Mysterious woman

I have been working on a series of Zodiac Signs on Nightcafe. The only zodiac sign I did not manage to create so far is "Sagittarius", which is symbolized with an archer. I used up a lot of credits and could not come up with something similar to the Sagittarius zodiac sign. 

However - the image above was among the results I want to keep. As far as I can see it has nothing to do with Sagittarius, but I like it nevertheless...

 

Three pink roses

I also created this image with the use of Nightcafestudio. These roses can not only be used for creating a nice birthday card, or will look beautiful on a calendar page, they also can serve as reference for a traditional painting or drawing!

 

Bridge

Creating an image with the use of AI (in this case: Nightcafe Studio) is not a simple process. You do not insert some text, hit the "create" button and then you get the desired result. More than once I tried, failed, deleted the output and started again. This image above is not exactly what I wanted it to be, but neverheless I like the result...

 

Diamonds

The AI Art Generator Nightcafestudio does a great job - but sometimes the result needs a bit of post-processing. The image above lacked contrast and sharpness (only a wee bit, but I was not satisfied with the result of the rendering). So I downloaded it and opened it in GIMP in order to work on the contrast and the sharpness. 

 

Abstract Art with Nightcafe Studio

I created this image with the help of Nightcafe studio. There is an algorithm there called "Style transfer" - and it works as follows:

• You upload a scan of your art.
• You open "Style Transfer" and choose a style.
• You hit the "Create" button.

I have been using AI Nightcafe studio since November, and I am still feeling my way around it. As I have got a a number of abstract paintings, either done with acrylics, acrylic inks, watermedia or markers, I've got quite a number of files to feed into "Style Transfer", and it works quite well, especially with abstract art.

 

Brandenburg Forest scenery

 

Forest and Creek scenery photo
by ullahennig

The region around Berlin, the capital of Germany, has much to offer: Beautiful lakes, forests and creeks. Sometimes when I go there I even have the impression of being in Canada or in one of the National Parks of the USA. Now that it is possible again I can only invite you to come to Berlin, spend some days there and then explore the region around it. 

And in case you cannot do such thing, what about buying this keychain with the beautiful photo of the scenery on it? 

Colourful beetle, done with Inkscape

I used some gradients on this beetle in Inkscape. As beetles do have so many colours you cannot say whether this beetle really exists - it could, could it not?

 

Clouds | Generated with Nightcafestudio

Experimenting with Nightcafestudio is fun. Sometimes I have to go through various fails, but in the end I get something presentable. 
 

Golden beetle, created with Nightcafestudio

Originally there was a beetle done with Inkscape. Then I uploaded the vector drawing into Nightcafestudio and added some text prompts. Mind you, it took me some time and some credits to get the image you can see above. But it was fun!

 

 

It is winter in my part of the world, but nevertheless I love to see flowers in all variations - they speak of spring and summer and warmer days!

zazzle_white_flower
by ullahennig

Adventures with Nightcafe Studio

I had heard of Nightcafe Studio in a video, and thought I could try it. Well, I must say, that creating images with this app has become a daily activity for me. It is always surprising what results you get when you submit certain prompts. And often enough I create something and throw it away because it does not make any sense. 

 

Grinning skull, drawn with Inkscape

I used the photo of a skull as reference, but then did my own creation with Inkscape. I practised again with gradients. I thought about adding a flower hanging out of the skull's mouth, but that may be done later.

Castles, created with nightcafe studio

A few days ago I discovered Nightcafe, a platform or a tool with which you can have images created after having submitted text prompts. 

I must admit, I am hooked on it! And I am still playing around with prompts in order to get the result I want to get...

 

Happy Flower Journal

Have you ever thought of doing a gratitude journal? I find it so important to notice all those things we can be grateful for - to live in peace, to have a warm home with running water, to have friends who care. And how about those moments of happiness when you feel the sun on your skin or drink a delicious cup of tea?

Happy Flower Notebook
by ullahennig

Another little monster

As I mentioned in my last post, I love using the gradient tool in Inkscape. I am still struggling with it now and then, but usually it does what I want it to do. 

Red and Blue Candle

 

I have been playing around with gradients in Inkscape lately - and this abstract red and blue design was one of the results. I first hated the gradient tool because I didn't know how to use it properly - now I am almost obsessed with it.

Red and Blue gradients 3" x 4" Pillar Candle
by ullahennig

Another cute little creature

This little creature was not planned - it was born in the process of playing around with gradients in Inkscape. Just now I am deeply in love with this open source vector software. I am continuously learning, which is fun. 

 

Just playing with gradients in Inkscape

Not too long ago I hated the gradient tool in Inkscape because every time I tried to do something with it it did something else - or nothing at all. However I am a quite stubborn person, so I kept on trying. And then, suddenly, I realized that I could actually handle it. Don't get me wrong, I am far from perfect with it, but at least I know what I am doing and more and more I have fun playing with it. Now I am a bit of a traditional artist as well - I love to paint abstracts with acrylics, gouache or watercolour, even markers. So I am now experimenting how to do abstracts with Inkscape and the gradient tool. Again, I am far from perfect. But I am having fun!

