PAINTING with PIXELS
Workshop

I will be teaching a two-day workshop January 4th and 5th, at The Art League School, in Old Town Alexandria, Virginia.

It will be covering some excellent apps for painting and drawing. Among others, I'll cover ArtRage, SketchBook Pro, ArtStudio, PhotoShop Touch, and Procreate for the big multiple medium programs, and specialists for ink (Zen Brush), graphite/charcoal (Asketch) , and watercolor (Auryn Ink).

From the catalog:

"This workshop introduces students to tablet and smart phone apps for fine artists. Discover helpful apps to improve traditional drawing and painting experiences, including useful tricks to help composition and visualization. Participants also learn apps that enable drawing or painting directly in various simulated media, such as charcoal, ink on paper, watercolor, pastels, or oils. Other non-traditional media and special effects apps are also covered. Participants must bring their own Apple iPad, iPhone,  or Android tablet."  

 Contact me with Questions, and check out the
APPS for ARTISTS heading.

Come see what you can do with this new medium!

FUN WITH CAMERA 360

I've been spending huge amounts of time with Camera360 (and a few other apps as well), going back and reworking several promising images. Camera360 can show you most of the effects "live", which is great for composing, but it saves at a low resolution.

A couple of months ago, when I was trying to free up some memory, I noticed that Camera360 took up more space than all my (many, many) photos combined! Further exploration revealed that it also saves the original, unfiltered photo at full camera resolution, which you can revert back to. This, plus the stronger and more useful tools and filters that the latest upgrades has given us, has opened up a whole new world of possibilities!

So I've been having too much fun, and not getting very much else done.

The  final (latest?) version of this image uses HDR, Sketch, and Cartoon filters, plus the adjustments, rotate, and crop tools.

My "PAINTING with PIXELS" course starts in less than two weeks! This will be it's maiden voyage, and there is so much still to do. (Click here for info)

I'm illustrating this with one of my much earlier computer works, done in 256 colors and very low resolution back in the early 90's. The fancy fellow is supposed to be a poet or orator, speaking in public in ceremonial garb. However, my friend took one look at it, said "looks like a pizza burp", and "Pizza Burp" he has been ever since.

Painting with Pixels:
Creative Apps for Drawing and Painting
Nine week Fall course. Instructor Nancy Freeman
Tuesday afternoon, 12:00 - 3:00 starting September 17. Sign up at The Art League School in Alexandria, VA

New Tools for Artists!
This is an exciting time to be an artist. With smart phones and tablets, there's been an explosion of amazing, inexpensive tools to create art.

These apps simulate a full range of traditional media as well as not so traditional media, allowing you to draw or paint in oils, crayon, watercolor, ink, charcoal and so on.

It's an entirely new medium that doesn't have to obey the laws of physics, plus it's clean, portable and has a very handy undo feature.
More Information here! CLICK

Come see what you can do!

Bottles Behind Bars:

"Drum 12"

There are so many good compositions in these "Bottles Behind Bars" situations, plus fabulous color, reflections and refractions, glow, distortions. So much to work with, so little time.

I'm enjoying this series so much, I may have to go find some more good bars!

iColorama ... This is the one I use most often, although it seems to be under appreciated. I like it because there are lots of creative effects, many useful presets, and very good controls in applying the effects. It has a couple of ways to apply masks, can use the camera, and has an iPhone version. It has no undo, which is usually not a problem since you have to choose to apply the edits, and it has no layers, although it can combine two different images in various ways.
Very strong distortion options and texture effects.

Photoshop Express (PS Express) ... This is not a big editor, but it has all the basics, is easy to use, very stable, and it's free. I use this one most if I'm just adjusting colors or cropping or other simple operations. It does have some filters.

Photoshop Touch (PS Touch) ... Now that the output resolution is larger, (max size 4000 X 3000, one of the best,) this is a very good app. Also one of the most expensive, but at $9.99, it is still a huge bargain compared to the desktop version. It has most of the core features that I use, and a good amount of filters and special effects. The layers and selection tools are very strong. There are tutorials included, (and many more online,) as well as Google image search and camera functions. No iPhone app.

Laminar Pro ... Excellent color and lighting controls, including dodge and burn brushes, very useful. Can open from clipboard, which is very handy. Strong layer functions, good masking, provides size info. Very strong control of color information, including levels, curves and channels.

Perfect Image ... This one is geared more toward scrapbooking and such. It has very easy intuitive collage functions and loads of stamps and borders and text options. It can do basic functions such as crop and color adjustment, and provides size info under the crop function. It has camera functions and an iPhone version. No layers.

Percolator
Playing on the idea of brewing coffee, this entertaining app mostly makes circles. Using three different variables, each of which has three sub-variables (each of which has many different options), it turns an image into a field of circles, from fine to coarse. There are some nice effects in the mix, and some excellent animations as it does it's work. I've used it in many of my  finished digital images.

Popsicolor
Made by the same team that made Percolator, Popsicolor does a quite credible job of turning an image into a loose, impressionist two-tone watercolor. I sometimes use it to essentially posterize a complex subject to isolate different value areas, which it does in fine style.

Goomifier
This app was probably made primarily to turn your face (or your friends' faces) into rubber, which it does very well. However, it can also come in very handy with abstracts, or even for curving or straightening parts of any kind of picture. Its underlying mesh is quite robust, and can produce extreme distortions without losing the original information. (You may not be able to see the details, but they're still there.) Many photo-booth type apps are similar in effect, some with more kinds of pre-made effects, but without the fine control. Much fun.

Fluid FX

Made by Autodesk, this excellent app has many effects that you can use. Most of them, although fun and entertaining, are not often very useful for producing art. However, there are some very good liquid effects, and a few that will stay put as you develop other parts of the composition. I've spent many happy hours with this one. 

Color Lake

If you need some watery reflections, this app does an amazing job. With a good range of controls, it produces excellent screen saver types of images where the reflection portion stays in motion. You can send a finished image to the Camera Roll, but a screen grab generally looks more natural, although the resolution is lower.

ART SPECIALISTS

Here are the Art Specialists that I use. Some are iPad only, some are for both iPad and iPhone. Many of these apps are free, or come in a free version to try out. I get the paid version whenever possible, though, for several reasons.
- They may have more tools, or better controls, or be able to work at higher resolutions
- They cost very little anyway. Amazingly little in fact. I don't understand how Apps can be so inexpensive. Some are not worth it even if they are free, but many are amazing tools.
- I don't like the ads cluttering up the limited screen
- I want these software designers to continue to improve their product, and they need material support to do it.

Fun Art and Paint Apps

These are some Apps that I've collected that are fun or entertaining or meditative. They generally don't have enough control to produce real art with, but might be able to be used for special effects, or are just fun to play with.

Click on the pictures to get the full list