Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

 I wish all my readers a merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

May your home be filled with golden light, To chase away the chill of night. 

May every gift and every word, Be the sweetest things you’ve ever heard!

Talking mushrooms

 

I did the design for this mug a loong time ago. I used Inkscape for it, an open source alternative to adobe illustrator. There are some designs in my Zazzle shop I am still proud of - and this is one of it. You can look at it and think of a story - an old and experienced mushroom telling a younger one about the important part mushrooms play in the forest, for example. 

So you can use this mug to drink your morning tea and meditate a bit about mushrooms or just create your own story in your head. 

Talking mushrooms Mug
by ullahennig

Image to prompt - another way to use your old photos

 

The image on the left is an old photo, taken many years ago during a vacation in the Provence in the South of France.

I decided to play with it and uploaded the photo to generateprompt.ai in order to get a prompt for it. I got the following prompt:

"A historic Gothic-style church with an ornate facade and tall, pointed windows, featuring a tall, spire-topped steeple with a weather vane at the top. The church is situated in a European city square, with surrounding old buildings and a clear blue sky overhead. In the foreground, there is a fountain with a rectangular basin, and a few children playing in the square, along with two women walking nearby. The scene is bright and sunny, highlighting the architectural details of the church and the lively atmosphere of the square."

I then went to piclumen.ai and insert it. Here is the result:

Of course, the prompt you get when you upload the image can be changed - you might prefer a painting in a certain style, or leave out the fountain, or change the history setting. 

I am a traditonal artist and I love AI Art!

For quite some time I have been creating traditional art (mostly art done with alcoholbased markers) and AI Art. There have been days when I focussed on AI Art, and days when I focussed on traditional art. Yes, traditional art takes longer, I usually need one week for preparing the image, selecting the colors, colorblocking and then shading with inktense pencils and adding the background with acrylic ink. 

The image on the left however is the result of directly combining a traditionally painted piece with using AI to edit it. 

First of all I was not so happy with the result. It was okay, but does not belong to the pieces I am particularly proud of. So I was curious whether AI would come up with something more interesting when I asked it to turn the style of the piece into Art Deco style. And here it is!

 

The Beauty of Winter

No, winter in general is not my favorite season. I especially hate November with its short and often dreary days. December is better, with all the lights of the Christmas season. 

However there is beauty in winter - like in the image on the left. The crispiness of the frozen leaves in contrast to the red of the berries - looking at such an image makes me happy. With all those AI generators on the web I can easily create my happy version of winter!

Alcohol markers and acrylic ink

One of the advantages of Acrylic ink is that you can generate shades of the hue by simply adding water. The acrylic ink here was a burgundy refill for Molotow acrylic markers; By using the ink as it comes out of the bottle you get a quite dark brownish red. The more water you add the more pinkish the color gets. 

Alcohol markers on the other hand are flat; you can get some kind of shading by going over the same spot twice with the same marker, or, as I did in the last painting, by using inktense pencils on top of markers.

With this painting however I wanted to create a strong contrast between the acrylic ink background and the shapes painted with markers in the middle of the image. 
 

Explosion of colors

Oil pastels are a medium I do not use very often. I've got a set of them, but they are nicely stacked away. However, in the past, I have played with them. One of the results is the design on this round magnet. I love the vibrant colors and the movement which is expressed in the design. 

I did it a long time ago in 2012. The only digital step I took was to scan the painting and remove the background. No AI at that time whatsoever!

 

Explosion of Colours Magnet
by ullahennig

Mixed media Painting

This abstract painting - the 1st one of the month of November, is a true mixed media piece. Up to now I have been colorblocking with alcoholmarkers, doing the shading with my inktense pencils. With this one I added a third medium: black acrylic ink for the background.

Why acrylic ink? Well, I wanted to create quite some contrast between the shapes in the middle and the background. And acrylic ink is really, really black. In addition to that it saves marker ink. I only needed a few drops of acrylic ink to cover the background.
 

Last October Marker Painting

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This is my latest marker painting, and it will be the last October painting. In October I managed to create four Marker paintings, and I am quite satisfied with the fact that I managed to keep up with doing traditional art in addition to creating digital AI art. I also managed to do color swatches with the new markers I bought. So I can easily select one of my selfmade color palettes and look for the markers which will go with this palette. As I wrote in one of my earlier posts, you can easily create your own color palette by uploading an image to coolors.com. 

