Recording The Painting

It's been while since I created a time lapse art video using SketchBlock, and I felt it was time for new one, however, I'm often asked for a real time / speed copy so that user of my software can see the way I personally use it. The trouble with this is keeping the video to a manageable length! (I'm not the fastest of digital artists!).

With my mother's birthday approaching I wanted to paint a simple card design featuring some Sweet Peas, as this should be a shorter painting than some I've attempted it seemed a good subject to record. I setup my EZCAP recorder on the HDMI output of my X1000 with the DVI attached to the monitor as usual, and started working on the project.

I captured the portion up to the finish of the actual painting, stopping before converting it into a card design. (Perhaps I'll do a tutorial on that another time). Total time was about 43 minutes. Not to long for more modern youtube possibilities.

The video has capture a good snapshot of my freehand work process, what you can't see is my keyboard short cuts in action. The most common of these is to press the control key whist painting to sample colours from other parts of the painting. The mouse pointer briefly changes to a pipette / dropper image when I do this.

If you see the colour darkening / lightening for no obvious reason, then I am pressing 'ALT COMMA' or 'ALT PERIOD'. like wise the size of the brush can be scaled up and down by pressing the 'COMMA' and 'PERIOD' keys.

Recording The Jazz

So I had my 43 minutes of video, but no piece of music long enough to use as sound track. I didn't want to loop a song or use an entire album's worth, so I thought up a challenge for myself, to record a single take improvisation, based on a theme, and to try and keep it varied and interesting, without losing site of the theme.

I recorded this by running the output of my Line 6 amp simulator direct in the line input (no pun intended) of the X1000s built in sound card. I then used the excellent Audio Evolution to record with. (I have the android version too).

Usually I run AE4 on my SAM-Flex but my Terratec Phase 22 seams to have stopped working, so this meant a bit of searching around for alternate cables as the X1000 has mini jacks whereas the Phase 22 uses proper full sized instrument inputs.

By the time I was setup the dogs needed feeding and I needing a cup of tea. With that done I settled in and just played for 43 minutes, a theme developed quite quickly and I drifted back and forth between it and more freeform parts as time progress, bring it back quite nicely by the end. (well I think so, have listen and see what you think.

The Video

That was more words that I expected to type, thanks for reading if you did, but here is what you came for:

SketchBlock Pro is available via AmiStore or can be purchased direct from myself. Send me an email (andy@broad.ology.org.uk)