Experimenting with watercolor inks and gouache

I love to do strange things with art mediums. In case you are following my blog you will know that just now I am deep into watercolor inks. I had neglected them somewhat and now I love painting with them. Another art medium I have been neglecting is Gouache. Yesterday I asked myself "Why not combine Gouache and watercolor inks?" So I went for my very old set of gouache paints from Reeves bought ages ago, took a tube of brilliant red and put a tiny blob of it on my palette. Then I went for the Ecoline warm grey watercolor ink bottle and dropped a tiny drop on the palette as well. It seemed to work. 

Mixing colors from different mediums was one thing - using a waterbrush to paint with gouache was another thing, I did a google search and most of the information I got there was against doing that. Well, I had to try myself. And it worked for me as well! Of course I very carefully cleaned the waterbrush afterwards.

And here is the painting:

Create a Coloring Page with ColorBliss

You can create a coloring page with almost every AI Art generator - in one of my last blog posts I described the process and the necessary steps in detail.

Some days ago I discovered a website which makes creating coloring pages very easy: It's name is colorbliss.art. There is a free plan which allows you to create 3 coloring pages for free. Once you've done that you can get another three credits if you share the website on social media.

This is one of the coloring pages I created. You can download the file by clicking on the image. It comes as a png file. I then open Open office Writer and paste the image into the document and then export it as pdf.

Important information: ColorBliss just changed the pricing. You have nine free coloring pages, then you have to pay!

What you can do with left over paint

I use a small yoghurt container for mixing my watercolor inks. Sometimes the ink will be used up when the painting is finished. But sometimes there is still paint left. 

I painted this tree with leftover paint, a mixture of vermillion and night blue. It is not more than a quick sketch, but in doing this I practised brushstrokes with my waterbrush. In addition to this I practised my handling of adding water to the paint (I added tiny drops with a dropper).

But I did not stop here. I thought "Why not use this quick sketch as a starter image?

At first I tried Playground AI, giving the starter image a strength of 40. As you can see Playground did use the color but changed the tree somewhat. 

Playground gives you a very user friendly way of handling the starter image. You can change the strength of it gradually. 

So I tried a higher strenght, and got the image below. Here the strength is 50, and you can see that is is more similar to the painting, but still has another feel to it.

What did I learn?

1. With watercolor inks no left over paint is lost. You can still do a rough sketch with it.

2. With AI you can change this rough sketch into something worth keeping.

Challenge: Create a painting with only two hues

 At the moment I am deeply enjoying my watercolor inks from either Pebeo (called Colorex) or Royal Talens (Ecoline). These watercolor inks are very vivid. They are not lightfast, which is no problem for me because I do not intend to sell the originals. I wanted to take up the challenge of only using two hues: "Night" from Colorex/Pebeo and "Fir Green" from Ecoline/Royal Talens. Both of these inks come in little bottles, usually both with droppers.

I used an small empty yoghurt container as a palette, used both of the hues coming out of the bottle, added with water and mixed with one another. You can see the result below. 

Creating a coloring page with AI Art Generators

I want to practice more with my liquid watercolors. Some time ago I watched a video about how you can get more practice with watercolours using coloring pages, and so I thought "why not create my own coloring pages"? OK, there are quite a few steps:

1. Create a simple coloring page without any colored pencils. In the past, whenever I tried to do that the AI added pencils or colored pencils. But I do not want them on the image. In addition to that it has to be simple, because I have to use watercolor paper, so I have to trace the image on the printed paper. 
2. Open a file with Open office writer and paste the image. Then save it as a pdf.
3. Have the pdf printed 
4. Trace onto watercolor paper.
5. Have fun with my liquid watercolors

Here's the result of step #1: I used Nightcafe Studio and the following prompt:

Kids coloring page, very simple, pixar cartoon field of roses, cute cat, plain, simple

It will take a while till I will have done the next steps. In any case I will show you the results of my coloring practice with my liquid watercolor!

Green Goblin - AI versions

In one of my last blogposts I published one of my latest paintings - a green goblin. Of course I wanted to see what the AI could do with it. So I opended Nightcafe Studio and uploaded my painting in order to use it as a starter image.

There are two ways to influence the outcome:

1. the prompt

2. the weight you place on the image

I used Nightcafe Studio. The first result I got is very different from the original painting. It shows a green goblin with some funny headgear and two blades growing out of his body. Not a bad design, but too far away from the origjnal piece.

So I reduced the weight of the prompt, and I got an illustration which resembles the original far more.

What did I learn?
1. Sometimes it makes sense to just let the AI decide what it comes up with. Taking the horns of the goblin and changing them into some sharp blades is quite interesting!

