Greggry P

This started off life as a quick colour study for an oil painting I’ve been planning and wasn’t meant to be anything more, but - as usual - I started getting obsessed with adding the detail, and so here we are. I’ll still work on the painting, but I’m really happy with the vector version so thought I’d share. Hope you like her!

Created in Affinity Designer iPad v2. Hope you like it!

Thanks Bob. I appreciate it probably doesn’t make much sense if you’re not familiar with Brighton in the UK. I guess I meant that the city has been anthropomorphised into a human character. For example, her dress represents the beach (sequins are pebbles, the skirt represents the sea, and the belt is the ruins of a famous pier stranded off the coast). Her crown is the dome of the Brighton Pavilion, her halo is another landmark - the Hove bandstand. Her ice cream is identical to the helter skelter on the end of Brighton pier, the hem of her shroud are the promenade railings, etc. (As I say, there are 33 of these…)

New work - Our Lady of Brighthelmstone. This was my recent submission for a call to artists put out by a new gallery opening in the city of Brighton & Hove - sadly rejected. The theme was metamorphosis, so I painted the city morphed into a fabulous drag queen, in the style of an Uber-kitsch religious painting (taking “Our Lady of Guadeloupe” as my main inspiration - Brighthelmstone is the old name for the city of Brighton). There are a total of 33 visual “easter eggs” contained within the picture, some architectural, some cultural. If any of you are familiar with the place, have fun spotting them! (Created on Affinity Designer 2 for iPad)

Thank you so much for all your help everyone. In the end, I managed to achieve exactly what I needed, so all your help was hugely appreciated.

Hey everyone - I’m fairly inexperienced when it comes to the exporting element of AD so apologies in advance if I’m asking a stupid question. I’m entering a competition next week, and need to upload my submission in JPEG form through the “Zealous” website. They have a maximum image size of 4mb, and the minumum file size I get when I export presently is 70.4mb (it’s quite a large and complex piece with a great many layers). Weirdly, if I export using super jpeg its 12.5mb (smaller?) I obviously want to export my image at the highest possible quality I can, so does anyone have any tips on how I might be blue to export/compress with minimum loss of quality? Any assistance would be hugely appreciated.

Thanks Garry. All sorted now, and I appreciate you taking the time to help. Have a good day.

I regularly employ this (admittedly basic) technique (see fur lined glove on screenshot below, and mink stole). Not an elegant solution by any means, but can look great and once grouped together behave the same as any vector object.

Paul - that's amazing. Such a simple solution and I would just never have thought of it! Thank you so much for your help, it's hugely appreciated. Hope I didn't take up too much of your time!

Thanks Paul. Have just sent.

You could just draw the "outer" hair on a separate pixel layer immediately behind your main curved object?

Thanks Paul. Again - sorry for asking potentially stupid questions but I'm not remotely good with this stuff - PDF-X4 won't allow me to rasterise everything (which I need to do, otherwise any objects created using the "multiply" blend tone appear as white patches on the exported PDF. Also, to be clear, the artwork was created on the iPad version, but I'm doing all my exporting on an iMac, because the iPad just takes far too long to perform this task (as it is, the desktop takes nearly an hour!) I used the screenshot of the iPad settings only because I have it to hand, and the settings I've been using are the same.

Hi Garry, many thanks for this. I’m afraid I’ve been through every individual stroke and object on every layer a thousand times, and it just doesn’t exist. There’s just nothing on the art board that isn’t already accounted for, or even that exists in that particular area. Regarding the export settings, I’ve been exporting according to the screenshot below. As I said in the original post I’m very new to this stuff so I may very well be doing something obviously wrong, so please feel free to point out any setting you think is incorrect or may make a difference?

I have an art show coming up in a couple of weeks, and I’m desperately trying to export this print file and it’s driving me mad! The issue is that on the resulting PDF a cluster of bubbles appears in the lower left hand corner of the background (just above the sink edge) which does not appear in the original artwork (see JPEG). I’ve been through every layer with a fine-toothed comb numerous times to see if I can locate/delete the offending object, but it just isn’t there. This phenomena only happens when I try to export it as a PDF, where the object suddenly “appears”. Does anyone have any idea what I’m doing wrong? Sorry if this is an obvious question, but I’m not hugely proficient with the software, so anny assistance would be hugely appreciated! Debbie Does Dishes.pdf

I know! It’s bigger than ever! Somebody stop me….