Category: Art

Next I tried landscapes. We have a great view out our dining room window, across the Deerfield River with a hill across the way. So here it is.

I really struggled with how to make the trees on the hillside, there’s a lot of them, and they all sort of blur at one point but are distinct at another.

Anyway, no matter, I’m really proud of the duck in the river with his orange bill.

Next was the view across a relative’s back yard.

A grey day in the Adirondacks, and again, wrestling with what to do with blurred forest in the background. Really liked how the blue barrels came out and the bushes on the left.

Then I was taken with a photo in our newspaper. I don’t think I enjoy working from a photo as much as from real life, but still it was fun. And the same problem with the background trees.

This was a great exercise in layers though. Had at least ten, starting with a sketch and then the stuff both near and far.

Most recently I was taken with an old photo that was posted in a group that talks about our small town, Shelburne Falls, MA. It used to have an iron bridge for cars and a trolly bridge close to each other, crossing the Deerfield River. (Same one with the duck above.)

The trolly ended and the bridge was going to be destroyed but some people decided to turn it into a garden and now it’s The Bridge of Flowers and draws people from all over. That’s why it was so much fun to see this photo of when it was a trolly bridge.

It was black and white, so first I did a black and white.

And then I colorized it.

I just bought a new iPad and Apple Pencil to mess around with. Then got Procreate which seems to be the best software for drawing. Here’s my beginnings.

First, I tried to draw what was in front of me:

As I mentioned in another post, it’s all about the journey. I had fun doing this.

From there I went to the wood stove, and made three attempts, fascinated with the fact that there is a special brush for painting flames. (We have two steam dragons on the stove.)

With my mother’s words in my head, an oil painter in her day, that drawing glass is hard, I went for the Manhattan (my mother’s drink of choice) in front of me.

Thus my first few days.

I’ve just started playing with an iPad and Apple Pencil, drawing stuff using the program Procreate. I signed up for a FaceBook group of Procreate beginners.

There appears to be a philosophical thread, where someone will have gone to great pains to create a picture that looks photographic in its detail and ask for comments, and others will comment that what’s the point if it looks like a photograph. It should have some of the artist’s own soul in it.

Based on my own beginning experience, that view point is based on a misconception of what a picture is all about. It’s the process of making the picture that’s fun.

It solving all the little puzzles of how to use the tools to render this part of the image and that. These pictures take literally hours of work. It’s not about the finished picture, it’s about the enjoyment the artist had working on the picture.

I’m thinking it’s always been that way. The first cave artists were trying to make the deer as realistic as possible, and enjoyed the puzzle of how to do that with a charred stick. As did Rembrandt with his portraits.