Between counselling and errands today, I’ve managed to create over 30 shell ‘digi stamps’ or individual images I can re-size and print out as needed by me, though I am considering putting them together as sets of digi-stamps, though I do need to add line detail to quite a few; that’s a job for another day.
I printed out a few of them on A4 paper, and used my Chameleon Pens to colour them in, and here’s the result – very brightly coloured.
My only problem is to work out what to do with them! Do I use them in some mixed media index cards or bigger work? Do I use them to make greetings cards? Is there something else I could do with them?
At the moment I don’t quite know, but I’ll work it. First I need to cut them all out. Hopefully, my scissor skills will improve …
Oh, I drew the shells on my Microsoft Surface book in Autodesk Sketchbook Pro.
Two index cards worked on over the last day or two. The focal points are shells I drew, first on paper, then the image was worked on on my Surface book with Autodesk Sketchbook Pro and my Surface Pen,
I had to use scissors to cut out the shells (not my favourite task as I’m not good with scissors) after I’d coloured them using the Chameleon Color Tones and Color Tops marker pens. I’m really pleased with the colouring.
Lots of different techniques/media were used on the index cards – stamping, stenciling, inktense pencils, distress inks and distress oxide inks, pebeo dyna paints, perfect pearls sprays, gesso, clear holographic embossing powder from WOW!
I’m happy with them, though I’m not sure they’re quite finished, especially the little one.
Digital drawing library
I’m beginning to build up a library of my own digital drawings – fungi, flowers, shells at the moment, oh and one angler fish skeleton that I’ve not used yet (but that’s an idea for later or tomorrow maybe).
I have to decide if I put these images together as packs of ‘digi-stamps’ for sale…I’m really pleased with my shells here, but the fungi have worked out fine too. With my limited scissor skills, I’m keeping it in mind I need to keep the outlines relatively simple, but the inside of the design can be rather detailed, which is fun.
Today I’ve created a set of six ACEO/ATC cards using dragonflies and butterflies as focal images.
The photograph doesn’t do them much justice; the backgrounds are shiny purple and silver with some stenciled patterns created using modelling paste. Peeking through in places are patterns from some reprints of first series Ordnance Survey maps as well as some torn text from an old mathematics text book.
I couldn’t work out how to use my cogs and gears on these, but remembered all the patterned paper I have, so I had a bit of a furtle through and found some paper that looked nice against the busy background, which also the focal images looked good on. Indeed, they look like mounted specimens.
I got the focal images from my stash, already painted. However, I did put some painted and embossed papers behind the wings of two of the dragonflies, which looks quite nice. I did add a wash of iridescent medium to all the focal images (can’t avoid adding some sparkle).
On returning from an appointment, I decided I would cover the dragonflies with 3D Crystal Lacquer, which has worked out really well I think (difficult to photograph though).
I’m really quite pleased with these ACEOs/ATCs; they’re simple, yet they just work and satisfy my need for ornate, sparkle and shine. I’m glad I used the patterned paper to crated a calmer centre to mount the focal images on.
I don’t think I’m going to add any words/quotes to these, though a few gems or similar may be in order once the crystal lacquer has fully dried.
Drawing focal images
One thing I thought of as I was using the die cuts for focal images, is that I do need to find the confidence/courage to draw my own. I have done some fungi, flowers and ammonites, but haven’t printed them out at the right size, yet.
Also, it may be that using the surface to do drawings for this may not be the best way for me to work; my drawings do tend to turn out a little too ‘perfect’ for my liking in some ways. I’m still doing my best to work out how I can get my Surface Book to work for me as I’d like it too. However, if I don’t use the smoothing tools in the software, the pen wobble just is totally annoying (it’s also something that is inherent in the Surface Pen/Surface book, which I really hope Microsoft will do something about sooner rather than later.
It’s really easy to use dies to cut out images for use, but to create my own…well…but we’ll see if I manage to use my own drawings in the next batch of ACEOs/ATCs.
So, my job this evening (apart from going out to do some food shopping) is to do some drawings, on watercolour paper I think, to cut out and use as focal images.
Oh, using scissors is a bit of an issue for me. Despite me being right handed with pens and so on, I use scissors in my left hand. In fact, there are quite a few things I can do with either hand, and many things I’m equally as bad at with either hand, such as using a badminton racquet or golf club! Don’t ask. Anyway, back to the scissors. I’ve always struggled using scissors well, and I’m worse with left-handed scissors than I am with right-handed scissors. Craft knives and me tend to be a slightly dangerous pairing – for me, not for anyone else! I’m ok if I’m using a rule to cut straight lines, but anything else, well …
So, I will persevere, and perhaps the mistakes I make won’t be as noticeable to myself…
This morning, I’ve drawn the two mandalas above. I used Autodesk Sketchbook Pro on my Microsoft Surface Book to do this.