 

Another cute owl

 This was a colouring exercise - I used my gouache paints with this cute little owl. I found this owl as  colouring page on the internet, so I could totally focus on the colours. I once watched a video where the artist recommended doing that for getting better with watercolours - but why not doing the same thing with gouache paints?

Another little monster

At the moment Inkscape is my favourite tool to do illustrations. This cute green monster vector drawing is based on a pen and ink drawing. I scanned the drawing and vectorized it, not without changing a bit here and there. 

 

Church in Italy

This is another diaslide from my father's dia collection. It was taken in the 60s, during a vacation in the northern part of Italy. At that time Italy was the place to go to for Germans - the sea, the special food, the atmosphere. You had to cross the Alps, driving along the twisting roads up and down.

 

Mermaid

I had worked on this mermaid in Inkscape in 2020. However I was not satisfied with the result, but I still had it on my harddrive. Just a few days ago I decided to give it a new try. I noticed how much about Inkscape I had learnt in these two years. And I learnt that it is important to keep these files even if one wants to throw them into the bin. 

 

Three flying bats Mug

 In one of my former posts I showed you the vector image of the flying bat. I used it for a mug on Zazzle;

Three flying bats Halloween
by ullahennig

Somewhere in the Alps

After having a longer break with the digitalizsation of my diaslides I decided to start anew. This photo was taken a long time ago - probably in the 60s of the last century, when we Germans used to go to the northern part of Italy (South Tyrol). 

 

Bat

Bat-creature, created with Inkscape

I must admit that I have my difficulties with the gradient tool in Inkscape. But I somehow forgot that there is a tool in Inkscape called "Gradient Mesh" which - in my humble opinion - makes it far easier to create gradient effects. Fortunately there are a number of videos on YouTube which explain how Gradient Mesh works, and after having watched some of them I am kind of hooked on that tool.

The bat above is still work in progress - there are a few things which have to be worked on still.

 

Portrait of a Grizzly Bear

Grizzly Bear

Just now I am following one of Aaron Blaise's courses - the course on Drawing Bears. Instead of just watching the course I took a piece of sketching paper and a pencil and tried to follow him. Now, he is drawing digitally, but I personally think that this does not make any difference. The only advantage for him is that he can erase wrong strokes immediately whereas I had to take an eraser. But fortunately you can always pause the video...

So I did this bear first with a pencil, then with an ink pen and then decided to color it with an ecoline brush pen. After having scanned in the sketch I did minor changes in GIMP, the free alternative to Photoshop. So there is indeed a mixture of traditional sketching and digital work in this piece!

 

Cute blue monster

Blue monster, done with Inkscape

Once there was a quick pencil sketch, then an ink illustration colored with Gouache. Then I vectorized the sketch and changed it quite a bit in the process. The advantage of digital work is that you can make changes again and again until you are satisfied with the result. Which, on the other hand, leads to the difficulty that you don't know when the work is finished. I personally find it difficult to let it go, to call a certain piece finished. In earlier times I definitely was too quick. I sometimes shudder when I look at drawings or illustration I did some years ago. That at least has changed...

 

Cute owl

Owl, colored with Gouache

I found this cute owl coloring page on the Internet, used it as a drawing reference and coloured it with Gouache. 

 

Candles in my Zazzle shop

You can find the left candle here:

https://www.zazzle.com/z/acaadqn8?rf=238113813312101086. The original design is an abstract painting done with acrylic inks.

And here is the link to the right candle:

https://www.zazzle.com/z/aw3x9fe5?rf=238113813312101086 

Here the design was done with GIMP, the open source alternative to Photoshop.

Gouache abstract painting

Abstract; gouache on watercolour paper, 2022

As all my abstract paintings this was done without planning, just a very general idea about the colour palette I would use. I am dipping my brush into the paint, doing the first strokes, covering the paper. I went for a flowing effec, putting in the dark blue in order to make the painting a bit three dimensional.

 

Whimsical Waterbird Magnet

 

Vacation prep | Whimsical waterbird
by ullahennig

In August I went back to Inkscape after a long period of not doing any vector art. I had been doing "traditional art" instead - painting with acrylics, gouache, watermedia and such. It took me some time to get used to this open source vector program again, but fortunately there are loads of Inkscape tutorials on YouTube!

Cute fish

Cute fish

Do you remember those watercolours which you had to use at school? Here in Germany we call them "Deckfarben" which means "paints that cover" or "opaque watercolours". They are a bit similar to Gouache paints but of course are lower in quality. A few days ago I was going through my art stuff in search for a certain medium and I found actually two sets of those school watercolour paints, each of them having 24 round pans. I love to experiment and try out things so I decided to have a go with them, in spite of the fact that I did not like them at all at school. 

However I found out that I was having a lot of fun. Actually I enjoyed not having to handle with tubes. The fish above was done with the set carrying the no-name name of Regina (I really do not remember when and where I got them). The paints were rather gouache-y, and easy to mix with another and with the opaque white in the tube. 

