Dennis Jones
eclectic artwork & other random things
My Annual Ipad Digital Painting Rant
Once a year I seem to go on a rant about the iPad and how I wish it were a better device for mobile digital painting. All I’m wanting to do is collapse into a chair in my living room in front of a football game on tv, press a button and instantly be able to digitally paint during the commercials… is that too much to ask?
I do my professional studio work on a Wacom Cintiq hooked up to an iMac with Adobe Photoshop and I’m a huge fan of all these products. I have a smaller 12 inch Cintiq (which is great) to work with on the road, but it has to be powered by a laptop computer, has six kazillion cords to hook it up with and you have to be next to an electrical socket to make it all work… not exactly the spontaneous mobile painting experience I’m looking for in a portable device…
…so I keep trying to make the iPad fill this need, and while Apple’s not doing a whole lot to help me out with this (other than to provide the most fabulous, ground breaking, magical device ever) outside developers are quickly filling the digital painting void. I’m currently using a Wacom Intuos Creative Stylus 2. It has a finer point than a typical stylus, links to the iPad via wifi and delivers faux pressure sensitivity. The product I cannot say enough about is a painting app called ProCreate. It honestly has almost every Photoshop tool I typically use to paint with plus a few… like saving video of your work process.
So this is my latest experiment to see how well an iPad could work as a mobile digital painting studio.
First of all, a traditional sketchbook, mechanical pencil, iPad and Wacom stylus are all extremely portable. I still prefer to draw with a pencil and paper, so I snapped a photo of a drawing in my sketchbook using the camera on the iPad and imported it into the ProCreate app. Because I am just wanting to have fun (and don’t want to paint a background) I fire up the iPad internet browser, find an image and import it into ProCreate to paint on top of. You can see my painting process in the short video (exported out of ProCreate) below.
My conclusion: I was able to plop down in a chair, fire up my iPad instantly with the press of a button, snap a photo, surf the web, paint a picture, export video of it and when all was said and done, the most important part of the whole thing was …it was really fun.
Another Wall Mural
Here’s another wall I did for the church in Memphis.
On this one I was asked to use their existing logo and create a bunch of children interacting with it in some way.
Custom Church Wall Art
I recently had the opportunity to create illustrations for the walls of a really great church down in Memphis, Tennessee. They sent me photographs that mapped out all the appropriate wall dimensions. I imported those pictures into photoshop and roughly figured out what the different components would be for each illustration.
After the wall ideas were approved, I executed the finished art and sent it to the printer.
The illustrations were then printed out in sections and installed to the wall.
1970 Opel Kadett
My very first car was a pale yellow, 1970 Opel Kadett… basically a tin can with custom installed Cherry Bomb mufflers. It’s best feature was a gigantic, state of the art, AM-FM/8 Track/Cassette stereo that cranked out more horsepower than the poor little 4-cylinder engine ever did. Sadly, I have no pictures of my beloved car, so I had to draw it by memory…
…and according to my razor sharp memory, this is EXACTLY what it looked like.
Antiquated Artist Clip Files
Gather ’round kids and I’ll tell you a story of how old timers used to make pictures back in the olden days.
As an illustrator, you have to be ready and able to draw anything a client might ask for, so photo reference is a must. In pre-internet days, artists were continually begging people to give them their old magazines. They would then spend hours looking through them, ripping pictures out and organizing them into file folders. By saving various pictures of random things, there was a slight chance that when a future client asked you to draw some obscure subject, you might actually get lucky and magically find a picture of it in your files. The more expansive your “clip file” was, the greater chance you had of finding usable reference in it. Not exactly an ideal system but better than nothing… slightly.
Finding reference material is so much easier today. The last magazine job I did was a story about a guy finding Elvis’s rusty old motorcycle in a garage sale. The client wanted a caricature of the writer dressed as Elvis and sitting on the motorcycle. I jumped onto the internet, googled up a motorcycle and an Elvis costume and within minutes was working my drawing out.
The good old days were good old days, but I’m a pretty big fan of new technology. These days if a client calls and wants a picture of a Gobi Jerboa, I can quickly look it up, read all about it, find a dozen good pictures to work from and draw a Gobi Jerboa that actually looks like a Gobi Jerboa.
Coming Full Circle
I started my journey into adulthood wearing a powder blue tuxedo (pretty much the same one Harry wears in the movie Dumb And Dumber) and now I’ve come full circle. The team I currently play hockey for has a jersey that exact same color…
…and, yes, I thought for sure I broke my nose in last nights game.
Salvation Army Band
I’ve been extremely busy for the last several months, so not a lot of posts happening on the old blog. One of my jobs was drawing an old time Salvation Army Band… for the Salvation Army of all people… in Canada – ay! Big fun!
Summer Grilling
Another snippet from the book I’ve been illustrating. I finished the art, sent everything in to the publisher and the book is due to be printed and available sometime this fall.
Death And Taxes
Benjamin Franklin said that in this world there is nothing certain except death and taxes, but I would add one more thing to that… death, taxes AND the palms of your hockey gloves rotting out. It will always happen and when it does there’s not a lot you can do except buy new gloves.
My summer hockey season has started (I don’t usually play summer hockey, but when I do, I try to make sure it’s in the summer) and while checking my equipment before game time, sure enough, I discovered the palms of my gloves were all but gone.
There is another old saying… necessity is the mother of invention… and it just so happens that I ran over a pair of leather work gloves with my riding mower (it’s been an eventful week for me) so in a desperate attempt NOT to buy new hockey gloves, I grabbed a needle and thread and re-palmed my hockey gloves with the chewed up work glove.
Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
…And Another Little Look
The new book I am currently illustrating has a little bit of everything in it. Here’s another snippet showing concept, rough and finished art.
Another Look At The Book
Here’s another small glimpse of the book that I am currently illustrating. I tried something new on this one. On previous books I’ve always figured everything out on paper first. On this one, I did all the “figuring out” on the computer. I first created the book spreads in Photoshop, added text to the pages and then roughed out picture ideas with a blue digital brush. This approach really worked well for me as it kept my roughs fast and loose and made it extremely easy to try different layouts as I searched for the right picture.
A New Book In The Works
I’m currently illustrating a new book. The publisher has graciously agreed to allow me to share a few snippets of it, so here’s a small glimpse. The book is scheduled for release in the fall and once we are past the confidentiality stage of this process, I will be able to disclose more information about it.
Unwittingly A Champion
My hockey season was drawing to a close. Two weeks ago, our game was delayed because someone skated over a goalies wrist in the game before ours. The paramedics got him stabilized and carted off (sobering) they got the ice cleaned up (also sobering) and we finally played our game… AND WON. “That figures” I thought. “Why can’t we play this way when it really counts?” The season was over and now it was time for our playoffs to begin.
Yesterday after a two week break (no hockey scheduled last weekend because of Easter) I jumped in the car and headed for the ice rink, eager to play in our first game of the playoffs.
We won the game and everyone on my team got really excited. After shaking hands with the other team, my teammates threw their equipment all over the ice and crowded around our goal. I was excited too, because I thought we got to advance in the playoffs and play again next week. Then the guy in charge of the league walked out onto the ice with a gigantic trophy, handed it to our goalie and people started taking pictures of us. Apparently, we had started the playoffs weeks before and unbeknownst to me, our team had just won the championship game for our division… huh? …I mean, yea!!
Everyone on the team also got a cool little portable speaker. My only regret was that we did not receive them until we were exiting the building… because I sure would’ve enjoyed lifting my championship mini portable speaker over my head and skating it triumphantly around the hockey rink just like they do with the Stanley Cup.
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Dennis Jones 