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!