeks ago. 

Colours, colours, colours!

What I dislike most about winter is the absence of colours. Everything is grey, black or brown. That's why I am so looking forward to spring with all its fresh greens, yellows, oranges and blues. In the meantime I help myself with my paintngs which I try to create as colourful as possible. I used acrylic inks again which I love for their intensitiy of colour.

Working digital and traditional

With the open source software "Inkscape" you can very easily create geometric shapes, for example stars, as in this painting and then use them as line drawings. I like coloring those shapes - because I can focus on colour combinations and colour mixing. This painting was done again with acrylic inks.

The painted Pillow

It looks like a pillow - but it is only a painted pillow. I had a colouring page with some round shapes downloaded from the web, and in the process of coloring the painting transformed itself in a magical way. Things like that have happened quite often to me during the last weeks - I had fun with taking a coloring page and transforming it into something quite different.

The painting was done with Gouache paints on a mixed media paper.