“I haven’t stopped painting or drawing – I’ve just added another medium.”
– David Hockney
Last weekend, I saw David Hockney: A Bigger Exhibition at the de Young Museum in San Francisco, which focuses on Hockney’s work over the past decade.
The variety of art, which includes landscapes, portraits, video collages, and sketches, is impressive. Even at the age of 76, Hockney continues to experiment with all sorts of media, and one of the most interesting parts of the exhibition was his collection of digital drawings and paintings that he did on his iPhone and iPad. He used an app called Brushes, which includes a cool recording and playback feature. The de Young displayed a selection of Hockney’s digital works on a series of flat screens, so you could see exactly how Hockney created his art, stroke by stroke.
I was so taken by this display that when I got home, I downloaded the Brushes 3 app on my iPhone so I could try it out. Included in this post are three of my digital paintings. I completed the flower on my iPhone in about 20 minutes between the Orinda and West Oakland BART stations. With the apple, I took more time so I could learn more about the app’s functionality. Finally, I used my iPad Mini and a Bamboo stylus, to paint the above portrait of David Hockney.
If you have a chance, I recommend you visit A Bigger Exhibition. The art is fantastic, but it’s also a reminder to keep experimenting.
“The mind is the limit. As long as the mind can envision the fact that you can do something, you can do it, as long as you really believe 100 percent.”
– David Hockney
P.S. Although the new version of Brushes includes the playback feature, you can’t export the video, as you could on older versions. Apparently, the developers are working on an upgrade, but unfortunately, I couldn’t include the videos in this post for any of you who actually care about seeing the steps I took to create these paintings.
Filed under: Art, Sketches
