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