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Cat in Aquarium

Thought I'd try my hand in digital art. This took me a while to get used to, as I never did anything like this before. I did one layer for the basic drawing, and a few layers more for coloring, shading, and erasing. I added one more layer for the background and decreased its opacity to give it an impression that the cat is looking at the fish. BTW, I used Sketchbook Express on my iPad.

I should get motivated by looking at everyone's cool stuff.I like it all.There's so much to do outside and I have been taking photos to paint,maybe when it gets really hot I'll be inside more and finish what I've started.I've got some ideas but not the time or energy right now.

^Thanks! Like I said, I'm new to this digital art thing. Maybe I'll experiment with it a bit more later...

[img][800:580]http://img833.imageshack.us/img833/4179/1h7t.jpg[/img]

[img][800:720]http://i1292.photobucket.com/albums/b570/traillight09/IMG_0322_zpsddadee87.jpg[/img]

mountain stream

evening, after a rainy day, looking toward canyon at sunset

[img][800:768]http://i1301.photobucket.com/albums/ag105/KiKiBomb87/b3d9bbbdd5e6a824de6f7ae5dc512ec0_zps4d9f1b5f.jpg[/img]

Northern Lights

I really liked how this turned out. I did the sky first, then I added the Northern Lights. I also added detailing on the stars and trees.

^ Nice aurora!


Greco-African Portrait
Don't really have much to say about this other than that this nameless character has both Greek and African ancestry. He could come from Ptolemaic Egypt, where Greeks would have mingled with the native Egyptians, Nubians, and other Africans.

Something I noticed yesterday, but seems obvious is how different everyone's art looks on different monitors. I was looking at your pieces yesterday at work and everyone's work, except NeXus_Blueliner, looked a bit washed out. When I got home, and looked at them, everyone's work really popped, had nice contrast, and the colors were more brilliant. For instance WitchsCat's Cat in a Fishbowl looked gorgeous either way. At work, the colors were more pastel, whereas at home the colors and hues had more contrast and more brilliance. For alphineglows watercolors, it really made a difference. At work, alpineglow's watercolors looks a bit washed out, which left me a little perplex. At home, oh my god, what a difference!

So keep in mind when viewing or posting others artwork, what you see is not always what the artist intended. If you compare pictures of an art piece in books and on the web, you will see it can look very different from one image to the other. Art reproduction is tricky.

There are programs to help adjust our monitors contrast, brilliance, and gamma to something approaching a standard, though it is still a bit subjective. I realize that many of you probably know this, but I completely for got this because all of my monitors are calibrated, except the one monitor I was using yesterday.

If you do a search for "calibrating your monitor" adding the operating system name to the serach (windows, window XP, Linux, or mac), you should find directions. On an iPad, which I think some of you use, I'm not sure. You can do a search.

I really do enjoy looking at everyone's work. Thank you for sharing. I like your latest as well, BrandonSP. The composition reminds me of a Vermeer painting, Girl with a Pearl Earring, but that is not why I like it.

^ Thank you, pcgoblin.


Queen Nefertiti Uncrowned
Portrait of the famous Egyptian Great Royal Wife Nefertiti (1370-1330 BC) with her distinctive cylindrical blue crown removed. When drawing her facial features, I used an authentic unpainted bust of her as a reference, though I had some trouble with the nose. The cocoa skin tone I've given her matches that of painted wall reliefs depicting her from her palace at Amarna. The short Afro hairstyle is my own artistic speculation, but then short Afro hair is easy for me to draw anyway.

this is called "totally bamboozled" .
it is an expression of dismay after realizing that nothing is worth being interested in.

I had to get my feelings out and found this helped a lot.

[img][800:580]http://img542.imageshack.us/img542/8687/imsf.jpg[/img]

^ Love his skull and the sketchy quality in general!


Hatshepsut and Cleopatra VII Redux
Drawn on paper and colored in Photoshop Elements, this depicts the two most famous female monarchs from ancient Egyptian history. On the left is Hatshepsut, a native Egyptian Pharaoh, while on the right is the Ptolemaic Queen Cleopatra VII (she's the Cleopatra everyone knows from the movies). I based Cleopatra's looks off the actress Zoe Saldana while Hatshepsut is supposed to resemble the model Oluchi Onweagba.