Tag: iPad

  • iPad Explorations

    iPad Explorations

    Introduction

    The iPad has been part of my own workflow since 2014 . A key consideration in my workflow is a need to manage RSI and consequent constraints on how long I can spend at my pc with professional digital software like Photoshop, Illustrator and Corel Painter. This review  aimed to provide a focus for upgrading my iPad skills,  looking in detail at recent developments and widening my range of software and styles, placing what I had earlier achieved in Procreate in a wider context.

    The iPad has a number of advantages for painting and sketching:

    • the ability to combine many different media on one image without needing to carry a lot of equipment.
    • can sketch in airports and people think you are just reading on your iPad.
    • possibility to work on very fine detail through zooming in and out of the image. fine control over transparency and ability to get very fine gradations of colour.
    • delicate edge effects can be produced with transparency lock.
    • ability to quickly explore many alternative styles, colours and compositions through manipulating layers.

    Some textural effects of watercolour and gouache cannot be reproduced solely on the iPad itself. But using natural media and the iPad can produce very distinctive art that is impossible just using natural media. 

    Using photographs enables very different perspectives, vantage points and weather conditions to be captured – providing the photographs themselves are well thought through with potential final images in mind. It is also possible to exploit the effects of light on printed images to create atmospheric effects.

    Procreate is the programme I have used most. throughout this course. Its key features include:

    • fully customisable brushes with pressure and tilt sensitivity, including possibility to completely create one’s own brushes. Procreate 4 has added blend modes to the brushes
    • good selection and masking tools
    • alpha-lock and fill features
    • effects and blend modes to enable rapid experimentation with different colours and versions of an image
    • perspective grid and perspective assist – though I find this a bit difficult to use

    It is not though so easy and intuitive to use for basic sketching as the colour palette is not as accessible

    The first iPad was released on April 3, 2010. The drawing experience significantly improved particularly with the introduction of the iPad Pro, first released in November 2015 and Second Generation 2017, together with the Apple Pencil and improved camera. A further significant advance was made in autumn 2017 with introduction of iOS11 when iPad software made a corresponding leap in terms of both image quality and range of styles that can be produced. The iPad is now widely used by artists and illustrators to produce high end art like that of David Hockney and/or as part of an image design and development workflow.  iPad portability and flexibility make it a very good tool for drafting and exploring alternative designs and ideas and travelling – potentially replacing both sketchbooks and pc digital work.

    Most early Aps focused on varying brush size and transparency to produce Acrylic, airbrush, gouache and oil-type styles. David Hockney produced many small early sketches using the Brushes Ap on his iPhone – delighting in the speed with which he could record the colours and shapes of his surroundings just using his finger. He also used further software to produce very large gallery pieces as part of the  ‘Bigger Picture’ exhibition at the Royal Academy in 2012. These resemble very large colourful gouache and oil paintings. Large pieces can also be tiled like his oil paintings to produce much bigger works. There are now a number of artists using the iPad to produce very large resolution paintings (eg Andy Maitland who paints using a tripod in the landscape) and hyperrealistic portraits (eg Kyle Lambert).

    Images can be endlessly worked on in natural media, photographed, printed and worked on again.

    Procreate Inspiration

    Procreate is one of the more versatile Aps commonly used for professional work by digital painters like James Julier and illustrators like Stefan de Groot, Danny Glasgow and Austin Batchelor.  The most beautiful and distinctive work I have found so far is by Ilya Tyljakov is a Russian concept artist who uses Procreate to create beautiful atmospheric work. He creates and sells his own ‘Pro Brushes’ on the ProCreate Community to produce very distinctive marks with a degree of randomness that make them very distinctive as a style.

    Some artists and illustrators produce textured collage work. See for example: Michelle Brown:  http://oldcellsstudio.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/iPad

    But a lot of iPad painting found on sites like DeviantArt, Filckr, Tumblr and other social and illustration marketing networks  has a very similar style – smooth blend, soft focus landscape and fantasy style. From my own preliminary explorations it is clear that there is much more potential to be explored to take my own illustration and artistic expression further.

    Procreate Tutorials 2016

    Resources

    Wikipedia iPad gives a history of evolution of the specifications of the device. Specifically for the iPad Pro see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPad#iPad_Pro_series

    Ipad Artroom: http://www.ipadartroom.com

    Cathy Hunt: iPad Art: Lessons, Apps and Ideas for the iPad in Visual Art : ebook  on using iPad for classroom art education for Apple download

  • Peter Kuper

    Peter Kuper is an American illustrator and cartoonist. Some of his work is overtly political, some if reflective. But all of his work has an implicit political undertone.

    https://www.peterkuper.com

    https://peterkuper.squarespace.com/interviews-podcasts

    Peter Kuper does both his own personal and commissioned work. He does a lot of work for free eg all the editing and work by all authors in World War 3 was done without payment. But provided a springboard to future work.

    Peter has lectured extensively throughout the world and has taught comics and illustration courses at Parsons, and The School of Visual Arts and Harvard University’s first class dedicated to graphic novels. He was the 2020-21 Jean Strouse Fellow at The New York Public Library’s Cullman Center and received a 2022 Yaddo residency.

    Translations of his work have appeared in Greece, Italy, France, Spain, Slovenia, China, Brazil, Poland, Sweden, Israel, Germany and Mexico.

    More recently he has become interested in the potential of e-publishing as a way of bridging print and animation, and possibilities for including links to video and external information.

    Peter Kuper’s work appears regularly in The New YorkerThe Nation, and Mad , where he has written and illustrated “Spy vs. Spy” every issue since 1997. He is the co-founder of World War 3 Illustrated, a political comix magazine now in its 43rd year of publication.

    He has produced over two dozen books including Sticks and Stones (winner of The Society of Illustrators gold medal), The System, Diario de Oaxaca, Ruins (winner of the 2016 Eisner Award) and adaptations of many of Franz Kafka’s works into comics including The Metamorphosis. His most recent graphic novels include Kafkaesque (winner of the 2018 Rueben award) and an adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.

    His New York sketchbooks were published as as series of short fiction works in different styles in ‘Drawn to New York’.

    His Exhibition INterSECTS: Where Arthropods and Homo sapiens Meet was on display at the New York Public Library Jan. 14- Aug 13th 2022. He is currently working the on INterSECTS, a graphic novel on the history of insects that will be published by W.W. Norton in 2024.

    Connections between his sketchbooks and his creative identity and illustrative style?

    Sketchbooks are central to his practice.

    • He always keeps small sketchbooks with him as he travels on the subway.
    • He then uses larger sketchbooks to refine his drawings and practise techniques. And to map out book plans.

    He works in many different media:

    • mixing crayon, pen, ink and watercolour often adding digital colour over ink
    • gluestick collage
    • stencilling and spray paint
    • scratchboard and woodcut eg in Kafkaesque

    He does a lot of research, draws from photographs and spends time writing on location to experience what he draws.