Playing with colors, lights, and loositudinality

Posted on January 24, 2025 by portfoliolongo.com

I had 15 minutes to kill before Spanish Conversation Hour at the Athens Public Library yesterday, and I wanted to play around with one of my favorite painting styles, Impressionism. (See my Sorolla study.) So I Googled Impressionism and portraits, and I found the AI-generated image below my freehand rendering, which I decided to use as a reference on a digital iPad painting…just for fun. I tried to work faster and more playfully to embrace the style by being less Ralph Kramden and more Robin Williams about it. I was over half way finished when it was time for me to close my iPad and go into the reserved conference room. Once home and after dinner I finished it off in the Sketch Club app along with final adjustments in Procreate and then iColorama. By 8:00 pm on Thursday, January 23, 2025 I officially became the image’s offspring in the “transformational reversal” that Cervantes described when he wrote that, “Cada uno es hijo de sus obras.” (Each of us is the child of our works.)

Here’s that AI-generated image. You’ll notice that I don’t mind rounding things up or down to the nearest 1,000.

Screenshot

O’Betty’s in Athens, OH

Posted on January 6, 2025 by portfoliolongo.com

According to O’Betty’s website, the eatery is located in the Cameron building, the smallest building in Uptown Athens. Originally built as a barber shop, the venue has been the home of other restaurants, such as Seven Sauces, The Strawberry Patch, The Korean Restaurant, DV8, The Redbud Cafe, and finally and lastly, O’Betty’s. I fondly remember Redbud Cafe; but, whenever I bite into one of O’Betty’s delicious hot dogs, I’m overcome with amnesia, euphoria, and dejavú.

O’Betty’s in Uptown Athens, OH

Technical: I used my own reference photo to make this quirky iPad painting in Sketch Club with an Apple Pencil. The composition took me about 3 hours over the span of several days and consists of 6,486 brush strokes on 3 layers. I then tweaked the image in iColorama.

New Years Eve 2024 with Davina and the Vagabonds

Posted on January 4, 2025 by portfoliolongo.com

Annyth and I joined our dear friends Darcy and Chris to ring in the new year at the Dakota Jazz Club in Minneapolis, MN with Davina and the Vagabonds, a jazz blues band founded in 2004 by front-woman Davina Sowers. We fell in love with the group, especially Davina. By the way the Dakota handed out little bells, so we actually did ring in the new year!
A free-hand iPad painting of Davina done in the Sketch Club app with tweaks in Procreate and iColorama: