Digital Art — Pho-Art Blog

Week 17 - Digital Collage on iPad Pro 12.9" with Apple Pencil. My resources for these collages were my photographs that were digitally altered with Snapseed, Diptic, and Photoshop Mix using my iPad and iPhone. My clipped art resources were from several collections of permission free and copyright free vintage anatomy and clip art.

I prepared the clipped art files by isolating the images in photoshop on the desktop and then saving the files as png so that I could import them already clipped into Procreate on my iPad Pro. The files were saved to a cloud account where I can access them as needed on my iPad. It was very easy then to manipulate and combine the files into a digital collage. Procreate has some very nice brushes to allow for adding effects like the blood splatters and drips in the image above, titled "Three Heads in a Field." The background for that image was a photo from the landscape at Gettysburg, then edited in Snapseed and Photoshop Mix. The background photo was then mirrored in Diptic to create a surrealistic background to this haunting image of three anatomy heads floating above a field.

For "Marburg Skull," I combined a skull photo that I shot in Washington D.C. with another of my favorite things, tentacles, to create what I imagine is beneath Lake Marburg at Codorus State Park, which covers the old town of Marburg.

In "Heart of the Universe" I combined a vintage anatomical illustration of a human heart with a galaxy background that I had created in Procreate last year. I also added other vintage art and brush effects like the water waves brush to complete the piece.

Last night I worked on another, "Fish Filet" where I combined a background photo that I had shot out at Codorus State Park earlier in the week with vintage art illustrations from The Clip Art Book. The background was edited in Diptic, Photoshop Mix, and Snapseed, and the clipped art was colored with the Apple Pencil to create another surrealistic composition.

I really enjoyed working with this digital collage process and will continue to work on it this week when I'm not out painting en plein air with Brenda. Look for an upcoming post on Plein Air Painting coming up in the next few days.