digital painting

#PleinAirpril2022

| Saskia
wood anemone painting
pancake plant painting
pink clouds painting
forest lake painting
house plant painting

Is May the month with the most art challenges? I think #mermay has been around the longest, but now there is also #myticmay and #misadventuremay… I’m skipping all of them, as I need to rest a bit from the challenge I undertook during April: Plein Airpril!

As the name suggests, Plein Airpril is all about completing a plein-air painting each day during April. It’s initiated by Warrior Painters and there are prizes to be won for both traditional and digital painters. You don’t have to do all your paintings outside from life (which is the definition of working en plein air), but it is encouraged. I did a mix of both painting from life and from photographs (I shot myself).

I hadn’t planned to join this challenge but when I saw Audra Auclair joining on Instagram (and had read there were prizes involved), I decided I wanted to do this too. I really enjoyed painting studies earlier this year and this could be just the thing I needed to pick that up again.

I hoped I wouldn’t regret this hasty descision; April looked already like it was going to be a busy month. It sure has been a hassle to make time for the paintings from time to time. Luckily I could finish a few in advance so I didn’t have to paint during my vacation in the last week of April. But overall, I’m glad I did it! I tried a lot of new brushes in Procreate, and I think I found a new favorite. I also learned that when painting form life, you don’t have to get the colours exactly right to achieve likeliness, as long as the relationship between them is accurate. Technically speaking: if the values are right and the colour temperature is in the ballpark, you can increase contrast or saturation, it will still look ‘right’.

dandelions painting
Stylized blur behind the dandelions
garden ivy painting
Scribbly lines for the texture of wet leaves
amaryllis leaf painting
This background is too stylized: it looks flat

I experimented with simplifying shapes too, especially in noisy backgrounds. Sometimes it looked nice and stylized, othertimes like the blur from a photograph with a shallow depth of field – and sometimes it didn’t work. But that’s what experimenting is for!

If you want to see all the paintings, go to my Instagram page where they were posted daily in order!

Digital Painting Workflows

| Saskia

I recently finished this illustration for DeviantART’s Cosmic Corsair Original Character Contest.

Not to talk my own work down, but I believe I could do better if I had planned more time for this. Nevertheless, I am happy with what I produced in the time given. Even more, I liked the workflow I discovered while working on this.

This illustration was the first finished piece that I tried to paint almost solely in Procreate. I bought my Ipad Pro a month ago, but I had only used it for study paintings and sketches so far. In the end I did switch to Photoshop, as I really missed some colour editing tools and layer modes. Switching between the programs was pretty easy though using Airdrop and I’ll definitely will create more illustrations this way!

Loish’s Workshop

I was lucky to attend the Intuitive Digital Workflow workshop by Loish in the beginning of October, as a part of the Playgrounds Festival. Loish showed how she approaches digital painting by creating a rough sketch, adding colour and effects with layer styles and finishes her illustrations by just adding details and corrections on top.

GlitchedPuppet

Loish’ workflow reminded me actually of another illustrator I followed for years: Melanie Herring, also known as GlitchedPuppet (Glip) or formerly PurpleKeckleon. Similarly, Melanie starts with a very rough sketch, and adds a rough colour blockout underneath. They then add colour variety using various layers modes. The full walkthrough can be read on her blog.

Both Glip and Loish work with what they have during the proces, building upon their sketch rather than figuring everything out at the start of the painting.

What does it say when two artists I look up to use similar approaches to digital painting? Something in their way of working resonates with me!

I have been following Glip’s work for more than ten years now and her approach has influenced my early digital works a lot. Learning that Loish works in a similar way makes me realize I should experiment with these techniques again. I never liked doing line-art and my sketches are usually quite rough too, which may be why my Inktober drawings tend to take so much time. I’m not the kind of person to make a detailed drawing before diving into colour, I want to sculpt and carve the painting toward a finished design.

The end result of Loish’ workshop: two portraits in different light conditions.

I hope the mobility of the Ipad helps me experiment more on the road with these techniques!