I’m gradually exploring the features of Sketchbook Pro, and the more I use it, the more I like it, though making the transition from paper to digital drawing isn’t as easy as I thought it would be. This is mainly because I find it hard to work at a detail level that doesn’t require a magnifying glass to see the detail or to add colour – particularly important when I’m doing work for colouring books.
This is partly because of the ability to zoom in so much on the artwork, and partly due to the screen size on my Surface Book being a little smaller than A4.
I have considered getting a Surface Studio, but that’s on hold until I’m sure I really want to go down the digital drawing route. Having such a big screen is an alluring prospect, being able to work on the paper size at it’s actual size…but I’m still thinking about it. Maybe when I find out my tax bill for the previous financial year I’ll make my mind up.
Now, these aren’t the first mandalas I’ve drawn using Sketchbook Pro. In the past three or four days I’ve some some small ones (approx 3″x3″) to print out, colour and mount on blank greeting cards to be sold to raise money for Mia Chambers, Rainbow Warrior Princess to get her to America for experimental cancer treatment not available in the UK.
What I’ve always found tedious as well as a tad challenging mathematically, is setting out the angles and so on for a symmetrical mandala. Sketchbook pro makes that easy for sure, as well as saving on the time in creating symmetry.
I’m still struggling with the idea that I may be ‘cheating’ by doing this. However, I can logically accept that the tools available in Sketchbook Pro allow me to focus on my creativity far more. Also, the ability to zoom in means I can add details and so on I couldn’t do easily when working on paper.
I have used mandala templates I’ve drawn on paper and scanned in Sketchbook pro to draw mandalas, as well as using sketched out designs so I can neaten up the sketch and add details (it saves erasing pencil lines and the mess and wrinkled paper and smudged in that can result). I don’t really need to mention how easy it is to undo mistakes.
Certainly, the symmetry option makes creating these mandalas a lot quicker, and because I don’t strive for total perfection in the hand-drawn lines or added patterns, then even though the mandalas are drawn in a digital environment, they still have that feeling of being drawn by hand, which makes me happy – they’re still ‘perfectly imperfect’!
Of course, I’ve not really got to grips with colouring the designs in Sketchbook Pro, so printing them out and adding colour using a chosen medium is still my favoured way of working. Also, I can add things like metallic highlights and sparkly gems to the mandalas, plenty of which appears on the cards I’ve made as well as the mandalas I’ve framed in order to raise money for little Mia.
I was pleased to be told by Shelly and Kelly at Faction Apps that there’s been an update to the Colorist app. That means I had to have another play!
The image above is one from my first book for the Colorist app – Doodle Worlds. Many areas have been filled in using the original pencil tool, which is great as it allows for overlaying of colours as well as being pressure sensitive if your device allows for that (my Microsoft Surface Book certainly does!).
It took me a while to get used to how the pencil works in the app, but that’s not a problem as either the undo or eraser tools allow you to completely remove anything you’re not happy with. (The eraser is also useful for removing colour to create a highlight!).
Bucket Tool
One of the new tools is a bucket-fill, which is great for filling areas with flat, solid colour. I used this tool for the pink monster. The pencil tool can then be used to add shading/highlights over the base colour.
A useful tool is the bucket tool as it allows for quickly filling areas with a solid colour, even teeny-tiny areas thanks to the ability to zoom in on the image! This saves some time and effort, which can then be spent on carefully adding the shading and highlights to the area.
Marker Tool
This is my favourite addition to the tool box in the Colorist app! I love the solid colour it lays down. The colours aren’t transparent, however, so blending isn’t yet possible with them ( perhaps that’ll appear in a future update of the app). Markers (especially Chameleon pens) are my favourite way of adding colour to drawings like this on paper, so I look forward to this tool being developed more in the future (fingers crossed and maybe a bit of pleading from me!).
What I love most about this tool is that I can draw and doodle and add texture and pattern to the image with the solid lines that I prefer in my art. I did this with ease on the flower next to the orange and white stripey twisty thing.
The wide range of colours available in the colour palette mean that highlights and shadows can be achieved, so long as a subtle blend from one colour to another isn’t required. However, I’ve just thought that a clever use of the pencil tool may allow this to happen. I’ll have to try that out!
