So it’s currently Dec 21, 2023, and I’m five days into a two-week art-making hiatus (I figured I deserved some downtime after going 275 days straight making new art on each of those days).
Although I’m taking some creative time off, I’ve still been a bit active in other areas of art – reading art history books, looking at art, prepping for my art to be included in a coffee shop in Niwot beginning January 1, and making plans for 2024.
Part of those plans include creating a series of tutorials where I walk folks through making digital art using Procreate on an iPad. This will be quite an involved project – I envision a series of videos (some free, some paid) that will get aspiring digital artists going on the platform. I’ll cover such topics as the interface, brushes, layers, etc, and then move quickly toward the successful creation of various art pieces – I think starting with something basic (like flowers maybe) and moving on to critters, landscapes, and abstracts will do the trick.
The question becomes – why digital art? Well, I’ve worked in a variety of mediums in the past 9 months (pencils, charcoal, oil, acrylics, pastels, digital) and although I have very much loved working in those traditional mediums and techniques, I’m 100% sure that the vast majority of my art will be made on digital platforms (and that means Procreate for now) going forward. It’s a question of being able to work quickly, with the least amount of fuss (I don’t have to gear up to handle toxic paints or crack open a window so I don’t asphyxiate myself), anywhere I want (all I need is the iPad and Pencil and I have access to millions of colors and thousands of brushes without having to go to an art supply store), not to mention, the ability to deliver art digitally to fulfillment places without having to ship giant canvases around.
I also find that digital tools open up a infinite world of creative freedom that I’m super pumped about exploring (and no I’m not saying that traditional tools don’t offer the same creative vistas, I’m just way more pumped about the digital now than the traditional!), but I also want to acknowledge (as I have elsewhere on this blog) that there’s no way I’d understand the dynamics of digital pastel brushes (for example) without the experience of working with the real stuff in the real world. So there’s that.
Back to my plans for 2024, and the creation of Procreate tutorials. Yes, I’m aware that there are already many digital art courses out there available for artists, but in my opinion they’re way too expensive, and spend way too much time on the basics before moving on to the equivalent of “let’s paint a nicely shaded apple” as the final project, whereas I’d like to share all the approaches I’ve sussed out for creating the kind of vibrant and energetic art that I make. I’m hoping that the tutorials will help provide shortcuts for artists who are keen on establishing their very own style and approaches using Procreate.
Because a comprehensive set of Procreate tutorials is a bit far off, I decided that I would launch some Procreate time-lapse videos now. These are by no means a substitute for more in-depth tutorials, but I figured they might be of interest to some. (For those who don’t know, Procreate has this really neat feature where it records what you’re doing and then provides a handy time-lapse video feature that is then shareable with others.)
What I’ve done is I’ve exported these time-lapse videos to iMovie, added a bit of voice-over, and created three video compilations. The first one is of six digital abstracts, and the other two are of 6 digital landscapes each for a total of 12.
I’ve tried to include digital art pieces that incorporate a variety of styles, brushes, color palettes, and approaches (on the landscape side, certainly: from a more “fantasy” feel, to impressionistic, to more realistic approaches–and including both day and night pieces). I’m hoping that they will provide some insight into how I work and how I achieve the results I’ve gotten.
Now, these videos don’t contain a lot of details on specific brushes and techniques (i.e., you won’t hear me call out specific brushes in the voice-over) , but I’m hoping the “behind the scenes” look will inform and entertain (particularly when you see me erase entire layers and start over again).
Here’s the abstracts time-lapse compilation:
Here’s the first landscape time-lapse compilation:
And here’s the second landscape time-lapse compilation:
I hope you enjoy these compilations – and I hope you’re having a wonderful, restful, and stress-free holiday season. Here’s to a wonderful 2024.
