I have spent the last couple of days “painting” on my iPad Pro using my Apple Pencil and the app ProCreate. I am trying to copy the work of Jill Carver, John Poon and Mark Boedges. This post is contains my copy of a painting by Mark Boedges. It took me about 1.5 hours to complete. I will write a tutorial soon to explain my process, but I can say that I am really learning a lot through my iPad paintings.
Here is the reference painting by Mark Boedges.
I have been struggling to really find my style. I want to paint in an impressionistic style. I recently came across the work of Jill Carver and it really impressed me. So I decided to do what the old masters such as Da Vinci and Michelangelo encouraged, which is to copy the work of the person you are learning from. My approach was to use my iPd Pro 12.9 with an Apple Pencil and the Procreate app to start copying Jill Carver’s work. Below is my latest one. Stand back a distance from the computer and look at it. I am quite satisfied. It took me 45 minutes to complete. I will try another couple on the iPad before I jump into the oil paints.
Between George and Oudtshoorn in the Outeniqua Mountains is a resort called Highlands Lodge. We spent a week there in July 2017 and during this time I attempted my first real plein air painting of a water hole. I struggled with the vegetation, bu the rocks and water came out fine. I don’t really have a reference photo for this one. You will have to go there to see for yourself.
However, I do have the following images of the area.
I still try to do a cloud study every now and then. I prefer sepia (using titanium white, burnt sienna and ultramarine) since it simplified the painting by me not having to think about the values of the colors. This was based on a Pinterest reference image, which I cannot find at present.
I really like the panoramic landscape photographs of Koos van der Lende. He has an incredible eye to see something in the landscape and it makes me want to look into the photo to see more.
I used the following reference to try something about the sea. I guess it is a good starting point. I would have like to make a bit more lively, but decided to leave it “as is”.
A friend of mine came up with the following photo as reference for a painting. It took me a couple of days to get my head around a strategy, but it did not work out too badly in the end. I took some artistic freedom by chopping it and stretching it to fit my panoramic aspect ratio. I hope it still resembles reality.
Since we now own a house in De Rust it has simply crawled deeper into our hearts. Here is an angle of the Swartberg mountains from the Middelplaas area near De Rust.
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A quick update photo from about a year ago. I completed it during our holiday in South Africa in July 2017. I used the Namib photo by Koos van der Lende as reference and did some modifications.
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