Painting using ArtRage. appropriated photo.

I spent more time this weekend exploring the creation of images on the iPad and am reeling at the possibilities...

My background is in painting but I gravitated to photography while snapping digital photos for mixed media content. Eventually I got bitten by a pure photography bug and have been focusing exclusively on it as a discipline for the past few years. Once in awhile I miss painting and have had a long term plan of going full circle by painting into large photographic prints. This takes the right kind of time and space, so for the time being, I've been visualizing the images I've wanted to make. With the tools now available to me on the iPad, I'm able to start exploring these ideas now and have a culmination of various parts and pieces finally coming together. I'm looking forward to seeing what happens when the pot is stirred even further...

I've been engrossed in the versatility of the iPad2 apps the past two days; taking existing photos, editing, and then painting on and into them. I'm able to embrace two favorite passions at once with no clean up :) The two apps I used for the photo in this were Snapseed and ArtRage... I don't have enough words to describe how outrageously cool ArtRage is. Simulated painting programs have been around since the late 80's -Fractal Paint- comes to mind, but the ArtRage knocks these earlier applications out of the park with its abilities to fine tune tool sets and behavior of paint (like adding intricate amounts of thinner, or having complete control over how you load a brush with paint). The final surfaces resemble painted textures of all kinds, and I've even imported hi-rez (300dpi) photos to work on with amazing results. This brings many possibilities into game, like printing and adding in additional mixed media. I've barely scratched the surface of what ArtRage can do, but am having a blast exploring. It's 4th of July, and I may have to have this thing pried out of my hands in time for fireworks. Click the image to enlarge and see the detail (done by hand on the touch screen of the iPad, over the photo.) I'll be posting more examples in the days to come, I'm sure :)

horses

iRemix