Digital Art: Modern Spectre

I drew this in Procreate last night. I wanted to create artwork that inspired thought and intellectual exploration. In the end, I was the one who ended up thinking.

I’ve been inspired lately by the many artists I’ve discovered on Pinterest. They were creating art that doubled as an intellectual landscape. The shapes, colours and movement of this art reflected not only the intricacy of the artist’s mind, but also the cogs and wires of the world around them.

This art lit an invigorating fire in me, one that needed creativity to burn, so I turned on my iPad and got cracking.

I’ve been thinking about the integration of technology with the natural world, and how this affects the fabric of human society. My mind went everywhere from etymology to history and science. In my head, an intellectual masterpiece was unfolding.

Then I painted it.

And…well. Let’s just say it wasn’t the masterpiece I’d imagined. I’m still learning when it comes to art, and my skills certainly can’t match those of the artists I’d admired on Pinterest.

Still, I didn’t feel bad about the piece. Was it Picasso? No. Was it an artistic masterpiece? Most certainly not. But did it reflect some of the thoughts and emotions I wanted to convey? Did it communicate? I feel that it did. Perhaps not perfectly, but it reached out and made contact, and that was something.

Marilyn Monroe once said that imperfection is beauty. I think she’s right, and more. I think imperfection is perfection. Why should my art be perfect when my mind itself isn’t? Surely this non-Picasso, non-masterpiece is a more honest expression of my creativity than any AI-perfect imitation.

Our minds are beautifully imperfect. It’s what makes us human. It’s what sets us apart from machines, and it’s how we create the flawed un-masterpieces that we do.

I, for one, am happy this way.

Digital Art: Field of Dreams

This is one of my latest pieces. It’s a digital watercolour and acrylic painting, and the colours used are from one of my favourite custom palettes. Procreate lets you “extract” colours from pictures to create palettes, and I’d aways liked the colour combination I’d ended up with when I created a composite watercolour “painting” in Canva.

That time I’d just let my mind go free and wild, picking watercolour splash elements to add as the feeling took me. I didn’t have any particular idea in mind; I let the muse have full control.

The muse, bless her soul, delivered. I’ve always wanted to recreate that colour combo, and now, thanks to Procreate’s fancy features, I can do this as many times as I like!

Microfiction + Digital Art: Ode to the Artist

They speak in shapes and colours. Their mother tongue is the evergreen sea, the polkadot prairie, and the acrylic touch of wind. They crave the geometry of flowers. They cry spirals and love like fluorescence. In their minds, the universe expands.

Digital Art + Microfiction: Enchanted Cat

A starscape of glitter, and a cat with no name. That’s how I discovered magic. I still follow black tails into the night, hoping to hear his enchanted meow.

Digital Art: Photo Manipulation

This is my first attempt at photomanipulation. I started with a free image from Pixabay, then used Procreate to change hair and eye colour, and add magic/sparkles/shadows. I know Procreate isn’t really meant for this sort of thing (most people, I’m sure, would go for Adobe Photoshop) but I’ve personally found it effective and relatively easy to use.

For changing hair and eye colour, I like to use the Soft Brush in the Airbrushing menu. With eye colour, I also turn on Gradient Map. With hair colour though I prefer to just paint over the original hair on another layer. This works well if the original hair colour was lighter than the one you’re moving to (the model in the stock photo I used had very light blonde hair).

I’ve also made some custom glitter brushes that I used to add some sparkle to the eyes. I haven’t had need to create many custom brushes because Procreate comes with so many diverse brushes already, but I absolutely needed a glitter brush or two.

I’ll post my next try soon.

Digital Art: Ghost Flowers

This is a watercolour painting I made in Procreate. I’m so glad I discovered the watercolour brush. It’s a dream to paint and blend with. Combined with a custom pastel palette I put together, it allowed me to paint these ghostly flowers.

Btw, if you’d like to know how I’ve been guiding myself in this digital art adventure, I have a Pinterest board with links to some really good tutorials on YouTube that have helped me, as well as some others I’ve bookmarked for later. (If you can’t access the embed below, you can find the Pinterest board here.)