Using a one word prompt

 

It's amazing what AI Generators come up with when you insert just one word as a prompt.

I used Microsoft Copilot and only the word "trick-or-treat". The result was the image on the left. It even had the words spelt correctly - which is something AI Generators had a problem with for quite some time. 

I must admit that I like being surprised - as much as I like getting AI doing exactly what I want them to do...

Latest Alcoholmarker painting

I finished this abstract painting yesterday. I had done a lot more planning with this one: In a first step I drew shapes on a piece of paper. I then selected the shapes I wanted to have on the painting, grabbed my light table and arranged the shapes on the paper. 

In a second step I went through my color swatches, went for a certain color combination and selected the markers which fit into the combo.

The rest was coloring and, at the very end, shading with inktense pencils. 
 

What to do with your AI Images?

I have been using my AI images for card design, for designs on my Zazzle store and I have been putting the images into frames and put them on the walls of my flat. Regarding the latter there is one problem: Here in Germany you do not find frames for square (1:1) images easily. But I have a lot of very nice AI images which are in the 1:1 format, and it would be a shame not to display them. 

Yesterday I suddenly rememberd that I have quite a few hard foamed panels. So I fetched one of them, grabbed one of my 1:1 images and mounted it on the panel. 

Fixing a thread on the back of the panel allows you to hang the panel on your wall. 

One tip: You have to avoid to apply too much pressure while cutting the board. Rather be patient and move the cutter to and fro as long as it needs to cut the board...

Edit old photos with Grok AI

I took this photo in 2010 when I was on vacation on the Darß together with my cousin. It shows a beach of the Baltic sea. The photo in itself is nothing spectacular. 

I have been using Grok AI for some time now. Grok allows not only the creation of images via inserting a prompt, but also the upload of images and the editing of them.

So I uploaded the above photo and wrote the following prompt:

beach at moonlight, rendered in the style of Daniel Merriam

You can see the result on the image on the right. 

By the way, Grok still allows to mention certain artists' names...

Having fun with alcohol markers the not so usual way!

Many years ago alcohol markers were all over YouTube. Coloring people were using them mostly, but there were some artists also who enjoyed drawing / painting with them. They created flower illustration, landscape paintings or illustrations in comic book style. Copic markers and swatches done with them were all over the place. Then, OHUHU markers appeared and got much attention because of the fact that they were sold at a reasonable price.

What I have up to now never seen on YouTube are abstract art pieces done with alcohol markers. This may be due to the fact that alcohol markers are not lightfast and you need to take some precautions for your art works in order to prevent fading. I usually scan my alcohol marker artwork and put the originals away. And: I work with rather small format. I have no studio, so I have to work small. However I deeply enjoy doing those abstract artworks, and although some of them might look similar, everyone of them is different.
 

The knight on the rock

This is the original image, created using Nightcafe Studio. A knight in a worn armour is standing on a rock at the sea, with waves crashing in and rain coming down from a dark sky.

Same scene, different style: The style is watercolor now, much lighter, sun coming in, the sea is much more peaceful. 

This image was created with the "Edit image" tool of Grok.

I haven't done much with this took yet, but everytime I use it I am amazed by its possibilities.

First September Abstract Marker painting

I tried something new this time: First I used squared paper to draw shapes in, then I transferred those shapes on Bristol paper, arranging them in order to create a nice pattern. I could have used my light pad for the transfer, but due to the fact that the sun was shining I simply used a window pane. 

It was the first time I used this method, but it won't be the last, as I am quite pleased with the outcome! 

And I must say that I really love the Bristol paper I am using with my alcohol markers!
 

Creating a comic book Page

 I love to create images with AI Art Generators, and I also love to tell stories, even in English, my second language. For a long time it has been eigher doing the one or the other. But now I can see combining those two. Here's an example:

I first created the image of a rearing black stallion in the desert, and then I thought: Why would this horse rear? Why do stallions rear? They do it for example when they fight with other stallions in order to prevent their mares from being stolen. 

