Today I will show you how I paint on the iPad, creating a step-by-step portrait in ArtRage. This program is an inexpensive drawing and painting app for the iPad that allows you to create realistic oil paintings that feels intuitive and natural. Plus, it’s a blast to play with.
The final painting was inspired by a photo I found on the Sktchy app. Sktchy is a great resource for artists looking for
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The portrait challenge paintings are finished! Some of the paintings I love and a couple I don’t like at all. One was a huge experiment with a new medium that became a bit of a nightmare. Overall, I think the challenge was a success and I learned a lot, which was the whole point for me.
Sktchy #30faces30days challenge – Final 10
If you missed my first two posts about the #30faces30days challenge, you can find the first one here and the second one here.
The days will be out-of-order as I split the last twenty paintings into
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I have no idea why I signed up for the Sktchy #30faces30days portrait painting challenge. Well, I sort of know. I had been working on a formal portrait and felt like I was painting too “tight”. The best way for me to loosen up is to paint fast – really fast. The only problem is that I’m a super slowpoke painter.
9 of the paintings from the 30 faces 30 days portrait painting challenge.
I’ve completed fourteen of the thirty faces in the painting challenge so far. For this article I’ll only be reviewing nine of the paintings. I’ll review other works in future posts. You can find the original photos at the bottom of this post.
The first day was definitely a challenge for me. I’ve never painted a partially shaved head before or a Mohawk. After I signed up for the Sktchy painting challenge, the deal was that they’d send a photo every morning to paint. When I opened the email for this one I
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I don’t know what it is about a hairless Sphynx cat that I find so fascinating, but I’ve always wanted to paint one. At first I thought they were so ugly they were cute, but now I only see how beautiful and interesting they are.
Below is my portrait of “Harry” the hairless Sphynx cat which technically is still unfinished, but I’m not sure if I’ll ever finish it. If I do, there will be an update to this post in the future!
Sphynx cat “Harry” near completion
I took photos and a few videos while painting this portrait thinking I would put together a “how to” guide like I did for my painting of Chewy, but it was a lot of work and not many
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You know what it’s like – you want to start oil painting and get your canvas and paints out. The excitement builds and fantasies about how fantastic it’s going to turn out from in your mind. It’s a glorious dream before the actual work begins.
Then reality sets in. The dog throws up. A hangnail needs immediate attention. Ummm, how did this much laundry accumulate? TAXES. It’s one distraction after another. If you’re finding it hard to get started, you may be succumbing to resistance.
Whether you think of yourself as an artist or not, you are a creative being and go through
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So far this year, I’ve been painting on the iPad using ArtRage in between working on larger oil painting projects. I love the immediacy of digital painting and I can paint even when there is little to no good light to work with, which is a challenge when creating traditional paintings during the winter months or on dreary days.
“Teatime” is a painting on the iPad I started over a month ago using ArtRage. It was a more complicated painting which took me longer than usual to complete. I painted it whenever I had
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For most of my artistic life I’ve wondered what the purpose of painting a still life was. In school, I found them to be the most boring subjects of all and a waste of time. They felt painful to work on and I had a lot of resistance to drawing and painting them. Portraits were my sweet spot and I loved the challenge of capturing someone’s essence on canvas.
Things started to change for me this year when I took up painting again. I knew I would be staying home more because both of my dogs were very ill and I needed
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Painting dog portraits is something I’ve done for as long as I can remember. Last weekend I continued working on my digital painting skills by doing this portrait of a dog named Scoby.
If you’ve ever had kombucha, you may understand his name a little better. His momma, Donna Schwenk, is the founder of Cultured Food Life and is a
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Life is full of failures. I’ve had small painting failures before, but this one had me starting over. I had primed one of my panels improperly and the painting just wasn’t working. This painting was a commission and had to be done within a specific time frame and a mistake was not part of the plan.
Above you see the progression of the painting I’m talking about. It might look good in the photo, but the first two shots are of the panel that failed.
I started the drawing and captured the likeness, but as I continued to work I noticed I was struggling with the paint on the surface. I had just started painting in oils, so I really didn’t know if this was a normal thing or something going terribly wrong.
All I knew is that the struggle was getting really, really, real!
Sammie step 1 – a disaster waiting to happen
For step 1 on this little painting of Sammie, the cutie-pie Cavalier King Charles, I was feeling pretty good about how the drawing
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I painted this combine at the beginning of the year. It’s only the second oil painting I’ve ever done as an adult!
At the beginning of the year I decided to expand from acrylic painting (which I still love) to oil painting.
I did oil painting as a kid, but the smell of the turpentine made me a little light headed.
Fortunately there are now more non-toxic ways to paint in oil, which has allowed me to breath a little easier.
I’m originally from Eastern Iowa so any scenes that are reminiscent of the farmlands I (more…)
