Just a random portrait
Just a random portrait after a long time painted fully from imagination. Painted in Sketchbook on my iPad.
Tree in countryside
After a long time I’ve finally created a new digital painting. This one was done using Sketchbook on my iPad with Apple Pencil. I initially started with the tree and then expanded the countryside around it, purely from imagination. No references used.
River backwater
Painted digitally using Sketchbook on my iPad.
This was done on my iPad with Sketchbook. This time I took a break from traditional watercolour and decided to go with digital painting. Sketchbook has decent watercolour brushes which somewhat emulate the medium. This was a simple piece just to get comfortable with these brushes and I feel reasonably happy with it. While Adobe Fresco has some good live brushes to emulate real watercolour flow on paper, it tended to crash on my iPad. So I went back to Sketchbook which is snappy and lightweight compared to Fresco.
Overall I would love to see Krita available on the iPad. Sadly I don’t think there will be a port available in the foreseeable future thanks to Apple’s licensing policy with regard to GNU GPL.
More traditional watercolour landscapes
Traditional watercolour painting
After a long time, I’ve done a traditional watercolour painting.
After painting digital for a long time, it was nice to head back to traditional media with its challenges and limitations. I felt quite anxious about this one, but decided to be bold and go ahead with painting freely. I think it has come out better than I expected, since I wasn’t too sure if I could control the flow of water on paper. Unlike the standard practices of watercolour, I have made heavy use of colour and layering, and even used white paint. I must look to get better at this with more practice. Done on A4 size 300 GSM “Anupam” brand watercolour paper; it does take quite a bit of water without buckling.
“Night Driving”
This time I wanted to paint something atmospheric and from imagination. Done with Krita using the RGBA brushes on my XP-Pen Artist 10s as usual.
For this piece, I went with my imagination and had a lot of fun doing the damaged road. On many Indian roads damaged sections are sometimes marked with a branch of a tree planted into the ground by the locals for motorists to sight and avoid, when there is nothing better like a reflective warning triangle available. Night driving is particularly hard on sections of damaged highways with no streetlights and on-coming vehicles, especially heavy vehicles, using powerful high-beam headlamps.
Resort
My latest painting in Krita, using the WaterC brushes.
Again, an attempt using the WaterC brushes. I think my style tends more towards acrylic painting than loose and transparent water colours. Like many of my previous paintings, this one is also referred from one of my photos. I don’t know whether I will continue with this brush set in the future, since I like the RGBA impasto brushes better (they have great texture and character). But for now I am reasonably happy with the result of this one.
Lake view
Another landscape, painted using the WaterC brushes in Krita this time.
Like many of my landscapes, this one too is based off one of my photos. The boat in the lake and the man watching from the foreground are my own additions. I am trying to do improvisations like this to develop my skills further. Though I am not totally happy with the level of emulation of watercolour in this attempt I like the brushes enough to try a few more in the future. Now, if only they weren’t so laggy on my laptop…
Old Red Bungalow
Another landscape/scenery, based on another one of my photos. I really enjoyed doing this one, and I am reasonably happy with it, though I wanted to enhance the lighting/mood a bit more.
Again, painted using the RGBA Impasto brushes. The inspiration for this comes from this photo of mine. Obviously I have made a few improvisations to it.
The location is of historical interest and has a personal connection. This building is located in the same compound as “Sribagh” which is a larger bungalow built by one of my illustrious ancestors. The property was later bought by the owner of Amrutanjan, Kashinathuni Nageshwara Rao and is a prime piece of real estate in Mylapore, Chennai. It was also the place where the Sribagh Pact was entered into.
Broken mountain road
Another landscape using the awesome RGBA brushes in Krita 5 beta 2.
This one is inspired from one of my photographs. I have got a bit more comfortable with the RGBA impasto brushes and I improvised a bit from the reference photograph (one of my own photos) by making the road a bit more broken and interesting than it actually was. Part of learning landscape painting is understanding where to deviate from the reference image to make it more interesting and I still feel like a newbie at this. In any case I am quite happy with the result.