More Fun with my iPad Pro

Over the past couple of days I’ve been laid up with some sort of tummy bug which has caused a great deal of pain around my stoma and I’m not able to do much but rest, so I’ve been using that as an excuse to play on my new iPad Pro!

I’ve been watching a lot of Youtube videos and discovered another art app called Paintstorm (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3p7iDXYZAYI for a quick demo of some of the things it will do). I installed the free version on the iPad and am experimenting with it – so far the only problems I’ve found with the “lite” version are that your export choices are limited to jpg, and exported images have a watermark (I was able to edit this out on the first piece I wanted to save). I shall probably get the pro version in due course.

One of the features in Paintstorm is the pretty amazing one that enables you to create instant symmetrical images and even kaleidoscope-like images – playing around with this, I thought that with a bit of practice, this could be an awesome way of drawing mandalas. After several abortive attempts to produce one that I liked, I ended up with this:

I exported it as a jpg and opened it in Serif PhotoPlus and used my colour selection tool to isolate the grey watermark and deleted it.

I then opened it in Procreate and coloured it, finally adding a Zengem in the centre:

I am very pleased with how this turned out. You might think that using the tool in Paintstorm to create repeating patterns is cheating, but it’s still all my own work as I had to decide what design to draw on each successive circle, working outwards from the centre – all the software does is repeat the design around the circle, and it saves one a lot of donkey work, getting the spacing correct. You can set it to have as many sections as you want – this mandala was 8 – for instance, if you chose 2, you could draw perfectly symmetrical hearts or butterflies – always a bit of a pain to do!

I then spent some more time in Procreate, doing some experiments with landscape painting. Many years ago I used to follow Bob Ross on TV and did a few paintings in his style, and decided to give this a go in Procreate. My first effort wasn’t brilliant:

so I had another go and was a bit better pleased with this one:

On the first day that I got the Apple Pencil, I was messing about in Procreate, trying different brushstrokes, etc., and quite liked what I’d done, so I decided to turn that into a painting too – a pink seascape:

I definitely want to hone my skills in this department.

Regarding my tummy bug – on the advice of my hubby, who was concerned about me, I phoned the stoma clinic and spoke to one of the nurses. She asked about my symptoms and whether Kermit was behaving properly and whether the area around him looked swollen or not, obviously trying to ascertain whether I’d got a blockage or a hernia – I said I didn’t think I had either, but the stomach bug did seem to be causing quite a lot of pain in that area. She said she didn’t want me to come in if I had a bug (a wise precaution) but if it didn’t clear up, or got worse, in the next couple of days, to contact my GP. She also said it might be a good idea if I came in for an appointment when I was over the bug – they are booked up this week but could see me next week – and I agreed to do this. I haven’t seen anyone about Kermit for a long time as I manage him very well and they were pleased with my progress, but it’s probably a good idea to get him looked at periodically.

Meanwhile, I’m feeling pretty rough and in quite a bit of discomfort. Playing with the iPad is definitely a distraction! The ironing remains undone for another day…