Crafting Goodness » Helen Bradley

An apple a day – Day 7 – Pixlromatic

Helen Bradley — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 08:41:03 +0000

Ok today I did a one click wonder for my apple. Actually it was more than one click but it was very simple and it was done on the iPad with the Pixlromatic app. This app is free and when I first got it I loved it, then I fell rapidly out of love as the save function was horrible and either didn’t save or saved without the effects… and I couldn’t believe it was rated as a 4+ star app especially as it is an Autodesk app.

A few days later an update arrived which fixed the problem, now I love it again.

It is simple to use – you can snap an image, use one from your camera roll or use a demo image. You then choose a color filter then a lighting effect and then a frame and you’re done. You can export to your photo library, iTunes, Facebook, Flickr, Imm.io, Dropbox or Email the image.

The effects are cool and interesting and combined you have plenty of options to use to convert the most humble of photos into something much more interesting. The big downside is that it works only in portrait mode but I can forgive it this because the rest of it is great. It is what I imagine Instagram might one day look like on the iPad minus the social media aspect of sharing and voting on images which I can easily live without.

It is going on my new Projectwoman.com – apps list as a 5 star – “Run, don’t walk” to get it app, it rocks!

An apple a day – Day 7 – Pixlromatic is a post from: Crafting Goodness

An apple a day – Back to SketchBook Pro – Day 6

Helen Bradley — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 09:23:55 +0000

Today I am back in SketchBook Pro and working with the brushes there.

If you buy the Pro version make sure to go to the store – click Info then choose Store to find and download the additional brushes. In addition to the built in brushes like the new smudge brush you will also find some half tone brushes and some fine art pencils too and they are free if you have the pro version.

Here I just messed around painting cross hatched colours. I sampled some colours from the apple photo and others I just got from the palette of colours down the right of the painting window. You sample colours by opening the Brushes tool, click the Eyedropper tool on the far right then drag the circle with crosshairs in it to a place on the image to sample the colour from.

This painting has splashes all round it from using one of the new splash brushes – yum..

An apple a day – Back to SketchBook Pro – Day 6 is a post from: Crafting Goodness

An apple a day – ArtRage again – Day 5

Helen Bradley — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 08:40:32 +0000

Ok. so it’s not like anything I’ve done so far in this apple a day post. But it is so much fun. I grabbed my photo and added it to a layer just as I explained yesterday. What I wanted from it was its colour and nothing else.

So I added a new empty layer and selected this to paint on but I could see the photo underneath. So I clicked the eyedropper to select it then clicked on the image to sample the colour at that point. Then I clicked the paint tube and dragged my finger over the image to add paint. I did this a few times till I had paint colours all lined up to use. Then I hid the photo layer so I could paint my apple.

To paint, I chose the Oil Paint brush and clicked the Settings button. Apart from Size, the Thinners and Insta-Dry settings are important here. You want Insta-Dry disabled because you want the paint wet. You don’t want a high value for Thinners if you want the oil paint to look lumpy. If you look at the finished image in the bottom right and left middle areas the paint is smoother – that’s because the Thinners value was higher when I painted those areas. Keep an eye on how the brush looks in the preview at the top of the settings dialog to see how it will look when you paint with it.

I then painted in circles to make the apple and spread the paint out.

So, using ArtRage you can paint your subject freehand but take advantage of being able to sample colours from an image to do so.

An apple a day – ArtRage again – Day 5 is a post from: Crafting Goodness

An apple a day – ArtRage – Day 4

Helen Bradley — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 15:18:44 +0000

All I can say is Oh Yum! I worked with ArtRage desktop recently for an upcoming issue of PC User magazine and I totally loved it so I was curious to see how the app would work on the iPad. I wasn’t disappointed at all.

This app comes with a hefty price tag for a painting app $4.99 but it is well worth the expense. The painting tools are similar to the desktop ones so you can smear the paint around as well as paint dry strokes.

Here I imported one of my apple photos and painted it. This is easy by adding a new layer then click the Layer menu – this is the trickiest part of the process – it is a button with 3 lines on it then click Import Image. This way the image goes into a layer not onto the page as a reference image which is something quite different.

With the photo as a layer in the file you can then paint on the photo by grabbing a tool like the Oil Brush or Palette Knife and paint over the photo to blend the colours in it to make a painted image from it.

Using the pixels from the photo makes it easy to turn a photo into a painting. There is so much to this app, I’ll be returning to it again tomorrow I know.

An apple a day – ArtRage – Day 4 is a post from: Crafting Goodness

An Apple a Day – OmniSketch – Day 3

Helen Bradley — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 09:03:26 +0000

This might be the best $1.99 you will ever spend. I cannot say how much I love this app. If you need convincing check out the app on iTunes and see the drawings done with it.

What makes this so powerful is that there is no such thing as a simple line anymore. Lines are automatically enhanced with patterns so a simple drag on the canvas and you look like an artist. You simply can’t fall fowl of this app.

To introduce it – because I know I will be returning to it frequently for this blog, I just made some simple shapes for my apple, selecting different brushes and different colours for each.

Here is what the brushes look like:

So those of the 24 shipped brushes that show lines on them like the first and second in the first row and the third and fourth in the last row all draw with shapes inside lines – these change thickness as you draw. Some draw as bubbles, some like trees and others like driving rain.

Seriously you should run (not walk) to get this app. And, if you have an iPhone it works on it too.

