Faux cyanotype art

[William Overington]

Whale by Moonlight

 

 

 

 

 

 

The following thread is relevant.

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/155724-can-one-produce-faux-cyanotypes-using-affinity-designer/ 

 

 

 

[William Overington]

Remembering that I might want to order a print of the image, and that the image includes bleed areas around the edges, I decided to move the white parts up the canvas a little.

So I saved a copy of what I had produced, and then edited that.

This proved to be quite atraightforward.

I selected the moon, then shift selected the three other white parts and then used the upward arrow key to move all four white parts up the canvas, while retaining their relative positions each to the others.

 

 

 

William

 

[Alfred]

29 minutes ago, William Overington said:

The following thread is relevant.

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/155724-can-one-produce-faux-cyanotypes-using-affinity-designer/ 

Couldn’t you have continued in that thread instead of creating this separate one?

 

[William Overington]

Yet that image loses the design idea that the part above the surface of the sea is larger than the part below the sea.

So I lowered the line that represents the surface of the sea.

I also narrowed that part too, to allow for the bleed areas.

 

 

 

William

 

[William Overington]

13 minutes ago, Alfred said:

Couldn’t you have continued in that thread instead of creating this separate one?

 

Well, I could have done, but I did not.

The reason being that I originally had started that thread in the Share your work forum. However, it got moved, which was reasonable as at that stage the thread did not contain any original artwork produced using an Affinity product.

So, when there was some original art produced using Affinity Designer produced, I started this thread as the appropriate place to display that art, rather than display it not in the gallery.

William

 

[Alfred]

40 minutes ago, William Overington said:

… I originally had started that thread in the Share your work forum. However, it got moved, which was reasonable as at that stage the thread did not contain any original artwork produced using an Affinity product.

I hadn’t noticed that the threads were in different forum sections! 

Anyway, I like the watercolour effect but it’s more turquoise than cyan. Also, as @walt.farrell pointed out in the other thread, the white lines don’t match the style of the original image:

3 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

You'd need soft edges to match your original image (and cyanotypes in general, I think), so probably a raster brush from the Pixel Persona.

If you prefer not to dabble in the Pixel Persona you can simply apply a Gaussian Blur effect to the white lines, yielding a result like this:

 

[William Overington]

Thank you for the image, but it looks, er, um ... fuzzy ... un ... to me!

How did you do the cyan part please? In which persona is it please?

William

 

[Alfred]

4 minutes ago, William Overington said:

How did you do the cyan part please? In which persona is it please?

I used the watercolour brush that you recommended. As indicated in my previous post, I stayed within the Designer Persona and simply applied a Gaussian Blur effect to the white lines (which is why it looks “fuzzy”).

[William Overington]

This is a copy of the previous illustration with the white lines converted with the same watercolour brush, yet no other changes.

 

 

 

 

William

 

[William Overington]

43 minutes ago, Alfred said:

I used the watercolour brush that you recommended. As indicated in my previous post, I stayed within the Designer Persona and simply applied a Gaussian Blur effect to the white lines (which is why it looks “fuzzy”).

@Alfred

How did you get the effect without obvious turns at the ends and without a doble opacity part when overlapping occurs when trying to avoid white gaps please?

William

 

[Alfred]

1 hour ago, William Overington said:

@Alfred

How did you get the effect without obvious turns at the ends and without a doble opacity part when overlapping occurs when trying to avoid white gaps please?

William

 

I allowed the brush stroke to overlap the edges of the canvas:

[AdamStanislav]

2 hours ago, Alfred said:

I allowed the brush stroke to overlap the edges of the canvas

Very clever.

[William Overington]

@Alfred

Yes, indeed very clever.

What are the white circles, filled cyan please?

I appreciate that they are the bounding box (is that the correct term?) of the lines used to produce the background, I am wodering about them being that size and shape.

Also, how did you get the whale to be drawn with such smooth lines please.

The circle is possibly from using the Circle Tool.

How were the waves done please?

I habitually use Affinity software with the light version of the User Interface.

The default User Interface always seems too glary for me.

William

 

 

[Alfred]

1 hour ago, William Overington said:

Yes, indeed very clever.

Thank you.

1 hour ago, William Overington said:

What are the white circles, filled cyan please?

I appreciate that they are the bounding box (is that the correct term?) of the lines used to produce the background, I am wodering about them being that size and shape.

The white circles are the adjustment handles and the bounding box is the rectangle that joins them. The size is explained by the fact that the screenshot is from iPad, although I’m pretty sure there’s a Preferences setting for node and handle sizes in the desktop apps.

1 hour ago, William Overington said:

Also, how did you get the whale to be drawn with such smooth lines please.

The circle is possibly from using the Circle Tool.

How were the waves done please?

I used the Pen Tool for the whale and the waves. (The whale shall henceforth be known as Katrina.) The circle is indeed created with the Circle Tool, or rather the Ellipse Tool constrained to produce a circle.

1 hour ago, William Overington said:

I habitually use Affinity software with the light version of the User Interface.

The default User Interface always seems too glary for me.

I would be more than happy to use the Light Interface in the iPad apps if they offered such a thing.