First Dip into Digital Art

I just had to share my recent creative escapade using Gimp and a Deco Mini7 XP-Pen tablet. I wanted to dip my toes into digital art.

I foraged through my photos and found one of some goslings that could use some fixing up.

I used the pen tablet as my digital canvas and played around with the Gimp layers. The sensitivity of the tablet allowed me to control the brush strokes with finesse, resulting in an almost hand-drawn feel.

Gimp offered a plethora of tools to play around with. I tweaked colors, textures, and lighting to infuse the artwork with a certain mood. The brush options were good, but I think I might want to try Corel Draw. They offer a better variety of painter-like brushes.

I also have a program called Clip Studio Paint that is more designed for Manga but might be useful for drawing. I haven't gotten a hang of that one, yet. When I become an expert with the pen, I may try Corel Draw's light version. But, I don't want to invest too much at this time.

2 Duckling Souls

This is an acrylic on loose canvas from a photo I took.  The two mallard ducklings didn't survive, but are alive forever in this painting.  They were about three days old at the time.

This art is available as a print on Fine Art America.  I haven't decided to put it anywhere else yet except in offline shows.

Mom and ducklings finished

Here is the finished product that will be going on T-shirts beginning with mine!

Of course, the t-shirts won't have my signature and date on it.

Mama and her ducklings

I still have to put some finishing touches on this acrylic painting of Fish Food Mama and her five ducklings.  One of the things I have to do is create a white, transparent background so I can put them on Cafepress items.  I also need to do some more detail work on a few of the ducklings.

Independent duckling

Acrylic on paper.  This is one of five little mallard ducklings I saw back in May.  Four stuck together and stayed with mom while this little run ran up to me and stood at my feet.

You can buy things with this picture on Cafe Press in my store, Just Ducky by Darlene.

Pepper the duckling

I did this so that it could be my avatar on Backyardchickens.com. It's a little black duckling I named Pepper who grew up at Lake Murray this year.

It's done in colored pencil on Canson drawing paper.

Little colored pencil duckies

Here's a colored pencil drawing I did with three duckies. Sorry they look a little distorted:

Little baby duck

I did this little colored pencil drawing on paper of a little baby mallard duckling.

"Fish Food Ducklings"

I've been having a ball watching all the little babies around Lake Murray. I call these ducklings the "fish food ducklings" because, when they first hatched, they were living in an area with a lot of large fish that could eat them. There are three, total, but I think there was four originally. One kept going off on his own and I think that's why he went missing.

Anyway, here's the two girls on the shore of the lake.