Saturday, July 3, 2021

Imagine that

Imagine that... ...two posts in the same month. And I am going to include photos of 2 paintings I finished recently. Okay, I have included it. As I said, "I finished recently" but what is not stated, is when I started them. The one you see here was started at least a year ago. I have to sketch my ideas and then go back to edit the sketch while adding a heavier line around objects. When done, I repeat this, adding a heavier line and this time I use a Marks-a-Lot pen that will cover that line with a wider line. Now I can use an Art Gum eraser and clean up all the pencil marks I added while sketching and editing, this will give me a clean image to photograph. Using my trusty Google Pixel4 camera, I shoot as many pictures as I think will be needed and then add one more. These images will automatically upload to my Google pix account and from there, I download them to my Desktop and open my Sketchbook program. If I were going to add brush work, I would open
my Rebelle software, by Escape Motions, a small group of coders and developers with an office in Piešťany, Slovakia. With their innovations, they get a lot of attention in the Imaging Software world. If you want to see how they do it, here is a short video. Since my image file is a JPG file, Rebelle opens it and displays it on the screen. Now it's time to open up my Wacom tablet for final editing. I have a very small graphics tablet but it can easily work on very large paintings. You just 'tell' the program what size you want and it adjusts as needed. You want it smaller when you are through? 'Talk to the program' and it will happen. I can adjust everything in the painting by using the tablet and the pen. I used it here to do a final 'cleaning' and editing. I could have used thousands of different effects but I just added the colors and the sun and clouds. I could have made it night time with a full moon or a cloudy sky and a raging storm. Wacom seems to be the tablet of choice among graphics designers and digital Now, to the printing. I wanted it printed on aluminum. I had done it once before and I really like the effect you get. And it's cheaper. I searched locally with no success I wanted the 1st one to be 16x20 and I found a place in the Bay area that looked promising. With a first time coupon, it came to $65 more or less. The second and third one were 8x10 and much cheaper, plus free shipping for the 3 of them. They can print them much larger, but since it was the first time, I didn't want to have an expensive problem with them. the aluminum is very thin but still strong. They use color dyes on the metal just as if were paper. Now that it is hanging on my wall, I am thinking ? that if I ever sell the 16x20, I would print another but larger. Sell it? sure, $400 OBO over $350. The 8x10 will be $200 firm. The editing sotware that Blogger is using, is junk. I tried to get rid of the excess space at the end of the text. Could not do it. I have to admit that my coding skills have been eroded by time. I retired about 17 years ago and will be 81 in 2 months. But, so what! The software is supposed to be user friendly, no matter what age you are. Being owned by Amazon is probably the reason for the change in use-ability.