Ulla Hennig's Weblog

Pink Abstract

Ulla Hennig — Fri, 17 May 2013 05:00:28 +0000

Pink Abstract. Artrage digital painting, May 2013

One of my goals with Artrage is to explore the watercolour tool and to try out the various settings of the tool. It is fun to let the paint flow digitally!

How to draw feet

Ulla Hennig — Wed, 15 May 2013 05:00:39 +0000

I have difficulties with drawing feet, and so I was looking for some useful video tutorials on YouTube.

The first one I found was this one:

It is only a bit more than 7 minutes long, and it shows you how to draw rather cartoonish looking feet.

Another more detailed video, created by Sycra, is this one:

Have fun watching!

Another cat

Ulla Hennig — Fri, 10 May 2013 05:00:14 +0000

Sitting cat. Digital sketch done with artrage.

This belongs to my series of cat sketches. It was done in Artrage. I added the frame in Photoshop.

In case you are following my blog: There will be no blogpost on Monday, 13 May. I am off to visit my family in the south of Germany, and I allow myself to do the next blogpost on Wednesday 15 May.

Have a great spring time, everybody!

Flying Dragon – revisited

Ulla Hennig — Wed, 08 May 2013 05:00:46 +0000

Flying Dragon revisited. Digital painting done with Artrage. May 2013

Working on that piece really taught me an important lesson:

Do not rush with lineart. In this case I definitely was too fast with my lineart which resulted in a piece which was “quick and dirty”. Whenever I want to try something out I tend to rush myself, focusing on a new method (“I want to see whether this will work if I do it this way”).
Fortunately I’d put the drawing on a separate layer, so I could change it, but I had to change the colouring as well.
Do not give up too early. Well, there was a time when I was considering throwing the whole piece into the trashcan. But I’m not only an impatient person, I’m also a person who doesn’t want to give up. So I made the neck longer, I thought about the light source, I worked on the background. It is still not a masterpiece, but it looks better than the first version does!

Playing with Red and Yellow

Ulla Hennig — Mon, 06 May 2013 05:00:09 +0000

Red and yellow abstract. Coloured pencils on cardboard paper. April 2013

This drawing is based on a digital painting I did some weeks ago with Artrage. Again I used baby oil as a solvent, and I am excited how strong the colours get when you do that.

Flying Dragon

Ulla Hennig — Fri, 03 May 2013 05:00:11 +0000

Flying Dragon. Coloured with Artrage

This is definitely a work in progress. There still has to be done some shading in order to take off the flatness of the dragon character. I also think that the sky has to be a wee bit darker, some of the lines have be a bit thinner and some spots have no colour or the wrong one. But the beginning has been made.

Dancing Dragon

Ulla Hennig — Wed, 01 May 2013 05:00:14 +0000

Dancing Dragon. Sketched with pen and ink, coloured with Artrage

It was a long time ago when I did that line drawing with pen and ink. I had coloured it already with coloured pencils, and I wanted to have a go at it digitally, with Artrage.

So I had three layers – the line drawing, the layer on which I did the colouring of the dragon and a layer for the background. You can merge layers in Artrage as you can in Photoshop, but I still keep them because I am not sure whether this version here will be the final one.

Pink Pansy

Ulla Hennig — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 05:00:00 +0000

Pink Pansy. Digital Painting done with Artrage. April 2013

Pansies come in all colours and shades. They are typical early spring flowers because they can take cold nights.

This was also done with Artrage Studio Pro and the felt pen tool.

Abstract with pearls

Ulla Hennig — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 05:00:10 +0000

Abstract with pearls. Digital painting, done with Artrage. March 2013

This was the result of 40 minutes playing around with colours, brushes, composition and the sticker spray in Artrage.

Back to the good old colour chart

Ulla Hennig — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 05:00:21 +0000

Colour chart with various green shades.

Some coloured pencil experts stress the importance of putting up colour charts. I must admit that I haven’t done many, but sometimes I do. Here is the one I did yesterday. I am working on a coloured pencil piece with a background in various shades of green. I have been using baby oil as a kind of solvent in my last paintings, and doing this I noticed that the colours get more vibrant this way and even change a bit.

Knowing this I wanted to test the effect in order to select the proper pencil. I used emerald green, juniper green and chromoxide green as the basic greens and added my other greens. I was surprised what a nice green I got using the emerald green and other greens – in the past I hadn’t used emerald green because of its unnatural look.

So now I now, and I am glad that this colour chart will help me doing the background.