So I thought of a short sentence which could introduce the reader to this situation.

I uploaded the image to photopea, changed the color of the text to white and inserted the text.

Then I exported the image as jpg - and voilà! My first ever comic book panel was created!

Two version with one prompt

Sometimes I like to work with several AI Art Generators and one prompt, and everytime I am surprised how different the results can be. 

The image on the right was created using Piclumen AI, which has a nice free version. You are getting reward points by uploading your images to social media (pinterest for example) and liking and commenting other people's creations.

The image on the left was created using Nightcafe Studio. Here you get reward points by showing up every day.

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. 

Acrylics and Inktense pencils

I love to try out new things, even running the danger of damaging artwork I'd already done (at least, I got a scan of it!).

This is the scan of a painting I'd done with acrylics. I was quite satisfied with the composition and the choice of colors, but when I looked at it I had the feeling that it needed some shading. 

I remembered that I had gone over my marker paintings with inktense pencils and quite liked the effect. So why not try using inktense pencils over acrylics? I did a quick search on YouTube, and could not find anybody who'd tried it. So I had to experiment.

And this is the result:

Well, it seemed to work. It is definitely not as flat as the painting above. And I definitely want to keep on with the combination of acrylics and inktense pencils. 

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.

Color mixing is fun!

With acrylic inks color mixing is a challenge. These inks are highly pigmented, and adding one drop of one hue to another hue can change the color significantly. In addition to that you have to be very careful just to have one drop getting out of the bottle - it happens often to me that I get more than one drop dripping out of the bottle.

But I enjoy creating all those color variations. Look how many shades of blue are in that painting on the left - dark blue, light blue, purplish blue! 

Switching over to Acrylic Inks

I must admit that I am someone who likes to change mediums after some time. In the past I painted quite a lot of pieces with acrylic inks, and now I felt like grabbing those tiny bottles of acrylic ink again. 

However I changed my working process a bit: I first applied the grey lines with alcoholbased markers and then began to fill in the colors. In the past I had often just let the colors flow and the shapes form themselves, but this time I spent some time thinking about which color to put where. 

I had fun mixing the colors and learning while doing so. I basically used three colors: Green, yellow and hazelnut. 
 

Abstract Inktense painting

I only used Inktense pencils with this abstract art piece. I tried to mix colors in two ways:

• I first applied one pencil and then the second one on top of it, both dry. Then I used a waterbrush to dissolve the pigments. It was a bit of an adventure to see how the mixture came out - depending on the strenght of application, and/or on the sequence of pigment applied. 
• I first put down one color dry on the paper, and then I touched the top of the second pencils with a damp brush and applied the dissolved pigment. 

I must say it was quite an experiment and an adventure!

 

How I connect AI Art and Traditional Art

The painting on the left was done with alcoholbased markers and inktense pencils. In order to get there, I combined AI Art and traditional art. In detail:

1. The first step was to create the image of a wooden mask as a reference image. I later on wished I had spent more time looking for an image which would serve as a good reference image (clear lines, good contrast, no shadowy parts and such). 
2. In a second step I downloaded the AI image and pasted it into my Open Office Writer.  What I did not think about was the size of the watercolor paper I wanted to use. I have A4 paper and I have A5 paper which is smaller. Open Office Writer is not very good in handling images (text processing software!), so I had to limit myself to A4 paper. The next time I will use Scribus, the free alternative to InDesign, in order to put the image to the proper size. 
3. I then had the file printed out as pdf and tried to trace the photo onto my watercolor paper. Not a very good idea. So I grabbed my tracing paper and used it for tracing the basic shapes with a fine liner. 
4. Now I could trace the result onto my watercolor paper and then continue with markers and inktense pencils. 

All in all it was a very educational and even joyful process. 

First Art piece in March 25

I'm experimenting with a new painting schedule: I am now painting in the morning at least one hour, after having sipped two mugs of tea and before eating my Müsli. I am also experimenting with time blocking, doing this one day before the actual day. This allows me to be flexible.

In the afternoon I do all kinds of digital work - scanning and processing my paintings, creatingpieces  with Artificial Art Generators, watching helpful, inspiring and motivating youtube Videos. 

