Procreate - most fun I've ever had with finger painting

Traditional inks coloured with fingerpainting, I haven't had this much fun with digital painting since I can't even remember when...

Ever since my wife and I got ourself an iPad, I've been itching to actually use it for something - anything, really, other than just as a glorified surf board. I wanted to try some drawing applications, and after searching for a while decided to give Procreate a try, since it seemed to get some nice reviews. The price was not too bad, even for something I might end up disliking, and the ability to export the work done in Procreate as actual, layered photoshop document sealed the deal for me.

Now, actual digital painting has always been beyond my grasp, so naturally I first wanted to try the program for something I would otherwise do in photoshop, like colouring my inked illustrations. aSince I still haven't dared to upgrade my venerable Mac Mini to Yosemite and hence can't fully utilize iCloud for syncing, I opened one of my inks via dropbox, and made that into a new document in Procreate. And much as I would do in photoshop, I then changed the layer containing the outlines to multiply, and then made a new layer for the colours. After that, it was just selecting right kind of shapes and sizes for the brushes, and swipe, swipe away with my fingers.

From the start, everything felt surpsisingly intuitive. Sure, there were things I had to check from the manual, such as making selections and locking -essentially masking - layers, but the main function of the program, drawing itself, felt very intuitive from the start. Zooming in, rotating, colouring and texturizing, then zooming out to get the big picture and zooming in again -that's how a paint program should function, and for the most part Procreate functions really well. Also the ease of use is staggering. If I want to make some adjustments, I can do that while laying on the bed or on the couch. also the feel and working style are more natural, more like traditional drawing, than with a Vacom and photoshop.

Eventually, I ended liking Procreate so much that I purchased a high-end, pressure-sensitive stylus, Adonit Jot Touch Pro, to actually do some drawing with Procreate. I still have some kinks to smooth out with that, to get the flow and feel of regular freehand drawing, but I'm on my way getting there.

More info on Procreate can be found here:

Ruined Fieldstone Mo(u)ld - Hirst Arts Mold #75

All miniature stuff has been on the backburner for a while, but to keep myself at least somewhat honed, I recently purchased the Ruined Fieldstone Mold (Mould #75), by HirstArts. And after a couple of test castings, I must say that I’m much impressed with both the quality and the utility of this mould.

After recieving the mould, I had some doubts about my casting skills, as the mould has several quite deep and narrow bits, and I have previously had some difficulties with such features - not to mention that I had not done any casting for over a year or so. However, the combination of precise measurements in mixing the plaster, mould-tapping and poking and stirring with a toothpick, ensured quite smooth casting process, with only a minimal amount of air bubbles. The atmosphere might have been a bit damp and cold, as the plaster seemed to take somewhat longer than usual to set, but otherwise the casting went as smoothly as I could expect.

The five different sizes of arches that can be cast using 

this mould.

As for the casts themselves, I’m very impressed with the variety of pieces you get out of this mould. Utility and versatility are the main points when I decide whether I want to purchase a mould or not, and I have to say that of all the moulds I have so far, this one probably has the most utility. In fact, even though the casting might be somewhat challenging, I would recommend this mould as the first mould to start out. Just the fact that with this mould one can cast 5 different sizes of arches would put it at the ’must have’ -category, the rest of the pieces are just Icing on top of that. Although it would take a lot of castings, a great variety of ruined buildings could be quite easily build just by using pieces from this mould. I especially like that there are 1/4” thick fieldstone wall pieces, as I tend to use that thickness quite a bit.

'Broken' and assembled bricks.

Floor tiles and thin wall segments, 

and some debris.

I also have to tip my hat at the ingenious way the ’halved’ pieces of this mould have been sculpted. They fit together snugly to form a whole piece, and yet when separated really look like they have been broken apart. Some real ingenious designing has been employed here.

I have previously ordered my moulds directly from HirstArts, but this time I decided to try an European distributor, Foundations of War (Hirst Arts UK). The whole process went smoothly, and the cost including postage was about 10 euros cheaper compared to ordering a single mould directly from HirstArts.

One problem remains. Apart from floor tiles, this is my only fieldstone mould, and now I have a sudden craving for some other bricks of the fieldstone variety. Although there are some custom pieces I have wanted to do for a while, maybe it would be more productive to get some quality mould silicone.