Abstract Art piece, created with Acrylics

This was actually the last piece I managed to paint in May. It was done with Acrylics again - liquid acrylics and "normal" acrylics out of the tube.

Now we have the 1st June. The first half of the year has been quite creative, not only regarding the creation of AI images, but also regarding the painting of "traditional" art. I actually managed for the first time to get a nice balance between those two kinds of art creation. I hope to keep this balance as the year will go on.
 

Watercolor inks and Stabilo pens

I had bought them years ago - used them a bit and then kept them in a brown cardboard box. At the time I had bought them Stabilo pens only had a bullet tip (Stabilo 68 pen) or could be bought in the same colors as fineliners. They come in many colors, are dyebased and therefore not lightfast.

The Ecoline and Colorex watercolor inks which I am using are not lighfast eigher. They are very intensive when you use them without watering down. I wanted to find out how much I could thin them down by adding water and was surprised by the results: I used left over ink from the day before, added some drops of water and still got some color on the paper. I then let it dry, then placed ink from the stabilo pens on selected spots and used my waterbrush to dissolve the ink. Nice! 
 

Watercolor inks and colored pencils

This is my fourth painting of May. Actually I feel a bit proud because I have been able to paint regularly in March, April und up to now in May as well. I am still creating images with the use of AI, but I keep up a good balance between doing traditional and digital art.

With this painting I added colored pencils to my watercolor ink painting. I always like to try out new things - so I grabbed my colored pencils and finished up the painting with them. 
 

Switching between mediums - Watercolor inks now!

In one of my last posts I said that I had so much fun painting with acrylics that I wanted to keep on painting with them. I did not. The painting on the left has been done with watercolor inks, also called liquid watercolors. 

Instead of criticizing myself for not adhering to my goals I thought about whether it is a proper goal for me. What is my most important goal? The answer is: to have fun being creative and doing art, and with that the kind of medium I am using is not important for me. 

I used Ecoline watercolor inks and Colorex watercolor inks, and, of course, I did an abstract painting. Not that I do not like landscape paintings, or floral paintings, or even stillife (although this kind of painting does not speak to me as much as the others do), but I am an abstract painter, inrerested in shapes, textures, and color combinations. 
 

Having fun painting with acrylics

My acrylic experience began a long time ago. People were telling me that acrylic paints are such a forgiving medium, so I wanted to try them and bought several tubes of paint made by various companies. But somehow I never had that feeling of creative joy working with them. So I put the tubes in a plastic container and more or less forgot them. Later on I used acrylic inks, feeling more comfortable with that medium. 

In April 2025 however I rediscovered my acrylic paint tubes, and yes, I felt comfortable with them and enjoyed the process of applying paint to to the watercolor paper. This does not mean that I am not having those moments of doubt. But I manage to overcome them and finish the painting. So I will continue painting with them.

The importance of not giving up in the middle of a painting

In the past I had my diSfficulties with painting with acrylic tube paints. I had difficulties with putting the right amount of water on my brush, the right amount of paint, and painting straight lines. In general, I felt like a failure. I had bought lots of acrylic tube paints from different brands, and put them nicely away in a plastic container.

Now, more than ten years later I suddenly felt the urge to try them again. So I grabbed a bigger brush, some Schmincke AcrapZkademie acrylics and a Rico Design Fir Green. It did not go as I intended to. It looked like crap. I was considering calling the whole thing a failure and giving up. But I somehow did not want to. So I stopped painting and did something else. The next day I looked at the painting again and got the idea that I might turn the landscape format into a portrait format. I kept on painting. In the end it irned out - well, let's call it acceptable. 
 

I just discovered Cogniwerk AI

 

There is a new AI Image creator online almost every day. I usually get myself a free account, experiment with the settings and then decide to either use it on a regular basis or only now and then.

Cogniwerk AI is one of my "newer" AI Image creators. To create one image costs one credit; every account has been given a certain number of credits, and when you have used up your credits, you can request more. 

Many AI Image Creators have difficulties with horses - they tend to create animals with five legs. I wanted to know what Cogniwerk does with a prompt like this:

A black mustang galloping over a yellow green meadow, vector style

Well, it actually added an additional leg where it does not belong. However they offer Inpainting, and so I managed to create the anatomically correct mustang in the image above. So up to now I am very pleased with Cogniwerk AI and will use it regularly.