Tag Archives: Procreate

Our Annual Christmas Letter: O

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This year’s annual retreat was held at Burr Oak Lodge & Conference Center in Glouster, OH. Over the course of three extremely productive days, thanks to the consulting team from McKinsey & Company, the Board of Trustees, senior management, and the entire staff at portfoliolongo.com revisited our organizational values and refreshed our vision and mission statements using 356 yards of butcher-block paper, 17 dozen scented markers, and 1,257 colored stickies. All together, the 36 participants invested a combined total of 6,854 lbs. of competence!
In addition to our Annual Report, a copy of which is being mailed to you, we hereby issue our Annual Christmas Letter for 2025 in keeping with our 15-year tradition. In accordance with our commitments to parsimony and stewardship, it’s O. You’re welcome to visit our North American headquarters over the holidays in Canaan Township, Athens County, where you will see our letter posted. (Click here to view previous annual Christmas letters.)

(click on image to enlarge)

Appalachian Fracking

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The hydraulic fracturing market, not just in the Appalachian Basin, but globally is projected to continue growing, with market analysis expecting it to nearly double between now and 2034. It’s argued that, to meet the energy demands needed to power AI data centers, more fracking is justified.

I asked AI if fracking is considered clean, and here’s AI’s response:

“No, fracking is not considered clean because of its environmental impacts, which include water contamination, air pollution from methane, and the creation of large volumes of toxic wastewater. While the burning of natural gas produces fewer emissions than coal or oil, the fracking process itself has significant negative consequences for air and water quality, as well as public health.”

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Technical: Sketch Club app on an iPad Pro with an Apple Pencil, some additional work in Procreate and iColorama. Here’s some Sketch Club stats, click on arrow to see a tiny progress video.

Playing with colors, lights, and loositudinality

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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

New Years Eve 2024 with Davina and the Vagabonds

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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:

Davina herself. See reference photo below. Click on image to enlarge.

My own reference photo.

The bow before the encore.

Portrait of Classmate from Another Classmate’s Photo

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Fifty schmifty! We’ve been friends for a little over 60 years!

Don C

Some Saturday afternoon guy in Procreate

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Folks like this just show up…

I was trying to avoid lines.

Copper Pretzel Plumbing on my New iPad

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I recently got a new iPad, a sixth-generation iPad Pro, 12.9-inch (33 cm), colloquially known as the M2 iPad Pro, complete with digital copper plumbing, 512 GB and, by necessity, a new 2nd generation Apple Pencil. Yea, it’s amazing; it’s my 3rd iPad since I started drawing and painting on an iPad in 2013, 10 years ago!


Here are a few other digital renderings done on my new device – mostly composed in Sketch Club using iColorama, Procreate and VideoShop here and there:

My dad and his cigar

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I revisited a digital painting I did of my dad in 2016, a post of which you can see here. I made some structural adjustments in Procreate and videotaped the reduction of an effect I had added in iColorama. It was a Fathers Day urge. Here’s how it came out:

You’re the Puppet

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The idea behind this quickly done, simple animation – done in Procreate – came from a series of tweets by Jared Yates Sexton, see the series here: (yea, click here.)

Happy Holidays

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Here, this short video of Santa riding a Norelco sleigh in the snow may help: CLICK RIGHT HERE.
Also, click on this link for the original post: Keep the Norelco in Christmas.