Art

How small a size can I get away with?

Does it still look like what I had in mind, a cat on a stool, at a fraction of 160 x 160 pixels?

The design of this cat seems too flat to get enough realism to relate to. Cats aren’t known for subtle facial expressions, since the appropriate facial muscles weren’t needed evolutionary. If real cats can’t emote like humans, studying real cats seems a dead end, though they can emote somewhat.

Describing (illustrating) and experiencing emotions are quite distinct. The former can be misrepresented and misinterpreted. Emotions are an involuntary response to a situation. Therefore, the trick seems to be to create clear circumstances that put the words and/or marks into the right context.

I tried animation in ibisPaint X again, and I can get it to export a single frame only. Either I’m doing something wrong, or the file export is broken on the iPad 9th gen. Frames can’t be exported as single PNG files either, so it seems a lost cause to try and animate with this painting app.

Learning about image size and how to stylize. I see how important it is to have a workflow, and not to overwork an image. Now I’m curious how Mastodon messes up my art. I already know micro∙blog displays artwork rather faithfully, because the developer cares about such things.

My first simple two-frame animation in IbisPaint X at a tiny scale (80 x 72 pixels). I had to assemble it in Pixaki to make it animate, since IbisPaint chopped off the second frame. It’s clear to me that animation was bolted on in a later version, not put in from the start.

I’ve been drawing on the iPad since they first came out. Back then there was no Apple Pencil and its fancy features, just your finger or a passive stylus. I hadn’t set up the stylus in IbisPaint X, and not noticed. Of course, with pressure sensitivity, drawing is much easier.

Three days ago I failed miserably at drawing a giant tortoise. Having done some simpler shapes, I was now able to capture a mediocre likeness, which is a huge improvement, in my opinion.

The drawing prompt for the Draw Every Day app was wrench, I found in SketchFab, and drew in IbisPaint X.

I’m pleased that drawing from observation goes so much better than a week ago. It all starts with estimating the bounding box around the shape, then drawing in a rough shape and applying blobs of paint.

Theme: “Dessert Island.”

Based on my previous sketch I made a pixel art version. To me it doesn’t look very convincing, which probably means I have to revise my process.
👾

I decided to go smaller than my previous 240 by 240 pixels in IbisPaint X, and use 160 pixels squared. It’s amazing that even at that scale one get a recognizable image. I guess I don’t need Glaze art protection to “prevent” some rogue AI to steal my art for profit.

Also, drawing small is cute 😻

I almost did a spit take when Daniel said how he’d pronounce Humane’s product name “Ai” (instead of the regular spelling “AI”) in the latest episode of the Core Intuition podcast 572.

Drawing is a kind of storytelling, at least, it is to me. So whether or not a drawing is “good” depends on how well I illustrated a story in an image. Apart from the obvious anatomical errors, I think I did well enough.

Another drawing to practice my observational skills, done in IbisPaint X. I started with a rough sketch, corrected and then refined. After picking my color palette, I roughly colored the sketch. The reference came from the SketchFab app, in which I posed the 3D model so that it looked nice.

Having some kind of process to capture the big shapes with (modified) simple shapes is a neat skill to have. So I decided to practice it in this drawing of a black and white kitten from a photo reference. While it’s close to the original, there are some slight differences, as there should be.

To compensate for not publishing a drawing yesterday.

It looks all out of proportion. Maybe using a raster is what I need as a (temporary) drawing aid. It’s fine to stylize once I know I can draw in a semi-naturalistic style.

The photo I wanted to use as a reference was mediocre at best, so I ended up tracing the face and hair by hand, then coloring it with my own colors, instead of those in the photo. Because it went so badly, it needed two days to be made. And yes, I learned some things.

I did some practice with simple shapes, and decided to try a more ambitious object, a teapot I found through the SketchFab app of 3D models. Again, I guessed wrong initially, but saw my mistake and corrected by deforming the drawing. Despite that it took over an hour, I’m pleased with the result.