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5 iPhone Apps for Artists

by GuestAuthor on February 15, 2012

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The iPhone has variable uses. Apart from the customary features that an iPhone is endowed with, for example, iOS 5, iCloud, A5 Processor, Better Camera compatibility and Display screen of 3.5 inches, there is a range of apps that can be downloaded on to the iPhone for subjects as varied as exercise, diet control and heart control and what have you. However, if you are an artist, have you ever heard of special iPhone apps for an artist?

Here are 5 iPhone apps for artists.

Colored Pencils

Colored pencils is an app designed to reproduce the effect of drawing with color pencils. It is interesting because you can replicate even the pressure applied on the lines so that they taper off towards the end. Though there is no apparent flexibility to the mark value, its transparency can easily be adjusting it. This app takes care of paper texture, and if your intention is only to draw lines; colored pencils would be your ideal choice.

Brushes

This app allows you to paint as if you would do in Adobe Photoshop. With an easy interface and multiple layers, this app allows you to retrace your steps and correct the errors. Transparency can easily be adjusted with the offer of several brushes to choose from, in the app. Using two fingers; you can use the zoom out facility conveniently. Other unique features are that all your brush strokes are recorded after downloading into your file and can be replayed in Mac OS X, allowing for export as a Quick Time movie, bringing your painting to life after finishing it.

Layers

This is an app with a painting agenda, comprising five layers of paint/color, which you can comfortably manipulate to move, edit or remove at will. By far, one of the easiest apps for painters, it is easy to use and justifies its name. Although these features are available in Brushes, as well, it definitely seems easier to handle under this app, which also boasts of a smudge tool, which, though attractive on paper, seems a little impracticable in actual use. This app provides you the facility of being able to change brush sizes as well as transparency and color. “Layers” is MAC OS X compatible, and like “Brushes,” can be replayed in its viewer. Being able to send finished images as JPG or PSD files on email is a top feature of layers.

SketchBook Mobile

This is an extension of the other apps, and features layers. The advantage is that you get to play with six layers in this app, and what’s more, layers can be duplicated. This app features oodles of pencils, brushes, and even markers, with facilities to customize the brush settings. However, most users have given kudos to SketchBook Mobile for its unique feature of synthetic pressure sensitivity, which purportedly, not only gives a natural effect to your markers, but also gives you an impression that you are working with a tablet, when using this app.

Flipbook

This app enables you the wonderful feature of being able to bring animation to your iPhone. Its unique onion skin feature enables you to see what you have earlier drawn, thereby making animation much easier. This feature is not only useful, but is also an equally enjoyable one, further allowing sharing your finished product.

The foregoing 5 iPhone apps for artists are sure to provide a fillip for the artists and also allow them to have fun while using them.

Kevin Pritchard works for the marketing department of Click Discounts where you can get some useful clickdiscounts money saving offers to help you make some savings on your purchases.


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How to Paint Like Leonardo da Vinci

by GuestAuthor on February 1, 2012

da Vinci’s Painting Technique

Throughout his years (1452-1519), Leonardo da Vinci employed a variety of techniques from painting on a dry stone wall to using wet plaster depending on the work surface he was commissioned to paint. Leonardo da Vinci typically painted with oil paint that he made by hand from ground pigments; later in his career, he worked with tempera made from egg whites. His work surface typically would be a canvas or board, or sometimes stone when painting a mural. As da Vinci began a painting, he would start by covering the canvas with a pale gray or brown, using the neutral color for underpainting. Atop of the underpainting, da Vinci would layer transparent glazes within a small range of tones. Typically, the colors used were natural hues; da Vinci never used intense or bold colors or tints in contrasting colors. By using such a small range of colors, he was able to give his finished works a more cohesive appearance.

Palette colors

The Leonardo da Vinci painting technique used natural hues that were muted in intensity. Most often, his works used blues, browns and greens in accordance to the earth itself. He also incorporated neutral grays, typically for underpainting.

Glazes

Leonardo incorporated glazes using the da Vinci painting technique of sfumato.  Meaning “like smoke,” smufato consists of applying dark glazes in place of blunt colors to add a depth that could not be achieved otherwise. Leonardo da Vinci explained how he created compound colors by painting a transparent colour over another color.  This technique created what he described as a compound color that is composed of, but differs from, each of the simple colors.

Techniques Used to Create His Great Works of Art

One of his most well-known paintings, the Mona Lisa, displays some of the techniques used by da Vinci in its grandeur. For instance, the use of sfumato gave the painting an illusion of somberness and mystery, while his choice of color palette reflects why her lips and eyes are so pale.

In The Last Supper, da Vinci used tempera over an underpainting made from ground pigments called gesso, which caused the painting to become almost unrecognizable 100 years later. He also painted directly on the stone wall surface rather than painting on wet plaster, as was the norm, which means it is not a true fresco painting.

About Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci is easily recognized as one of the greatest painters the world has ever known. Some of his most famous paintings include the Mona Lisa, The Last Supper and the Vitruvian Man. Known as the true Renaissance Man, da Vinci was also an inventor as noted by his collections of sketches of mechanics that would take centuries to come to fruition. He was also known for being a chronic procrastinator. For those interested in learning from the Italian artist, it is imperative to study the da Vinci painting technique. An artist of the Old Style, very few of his paintings exist today, totaling a dozen or so, because of his revolutionary (albeit often destructive) techniques. However, from the surviving da Vinci paintings we are able to understand a little more about how to paint in his style.

Leon Grey writes about Leonardo Da Vinci’s Life. See the complete website at www.davincilife.com.

When a transparent color lies over another color differing from it, a compound color is composed which differs from each of the simple colors. .


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