madlyinlovewithlife's photostream  

Now didn't Nature just do a great job on this! One of my favourite things about daffodils is that ruffled edge. I didn't quite achieve the super sharp focus along the edge of the ruffle that I wanted, but this still captures a bit of my delight and fascination with these fanciful flourishes! And doesn't a pure spot of yellow just brighten up any day?

"A world in which elves exist and magic works offers greater opportunities to digress and explore”.
~ Terry Brooks, novelist

Collaborative Image by Lydia Kurnia and Jeannie (a.k.a madlyinlovewithlife)

Fairies painted by Lydia Kurnia using her iPad. Background macro photograph of a tulip leaf by me.

When Lydia said that she loved the leaf image I recently posted, and asked to paint something on my leaf, I was totally up for it. I had no idea what she saw on my leaf (with Lydia’s wild and wonderful imagination, one never knows for sure), but I happily handed it off to her.

I never said anything to Lydia, but I couldn’t help but wonder if she couldn’t see something of the Fairy Realm. For I know that, for those with eyes to see, every bunch of tulips comes with its own teeny-weeny Tulip Fairies. Alas, I couldn't quite bring the fairies into clear focus, but I suspected their presence as every now and again I’d catch flashes of sparkling light dancing on a leaf. But Lydia's finely-tuned eyes easily spotted them! I love Lydia’s fanciful fairies. I love their playfulness upon the tulip leaf and I love their daffodil-inspired dresses. Thanks again, Lydia, for your wonderful art! You can see more of Lydia’s wonderful work here: www.flickr.com/photos/33904170@N00/

A note about iPad Painting:

Lydia is a talented artist working with a leading-edge art form. iPad painting is a newly emerging art form and the skills and technology for it seems to evolve almost daily. Drawing and painting on the iPad is not as easy as it might seem. It requires a lot of skill and practice, even for a trained artist, as it’s simply a completely new art medium.

I have an inkling of what kind of skill is involved simply because I’ve tried to paint on my iPad from scratch, and I still haven’t painted anything even halfway decent. I'm not much of a drawer, but I do draw the odd thing here and there and I like to dabble a bit using a stylus and Wacom tablet - which is very similar to using a real brush or pen. A Wacom tablet and stylus are pressure-sensitive devices you use with a PC to draw with. The pressure sensitivity makes it easier to draw and paint normally and I’ve been able to paint a few things that look not so bad.

The iPad, however, is not pressure-sensitive and the brushes available are more limited. So, to create any detailed image that looks like a painting requires a lot of skill and understanding of layers and opacity and other things I have no idea about. It takes a lot of practice even for seasoned artists. Thus, I have great respect and appreciation for all the iPad artist’s, like Lydia, who are out there breaking new ground, painting amazing things from scratch on their iPads.

iPad art is quickly changing the face of the art world in the most exciting ways. World-renowned British artist David Hockney’s iPad work is a testament to this. Here are couple of YouTube videos of David Hockney's iPad art that give a hint of what the future holds for art exhibitions and interactive art:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNK_Uq_0SyI

www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzr6kPoxQhI

The snow is nearly all melted here, which is nice, but the receding white blanket is slowly being replaced by mottled shades of grey and brown. It's beautiful in it's own earthy way, but today I'm especially happy to have these bright tulips to brighten things up.

For those dealing with tulip-overload, this is the last of the tulip flowers (for now).

Another photo-painting of one of my favorite subjects. Have I mentioned how much I love tulips?

For this one, I hand-painted my original tulip shot in Corel Painter X on my PC, using a Wacom tablet and stylus. I used mainly chalk brushes (the chalk strokes show up much better viewed on black.)

Here's a photo-painting of a blue flower - it's my favourite colour of flower. I had no idea what this was called until my Flickr friend, David Preston, identified it for me: it's an agapanthus, or African Lily. Thanks David!

I took the shot last summer while out on a walk in our inner-city neighborhood; the flower was happily thriving in a big pot next to the sidewalk. The green hues in the background are actually the blurred top of a parked vehicle. Handy that it was such a nice colour for my photo!

Photo-painted on my iPad with Artist's Touch. Fine-tuned in Photoshop CS4 and Corel Painter X.