Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Abstract dabbles

Never before did I really appreciate any kind of abstract art, until I found a channel on youtube, which goes by the name agnescecile, who is a watercolourist who expertly mixes traditional art, say, for example a face, with some abstract elements, and this creates a very dramatic and interesting look. I was so inspired, I figured ill try it out myself. At the moment, I have no watercolours at my immediate disposal, so I drew it digitally. Its really a just a quick sketch, just to get the general feeling down, no carefully measured proportions or anything like that.

It looks like this;
I call it "Tripping balls".
The process of drawing the face was the same as in just about all my other paintings, block in general values, define shape and form using shade, etc.. I put the abstract stuff on separate layers, so that the clarity and contrast of the differing colours wouldnt be lost. What I could have done differently is that I could have used Layer masks instead of just fucking about with the pen and eraser, which would have enabled me to smartly use gradients, instead of flat colours. This would have taken alot longer to do though, so it is perhaps not so smart to do it that way if the piece is just going to be a sketch, anyway. Anyhow, to alleviate the flatness, I used a couple overlay layers and also a colour layer.

Im pretty satisfied with the result, it looks very fresh and modern. Usually, Im not that huge a fan of modern art, but this is acceptable.

I also got the chance last week to do it in watercolour, which worked to some degree, but not as well as I had wished. The painting is at school now, so I cant scan it at the moment. Sometime at the end of the year, when I take all my stuff home, then ill perhaps upload them here, by then youll surely be sick of all the digital redundancy anyway.

Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Opencanvas and Event files

So, as I said in my earlier entry, im going to show off this last awesome feature of OpenCanvas. What makes it so useful for people like me, who blog, share, and show our art to other people, is the Event history recorder and player. Basically, I can replay any painting I ever did in OC, just the way I drew it then, brushstroke by brushstroke. Thats right, any painting I ever drew, yes, the whole process of painting it. Just like some speed painting/time lapse drawing on youtube. These files arent big, its not like an avi recording of you drawing, its simply recorded history being played back.

Heres an example.




Drawn, say, 2 years ago. Recorded 1 year ago ;) This is a feature i really like.


Unfortunately OC has no built in video recorder, you'll have to use some screen capture software like Fraps, Xfire or whatever pleases you. I used some freeware shit I found on the internet, worked well enough.

Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Le victor.

Alrightyos, ten days since my last update. Been busy doing exactly nothing at all, theres really no excuse. Oh well, heres another self portrait that you might like. It wasnt actually meant to be one, I just made the bowtie and then spun off that. Quite different from anything ive done before, but I think it turned out pretty cool. Biggest problem I faced was choosing what to write in the fields of text. Being a classy man, I of course went with putting my name in a hundred and twenty places.

I thought about adding my signature, but they said im overdoing it? LOL, Yah right.


And here are some of the layers used.


A couple more in there somewhere. Not all are visible in the final piece. My biggest gripe with how it turned out is that it looks a little cluttered :/ Basically turned a very simplistic concept into a very large design, which doesnt always turn out exactly great. Im still satisfied, it was great fun making, too!


Ill leave this entry short, as im reading for a finnish test. For a taste of the burning fragment of hell im dealing with here, heres a list of all the forms of a Verb there is in the finnish language. Note that this is a single, very easy word, other verbs will differ greatly.  Lets not forget nouns and adjectives, prepostitions and postpositions, adverbs and conjunctions, and all the other types of words im forgetting. Verbs, though, are but the beginning.
http://wiki.verbix.com/Verbs/AllFormsOfFinnishVerb