86x8x6 LEARNING TO PAINT: 155 of 86

12 April, 2018

155 of 86

WASHING DAY

DIGITAL - ARTRAGE ON IPAD PRO. After buying an iPad Pro 12.9" tablet, I was soon downloading all the various painting apps and trying to get to grips with their complex array of tools. It was pretty confusing and eventually, I settled with ArtRage because it is very simple and intuitive. I have recently purchased Affinity Photo and hope to master its complexities, but for now, ArtRage is the paintbox of choice.

If you've never tried Digital Painting, you really should give it a go. I hear many people say "Yes, but it's not real art is it"? Well I'm not getting into that debate - all I will say that even if you don't approve of it for a final painting, it is absolutely superb as a Sketch Book for producing full paintings at a later day. You can take your tablet with you wherever you go and your work is usually automatically uploaded onto the iCloud and available to you wherever you are in the world.

I am lucky enough to own an Apple iPad Pro 12.9 with an Apple Pencil, but you can use ArtRage on virtually any tablet. My wife has a Samsung TAB-S3 which comes with a SUPERB pencil which doesn't even need charging!!

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Our Own Art-Club!

Each Friday we go to the local Art-Club in Horwich. It's a thriving club with a broad range of people of all ages and skill-levels. Apart from the regular painting sessions, we have many professional artists visiting us to demonstrate their skills and to run workshops.

But sometimes, it's nice when just a few friends get together mid-week too, and so here we are in Simon's "studio", benefitting from the skill and experience of his father, Brian Waddington. It looks a bit cramped in there, but we were just huddled together to fit in the photo frame :-)

And you can drink beer in this club! :-)

INTRODUCTION

Thank you for visiting my blog! It's my intention to post each of my paintings here as I go through the learning process. As you will soon discover, I am pretty damned awful at painting, but I am, at least, determined to get better. Hopefully, my work will show improvement over the coming months.

Originally, this blog was just about learning to paint in oils, and I was going to do 86 paintings in quick succession on 8"x6" panels using my Jullian pochade box. But that didn't quite workout, so I'm now going to make it about oils, watercolours, acrylics, whatever!

The oil-paints I use are either Winsor & Newton Griffin Alkyds which are quick drying, or Cobra Water-Mixable oils. I am seeking to develop a very loose and impressionistic style as I go along. To me, detail is the enemy!

Some of the paintings will be copies of someone elses work (ie from books), but as I improve, I hope to do a lot of plein air painting instead. Luckily, I live close to many well known beauty-spots.

UPDATE :
Since starting this blog, I've bought some W&N Artisan Oil paints which are water-based. They seem no different at all from the Griffin Alkyds and are far easier to work with in terms of cleaning up afterwards. Only down-side of course is that they're not dry with 24hrs like the Griffins.

UPDATE :

Bought a 12"x 10" OpenBox M Pochade setup to compliment my tiny Jullian. After using it with a 10x8 oil-panel, I must admit - it seems far easier to paint bigger than smaller! This kit, by the way, is a cracking pochade box. A bit on the expensive side, but luckily, I got mine on Ebay very cheaply. It will take panels or canvases up to 18 inches wide which is extremely versatile.

I've recently become interested in Digital Painting and have started to post those too. I normally use ArtRage on the iPad and PC but have just started to learn Corel Painter 2019 which I have installed on my Microsoft Surface Pro 5.

If you like any of my Digital Paintings, you can always contact me on tommcquiggan@gmail.com and ask for a FREE COPY of the image. I will send you a copy of the file via email and you can then have it printed onto canvas (or photo-paper) at your local Tesco, etc, to the size that suits you.

Please note that some of my earlier attempts at digital painting were done at low-resolution, so they may not be suitable for large scale canvases.