This week I began painting the clouds in the sky on each canvas. Wanting to having a consistent style, I planned out how I wanted the clouds to look throughout the painting. However, when I took to the canvas, the clouds went a different direction stylistically, and instead of having soft and wispy clouds, I opted for having round, thick clouds. At first I was hesitant about the look of the clouds, but I considered the fact that I’m going for a less realistic style and decided to continue doing the clouds the way I was. Just as I worried about, connecting the canvases to one another did present a challenge. I was able to line up the placement just fine, but I had to carefully adjust the clouds that crossed the canvas lines to match in colour. Next week I’ll be starting the main focus of the painting—the mountain. I’ll have to pay careful attention to the style and its flow throughout the three canvases for this part, as its the element that brings the whole mural together. I’ll start by planning how I want to unify the style next week and hopefully by the end of the week the mural will start looking truly connected.
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Working on my trip-tic painting this week has been a learning process to say the least. When planning how I was going to paint, I hadn’t thought about how tedious it might be to do one painting at a time, going layer by layer. It requires pulling out one painting and doing a layer with the colour I’ve mixed, then pulling out the next and doing the same, making sure the colours match by the end. I also have to make sure that the paintings are blending with one another at the seam, so when I finished the sky layer on all three paintings, I laid them out all together and blended the seams. Even having a single painting out is a challenge, though—with the canvases being 36x36 inches, changing between them and putting them on an easel is a process. It’s been fun regardless, as I’ve been using a big sponge brush to do the sky throughout, not focusing too much on details yet. Next week I’m adding clouds, and I’m curious to see how consistent I can make them look, since I’ll actually be drawing objects that require consistent technique. I’m excited to see how everything will come together when the clouds are added—the trip-tic will really start looking like a unified painting.
Recently, I've been viewing a lot of digital art on social media. It's incredibly different from traditional art, particularly in the area of colouring. You have the ability to make the colours on your drawing completely even and kept within the lines, using the tools of whatever software you're using. A few years ago I got alcohol markers to achieve more even and precise colouring in my drawings, similar to the digital work I've seen, but a year later I finally asked for a drawing tablet for my birthday so that I could do digital art.
I began by drawing in the software very similarly to how I draw traditionally: sketch, line, then colour by working lightest to darkest. However, I ended up letting my drawing tablet collect dust for a while, as I wasn't very satisfied with the work I was producing. In January, however, I plugged my tablet back into my laptop and decided to try drawing with Photoshop—a software I had put on my laptop a while ago, but had only used for drawing once. I abandoned digital art after having difficulty, even in the best drawing software, making smooth lineart. I felt discouraged and figured that maybe digital art just wasn’t for me. But when I tried again, I decided right off the bat that I was going to commit to making something I was proud of. I did my lines over and over until I was happy with them, and consulted a friend for tips about colouring. I used the same techniques that I do traditionally, translated to digital tools. I ended up being really satisfied with the final product and posted the sketch, lineart and finished piece to my social media (first two images below). The response was positive and I did a couple more small pieces in January. My tablet died shortly after, completely failing to connect to my laptop. I had an itch to do digital art again, however, and when I eventually replaced my laptop with an iPad, I downloaded Procreate and waited impatiently for my stylus to arrive in the mail. The day it came I ripped into Procreate and made three rough drawings in the first twenty-four hours that I had it. The last two weeks have been filled with constant drawing, as I have the software and my stylus with me all the time now. It gives me the opportunity to sketch all the time, and to turn the sketches into full drawings easily. I’m learning rapidly and finding the medium to be a really useful tool. With every drawing I’m challenging myself a little more, learning out shadows and lighting in a way that I couldn’t with traditional art. My most recent piece was one of the most challenging pieces of art I’ve ever done (final image below). I pushed myself with everything: perspective, lighting, detail, background and shadows. These are things I near never include in my drawings, but with tools like layers, opacity and duplication, I could test things out easily. I never believed I would or even could be a digital artist, but it’s proven to be an accessible and fun medium. Without it, it might have been a long time before I ever did something with perspective and lighting the way that I did. By no means am I thinking of putting aside traditional art—I still enjoy and am more skilled at painting in particular—but focusing on digital art has proven to reap rewarding results. I want to continue working with procreate and trying new things until I can finally feel confident in saying that I’m more than acquainted with digital art. |
About this blogOn this blog page I'll be posting about my progress in achieving art goals, and how I'm learning new things and improving as an artist. Archives
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AuthorLeah is an eighteen-year-old aspiring Canadian artist who enjoys drawing, painting, and photography. |