Full Version: iPad Project 2011 Culmination/Film

This film runs a bit slower than a previous version I posted.  This is my preferred way for viewing the work.  It's too long for YouTube.

iPad December Advent Calendar

Blue, White, and Black

Green Square Blue

Check in daily to Art Weekly for an iPad Advent Calendar! Each post will feature one or more of my artworks done on the iPad using the apps Brushes, Sketchbook Pro, Inspire Pro, Art Studio, or Type Drawing.

iPad: Like Morris Louis, Green Blue Triangle Red, Cloud on Land

Like Morris Louis

Green Blue Triangle Red

Cloud on Land

Green Blue Triangle Red seems primordial. The red makes it seem like we are looking through a tepee: the door drawn back allowing the opening to be filled with the bright landscape of summer. Compositionally and coloristically (I don't think those are real words but we painters use them all the time) they relate to painter Morris Louis. Morris Louis , an Abstract Expressionist and a central figure in the development of Color Field Painting. He was inspired to experiment with paint applications of newly available acrylic paints after seeing Helen Frankenthaler's Mountain and Sea, the first "stain painting". [See Louis' 1961 Alpha-Theta] I was privileged to have Frankenthaler speak at my small departmental graduation ceremony for the MFA department at the University of Pennsylvania in 1996. Her speech was regrettably short (she seemed excited to get to her private showing of the Cezanne show up at the Philadelphia Museum of Art) but she got to the point which is what we often wish speech-givers would do. I will never forget her clear message, "Use your skills." She knew we were accomplished and understood how art can get pushed aside. She's now eighty-two and I am not alone in appreciating her contribution of luminous, energetic spaces. I haven't heard anything about her owning an ipad. I wonder what she would do.

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[A most excellent website: http://www.theartstory.org

It's mission statement:

"The Art Story Foundation's official statement of purpose is to: "Educate, inform, and introduce people to modern art through speaker series, educational workshops, and online educational resources".

Nicole is all excited!]

Ipad Art, Brushes App, QuickTime Player

Farm 3, Brushes/ipad

Field, Brushes/ipad

Box, tablet computer, 2007

Untitled, iphone/idoodle, 2009

I am not anti-technology. A public confession: I think I'm addicted to clicking. I think I found a way to paint and have my clicking too. While nothing replaces painting, each artistic medium having it's own inherent strengths and limitations, Brushes for ipad is very exciting. Here's a

Brushes demo video by creator Stephen Sprang. It sells on iTunes for $7.99 and I think it will save a bit on paint as I am able to use it not only for digital art in and of itself but also for painting studies. I love the materiality of all traditional art media. The difference between an oil painting and a digital painting is corporeality, similar to a person in real life vs. a photograph of that person. Photography has a lot to say, or rather show, so much so that Native Americans thought being photographed might steal their souls. The photograph is far from soul-less, and so is the digital painting. My work is mostly seen via the computer (I wish it was seen more in person, oh well). Digital art is made for the computer. Scale isn't an issue. The images are light-filled. British painter David Hockney is totally on-board and says it is like painting with stained glass. I LOVE stained glass, always wanting to achieve colored light like it. Hockney is prolific, totally going to town on his ipad and emailing friends drawings of flowers daily. He started out using Brushes on the iphone and the pictures were exhibited at the Tate and Royal Academy in London. [Lawrence Weschler's Hockney article and Jordan Galloway's in The New York Press ]

The ipad isn't my first excursion into creating digital art. I've used a tablet computer and an iphone (see above). Ink Art was the software I used on the tablet. It's not that different from Brushes. Many people on customer reviews complain about having to use a finger to draw in Brushes rather than a stylus like on tablets. I am much happier skipping the stylus. It felt too removed for me and touch brings me that much closer to what I'm making. I think it's just a question of getting used to it, like a touch mouse. There are fans of drawing with pencils rather than painting in general because of the difference of control.

The ipad's big screen is the key to my excitement. I enjoyed making images on the go with the iphone, thinking of them more as studies. The ipad is large enough to do more. Jorge Colombo has made three covers for The New Yorker using the iphone, achieving a surprising amount of detail; I'm assuming by zooming in and out. I'm a little worried the paintings will pale in comparison to my new digital images when seen on-line. I also wonder how it sits with me that the digitals are more graphic in nature. I intend to make paintings from some of them, so it should be a rather fluid back-and-forth process. I can also take a picture of my painting and work on it further in Brushes. This can give direction to a work in progress or expand the idea for working in a series. Best yet, Brushes allows the actions/steps involved in making a picture to be played back as a QuickTime file. The subjects I'm painting lately are non-narrative yet I'm seeking to make them into moving images. Move over, Hockney.

The movie below is the making of Farm 3. I had a little technical trouble with Brushes Viewer and Steve Sprang himself replied to my query. Thanks, Steve!

Summer Lake Ontario

digital image (iphone)

Gone fishing.

No, flying to Chicago, be back soon.

Hope you get some summer sun too.