Of course there are days when I cannot keep this rather rough schedule - days with doctor appointments, days when I am invited for coffee by my neighbor, days when I allow myself to spend some hours at an art shop. However in general I want to keep the aforementioned time blocks because they help me to maintain a balance between doing art traditionally and doing art the AI way.
 

The last days of February

 Today is the second last day of February. So it's time to look back at this month regarding my art activities. I actually managed to paint six pieces done with alcoholbased markers and colored pencils, and with the last piece which I scanned in today I switched to the combination of markers and inktense pencils.

I also managed to sell a digital file of one of my art pieces. The lady I sold it to had it printed on a canvas. She sent me a photo of it hanging on her wall, and I must say I am quite pleased of the way it looks. I might as well have one of my files printed on canvas for my own flat!

In February I also did a lot of AI Art pieces, focussing mainly on three AI Art Generators: Nightcafe Studio, Bing and Starry AI. 

What are my plans for March 2025?

• I plan to explore possible color combination of markers and Inktense pencils. 
  Up to now I have been selecting the pencils rather spontaneously, without doing color charts in the beginning. I will try to work on this a bit. I also plan to paint at least five pieces with markers and pencils.
• As the month of March is a month with some birthdays I want to create new cards with new images. I also want to refill my stack of stickers and address labels, using my AI art pieces. So in March 2025 I will continue to create images with AI art.

Starry AI

Sometime last year - or even the year before - I discovered Starry AI. I wrote down the webadress, but other than that I didn't do anything with it. A few days ago I found the note with the address on it, and tried it out. I must say that I am very pleased with the results I am getting. 

First of all, I have the free version. The free version has got its limits regarding the format: you can only create images in portrait format. But: you are able to get five lumens (or credits or tokens) by logging in each day. You are also able to earn lumens every three days by posting your images on instagram or X (twitter). And, as I mentioned above, the results are very, very nice!

I wanted to create an image showing a cute rat carrying a bowl with coffee beans. I first tried Nightcafe Studio, but didn't quite get what I was going for. So I used the magic prompt Nightcafe had created and applied it on Starry AI.

The image on the left more or less shows what I had in my mind. This is one of four images and the one I liked best. 

So Starry AI has become one of my favorite AI Image Generators, together with Nightcafe Studio, Bing and Mage Space.

Sold!

Yesterday I sold the digital file of this painting. Actually it was my first sale. I gave two paintings away as a gift, one to one of my cousins and one to a friend of mine here in Berlin. One of the paintings was done with colored pencils, and the other one with soft pastels.

Of course I felt very honored when the woman who I have been meeting regularly in my neighborhood cafe asked whether she could buy the original. However I told her that it was done with markers mostly which are not lightfast. I had done a bit of research on Etsy and found out that many people there are selling the digital files of their artwork. So I asked her whether she would be interested in getting the digital file which she then could upload to a printer. She said yes and we agreed on a price.

Yesterday she handed me the money, and I felt great and I am still feeling great! It motivates me to keep on creating paintings in that kind of style. Some time ago I mentioned "The complete book of Color Harmony". It gives you hundreds of possible color combinations. I just have to go through this book, select a color combo and then go for my markers. 

Trying out a new color combination

This piece is the last artwork I did in January. I went for a new color combination - blue and brown/yellow hues. I got loads of markers in various shades of blue, from light blue to darker colors. 

I have been quite productive in the first month of 2025: Eight paintings on watercolor paper and one doodle in my little sketchbook. I also ordered two photo prints of my paintings - which I haven't done for a long time. 

I am still enjoying the combination of alcoholbased markers and colored pencils, and I intend to continue creating art in February!
 

Using one of my tiny sketchbooks

A long time ago I got a tiny little sketchbook as a gift. I have been using it now and then, but not very often. I did the colored doodle on the left using markers and colored pencils, mainly to try out color combinations of alcoholbased markers and colored pencils. 

I have organized my colored pencils quite well and know which pencils I have; unfortunately I didn't know how many markers I have until the moment when I decided to get them organized. Now I am in the process of doing that. Knowing which colors I have definitely helps to keep me from buying the same colors a second time (something which happened in the past!).