Already at a young age I began to draw. Later, during my exchange semester in St. Petersburg, I completed an art class for watercolour painting and for pencil drawing. I learnt various techniques and to trust my artist-intuition. … After a full week it’s so rewarding to sit down on a Sunday morning and bring one-pointed awareness to the colours on my piece of paper.
But it’s not always paper. I also enjoy to draw on my iPad. With the procreate app I can create pencil drawings and work very precisely. It’s a pixel-based program, while the Illustrator App, that I also use, is based on vectors. That makes it possible for me to illustrate, create logos and vector-graphics such as in my screen-designs of the fictive app.
Pen and Paper
Procreate
When I tried out the pencil on the iPad for the first time, I was astonished! It’s so precise and the pen even perceives the pressure. A fun fact: When I draw with pen on paper, I like to use a softlead pencil. Unfortunately what happens while drawing, I blur the lines that are already on my paper with my hand… When I draw with the pencil on the iPad, it just registers the pencil and not my hand on the paper, the screen, so that I don’t blur my painting. That’s a big plus when using the technical devices for drawing!
The app Procreate has the function to create Timelapse-videos of the drawing process. For this picture I created my own composition: Just placing a few objects next to each other and then I draw what I see. The cup handles were my favourite part.
This was a picture that I took during a hike. In the evening we usually do a little bonfire and cook food. Drawing the flames was a great challenge. Also the smoke of the fire was not easy to draw.
Watercolor
Colours in general – are so magical! When I first started experimenting with colours, I used acrylic once. When I attended the art class in St. Petersburg I tried out for the first time to paint with watercolours. I fell in love with it! It has something meditative and calming to it. It’s like listening to a gentle piano piece on a warm summer night. The colours blend smoothly into each other and create unique transitions. Depending the amount of water used, the kind of paper, the air in the room, my mood – there are so many factors – and when it all comes together the created art piece looks different every time!
While acrylic colours are strong and more ‘absolute’ when applied on the paper, watercolours are very soft and flexible. With every layer applied, the painting changes, but it’s never absolute. It’s always possible to remove colours with a lot of water (which is not possible with acrylic). It’s such a vivid process and I just love it.
There’s so much possible with watercolours. On the picture on the left I used more washed out, pale colours on the background and drew with ink the wild, rough flowers on top. In contrast the picture on the right, where I used clear, glowing colours and drew very fine brush strokes to create the woodpile and mushrooms. It’s an example of two very different styles.