 

Strange face

Face

I did this strange face with Gouache. When I began with the painting I just put one blob of paint beneath the other, and in the end, I noticed that I could turn the abstract painting into something face-like. It looks a bit battered and distorted, yes, but it still reminds me of a face.

 

Cute Christmas Owl

 

Whimsical Christmas Owl Mug
by ullahennig

At first there was the failed Inkscape drawing of a bird. I had tried something new, failed to create the design in the way I wanted it to be and then left it unfinished and forgotten on my hard drive. Months later with a bit more experience with Inkscape and the help of a few YouTube videos I gave it a new try. The result was a cute owl, which had nothing whatsoever to do with Christmas. Then I thought it could look nice with one of these Christmas hats, and maybe a kind of red coat on. You can see the result of my work above. 

Fall leaves

Fall leaves, painted with Gouache

Although a set of gouache paints was the first set of paints I bought in 2009 or so it took me a long time to get familiar with this medium. In fact I tried them once or twice, was not very happy with them and then forgot them. Now, more than 10 years later I kind of rediscovered them and liked them. I liked them because I could practise color mixing with them without running the danger to have them drying out on my palette in a short time. And they are rewettable, although with a bit of a loss of covering quality.

 

On the Swabian Alb

Diaslide from the 60s

Long time ago taking photos as diaslides was the state of the art. I remember days when friends came to my parents' home and my father proudly presented the diaslides he had taken through our summer vacation. This one above was not taken during our summer vacations which usually were spent either in Austria or in Italy. It was taken on one of our precious weekend trips to the Swabian Alb. More than once the trip also meant lighting up a campfire and roasting those delicious German sausages.

I inherited a big container with those diaslides when my parents had died, and going through them and deciding which ones to digitalize still is one of my projects. Some I keep because they are excellent photos - some I keep because of the memory they bring to me.

 

Tree character done with Inkscape

Tree character

Some time ago I thought that doing traditional paintings or drawings and doing digital art with Inkscape are opposite to each other. You can do either the one or the other. I do not think anymore that it is true. The origin of this tree character was a sketch done with pencil and then a gouache painting. But I wanted to go a step further and create a digital piece out of it. I scanned it in, openened it in Inkscape and the result of this doing is what you can see above. It is not a copy, it it something different, but it definitely has its origins in traditional art.

 

Back again!

 Yes, I am back again. It is now the middle of August. While I have been absent from this blog I haven't stopped doing art, be it traditional or digital. I have painted with gouache, done some acrylic paintings and enjoyed drawing with markers. 

Abstract painting done with Acrylics

Lately I focussed on doing digital illustrations with Inkscape, and one of the results of this is this cute little cat:

Black cat drawn with Inkscape

And I have started being active on Zazzle again. 

Two cute dark cats
by ullahennig

Cute Easterbunny

 

Cute Easter Bunny Keychain
by ullahennig

Looking for a cute Easter present? Isn't he sweet, the little Easter Bunny?

Using acrylic inks like watercolour

One of the advantages of acrylic ink is that you can thin it down considerably. In this way you can achieve a watercoloury look. As acrylic ink cannot be diluted by water when it is dry you can work with several layers, thus creating shadings. In the end I used an acrylic paintmarker in the same colour in order to put on dark spots.

 

Mixing greens with acrylic ink

Actually I did not use yellow and blue to mix those various shades of greens. I used a turquoise green, a lemon yellow and white. I also used acrylic inks which I find more difficult to mix than acrylics out of the tube. Sometimes I feel like I am in the middle of an adventure with no fixed ending. Sometimes the result is similar to the one I have in mind - but more than once the result is interesting but not as I intended it to be. But most of all, it is fun and very relaxing!

 

Abstract Art with Inktense Pencils 2

I didn't do any planning or sketches for this piece. I just decided which colours I wanted to use, picked them and then started with the painting. The funny thing is that I don't do that when using acrylic inks - I normally do a rough pencil sketch there. The reason for that may be that it is so easy to use those inktense pencils - you just grab them and then apply them. Whereas with acrylic ink I paint with self-mixed inks which tend to dry out very quickly. So I want to know where to put a certain colour, use that colour and then add the second colour.

 

Abstract art with inktense pencils

It has been quite some time since I last used inktense pencils. Actually I didn't know how many I had - and which colours I had. I love them because of their intensive colours, and because you can layer them. You can apply them in various ways - apply the pencils directly on the paper and wet them, or taking pigment off the pencils with a brush. 

The blue background was generated with Canva. 
 

Liquid watercolours and layout markers

In this painting I used pastel alcoholbased markers to put some marks on the watercolours. I used light pastel colours. I didn't want to destroy the soft, washed out look by adding strong colours with my markers.

 

Choosing another medium

After having done quite a few paintings with alcoholbased markers I wanted to try something different - painting with my liquid watercolours. Here I used two colours - a deep blue and a warm grey. The first is a colorex paint, the second an Ecoline one (Colorex is made by Pebeo, and Ecoline by Royal Talens; both are also described as "Watercolour inks".)

I tried to experiment with watering down the paint in order to achieve a shading effect.