Eyedropper tool
I didn’t make any use of this tool, but I’m likely to in the future as it means that you can easily select a colour you’ve previously used in the image being coloured without going to the palette and ttrying to remember just which shade of, say, blue it was you used.
Sketching in the Colorist App
The ability to sketch within the app, and save the drawings too, is the fab new feature. I really like this, especially with the marker pen tool.
Usually, I use Autodesk Sketchbook for drawing on my Surface book. One of the weird things about drawing on the Surface with the pen is that there always seems to be some wobble in the line, even if the line drawn is smooth. Autodesk has a smoothing tool, which in the Pro version you can set to a level that suits the art you are doing at the time.
Although the Sketch function in Colorist doesn’t have the smoothing tool (yet?) it works just as well as Sketchbook for the kind of doodly, abstract, whimsical art I do. The image above is a drawing I did in Colorist last night, it took an hour or so to achieve.
I enjoyed using this function, though not being able to rotate the digi-paper meant it was a tad awkward for me to draw certain things. However, Colorist isn’t designed as a dedicated drawing/art app, but I do wonder if a ‘pro’ version could be developed where a small fee is paid for such a functionality. The latest updates certainly suggest to me that there’s a possibility that this could be a direction the app could take in the future.
My verdict
I really like the updates, especially the marker and the sketch function. Congratulations to all at Faction Apps!
The suggestions I’ve made above for extending the additions in the future are not criticisms of the great updates made, but they would take this app beyond that of being just a colouring app, so I’m well aware they may not happen.
However, I do believe this app could evolve from being a colouring app into something more…
First, the announcement! I’m doing some coloring templates for the Colorist App, and my first book of ten pages – called DoodleWorlds – is now available for it!
Review of Colorist
Colorist is the only app that lets you color with exactly the same feel as coloring pencils! Relax on the couch and enjoy coloring a complex design, a vacation spot, or a crazy cartoon cat – tons of pages to choose from. Even color the same picture more than once, to see what else you can do with it. No need to worry about losing your coloring pencils in the couch anymore!
I have tried the Colorist app out, and here’s an honest review of it.
I had a quick look at the app before I agreed to do any design work for Faction Apps as I’d not want to have my artwork on any platform that I didn’t think was a good thing.
I’ve given it a test run using my Surface book and the Surface pen. I haven’t tried it out in touch mode with my finger. You can see what I did in the image above, which is one of the free downloads as my own weren’t available at the time I did this test.
Here’s a close up of the section I coloured in.
The colour palette
There’s a large number of colours available in the palette, and the bar that appears beside the image retains the last eight colours you’ve used, which is really useful and makes colouring in areas you want in the same colours easy to do. It also means it’s easy to use many colours to get a smooth colour gradation, something that you can’t do with other colouring apps I’ve seen.
The pencil tool
There’s a slider bar with the tool so you can select the width of the pencil stroke, which is great. The finest settings allowed me to add patterns to the image. This is something that sets the app apart from others I’ve seen, which only allow a flood fill.
The finer lines and the ability to zoom in to the area you’re colouring mean you can get into the tiniest areas to colour, which at the original image size may have been a challenge, especially when printed on paper and coloured using coloured pencils.
The line isn’t a solid line, it has texture to it just as if you’re colouring on paper with a ‘tooth’ (texture). This means that optical mixing of colours is possible, as well as adding texture to that mixing. It also means that a smooth blend of colours is achievable.
The colours lay nicely on top of each other, thanks to that bitty texture; one colour doesn’t obsure the other, unless you use a lot of pressure and it’s what you want.
Oh, the colours don’t obscure the black outlines of the colouring page, no matter how hard you press.
My surface pen is pressure sensitive, and that makes the colouring experience a lot more comparable to colouring on paper with pencils, but without the mess! I don’t know what it’s like on a screen that isn’t pressure sensitive, or how it works if I use my finger instead of the pen.
I am really impressed with the results and how the pencil tool works.
Also, I can get a bit irritated when I’m colouring with physical pencils; they often make my arthritic joints ache. No such problem here; indeed, I wanted to carry on colouring but had to put it aside so I could get on with other things.
Eraser tool and Undo Button
It works! However, I preferred to use the white from the palette to erase small areas to add highlights as I could control the thickness of the line being used to remove colour.
The undo button would be really useful too.
Together, they are things you can’t do when you’re colouring on paper, well not easily.
Saving your art
You can save your work at any time by using the save button on the app. You can also colour each page in as many times as you like in as many different colour schemes as you like too.
Final thoughts
I like this app, very, very much. I found it easy to use, quick to master, and it gives really lovely results. It’s a well thought through app, it does what it says it does, and the experience and results are a lot like using coloured pencils on paper!
