Digital spiral

I know that this is a repeat pic from a post below, but it was too appropriate to not use for Illustration Friday's prompt of swirl.

I'll try to do something new later in the week. Given my recent track record, it may or may not be posted.

We'll see.

More digital silliness

Maybe silliness isn't the right word, but calling it art seems kind of weird.

I have a few different... let's call them autodrawing apps for lack of a better term... on my phone and tablet. On my phone I'll use them if I'm waiting for something and don't feel like checking twitter or playing a game (ah, modern life). On my tablet it's sometimes distraction when I have a headache, sometimes wanting something to do with my hands, and sometimes just being too lazy to find something to do.

I don't, I should make clear, use them for meditation or trying to clear and/or focus my brain. I know some people have luck with that, but my thought processes just don't work that way. For me, it's just idle fun.

The odd thing, though, is that I often find myself somewhat drawn into the art aspect of it without realising it. For example, I have two kaleidoscope-type apps; one of which aimed at adults and the other just at entertaining kids. I get artsy with both of them, sometimes without meaning to. I guess some things are just ingrained within us somehow.

Anyway, here are a few of my latest down-time "art" offerings. Of these, Magic Fluids (the one that looks sort of like an aurora borealis) is the only app that I've actually paid for the upgraded version because I find it fascinating. The shot you're seeing here is from the free version, though.

Just a bit of recent pattern play

Silliness

I'm not doing Illustration Friday this week (the prompt is Prince: I know what most people have posted, and I don't do portraits. I'm also not in the mood to put a twist on it).

In lieu of that, here's a fairly bad cat doodle (done in multicoloured pencil, no less) that has been completely warped over by digital filters.





Sometimes it fun to just be silly instead of worrying about getting results. I need to remind myself of that too frequently.

Just a couple of doodles

 This was just a bit of play with the Wacom Bamboo Paper app on my tablet. So far not bad, but I have another app that I like a bit better (I'll upload something form it at some point or other). Still, can't complain much about something that I got for free.

I still don't think I'll get rid of paper since texture is such a big part of things for me, but for casual doodling digital can be handy.

As I'm learning.

Spin in... pixels, I guess.

This week's Illustration Friday prompt is spin. This? Well, to be honest it's from a drawing app that's supposed to be for kids but is endlessly entertaining for my personal inner five-year-old. We all need a little doodle time, I figure.

I'll throw in a couple of bonus spins below; believe me, there were plenty more from that particular session. I just didn't want to overdo it.

City in watercolour

This week's Illustration Friday prompt is city, and I'll likely edit this post before I put it there because it's a pain posting from the phone with a quick phone scan. Edit: decided not to edit.

Anyway, this is pretty much what the city felt like to me when I first moved to one from a small town. My neighbourhood was ok, but downtown was completely overwhelming and didn't feel like it was made to human scale. And if you could find a sliver of blue sky and sunlight, well, that pretty much made your day.

I'd intended this to be the first layer of something more elaborate, but as I was waiting for it to dry I realised that it already said city to me. All I did in the end was to add a black dot.

That's me, of course.

Just for interest's sake, below you'll find the doodle I did when I was deciding how to approach the prompt. Guess I was having a vague shape day in general.

Branches with chickadee

This week's Illustration Friday prompt is animal. And this is another week of me making myself slightly uncomfortable.

I just don't know where manipulated photos fit in my personal art, you see. I've no doubt that there's art to it, just as I've no doubt that I've put some work into this and made some choices. I almost want to show you the original so that you can see the differences, but in a way that bothers me even more. You know, like I'm a five-year-old trying to prove that colouring outside the lines makes it my picture now.

Ah well. That's as may be. And if I get time later today maybe I'll do something that involves actual paper and I'll feel happier about the whole thing.

A bit of discomfort isn't a bad thing anyway, I figure.

A couple of photographic abstracts

 Just playing here, really. I took a few shots at a low shutter speed while moving the camera, then ran them through some filters with a simple photoeditor. I do it fairly frequently, actually, but these ones turned out kind of neat so I thought I'd post them.

I'm of two minds about things like this, to be honest. On the one hand, I made choices here. I decided where to crop, I decided what and how much colour I wanted, how many layers there were going to be, and how much of the original photo was still identifiable. But... does that make it art?

I suppose it does under most definitions, but it just doesn't feel like it to me. Manipulating photos, at least the way I do it, just seems too... I don't know, easy? effortless?... to count. I mean, don't get me wrong. I am definitely not saying that digital artists aren't artists. Not everything everyone does is to my tastes, of course, but I'm not trying to imply that there's not art there. There is. For me, though, when I do things like this I don't feel like I'm making art.

I'm playing. I'm seeing what happens when I press a particular button. If I don't like it, I try another button until I find what I want.

But doesn't that make it art, then? Do I really need to be holding a pencil in my hand to give myself permission to think that the end result could be considered art?

By the way -- for those stumbling onto this blog for the first time, I should say that when a post is nothing but questions it generally means that I really don't know where I'm going with this...

Anyway. I know that many people out there wrestled with this question ages ago and came down on whatever side suits their philosophy best, and that I probably seem pretty late to the party. I'm not; I think about these things a lot. I just don't usually post the things I'm playing with while I'm thinking of them, that's all.



Maybe I should do it more often.

Hiding Place in... um, 3DS?

This week's Illustration Friday prompt is secret.

Have you ever stashed that secret name or photo in a locket to keep it close to your heart?

I...

Haven't, actually. I never was good at the romance thing. I do, however, own the locket that this doodle is loosely based on. I'm wearing it right now, in fact. It's very, very empty.

I guess I'm a little lacking in secrets. Interesting ones, anyway.

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Just wondering: does this still count as any sort of form of art at all when it was done on a toy while watching a House rerun?

Just for fun...

A quick digital version of last weekend's magpie. Done on my 3DS, so not exactly the most sophisticated software, but it didn't turn out all that badly for a first go, I figure.

Lunch-hour scribble

It's a tree.

More or less.

Yeah, thanks for that moment of obviousness, Dee.

Something weird

I'm not entirely sure what it is. Vaguely abstract-rose-ish, maybe?

Truth be known, I was just playing around with The Scribbler. Thanks to Sparroweye for the heads-up on that one. It's sort of fascinating to watch what it will generate from a silly doodle.

And obviously, if I'm posting a scribble I haven't bothered to do any real doodling these past couple of days. I also wasn't in the mood to look up a poem.

So there you go, I guess. Better than nothing.