2. If you want an image which looks more like the original you have to try a few times. Just play and have fun!

Combining watermedia with acrylics

When I say "watermedia" I mean watercolor brush pens and pens whose ink can be dissolved with water. I own tombow brush pens, ecoline brush pens and stabilo 66 pens. I love the vivid colors. 

So I grabbed a piece of watercolor paper, some of the pens I mentioned above and began to paint. I did not do a preliminary sketch, I just went for colors and shapes. In the process of painting I noticed that the shapes formed themselves into two fish characters. 

Now I thought about the background. Why not using acrylics for the background? So I went for an old acrylic paint tube, wondering whether it still would produce paint. Yes, it did. 

It might not be one of my best paintings, but it was important for me to have a break from all these AI image creations and do some traditional painting again.
 

How to use ChatGPT to create a refined prompt

Are you familiar with the expression "being afraid of the blank page / white canvas"? I must admit that more than once I felt like that when I tried to think of a prompt to use with one of the numerous AI Art Generators I am creating images with. Well I discovered a method for myself which helped me to deal with that kind of feeling and I want to share it with you. 

1. PromptSilo
PromptSilo is a webpage where you can find all kinds of information to put into a prompt. It gives you ideas for a prompt. For example you want to create an image which depicts a landscape with certain plants or flowers. It gives you a list of flowers, trees, whatever you like. You want to create a painting of this landscape in a certain style - just click on the artist.

This is what I got:
 bouganvillea trees style of Edgar Degas daylight

2. ChatGPT
The second step is to ask ChatGPT to refine the prompt. Here is the refined prompt:
Capture the graceful essence of bougainvillea trees in the style of Edgar Degas, bathed in the soft glow of daylight

3. Submit the prompt to an AI Art Generator (in this case: Bing Image Creator)

Here is the image created with the above prompt.

Once you have a refined prompt you can change it easily. You can replace the kind of tree you want to see, you can change the style, you can change the light. The possibilities are endless!

Painting with Liquid watercolours

I must admit I got lots of artist materials. Acrylic ink, acrylic tube paints, acrylic markers, alcoholbased markers, waterbased brush pens, oil pastels, a set of watercolours and some liquid watercolours (also known as "watercolour inks") from Royal Talens (Ecoline) and from Pebeo (Colorex).

It had been quite some time since I used these liquid watercolours. But two days ago I felt very much like painting with them again. I used Yellow from Colorex and Fir Green from Ecoline. I had bought a beginner Colorex set a long time ago, when they had no droppers on their bottles, so I had to use a pipette for putting the ink on my palette. Regarding the Fir Green the bottle has got a dropper, so putting it on the palette was no problem. But then it got a wee difficult - mixing liquid inks is a bit of a trial and error process. 

However, as you can see on the image I managed somehow to get various shades of green and yellow. I think mixing liquid paints (the same applies to acrylic inks, in my opinion) is a matter of practice!

Happy Easter

Happy Easter! May your Easter holidays be peaceful, creative and joyful!

Two interpretations of Medusa

 I asked ChatGPT who Medusa was, and the answer is:

"Medusa was a figure in Greek mythology, known as one of the three Gorgon sisters. She possessed snakes for hair and a gaze that could turn anyone who looked at her into stone. Perseus famously slew her by using a mirrored shield to avoid her petrifying stare, and later used her severed head as a weapon."

Then I asked two AI Image Generators to create an image of Medusa. The results differed quite a lot.

This image was created with Nightcafe Studio. Without doubt the young woman has snakes in her hair, but I would not describe the look on her face as something which would turn you into stone.

Now Greek mytholody says that Medusa was a beautiful maiden till she got punished by the goddess Athene. Maybe we see her just changing into the monster.

The image on the right - created with Lexica AI - shows a bust of Medusa. She also does not resemble the monster which Greek mythology describes. In my opinion she looks like she's in pain, suffering, and her eyes are closed.

Both of the images made me think about Medusa.

Using Watermedia and Acrylics together

A few days ago I watched a video about using acrylics and watercolor together in one painting. It inspired me to try a similar combination in an abstract painting. 

I did not use watercolors - I used Ecoline and Tombow brush pens. Their ink can be dissolved beautifully with adding tiny bits of water. For the background I used some kind of acrylic craft paint. 

I must say that I quite like the result, and I definitely will continue to experiment with combining watermedia and acrylics!

AI versions of my Acrylic Painting

In my last post I presented an acrylic painting which I had done on the last weekend. Today I will show you two AI versions of it:

This was done with Playground AI, using the acrylic painting as starter image. There is quite a difference between the original painting and its AI version. However I like the way the orange / yellow / ochre colors have found their way into the digital image.

