Yesterday several artists gathered for a monthly session of working with the Artrage application in creating iPad art.  It is wonderful tool for generating ideas and working up sketches for new paintings.  An accomplished student of iPad art can create paintings that look every bit as painterly as artwork from the traditional mediums. During this session we played around with using a photo reference to get started and then removing that reference and moving on from there.

Over the new year I had been visiting Virginia wineries and came across a cat resting on the front porch at one of the tasting rooms. It was the perfect picture of contentment on a lazy afternoon. I sketched out an outline to get the basic composition in place and messed around with color choices along with light and dark values.  I may choose to refine this sketch more later or I may decide to switch to oil paint and do the final on an actual canvas. Here’s the rough sketch after a couple hours trying out different tools and techniques with the Artrage application.

 Front Porch Cat Nap