The April Challenge

The latest in the monthly series of paintings that I do with my friend Peter Ward. (www.watercolourfanatic.blogspot.com)

Peter has been making pictures of native americans for some time and this is the one that he chose for our latest joint effort.

This was the photograph that Peter sent at the start of the month, a dramatic image with strong contrast and a strong set of features.

Just for a bit of fun I had a bash at doing a finger painting on the iPad before getting out the paints.
Ostaho Indian - iPad painting

I then set about rendering the image with watercolour. I was keen to try and get close to the value range of the original photograph but had some difficulty in getting sufficient depth in the darks without building up that with overlaying washes. This tends to degrade the painting as the paint loses brilliance. All in all an object lesson in paint application. More pigment required in the first pass.

Another interesting exercise.
Ostaho Indian - Watercolour on Not paper 12" x 9"

Finger Painting

Something a little bit different this time. As regular readers will know it's been a problem recently getting out and much of my recent work has been still life at home. This last couple of weeks have seen us helping out with the grandkids so painting time has been limited, so I came up with the following idea - give finger painting a try on the iPad, something I've been promising myself for a while. Now this really is something different.

The first job was to find an appropriate application to use and having investigated two free applications I found myself less than convinced as I was having a great deal of difficulty getting sufficient control to drum up the confidence to complete a piece. Then I had a stroke of luck I saw a piece by an American artist, David Kassan, in Sunday's newspaper. A quick scout around the web and a couple of demonstrations on You Tube and I decided to risk £3.99 on a programme called ArtRage. The big attraction of this application was the apparent ability to simulate some of the techniques used in oil painting. It was possible to mix, blend, create impasto and use palette knife techniques.

Having acquired the application and done a minimum of making the acquaintance of the controls, a break in the babysitting allowed me a short respite to give it a go. The subject matter suggested itself, one of the grandkids. I thoroughly enjoyed producing the picture below, gaining interesting insights into the potential of the programme. The result isn't the best likeness but it did afford the chance to try some of techniques mentioned above and I particularly like the way it is possible to produce texture.

Another diversion to explore.

Oliver - iPad finger painting