Here is the AI version I got from Limewire AI. It is much more similar to the acrylic painting and has a painterly, watercoloury look. 

Painting again with Acrylics

It's been a long time ago since I've last painted with acrylics. Some say, acrylics are an easy medium - not with me, I must say. I've tried them a few times, was not satisfied with the result and then switched over to other mediums, like alcoholbased markers for example. 

However, sometimes watching me a certain video makes me want to try a medium again, and so I grabbed a piece of watercolor paper and some acrylic paints and created this painting on the left. I did it - like I always do - without any planning or preliminary sketches. This is something which may work or not - and I think I have actually have to do more planning and sketching before I actually begin to paint. I used colored pencils also, something I want to explore more. 

And I definitely want to use this painting as a starter image with some of my AI Art Generators!

Abstract alcoholbased marker painting No 5

Up to now I haven't found an artist on YouTube who does abstract art with alcoholbased markers. Yes, there are some artists painting abstract art with acrylic markers, but not with alcoholbased ones. This has very much to do with the size of my paintings. With these markers I do A5 sizes (about half the size of a letter size page). I haven't actually counted the time I need for such a painting, but often enough it takes longer than I expected. 

However it is such a joyful process that for now I cannot stop creating those paintings!

Happy Easter keychain

This design has got a story: A long time ago I had drawn and painted the cute bunny with some waterbased markers, scanned the painting and uploaded the image file to Zazzle. This year I thought why not redo the design in AI, using my own painting as a starter image? 

As you can see it worked!

Cute Bunny Happy Easter
by ullahennig

Working with PromptComposer

I learnt about PromptComposer via Twitter. This online tool allows you to search for prompts. I am always keen on trying out new things, so I had to give it a try. I submitted the words "tulips watercolor" and got the prompt: "photo realistic  clipart  watercolor art of a cute  adorable  pretty chocolate candy  easter bunny  sitting in a woven basket with beautiful colored easter eggs  daffodils and tulips".

There is one disadvantage to the tool: it only searches Midjourney prompts, and I am not using this AI Art Generator. The first AI Generator I used the above mentioned prompt with was Stablecog, and here is the result:

As you can see you have a bunny in a basket, colorful easter eggs, but no daffodils and tulips. Instead of the flowers you have some nice butterflies flying around the basket. 

In addition to that I did not quite like the position of the eggs - some are kind of hovering in the air.

So I decided to use another Art Generator and to change the prompt a bit.

I went to Freepik.com and changed the prompt to:

"photo realistic  clipart  daffodils and tulips watercolor art of a cute  adorable  pretty  easter bunny  sitting in a woven basket with beautiful colored easter eggs  full body"

With moving "daffodils and tulips" to the beginning of the prompt I obviously managed to make them appear in the image. In addition to this the easter eggs are now nicely arranged either in the basket or in front of it.

So I learnt two things:

1. PromptComposer can serve as a basis - you have to know that the result of the prompt you are given there may not work in a satisfying way with Art Generators other than Midjourney. 
2. The ability to understand Midjourney prompts may differ from one Art Generator to the other. 

Abstract marker painting No 4

 I changed my style a bit with this one, using a STAEDTLER pigment liner for the ink lines. In addition to that I changed the paper: I used coated paper. Coated paper does not allow the ink of the alcoholbased markers to be sucked in that quickly as paper does which is not coated. The ink stays on the paper. The markers do look a bit like watercolor. Another effect of the coated paper is that the markers do not bleed. 

Fluff and Snuggle

 

In the heart of a whimsical forest lived a furry monster named Fluff. He lived in a tiny little house visible only to himself. Despite his fearsome appearance, Fluff had a heart as soft as cotton candy.

Every night Fluff would retreat to his hut among the fir trees. There was only one room in the hut with a big cozy bed and a tiny table. Fluff had a big cup of hot cocoa and then he curled up with his most cherished possession - a tattered old teddy bear named Snuggle.

Snuggle had been Fluff's faithful companion since he was just a little monster, and together they had shared countless adventures. From climbing mountains made of candy to sailing across seas of dreams, Fluff and Snuggle were inseparable.

And so Fluff wrapped his arms around Snuggle and drifted off into a peaceful slumber. And in those quiet moments, surrounded by the warmth of friendship and love, even he could find solace and contentment.

Abstract stained glass

This abstract stained glass image was created using my latest marker painting as starter image. If you compare the two images you will see that the AI Generator (in this case: Openart AI) only used some of the colors but apart from that created a totally different image.

