Illustration: Nautilus septembre 21 2021

 

Krita gave me a nice surprise with the final update to version 5 coming out right at Christmas. I haven't been sleeping so I had more time than normal to try it out with a painting of my dog Nautilus. It is a different style than I am used to. My first idea was to block out the shapes and colours then go over them with brush strokes to detail the fur but I started tried some thicker strokes and I sort of liked the effect and went with it. I used black, white and dark blue/grey for the fur and did very little blending. Kind of a bold colour palette.  So one more done before the year ends.

Illustration: Keamy (portrait)

 

This time a used Affinity Photo to draw another portrait of another friend. I was on the beach in Newburyport with him and took some personal photos under not great lighting conditions. A couple came out nice enough and a few more made me think they might be transformed into a portrait. I have been visiting a friend in hospital and was able to do a few hours of this there on the iPad. I had to play with the lighting and decide how much detail to include on the clothing. At one point I was thinking of just the floating face on the canvas. This was sort of a sneaky portrait since he didn't know (more did I) that is was going to do one. I would like to do more but I asked a number of friends a while back and they all refused. 

I did have some issues with palm rejection and the pencil switching from brush to eraser on its own. Procreate let you turn the device without it automatically changing orientation and Photo had issues with that as well. 

More illustrations done on my voyage to Massachusetts

 Another pen and ink style drawing o Nathan and Pascal. I think I have one more to do of them before this series is finished. 

A yellow leaf. I have, it seems, a small series of leaf paintings and illustrations. I ought to put them in a separate folder maybe. I just finished another one that I won't bore anyone with here but it's a "thing" with me apparently. 

Not sure Ill get anything else done drawing wise this year... it was  a HUGE year, actually 2 years for my artwork. Some years I didn't produce even one drawing, lately it has been several a month! 

Photos from Boston area visit

 I recently had to visit Boston, no easy task with the covid testing and restrictions. Getting around to anyplace was a nightmare but after getting there, it was super nice to see family and friends. I finally got to take out the camera and really takes some photos. Being stuck here on the island for a couple years sort of limited my subject matter. Another aspect of this trip was to not bring a laptop but only use my iPad pro which has a terabyte of space and with Affinity photo installed, should be enough to process most of the photos I take while away. This was pretty efficient and made travelling pretty easy. I did miss some plugins I use often but there is no reason I can't just take the iPad with me from now on. Once Affinity gets a tablet version of Publisher released, I should be able to do pretty much everything but 3D works it. I am used (spoiled) by my 27 inch screen but the tablet screen was, honestly, more than good enough while running around from place to place. 

Click images to see them larger.

Provincetown.

I never get tired of this place and the beach, dunes and town are always changing enough to keep my camera lens trained on it. I was super lucky to be there when a boat got beached in nearby Turo. 

Boston

Boston has changed so much since i lived there that it is now an unfamiliar place to me. I got lost a couple timesaver got my bearings back. I took new photos of places I had photographed 40 years previously, with limited success. I also spent some time in Quincy Quarry with a friend and that was interesting.

Newburyport

I have been here before and it's really lovely to walk on the wood pathways to the beach. I have only been in wintry times so the place is always pretty much deserted, my favourite way to visit anyplace! 

illustration: Dan portrait (Procreate)

I was little hesitant to post this since it will hopefully be sent as gift to the subject as a surprise but since he, like most people, never read my blog I decided to take the chance. Below is the detailed sketch I use as a guide when drawing, I like to have an overlay sketch to keep things from getting distorted and to remind me where details are. I am unsure how good the resemblance is. partly becuase its really hard to do that sometimes when you know the person really well, and we have been friends for many decades at this point. I also had to work from photos he has sent me since he moved to Orlando and they are great for me to look at but not always the best choice for a drawing. We are both avid cyclists so I wanted that represented. I think the strap might be changing the shape of his face enough that it's throwing the likeness off a little. I tinkered a lot with his expression which was slightly dour, in my opinion, and a slight smile is more "him".