Matthew Watkins
Sir Isaac Newton and Mobile Digital Art
On the Shoulders of Giants
BY MATTHEW WATKINS
Artist, Illustrator
Bari, Italy
Along with co-contributor Benjamin Rabe, Matthew runs the iPhone/iPad art blog, www.fingerpainted.it, where his work, as you will see below, is as inspirational as his source. Here, he shows us how he incorporates his drawings and sketches into his mobile devices for further exploration using the app “Brushes”.
To integrate drawings with mobile devices, take a rough picture of the drawing using the iPhone or iPad camera. The quality of the photo doesn’t matter, as it’s there for reference only. This is a moleskin drawing of mine used for this piece.
If the photo is dark and blurry that can be a plus, creating soft tones, greys and purples, that you can draw into.
One of the tricky things about doing a watercolor is that you have to keep preserving the white space till the end. With iPhone or iPads this is not a problem, as you can create white space whenever you want.
Using the photo of the moleskin drawing as the base sketch, I start painting by putting the white space back in.
Once I have blocked in the composition, it’s time to experiment with areas of color. I begin to develop the highlights and shadows.
I increase the contrast of the piece by pumping up the dark areas and going for a more intense yellow.
At this point all brush strokes should be very transparent, so that all additions are subtle, requiring multiple overlapping strokes.
The small character at the top is backlit, so to heighten this effect I put some yellow edges around him, and fade out the arms with some light transparent strokes.
To finish it off, I added some “lens flare” by taking the largest brush and making small circles at different levels of transparency. And then I added back in some details on the top figure for definition and clarity. Finally, 1 px yellow and black brush strokes create depth and definition and 3 px yellow brush for my initials and the date.
BY MATTHEW WATKINS
artist, Illustrator
Bari, Italy
Matthew Watkins has been a moving force in mobile art with his site www.fingerpainted.it, co-developed with Benjamin Rabe, his work on Flickr, and exhibits of his iPhone and iPad art in the real world.
I start with a good-quality scan of the original.
After opening the image in the app “Brushes for iPad”, I began gridding out the shapes, following the contours. Dividing her into plates.
Using colors sampled from the great man, I started blocking out the plates, and adding bevels and highlights. I like to work with transparent layers, not the micro-thin glazes or sfumato that Leonardo used, but not solid color either.
I began to focus on the background, essentially doodling forms and buildings over the landscape with loose attention to the shapes below. I am pretty sure, though, that it was not the Città del Futuro that Leonardo envisaged.
I added two mischievous bunnies and a robot in chains.
Mona’s arms and hands got the steam-punk treatment.
Next I started filling in the shapes while mostly being faithful to the color palette of the great man.
Some finishing touches on that enigmatic smile.
