Category: Art

02/11/2022

Common Print Sizes at 300dpi

Pixel Rendering by Simon Lee

As a digital artist working in the Procreate app, I am always trying to keep in mind common print sizes at 300dpi. I like to use this site because it has a handy pixels-to-inches calculator. You just enter what inches or pixels you are working with, and add the DPI (dots per inch). The more I’ve started using sites like Printful, the more I find it useful to start out with the proper size. So I created this nice table to refer to! I hope you find it helpful. I’ve also indicated which sizes can be used for posters and canvas in Printful.

02/02/2022

IPhone Wallpaper art marketing experiment.

A surface pattern design I’ve been working on.

As far as art marketing goes, I’ve been leaning heavily towards Pinterest these days. Instagram is okay, but it feels like such a treadmill – liking and hashtagging all day long, just to get some engagement and attention from users who are also just trying to get my engagement and attention. Pinterest is different. I feel like people go on there looking for inspiration, and things to purchase. Also, my business page reports that I have over 5000 monthly impressions on my pins! I’m sure these numbers are skewed somehow to make it look good and make me want to use Pinterest for my art marketing. But even if they are exaggerated a bit, it’s still way more engagement than I get on either instagram, or this website. Read more

01/28/2022

Art Every Day

pink cherries are my vibe

I spend a lot of time online looking at images or art and design. I tell myself it’s for the purpose of inspiration, and it helps to keep me working. But does it though? Sometimes I immerse myself in finding images. Hours go by and I have produced nothing. I’ve merely been hunting, collecting and sorting art, not making it. The next part of the process is that my inner critic starts berating me: “You’re a phony! You call yourself an artist but all you are doing is endlessly scrolling, clicking, posting. You produce nothing!” That guy is such an asshole.

One day I decided to answer, “So what?” Maybe the hunting and curating and organizing is kind of the point for me… Read more

01/25/2022

Digital Floral Collage

One of my favorite art exercises is creating a digital floral collage. It’s something I can always get into if I am feeling a little less than inspired, or short on time. I have a couple of albums of flowers photos, some my own, some from creative commons images. It’s a very playful exercise. I basically just start throwing the images onto a procreate file and start manipulating them. Often I will process the heck out of them using other apps like picsart, and decim8. Sometimes it’s just a throwaway process, kind of like tooling around in your sketchbook to get the juices flowing. Other times I have made some really interesting images. Here is one of my favorites:

01/21/2022

Using AI Art Apps to make Digital Art

Shiny Toys! made with Wombo Dream.

I have found some shiny new toys in the form of AI art apps! My daughter mentioned something about an app that makes images look like “The Scream,” by Edvard Munch, and I was curious. I started googling and the first thing that came up was something called “Wombo Dream”. It is so simple and easy to use, but also quite powerful in its ability to generate interesting art images. Here is how it works. Go to app.wombo.art. Add some text. Choose a style. And hit the create button. It could not possibly be easier, and it’s fast!