Tag Archives: Sketch Club

Van at the Europa in Belfast

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What a pleasure to see Sir Van again, this time in Belfast! And what a performance!

Oh, and dinner included a little birthday cake to celebrate his 80th!

This freehand digital painting was done on an iPad Pro with an Apple Pencil using the Sketch Club app, with a final sharpening tweak in iColorama. I started it yesterday on the train from Belfast back to Dublin and finished it off in our room last night at a residence hall on the campus of Trinity College. The whole image took me a little under two hours. Obviously, I’m rounding things up to the nearest 1,000 for the fun of it. One of these days I can come back to this image and finish her off, but for now I’m still enjoying the tunes in my head. Hey, I painted Van on my iPad back in 2014, click here for that.

Here’s a look at the whole team, virtuosos everyone of them!

Van with the whole band

Play list: June 24, 2025.

After Gloria, and once Van had left the stage, the band played on for another 15 minutes improvising their asses off. We all stood in amazement.

Click here to learn more about the Hotel Europa

Hotel Europa, Belfast, Northern Ireland

Lagniappe Time: Part 3

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For this post I got to spend some lagniappe time with Albert Rouzie, another local guitarist-performer also on stage the night of 5/22/2025 at the Bob Dylan tribute show at Casa Nueva in Athens, Ohio. He performed:
Senor (Tales Of Yankee Power)
Man In The Long Black Coat
Highway 61 Revisited (Mason-harp)
Blind Willie McTell (Todd-harp)

The program, organized by Steve Zarate, went kinda like this:

Mason Alexander Ault

Mason Alexander Ault – See Lagniappe Time: Part 2
It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry
To Ramona
It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)
Just Like A Woman

Bob Stewart
I Pity The Poor Immigrant
Girl From The North Country
Mr. Tambourine Man
When I Paint My Masterpiece

Caitlin Kraus – See Lagniappe Time: Part 1
It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue (Albert-guitar)
Masters Of War
Queen Jane Approximately
Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright

Steve Zarate
Subterranean Homesick Blues (Todd-harp)
Love Minus Zero/No Limit
I Want You
Mama You Been On My Mind
If Not For You

Todd Burge
Jokerman
You’re A Big Girl Now
Gotta Serve Somebody (Steve/Caitlin/Mason/Albert-b/g vox)
All I Really Want To Do

Bruce Dalzell
When The Ship Comes In
Tomorrow Is A Long Time
Dark Eyes
You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go

(Closing songs)
You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere
The Times They Are A Changin’
My Back Pages

“Lagniappe” is a concept and a term I became familiar with while living in New Orleans. In Cajun culture, “lagniappe” (pronounced “lan-yap”) means a little something extra” or a bonus. It’s often a small gift or extra item given by a merchant to a customer, usually as a thank you or to show appreciation. it’s kinda’ like the notion of a “baker’s dozen.” Lagniappe time, then, is being able to spend a little extra time with live performers sketching freehand on my iPad Pro mainly in the Sketch Club app. I’ve illustrobloged elsewhere about lagniappe.

Lagniappe Time: Part 1

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Generally, we’re encouraged to “let go.” It’s hard to do; and, it’s particularly hard to let go of my experience of the 5/22/2025 Bob Dylan tribute show at Casa Nueva, Athens, Ohio, organized by Steve Zarate. So I plan to spend a little, what I’m now calling “lagniappe time” with each of the performers – like I did here with Caitlin Kraus.

“Lagniappe” is a concept and a term I became familiar with while living in New Orleans. In Cajun culture, “lagniappe” (pronounced “lan-yap”) means a little something extra” or a bonus. It’s often a small gift or extra item given by a merchant to a customer, usually as a thank you or to show appreciation. it’s kinda’ like the notion of a “baker’s dozen.” Lagniappe time, then, is being able to spend a little extra time with live performers sketching freehand on my iPad Pro mainly in the Sketch Club app. I’ve illustrobloged elsewhere on the subject of lagniappe.

That evening Caitlin Kraus performed the following Dylan songs:
It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue (Albert-guitar)
Masters Of War
Queen Jane Approximately
Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright

Mason Alexander Ault
It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry
To Ramona
It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)
Just Like A Woman

Bob Stewart
I Pity The Poor Immigrant
Girl From The North Country
Mr. Tambourine Man
When I Paint My Masterpiece

Albert Rouzie
Senor (Tales Of Yankee Power)
Man In The Long Black Coat
Highway 61 Revisited (Mason-harp)
Blind Willie McTell (Todd-harp)

Steve Zarate
Subterranean Homesick Blues (Todd-harp)
Love Minus Zero/No Limit
I Want You
Mama You Been On My Mind
If Not For You

Todd Burge
Jokerman
You’re A Big Girl Now
Gotta Serve Somebody (Steve/Caitlin/Mason/Albert-b/g vox)
All I Really Want To Do

Bruce Dalzell
When The Ship Comes In
Tomorrow Is A Long Time
Dark Eyes
You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go

(Closing songs)
You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere
The Times They Are A Changin’
My Back Pages

“Before you answer…” selected as part of an online gallery exhibition

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“Before you answer…” was selected as part of Calm or Chaos, an online gallery exhibit sponsored by the Cape Cod Art Center and the National Association of Digital Artists
Click here to view the exhibit or take the tour.
Click here to view the exhibition catalog.

Before you answer…

Take 2

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On Sunday, March 23, 2025 at Eclipse Company Store in The Plains, Ohio I finally got to see Take 2 . . . over a delicious Peanut Butter Porter from the Saugatuck Brewing Co.. Band members include: Jeff Carr, guitar and vocals, Scott Schell, harmonica and vocals, Ken Dean, percussion and vocals, and Mike Sisson, bass and no vocals. A wonderful night of blues, contemporary folk, Americana . . . and craft beer.
I snapped a reference photo on my iPhone because I knew I’d want to do some digital painting on my iPad. I’ve never gotten so carried away on an iPad painting. Take a look at the stats from the Sketch Club app that I used.

See tag #Athens Ohio Musician.

Click on image to enlarge

Reference Photo:

Reference photo – portfoliolongo

Sketch Club App Stats:

Ponce Inlet Lighthouse

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The Ponce Inlet Lighthouse, aka Ponce de Leon Inlet Lighthouse is located a short distance from Lighthouse Ice Cream.

Click on image to enlarge

Technical: I made this freehand iPad painting using a photo that Annyth took as a reference using the Sketch Club app for drawing and painting and iColorama for final tweaking.

Peirani at 30,000 ft.

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I’ve been intrigued by accordionist Vincent Peirani for quite a while now. Here’s a quick digital painting of a screen shot that I used as a reference.
See YouTube link below for a sample.
Technicals: Sketch Club app, iPad Pro, Apple Pencil, iColorama

peiriani at 30,000 feet

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

O’Betty’s in Athens, OH

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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.