I love stained glass art in general and I love how this style is represented in the image on the left. 
 

The Joys of Journaling

 I do it every morning. I sit down with a nice cup of tea, fetch my journal and write. Sometimes I focus on the things I did the day before. It may sound strange, but reading this kind of entry a week later or so gives me a good feeling of how much I actually can get done in a day. Sometimes I focus on my social activities like meeting friends for a lunch or dinner. Sometimes I focus on the art activities of the day before.

I like to decorate the entries with stickers; and I like to use journals with a nice cover. 

Maybe you are looking for a notebook which you find aesthetically pleasing - so why not go and have a closer look at this journal? 

Colorful abstract flowers Spiral Notebook
by ullahennig

Another abstract alcoholbased Marker Painting

This is the third marker painting I've done in February 2024. After having done the black lines with a Faber-Castell PITT Artist brush pen I thought about the color combination I wanted to have, decided on it and picked the relevant markers. And I only took these markers to my drawing table (which indeed is my breakfast table by the way). 

I really like the result of limiting the number of markers in the painting!
 

AI version of my Marker Painting

This AI version of my latest marker painting was created with Deep Dream Generator. Deep Dream generator is not my favorite AI Art Generator when it comes to using starter images. But sometimes the result is quite nice, as it is in this case. I love the stained glass effect and the vividness of the colors. 

 

Another abstract painting created with markers

Some time ago I bought "The Compete Color Harmony - Pantone Edition" from Amazon. Beneath interesting articles about certain colors like Red, Brown or Purple, just to name a few, the book contains lots of color palettes (circles with three colors) in relation to certain moods. Of course it is a bit difficult to find markers corresponding to Pantone colors; but I took the book as a challenge to l. imit the number of colors in my abstract paintings down to not more than four colors. 

I must say I am quite pleased with the result!
 

Using ChatGPT for creating prompts for AI Art

 I had created a few monster AI images using my own art as start images. Well, there are some AI Art Generators which do not allow the use of starter images. I wanted to create monsters with them as well and was thinking about possible prompts. But I had no ideas regarding the prompts, so I went to ChatGPT and wrote:

I am an AI artist and I want to create images depicting cute monsters. Could you provide me with some prompts, please!

ChatGPT provided me with 10 prompts; most of them would never have come to my mind. I picked one of them:

A shy monster peeking out from behind a curtain with a bashful smile

and used it with Lexica AI.

Now we could discuss whether the monster in the image on the left has a "bashful smile" - but it has a smile.

Of course the prompt given by ChatGPT could be specified: We could ask the AI Art Generator to create a curtain in a certain color or texture: we could go for more details regarding the monster.

The main point is that I got 10 prompts full of ideas and contexts for the monster.

Fluffy monsters

 

I did this monster quite some time ago with gouache. My aim was to use a limited palette and to get more familiar with my gouache paints.

I scanned the painting and added it to the folder "scanned documents" - and there it was until today when I was looking for an image to use as starter image.

As I mentioned before not every AI Art Generator which allows the use of starter images creates good images. Playground AI is one of the AI Art generators I go to when I use starter images.

The image on the right has the same color palette as the starter image, but otherwise the differences are quite big. I like the fluffy guy, but I wanted to create something more similar to the original painting.

Now there are two ways to do that: You can change the weight of the starter image, and you can change the seed number.

I did that, and look what I got now:

This image is way more similar to the original starter image. The style is that of a 2D illustration, and the only thing which differs from the starter image are the eyes in his face.

Abstract Marker Painting

 

I decided to have a short break with creating AI Art and focussed on painting with my alcoholbased markers. I first did the black lines with a PITT Artist brush pen, and then colored the spaces between the lines. I must admit that my alcoholbased markers are mostly on the not so expensive price range - with only one or two copics between them. Some of my markers are ten years old and can still be used. Some of them I will have to replace soon. I will have a look at Stylefile markers which can be bought as single stock at Boesner's, a big art shop in Berlin. Stylefile markers can be bought with a bullet tip and a brush tip, and they can be refilled!

Stablecog

Stablecog is an AI Art Generator which allows the use of Starter images. However each time I tried to do this the result was disappointing. Of course this can be due to my not using Stablecog in the proper way, but there are AI Art Generators which I had been more success with so far. 

But this does not mean that you cannot get nice results by simply using a prompt. Here are two images I created with the prompt: "beautiful wooden carved ornament, blue shades, intricate".

Goblins, created with AI and a starter image

I did not have a special character in mind when I did the illustration on the left quite some time ago. I was interested in the roundness of the shapes, and in giving the creature some kind of headgear. 