I’ll be sharing tips and tricks for using it in later posts, for now can I hint at blend modes, mirror and kaleidoscope drawing?

An Apple a Day – OmniSketch – Day 3 is a post from: Crafting Goodness

An apple a day – Pencil Sketch HD Lite – Day 2

Helen Bradley — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 08:58:28 +0000

This app is a one hit wonder. It is free which is good because in terms of creativity it sucks because it does all the work for you. The only thing you get to do is to choose the paper for the background if you want a background.

I made this image a bit more interesting by using a screen capture of the sxc.hu site where this apple came from rather than using the photo alone, hence the interesting effect at the top of the image.

The big problem with this app is that the free version puts this copyright text over everything so it’s not totally useable – that said, this image doesn’t have the copyright text and I am just not sure how I got rid of it. I certainly didn’t shell out the $2.99 they want for the full version. You can’t save, print or email the final image created using this free version so it’s only useful for testing if you like it. Added.. I have since talked to the developer folks at Apps4U about the inconsistency in the copyright text appearing. Apparently the text appears when you aren’t connected to the web to get the advertising content on the page. So it runs with ads or big wads of text over the screen depending on your being connected or not. That explains why the text is there sometimes and not others – and kudos to their support team for clarifying this so quickly.

I wouldn’t buy this app because it doesn’t let me do anything or make any choices, however the sketches/drawings do look good so, if that’s what you want, then it is a simple application that anyone can use and which gives usable results if you pay for it.

iPad 2 Bonus Tip

To take a screen shot from your iPad 2, press the Home and On/Off switch at the same time, you’ll hear the click of the camera. The image is now in your Photos collection.

An apple a day – Pencil Sketch HD Lite – Day 2 is a post from: Crafting Goodness

An apple a day

Helen Bradley — Sun, 18 Sep 2011 19:54:02 +0000

Ok, so this is a total pun on words. I have a new iPad 2 and one of the things I found myself doing from the get go was drawing and digital painting.

I’ve wanted to draw more for a long time but somehow the pen just wasn’t hitting the paper. Now the pen is hitting the tablet or it will be when my pen arrives Wednesday, for now it is my finger.

This blog needs a big shot in the arm so here is the idea – an apple a day most times drawn on my new (yep) Apple iPad but sometimes done the old fashion way with pen and paper and whatever else I have to hand in my studio.

For the iPad portion of the project I will get to investigate some of the great drawing, painting, photography and design apps on the iPad. It will be part drawing and painting, part how to, part software review and a whole lot of fun.

The choice of object is quite simple. I took an art class with the magical Connie Goldman some time ago and one of the projects was to render one object in a number of ways. I chose my Ariat riding boot and I still have my favourite boot image stuck up on my studio wall.

For this project I wanted something simpler, more recognizable if I totally messed it up and something that I could render in 2 seconds or 2 hours depending on how my day is going.

I was at home when I started and there were no apples in the kitchen, so I hiked across to www.sxc.hu a great source of free images. I found a couple of apples to use and then added a third today. I now have a yellow, a red and a green apple. Thanks to Harper07 for the red apple, pontuse for the yellow and Gemedj89 for the green.

What I plan to do is to post an apple a day rendered somehow differently to yesterday’s apple. It might be using an iPad app that requires you click one button to achieve a built in effect or it might be painted but it will always be creative and different and, over time, I will showcase some of the free and for fee apps for the iPad. I do, however reserve the right to go hands on when I feel so inclined.

Some apps I know I will use over and over again, some might be one hit wonders. So, off I go… an apple a day begins … well… today.

An apple a day is a post from: Crafting Goodness

Macramé and button bracelet

Helen Bradley — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 04:23:00 +0000

Confession time. I really have a bit of a hard time with macramé so projects like this tend to get away from me a bit. I’m ok for the first few knots then my brain over thinks the process and I can’t remember whether I am going over or under. Call me Macramé challenged.

However, I love macramé bracelets so I designed this one for Get Creative magazine. I had to get some help actually turning my ideas into reality, so Michelle who, by the way rocks at macramé helped out. I measured and told her exactly what I needed and I started the main loop. Then she kindly removed the string from my hands, nodded sagely and began knotting away. Magically the bracelet materialized just as planned.

If you’re a dab hand at macramé or want to learn, here is the link to the project and the full instructions.

Macramé and button bracelet is a post from: Crafting Goodness

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Hand Painted card

Helen Bradley — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 05:32:00 +0000

What I love to do most is to show people how easy it is to do things that look quite hard. Take this card – it’s hand painted and it looks difficult to do but it really is quite easy. I made it for Get Creative magazine together with full step by step instructions.

The next weekend I made cards for all my family. Each was hand painted in this style and each was customized to suit the recipient. There was a bird decorating a tree with a heart decoration for my mum, my brother who lives in the tropics had a tree which was a palm, my nephew got a tree on a computer screen and so on. They were so much fun to make.

If you don’t think you could paint a card, I challenge you! Try this one, you’re guaranteed to succeed.

Hand Painted card is a post from: Crafting Goodness

Turn a photo frame into a mini book

Helen Bradley — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 05:12:00 +0000

This book features my cat Molly who is just so dammed cute!

It is a photo frame which has had holes drilled on one side and had large wooden tags added to it to make it into a mini book. It stands on a book case in our living room.

It was also featured in Get Creative magazine in Australia and the article includes full instructions for making one for yourself.

Turn a photo frame into a mini book is a post from: Crafting Goodness