The Bradford Media Museum unveils its new Prehistory of Video Games exhibit.
Happy birthday to Bridie
The Prehistory of Video Games
Frosty Morning
It was muddy going around Newmillerdam yesterday but this morning it’s crunchy underfoot and ice has formed over parts of the lake.
Monday Mornings
The usual pattern for Monday mornings is that, while I sit and draw ducks, Barbara and her brother John walk off around the lake. Sadly not today as John was admitted to hospital yesterday. Monday mornings are just not going to be the same.
“Would you like to see what Richard’s been drawing?” asks Barbara.
“No,” says John.
“It’s good!” I reassure him.
“It’s always good when Richard draws it.” he replies.
Glad his condition hasn’t affected his aesthetic judgement.
Canada Geese in Flight
On Román García Mora’s Naturalist Animal Illustration with Procreate course I’ve gone back to a ‘task’ in an earlier unit, ‘Sketching in Front of the TV’. On YouTube I’ve found a National Geographic video of Canada geese taking off and drawn them on freeze-frame.
Having drawn them so much from life with wings folded it’s interesting to see what happens when the wings open up.
More Recent Sketches
More recent sketches on the iPad and in pen and ink and watercolour plus on today’s sketch of the railway bridge seen from Books on the Lane, Walton, a dash of Gold Blend coffee to create a blotchy ink wash.
A6 Freewriter
Unfortunately our local art shop has been closed for a week due to the latest bout of flu so I’ve gone for an Eco Grey Leather A6 Freewriter with a ‘recycled’ cover made from an offcut of leather. The cover makes it difficult to scan, but the Chambers Biographical Dictionary is sufficient to flatten it on the scanner. The creamy coloured paper doesn’t take watercolour as well as my regular sketchbooks. I prefer white paper when I’m scanning watercolours.
But as a sort of pocket notebook it should be fine.
The sketchbook and pen were drawn in my A5 Seawhite travel journal and you can see it’s more sympathetic to watercolour.
The Hidden side of Procreate
No, this isn’t a goose watching its favourite anserine TV soap . . .
I’ve learnt a lot from the online course Naturalist Animal Illustration with Procreate but some of the ‘hidden’ features of the program are a bit difficult to grasp when the course is in Spanish and you’re trying to take in both subtitles and – to me – unfamiliar names on the Spanish version of the various tools and menus, so today I booked a free ‘Introduction to Procreate’ session at the Apple Store in Trinity Light in Leeds and I was able to delve into the mysteries of Alpha lock, importing a reference image and the various options for blending.
Sketchbook to Procreate
Rather than re-draw the Canada goose from my sketchbook, today I went to Procreate’s ‘Action’ menu and chose ‘Take a photo’ and used the rear camera of the iPad. I scaled up the photo to get the drawing I was after to fill the canvas.
Now that I’m more familiar with the process of putting together a drawing, following Román García Mora’s suggestions for an ‘illuminated drawing’, the next stage is to get more of the natural variation of watercolour washes into the illustration.
Procreate: Naturalist Illustration
Wet weather even for the ducks and geese this morning so I’m trying the process of drawing an animal in Procreate on an iPad Pro as suggested by Román García Mora in his Naturalist Animal Illustration with Procreate course on Domēstika.
His favourite style is what he calls ‘illuminated drawing’ in the tradition of 18th and 19th century natural history illustration where a line drawing of the animal was printed and the colour added by hand in watercolour, so you get the definition of an ink drawing and the luminosity of watercolour.
Geese Preening
10.05 a.m.: I’m counting about 85 Canada geese this morning but a passing dog walker tells me that for two days last week he thought that they’d deserted, there were none on the lake.
Two passers by comment on the single drake mandarin that is looking immaculate but sadly hasn’t yet attracted a mate. I’m here for the geese but if he swims over towards me I won’t be able to resist drawing him.