Now, with AI Generators allowing starter images I thought: "Why not create a goblin out of this creature?". Up to now I got pretty decent results with using Playground AI, so I used that Generator in this case as well.

I used the prompt: "portrait of a goblin, colored pencil illustration, intricate".

I am quite pleased with the first result: the shape of the head and the colors are similar, and the headgear looks quite nice.

The only thing which could be made better are the eyes. They are big, yes, but still looking quite human. 

So I changed the prompt to: "portrait of a goblin, big eyes, colored pencil illustration, intricate"
 

Playground created this image. Look at the big bulging eyes! It was just what I wanted to get.

Cherry Blossoms Pillow

Spring is still more than a month away, but you can get it into your home by buying this lovely Cherry blossom pillow. 

I made up the design from one of the photos I took of the Japanese Cherry Blossom tree standing in front of the house I am living in. Every year I feel so much joy when I see the tree in full blossom, and every year I am a bit sad when the blossoms have gone.

Cherry blossom photo
by ullahennig

Changing the seed numbers in Stablecog AI

 Stablecog AI is one of the AI Art Generators I use quite often. A few days ago I watched a video about the importance of Seed numbers (the video referred to Playground AI, but the information given is valid for all AI Art Generators.). I do not want to go into detail here, I just want to give you some examples for the impact of varying the seed number.

The prompt for this image was:

dwarf holding a tulip in his hand, digital painting, cinematic photography

Seed number: 4

There is a dwarf, and he is holding a tulip in his hand. However to me the stem of the tulip does not look right, and the dwarf looks like thinking: "What is this? It looks dangerous to me!"

Instead of changing the text of the prompt I changed the Seed number from 4 to 44.

Well, the dwarf is holding a tulip in his hand and the tulip definitely looks better. The dwarf himself looks more relaxed. But there is this long tulip on the right side of the image which seems to grow out of the dwarf's back. Of course one could always think of removing that unwanted item digitally, but it would cost me a lot of time.

So I changed the seed number again, this time from 44 to 55.

And this time I was quite pleased with the result: The dwarf looks relaxed, the tulip in his hands is an eyecatcher because of the orange yellow colours, and the tulips in the foreground form some kind of a frame.

So if you are not pleased with the first results of your prompt try to change the seed number! In most cases you will get something usable out of this process!

Cute Lioncubs

 I definitely like cute animals. So I try to generate them with AI Art Generators. Here are some examples:

Here's a kitten holding a red heart, created with Full Journey. 

Full Journey once was Bluewillow AI. You get 4 images with one prompt, and you can use the images commercially. Full Journey is not totally free - you are paying for each prompt with one credit. However your credits are filled up to 50 every month or so. The quality is quite nice, and you can choose the aspect ratio. 

This cute lioncub was created with Nightcafe Studio. Nightcafe Studio is not free either. You pay 1 credit for one image. However, you can earn additional credits: You get 5 credits for logging in, 3 credits for publishing your image on instagram, 2 credits for voting in the daily challenge. In addition to that you get 5 credits for every five images you create.

The creations can be used for commercial purposes (for example as designs on print on demand websites).

The third example of a cute lioncub was generated with Bing Image Creator. Bing only offers 1:1 aspect ratio. At the beginning you could read on the website that commercial use is not allowed; in the meantime it looks like there is no such explicit restriction anymore. 

Bing is free for anybody who has a Microsoft account. You do not have to pay any credits; you have so called booster points which help to generate your images faster. You can also earn additional booster points by answering certain questions.

Cubist cityscapes - a comparison

 Many AI art generators allow the use of an init or start image. Some do not. In my humble opinion the use of start images (which in my case are scans of my own paintings or illustrations) allows to create images which are special and unusual in a certain way. In this blogpost I will give an example.

The subject I chose is "Cubist cityscape". 

One of the AI Art generators that does allow using a start image is PicFinder AI. But in this case I did not want to use this way of creating images; I used the prompt "cubist cityscape". You can see one of the results on the left. Yes, the style is cubist, but the result is not very spectacular.

So I went to Nightcafe Studio and uploaded a painting which I did years ago with acrylic paints.

I remember that I had something of a cityscape in mind when I painted the image. But I do not do much planning when I am painting. Often I just paint, add one colour to the other, draw lines, paint lines and so on. 

I did not think much of the painting, and so the painting itself stayed in the folder, and the scan on my hard drive, until the moment when I thought it could be used as a starter image.

And here's what Nightcafe Studio did with the starter image. The style is cubism; the angle is taken from the starter image as well as some of the colors. They are muted, not as happy and vivid as in the image which I created with picFinder.

I think that using the starter image made it possible to create something away from the mainstream.