An Obsessive's Dream/Nightmare

Creating artwork with the iPad apps means that one can easily change small parts and then change it back to see the effect. For someone with obsessive tendencies, it can mean hours of fiddling. At times I have taken an old painting that had some parts I didn't like, put it into the iPad app, worked on it for hours, and then when I compare the two versions, I can hardly tell them apart. Finally, I'm left with the problem of having to decide which one is "the one." Here is an example.

Right now I'm thinking neither version is very good, or at least that my first one (on the left) is better. Apparently, I have discovered another way to increase self doubt. Oh well, at least I had fun!

My Sister's Things

This work was created with ProCreate on the iPad using photographs (most taken by Dan) of my sister's things -- our mother's oil paintings that she had, drawings she did when she was young, the ceramics she made in retirement, and the small porcelain figurines we collected as children.  Lord, I miss her.

There Used to Be Birds

A series of artworks about the continuing decline in bird numbers resulted in the following:

The two above are versions of the same idea, digital collages created new on my iPad with the Procreate app. The next one was DRAWN on the iPad with a bit of digital collage some time back and revised recently:

This last one was was based on an oil painting I did last year. A photograph of the painting was entered into the art app, and the falling feathers, each photographed individually, were digitally collaged on top. 

A Successful Creation

Yesterday and today I had the fortitude to try to create something new on my iPad. An image had come into my mind and hung on. After a few hours, I had something I actually liked. And even more amazing, it looked pretty much like the image in my mind! It's titled "Into That Good Night."

New Methods with the iPad

At a workshop with Katherine Chang Liu in Claremont in January (a wonderful experience), I experimented with using my iPad in a different manner. First I painted a watercolor and then took a photo of it with my iPad and put it into ProCreate, where I made several alterations. I had walked around Claremont taking photos with my iPad of the brick driveway near the hotel, of the Millard Sheets mosaic on the bank nearby, and of other things, and I used pieces of these photos in the work. Next I painted some of those alterations onto the watercolor painting, took another photo with it, worked on it some more in ProCreate, and painted some of those changes on the painting. I went back and forth that way and ended up with "The Birds," which won second place in digital art in the Huntington Beach Art League Open Show in May 2015.

The Birds

With the large collage in the last post, I wasn't happy with how the woman kissing the horse looked, so I took a photo of it with my iPad, put it in ProCreate, erased most of the woman, and made it look better, to me at least: