Tuesday, November 4, 2008

Technique: More about that little painting


Warning: this may get vaguely technical ;)



I cut myself off in my last post about this little painting because I didn't want it to become an essay...but I still have more to discuss!


This time I experimented a little more with the technique I used. I applied the paints much more thinly (they are watercolours but last time I used them more like acrylics). And I used a brown pencil to outline and do some detail and shading (last time I used grey lead). What do you think?


I also messed around with Adobe Illustrator ('messed around' being a very apt description). I was trying to use the 'live trace' and 'live paint' tools but I really wasn't happy with the result. Live trace is a tool that converts an imported bit map image (in this case a digital photo of an ink drawing) into vector content (lines and fills on Illustrator). You can then use live paint to colour the drawing 'intuitively'.

I tried varying the settings for live trace but just couldn't get a result I was happy with and the whole process just gave me no happiness. Painting usually makes me smile. This just made me frown. This is one where the lines were closest to something I was happy with and I quickly filled in some colour to get an idea of how it would look. But I found no matter how much I changed the settings for live trace, the result just looked too computer generated for me. I think there is something special and real about a hand sketch and this just didn't have it.

2 comments:

renai said...

I agree that there is something more special about a hand drawing as opposed to a computer image. I do like the colours of the one at the bottom. Purple is all around this season.

Anonymous said...

I love the original but I also think the computer generated image is great too. It lends itself more to a commercial angle with it's boldness of line and colour. Maybe you could print it out and use it as the gift tag. It could then go in a little photo frame or be put into Ruby's photo album next to a picture of the two of you. xx