I just discovered what looks to be an amazing tool for the iPad. I remember distinctly thinking it would be nice to have Lightroom functionality on my iPad. Someone else thought that and did something about the thought.
It’s called Photosmith.
They’re looking to have it on the Apple Store the first week in April. I’m excited!
I’m slowly pushing through my Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain exercises. Still on section 1 – edge perception. The idea here is learn to see the object as it appears on a 2 dimensional plane. Not as we perceive it in our mind. Instead of drawing a hand, you draw a series of lines and shapes.
In this exercise she introduces setting a ground – toning the paper with a layer of graphite. That establishes the mid range. Lines and shading build the shadows, removing the ground provides the highlights. Surprisingly simpler than building everything from a white sheet. And she has us start using the picture plane:
This helps a great deal in translating the 3D image to a 2D representation in my mind. And it helps in visually recognizing angle and size relationships. I have to admit though – I’ve used it in previous exercises – the book shelf in the corner. I don’t think I could have got the angles near as close on that one if I hadn’t used the picture plane. There are some very subtle relationships in that image that I couldn’t see until I used the plane.
Exercise 9 was a revisit of drawing a hand. I did that as one of her pre-instruction images in Exercise 1. These are a distinct improvement.
The pre-instruction sketch:
Two new hand sketches, using the ground and picture frame, and a little more time and effort:
My finger appears to have healed since the first one.
I saw a painting in the BAM last week end that I liked. He had a color textured field with scattered shapes and some elements pasted in and around the shapes. I liked the idea so I played a little.
This isn’t a wow – just an exercise in playing with a textured background and dropping elements on it.
