{"id":777,"date":"2021-07-17T18:29:40","date_gmt":"2021-07-18T01:29:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/traceythompson.com\/art\/?p=777"},"modified":"2021-07-17T20:42:32","modified_gmt":"2021-07-18T03:42:32","slug":"my-experiment-with-digital-painting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/traceythompson.com\/art\/2021\/07\/17\/my-experiment-with-digital-painting\/","title":{"rendered":"My Digital Painting Experiment"},"content":{"rendered":"
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San Pablo Bay National Wildlife Refuge<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Why Digital Painting?<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

My day job has me parked in front of a computer so I\u2019ve waffled on digital sketching in the past. It seems silly to spend my downtime in front of yet another screen, especially these days when even my social life takes place over a video chat. But at the same time, digital sketching helped me keep my sanity over the last year and a half. The two reasons: it\u2019s convenient and it takes up little space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just prior to the pandemic, we took a quick family trip for my Dads\u2019 birthday on Amtrak\u2019s Texas Eagle. I love sketching on the train and immediately packed my watercolor kit, gouache kit, and all my pens. Feeling my backpack straps strain under the weight, I decided to unpack it and commit to a single medium: digital. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have a history of overpacking. On my Indiana Dunes trip<\/a>, I took 24 POUNDS<\/em><\/strong> of supplies. I did not want to repeat that mistake here. At a little over a pound, the iPad was exactly what I needed to travel light. I painted each day and still had room for clothes. With the Procreate app, I could quickly jump into a painting, then pause if I needed to without the hassle of setup and cleanup. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shortly after I returned, our community went into a shelter in place order. Suddenly every surface of our small apartment turned into an improvised office or school. I occasionally painted in watercolors, but quickly found myself returning to digital media. The convenience of this low footprint, zero cleanup method made it clear that digital was going to be the best medium to keep me sketching and painting in this crazy new world. I spent the next year and a half almost exclusively painting digitally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Illinois<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Kopperl, Texas<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Lindale, Texas<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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What I learned<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

I have so much I want to talk about regarding what I\u2019ve learned including how I got started, specific techniques I\u2019ve learned, and resources I\u2019ve found helpful. Or course that firehose of information is making it difficult to actually get this post done, so I\u2019ll break those topics up into a few blog posts that I\u2019ll post later. For now, I\u2019ll focus on what I learned at a high level. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

1) The convenience resulted in frequent practice <\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve struggled with digital painting in the past so I had low expectations for this experiment. But the adage is true: if you practice, you improve. Our new homebody lifestyles were far busier than I imagined. I found being able to pull out my iPad after dinner was over made it easier for me to make time to paint and sketch. When I got tired, I could just put the iPad away. The low overhead kept me moving on days when washing brushes seemed like too much.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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2) I built confidence experimenting with light  <\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

I have struggled to paint light the way I want to with physical media. So many times I\u2019d lose the lighting, struggle to try to get it back, and wound up with everything completely overworked. Because software like Procreate uses layers, I am able to turn the layers off, try a different method, then compare the two. It is easier for me to see what I\u2019ve done wrong, and how to get back on track. This has helped me understand how to better plan my compositions in physical media, and, at least with gouache, how to better correct my mistakes. I\u2019m building confidence to approach lighting in physical media I would not have attempted in the past.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Digital Still Life<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Still life in Gouache<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
3) I was able to focus on process<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

The convenience of digital media also helped me make time to think about my practice. I found time to think about what I was painting and why. That\u2019s something I\u2019m sure I could do while standing over the sink cleaning brushes, but it hadn\u2019t occurred to me before spending serious time sketching in Procreate. Using layers, I can put my notes right on the painting, then hide them when I share the work. It makes thinking through the composition a more seamless part of my workflow. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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4) What about physical media?<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

I am grateful to have an easy way to paint during all this chaos. While much of what I have learned translates back to physical media, I still have a bit of physical media guilt! I miss the feeling of a real brush. I know mixing colors in Procreate is nothing like mixing them in a pallet. I don\u2019t want to get too far from brush and paper. This tells me digital will not replace physical media for me. I sense it will be \u201cdigital and\u201d rather than \u201cdigital or.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Future Posts<\/strong> on Digital Painting<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

I hope to share more practical details of what I\u2019ve learned in future posts. Clipping masks have become a huge part of my process. I can\u2019t wait to share with you some of the amazing artists I\u2019ve been inspired by and learned from over the past few years. I also hope to share a bit of my other pandemic hobby: sketching birds. If you have a question or a topic you\u2019d like to see me cover, contact me on Instagram and I\u2019ll see if I can answer or work it into the next post. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Prints Now Available<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

One last thing, I recently launched an INPRINT store to make prints of my digital work. These are giclee prints with a digital signature. Check out https:\/\/www.inprnt.com\/gallery\/traceythompson\/ <\/a>to see what’s available. More to come! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Browse Prints<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Thank you and I hope you’re well!<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Thank you for reading. I know this has been a long, challenging run for all of us.
I hope you and your families are healthy, happy, and safe. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Why Digital Painting? My day job has me parked in front of a computer so I\u2019ve waffled on digital sketching in the past. It seems silly to spend my downtime in front of yet another screen, especially these days when even my social life takes place over a video chat. But at the same time,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[21,8],"class_list":["post-777","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-process","tag-digital-painting","tag-process"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p91V5n-cx","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/traceythompson.com\/art\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/777","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/traceythompson.com\/art\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/traceythompson.com\/art\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/traceythompson.com\/art\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/traceythompson.com\/art\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=777"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/traceythompson.com\/art\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/777\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":820,"href":"https:\/\/traceythompson.com\/art\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/777\/revisions\/820"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/traceythompson.com\/art\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/traceythompson.com\/art\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/traceythompson.com\/art\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}