IPhone Art App Mixer, originally uploaded by purple0wl.
How many iphone art apps were used to create this image? Four, if I remember rightly. Maybe more.
The background started life as an iphone photo of a doorway in Barcelona. After a tracing in Vihgo followed by a mashup in Photo Studio it was never the same again.
The monastery was embedded into the background in Juxtaposer. The Art App Mixer was added on a separate layer in yet another iphone app, Brushes.
I have a feeling this promiscuous piece would not be invited to the party over at Inspire! (More about that at the Inspire Contest page.)
iPhone (or iPod Touch) painting is always rewarding. Now there’s actually a generous prize on offer to the winner of a competition for finger paintings done in Inspire app. The contest is run by KiwiPixel and Mobile Art Books.
Inspire competition deadline is March 14th. First prize is USD 150. Very nice.
You must do your painting exclusively in the Inspire app. No app skipping or imported images allowed. Your artwork must be wholly original and on the theme “Humanoid in confrontation with nature”.
Read all about it here – and warm up your fingers ready for the inspiring Inspire contest!
Spider Assesses a Web Page, originally uploaded by purple0wl.
Why does fine art have to have the monopoly of abstracts? Actually I think most cartoons are abstracts. They use notations to express actions and emotions that are not at all what you actually see in real life.
Here we see a web spider, doubtless one of Google’s tireless army of minions, poring over a web page. Like all web spiders, he sees only words and is colour blind.
How was the image made? I shone a rainbow (made a while ago in Corel Painter) on a scribbled doodle (made a while ago on paper).
The rainbow was projected on my iphone, using an application called DXP (Double Exposure), and finished in Brushes app.
Tags: art, Art on the iPhone, brushes, cartoons, creative, digital painting, doodle, iphone art apps, ipod touch, purple owl, robot, SEO, spider, valerie beeby, visualise, website
iPhone Finger Painting. Sizing Up. Originally uploaded by purple0wl.
Nocturne, originally uploaded by purple0wl.
Click on the picture then on ‘View On Black’ to see this picture at larger size
I’ve been thinking a lot about texture in iPhone paintings now the iPad is on the way. It’s no use trying to give a tiny picture interesting brush strokes or textures. There just aren’t enough pixels.
Paintings made in Brushes app are saved quite small if you sync them via the iPhone gallery to your desktop.
Help is at hand if you have a Mac. It looks as if help will be even handier if you have an iPad with its much bigger screen than iphone or ipod.
Meanwhile my helper when using Brushes app is the Brushes Viewer, as far as I know still only available on the Mac.
Brushes Viewer syncs with your Brushes gallery via wi-fi. Not only does it play an animation of your brush strokes as you painted your picture. It exports the finished result at surprisingly high quality in a choice of much larger sizes.
Tags: art, Art on the iPhone, brushes, brushes app, creative, digital painting, drawing tablet, ipad, iphone art apps, ipod touch, moonlight, night scene, purple owl, tips, valerie beeby
Afternoon Apple, originally uploaded by purple0wl.
I took a photo of an apple with my iPhone 3GS. Displaying the photo on my computer screen, I finger painted it back onto the iphone in a paint app called Layers.
Layers created a stir among iphone artists a while ago, because for the first time it offered – guess what. Layers. Now other paint apps vying to be the best, including the old favourite Brushes and newer Sketchbook Mobile, also offer layers.
In this painting, layers allowed me to paint the wooden sill and window frame behind the apple without interfering with its outline.
Another tool absent in paint apps until quite recently was a blender.
A blender is really just an empty brush that allows you to smudge the paint and make a smooth transition between tones. In days of yore on your iphone or ipod Touch, you could make a reasonable transition by building up layers of transparent colour. Reasonable, maybe. Satisfactory? No, not really. For me the result was usually horribly streaky.
Than along came another paint app, Inspire, and for the first time, blending. Truly useful, even though Inspire, alas, did not allow you to import an existing image.
Since then, Inspire has opened its gates to images created in other paint apps. Meanwhile, Layers, not to be outdone, has added blending to its box of tools. Very useful for polishing apples.
Tags: apple, art, Art on the iPhone, creative, digital painting, iphone apps, iphone art apps, iphone camera, ipod, ipod touch, learn, learning
Bicycle Snake. Beware!, originally uploaded by purple0wl.
The Bicycle Snake has landed! The preferred diet of this rapacious reptile is fortunately bicycles, but it’s not a good idea to get in its way. It has a nasty bite.
Noting that my new app Magic Brush allows you to make a finger painting brush from any image, I stole a cycle or two from the bicycle shed at Oxford station. This serpent was the unfortunate result.
I photographed the cycle shed on my way home from the Oxford Internet Institute. There I had been mesmerised by a portrait painting session given by Jeremy Sutton. He uses Corel Painter, which of course gives a huge choice of brushes, and allows you to make your own. You can see the vast Painter 11 range in my samplers at http://owler.com.
The range of brushes and effects on offer for finger painting on the iPhone or iPod Touch is increasing daily. Handheld apps are unsurprisingly more limited than desktop leviathans like Corel Painter or Photoshop. Most iphone artists use several finger painting, drawing and photographic apps, but don’t despair! Once you’ve got your iPhone or iPod Touch, apps are cheap and most offer frequent free upgrades.
Tags: art, Art on the iPhone, brushes, creative, digital painting, iphone apps, iphone art apps, iphone camera, ipod touch, purple owl, reptile, snake, valerie beeby