Last Friday was altogether different, as Dennis explained how he creates stunning artwork online. He had arranged lots of his beautiful work on tables. He had even created some bookmarks for us to take away as a souvenir.
Dennis explained that you can use your finger on the iPad but that this is just too thick for precision work. He operated his iPad with a special £80 ‘pencil’ which pairs with the iPad. This is used like a water brush – tilting and applying pressure create different thickness of line.
Dennis introduced us to 14 digital art programs and showed us how to use some of them: Procreate, Jackson’s Artgrid, Amaziograph, Flowpaper, i-pastels, My Sketch, Sketchbook.
Procreate comes with a handbook but you can learn a lot just by experimenting. There is a brush stroke library included but you can also download more, and even create stamps. Starting in black and white you can overlay shapes and then fill in with the iPencil. It feels like you are ‘painting’ with colour, but actually you are ‘painting’ with light. Dennis showed us how artwork can be built up in layers, giving us the added tip that these can be labelled to keep track of them. We also learned that it’s a good idea to save a copy of an image before you work on it, and you can import pdfs or photos in to many apps.
i-Pastels allows you to create art with smudges, fine work and many hues and shades – just like pastels but without the dirty fingers!
Halifax Art Society 