Abstract Gouache painting

 

I haven't touched my Gouache paints for a long, long time. But yesterday, while cutting the banana for my muesli I thought: Why not play around with them and try to do some color mixing? I was not thinking of a "real" piece, just of a kind of exercise. 

I grabbed some of my Gouache tubes and started. And - I had a blast! This does not mean that I will stop making art with my alcoholbased markers, but I can imagine - now and then - to do something Gouache-y!

Panther bookmark

 

For a long time Zazzle didn't have proper bookmarks. They had some, though, which were so tiny that I would not use them in one of the books I am reading. I looked for a solution and found out, that you could cut out two bookmarks out of a postcard and designed some with Photoshop. But would you do the cutting as a customer? Not really. 

So I was very pleased when I noticed that Zazzle is now offering "real" bookmarks, and could not resist creating one.

The panther on the prowl was created using AI.

Prowling Panther Bookmark
by ullahennig

Marker Art and AI version

This is one of the two marker paintings I did in July. Only two? you might ask. Well, I focused on swatching all of my markers in July, and that took more time than I thought it would. 

But I now know that painting / drawing abstract art with alcoholbased markers plus shading with inktense pencils is the thing I really love to do, and so doing these swatches was an absolute must.

However I am still creating AI images, and lately I have been creating a lot of images with Grok.

Grok allows to upload one's own images and to create AI versions of them. 

As you can see on the right, the result is quite similar with a bit of change of color in some places. 

 

Marker Color swatching

It took me almost one week, and the color swatches on the image are only a small part of the swatches I had to do for all my alcoholbased markers.

I decided to cut the paper in strips, and not do my swatches on one sheet of paper. Having them on paper strips makes it easy to take them with me when I go to the store in order to buy new markers. It also makes it easier to compare the swatches on the paper with a color palette. It also makes it easier to select the markers for the next painting. 

Creating Color palettes with AI images

 I am an AI artist and a traditional artist who focuses on abstract art. Colors and shapes are an important part of abstract art, and so I am always looking for color palettes. There are hundreds of color palettes on the web, but most of them are not the kind of what I am looking for. 

So I was very glad when I found coolors.co, a great online tool to create palettes from your own images (you can do way more with this tool, by the way) 

Here's an example:

The landscape image was created with an AI Image Generator. I uploaded it, and then I could select certain parts of the image which display the colors I would like to have in the palette.

This can be done easily with a free account; with a pro account you can get the hex numbers of each color, in case you need them for digital painting. 

Doing Art inspite of the Heat

At the moment we are having a heat wave in Germany. It was so hot inside my flat that I could not imagine doing something with Acrylics. So I grabbed my alcoholbased markers and painted with them in the morning, or in te early evening. The good thing with markers is that I do not have to prepare my table in the living room, and I don't have to clean the brushes afterwards. And of course, there is no quick paint drying!

Robin "The Cat" Hood

 

As you might know you can use Grok to help you with prompts. So I asked:

I am an AI artist and I want to create an image depicting a cat disguised as robin hood. Can you provide me with a prompt, please?

Grok answered with:

A whimsical, highly detailed digital painting of an anthropomorphic cat dressed as Robin Hood, standing in a lush Sherwood Forest. The cat has sleek tabby fur, a mischievous grin, and wears a green feathered cap, a leather quiver with arrows slung over its shoulder, and a flowing emerald cloak. It holds a finely crafted bow in one paw, poised confidently atop a tree branch, with dappled sunlight filtering through the leaves. The background features a medieval forest setting with soft mist, scattered gold coins, and a hint of a distant castle.

So I used this prompt and asked Grok to create an image. You can see the result on top of the page on the left hand side. 

Not bad, but I was curious and wanted to find out what Bing would do with the prompt. Here's one of the four images Bing created:

As you can see, there are similarities and differences between the two images.