I made this print from a printing plate made out of card stock. I used scissors and an Xacto knife to cut up card stock and I then glued the pieces to another piece of card stock using Elmer’s white glue and then glued the whole thing to a thin sheet of wood. I sealed the plate by painting it with a thin coat of acrylic gloss medium. Here’s what the plate looked like before I inked it up for printing.
Category: Art (page 2 of 11)
Traditional and digital art.
This is my second attempt at block printing. I carved a soft rubber plate (3.75×5.25 inches, 9.5×13 cm) mostly using the smallest V shaped Speedball cutter and an xacto knife.
I got some Speedball linocut carving tools and a couple of rubber printing plates for Christmas. I’ve never tried relief printing before. I spent about a week researching relief printing techniques and subjects. The toughest part for me was choosing a subject. I’ve been working with a full range of values and colors in watercolor and acrylics. It was hard to switch my thinking to just black and white. I looked through my collection of sketches and photographs, and picked out a few that were high contrast. One was a picture of my father’s almond orchard.
These aspen trees are on the road between Lake Louise and Jasper, Alberta, Canada. I took the reference photo on our honeymoon trip in 1975. I painted two of these for Christmas gifts – one for my wife and one for our daughter.
Acrylic on Gessobord. 6×6 inches (15.2×15.2 cm).
After doing the comparison of analog vs digital collage, I decided to experiment more with digital collage to see what else was possible. I looked through my image collection for a landscape that was contrasty and had a limited number of colors and found this one that I did a few years ago on my iPod Touch.
I pulled it into a layer in Inkpad, which is a vector based app on the iPad, and outlined the major shapes in another layer. This allowed me to alter the shapes and fill them with colors. I exported the image and modified it using a number of other apps.
iPad 3, Inkpad, Sketch Club, Pixelromatic, iColorama, Image Blender, and Photogene apps.
Jim
I’m comparing two very different methods of working. I did this collage the traditional way by cutting out pieces of paper and glueing them down to a piece of of card stock. I’m seeing how this compares to the digital version in the next image done on the iPad. I did this one first.
- Meadowland
- Night Walk
- BIG
- Dreamscape
These four works are the results of experimentation. The first one (Meadowland) was started in Brushes Redux. I then experimented with filters and textures in iColorama. In the second one (Night Walk) I learned how to essentially paint a mask in Sketch Club. It takes two layers. I imported a colored texture into the top layer and set the layer’s blend mode to “On”. Then in the layer below I can paint with any brush to reveal the texture in the layer above. I did this three times (for a total of six layers) using three different colored textures made with NPtR on the iPad – a light blue for the outline of the figures, gray for the moon, and red, yellow and magenta used in the raked lines. Finally, I saved and opened the Sketch Club image in Pixlromatic and added the white noise.
The third image (BIG) was done the same way. I experimented with a variety of brush, text, and opacity settings in the mask layers.
I used Procreate to do something similar in the last image (Dreamscape). I made textured marks with NPtR, opened the image in a layer in Procreate, and set the Blend mode for the layer (Difference) to reveal the marks over a background texture (also made in NPtR) imported into a layer below.
Jim
I’ve been meaning to try this for quite a while. I bought a cheap plastic one inch putty knife with the idea of using it to spread some paint around just to see what kinds of marks it can make. I then used a dip pen to add some detail with acrylic ink.
Acrylic on paper, palette knife and dip pen. 5.5 x 7.5 inches (13.5 x 18.5 cm).
Jim
When you truely experiment, the medium sometimes takes you places you had no idea existed. This was the case with this image and I want to show you the journey.
I’m working on the iPad this morning with the iColorama app. Usually I import a photo or another piece of art and alter it, but today I wanted to use the brushes within iColorama to create a new painting from scratch. The program has a wide variety of brushes. I explored only two or three. I then opened the image in Pixlrama and altered the color balance and texture a bit. Finally I sharpened and altered the contrast in Photogene.
I”ve been experimenting with ways to get gradients into my art projects on the iPad. I started the above image in ArtRage and filled the page with a gold color on a textured paper. I then opened that image in iColorama and applied a gradient and another paper texture and saved it. Next, I opened the iColorama image in Sketch Club and imported it into a layer. I copied that layer and used transform to resize and rotate it. I then used the eraser tool to create an interesting shape. I copied that shape into another layer and offset it behind the original shape and set the blend to Difference. I also copied the original paper texture, resized it with Transform, rotated it and placed it behind the two shape layers. Finally I copied the small paper texture layer, blurred it, and moved it over a bit to create a drop shadow.
I like the textures, colors, and gradients of this one.
Jim
Since breaking my ankle I haven’t been able to get out on location to do any paintings. So, I’ve been working on the iPad. It’s been a while. I’m having to re-learn techniques. I did the above painting in ArtRage. It was an experiment in using metallic paints and the new Glitter tool.
Below are other paintings I did. In addition to using ArtRage I also used iColorama, Distress FX, and Sketch Club.
- Fractured Space
- The Regatta
- Monochrome Abstract
- Worlds Apart
- Poppies
- The Last Buoy
Jim
Here is a slideshow of the sketches I made in Roz Stendahl’s online class which was from July 24 to August 23 2015.
This slideshow is embedded using a shortcode from Slideshare.net.
Jim