I just want to repeat that although I have done some artwork for the app, these views are my own and not influenced by me working for them; if hadn’t htought the app was a good product I wouldn’t have agreed to do work for them!
Sending each and every one of you all the very best of the wishes of the season. May each of your days ahead be filled with love, joy and all things bright and good!
Thank you to all who have supported me and sent me such kind words too.
Drawn on my Surfacebook, coloured in via Autodesk Sketchbook Pro.
My first digitally coloured and drawn line art created using my Surface Book.
The image to the left is my first digitally coloured drawing I’ve done with the Surface, but not the first drawing I’ve done with it.
The image to the left is my first digitally coloured drawing I’ve done with the Surface, but not the first drawing I’ve done with it.
I went and did it. I really did. I thought long and hard about it, I considered my various options, but after a lot of help and a play with a Microsoft Surface I decided that I was going to get one so I could explore the world of drawing digitally and digital art.
So, I ordered a Surface Book, it arrived and I picked it up from the shop at a time when the young chap who helped me with information about them was there so he could see it and try it out – my thank you to him. Apparently it caused a ‘nerdgasm’ as a fair few of the assistants came over to have a look and lust over the Surface.
That was around 3 weeks ago and I’ve certainly been giving it a good try out, and learning as I go, and I really do have a lot to learn! I will learn too, as and when I need to simply by exploring and playing.
One awkward task has been finding a program/app that will let me draw on the surface almost as if it is pen on paper. So far, Autodesk Sketchbook Pro is my most used app. I’m having to learn about using layers, the type of ‘brush type’ and thickness and the other settings to get my drawings to look the way they do.
One little tool that has been invaluable has been the ‘smooth’ function; the Surface screen is so sensitive to movement and there is such little friction between the SurfacePen and the screen that my usually smooth lines were all over the place! This has solved it though, without making my drawings look like they’ve been computer generated. I’d like some choices of amount of smoothing applied, however, and maybe that’ll be something the app designers will add to it in future updates.
I have already found it of great help as I had some small amendments to make to a couple of images for Color Me Grateful. It was so easy to do these, once I’d worked out how to make the texture/randomness/spacing of the line drawn mimic the lines drawn with the pen I’d used on paper. No messy white-out liquid, no dusty eraser mess, no awkward editing to do with a mouse. I can do the editing and tidy up of lines as I work, easily erase ‘mistakes’ or alter elements wholesale. That alone makes the Surface worth it’s weight in platinum!
Add to that that if I am going to do all my future drawings on the beauty then I’ll not need to do the rather tedious task of scanning in and then cleaning up the images laboriously, then it’s worth double its weight in gold-pressed latinum!
Oh, I know I’ll still have to scan in a few images – ones I’ve printed out and coloured using traditional media – but they will be far fewer than the numbers I’ve had to do.
I did consider a Wacom Cintiq, however I couldn’t find anywhere to have a ‘test drive’ of one, and that I really wanted to do before I bought one. I was able to play with Surface and work out quite quickly that it would work for me, especially as there was software loaded on it that would do what I wanted to do with one.
Of course, it will lead me to exploring the world of digital art and how it will work for me and my style of art, but I also know it will open up new ways of working, new techniques and effects for me.
Printing
Playing with the Surface
I have a fair few drawings I want to print out to colour in traditional media, and also to check the line thicknesses and detail of the drawings as I’m still in the process of getting used to drawing on a screen that is smaller than A4 paper, and a lot smaller than A3. However, the more I use it, the easier it is becoming for me to adjust to this way of working.
So, I went to print out some art yesterday, to find my printer had died on me. I can’t even get it to turn on!
The hunt for a new printer began, and I chose an Epson printer that uses the DuraBrite Ultra ink as it’s supposed to be at least water resistant and someone has posted somewhere that it isn’t affected by alcohol markers such as Promarkers or Copics. That would be great if that’s the case! I also understand that the printer will take fairly hefty papers/cards too, which is even better considering I’ll want to put watercolour paper and mixed media paper through it. My dead Brother printer coped well with both of these, though the watercolour paper had to be fairly lightweight in comparison to some I have in my stash.
The new printer should be with me the middle of next week…
Other things…
I have a break for a while from working for publishers. I’m using the time to explore the Surface book, to visit places to gain inspiration, and to get my head around ideas I have for books and illustrations and so on. I also need a break from the wonderful, crazy but overly busy time drawing for so many publishers and books.
Crazily busy, yes, but something I’m so grateful for as it’s all allowed me to leave teaching and become self-employed.
Art is the Adventure 