art - tm - linux

geo-scramble

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geo-scramble

Update: Reposted the above at its intended size (500 x 500 pixels). The frames were made in GIMP and assembled in my old Windows GIF program. Earlier today I posted a 400 x 400 version assembled in Online Image Editor. It was resizing to fit OIE's 400 x 400 max dimensions and anti-aliasing, which is more tasteful but not what I intended for this GIF.

Update 2: Assembled the frames using GIMP and re-posted. I opened the frames (png files) as layers and exported as a GIF animation with the following items checked: (A) one frame per layer (replace)*; (B) 100 ms delay; (C) use delay entered above for all frames; (D) use disposal entered above for all frames. I left "interlace" unchecked. Per the help page: "Checking interlace allows an image on a web page to be progressively displayed as it is downloaded." Another thing I learned about GIMP: the pencil tool, which can be set to different widths, does not use antialiasing, so it's the tool of choice for pixel artists.

*Actually for a group of opaque frames the "disposal" doesn't seem to matter. The default is "I don't care."

sketch_k5

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sketch_k5

Drawn with Linux MyPaint.
I still haven't found a brush I like as much as the Chibi Paint "watercolor" brush.
There is a kind of a fine balance where a digital brush pulls the paint and where it is just smearing or blurring it.
The ideal brush for me would simultaneously be loading color and pulling it away from an adjacent mark, and actually looking like a brushstroke without obviously or self-consciously imitating physical media.
Most of the "blend" brushes in MyPaint just dissolve, so everything resembles the Photoshop smudge tool, an effect I dislike.
Here I am compensating by crosshatching, so a volume is built up with fine lines of gradually lightening or darkening color.
The Microsoft Paint brushes in the Windows 7+ versions don't have any dissolve function at all -- they are all very "scratchy." I ended up getting my best results with the "colored pencil," which had a softer, semi-transparent line.
It's hard being a primadonna in a world where the digital tools are conceived by engineers. "Hey ottist I made a brush for ya!"

painting thumbnails 3-4

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mypaintexperiments3-4_thumbs

Above: more thumbnails of paintings I've been doing using Linux MyPaint.

Was looking at Peter Halley's portfolio pages -- you click through dozens of his cell-and-conduit paintings, all roughly the same size thumbnails. It's an intriguing design exercise -- after so many years of production, there are hundreds of variations on the colors and basic shapes he employs. Halley wrote an essay in the '80s about Frank Stella and the simulacrum, arguing that Stella was neither the last formalist nor a "bureaucrat" but a post-modernist emerging early, in the 1960s. Halley's own career continued the logic of ironic serial production. He could even be said himself to have anticipated 3D printed canvases, since the actual objects he makes have a kind of chalky, plastic perfection. All those coats of acrylic could be passes of the print head, over and over until the surface is built up.
The ultimate logic of postmodern simulation would be to bypass the objects altogether and just have the digital archive of patterns. The art becomes more easily transmissible, gets out to more people, and doesn't add bulk matter to the universe.

sketch_k3

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sketch_k3

Drawn with Linux MyPaint and GIMP.
So far these tools are looking and handling similarly to the Chibi Paint plugin used by Computers Club Drawing Society (among other plugins).
Haven't figured out how to use the hard-edged black and white fill patterns as a brush, yet. I had to make an underlayer in GIMP with that stripe pattern and use the eraser in the top layer to pull it up.
MyPaint has more brushes and effects, a few of which aren't horrible.

Addendum: Am thinking I would like to see this Epson-printed at 17 x 22 inches on some kind of hand-crafted paper resembling a rumpled, brown grocery store bag.
Addendum 2: Added an off-white background.