Back-up, back-up, back-up

What a day, my computer decided to die on me at my busiest time. I had a nine year old boy to entertain, fruit and veg and supermarket shopping to do for the week, and with the best will in the world I'm not going to be able to design books and annual reports in Pages on an iPad, so in between times I was taking hours trying out troubleshooting with Apple Support. In the end I had to cut my losses and find a supplier who could provide me with a computer today. Long waits while talking to telephone support and watching the beach ball of death on my computer meant I could play with this fun little app. And I’m thanking God that I backed up. So if you're thinking about buying that neat little terabyte external hard disk, do it before contemplating spending money on anything else. If I hadn't bought my lovely easy to use hard disk back up in January, I would have lost so much it doesn't bear thinking about.

Love these jars

These jars are great for putting home-made goodies into for Christmas presents, and the jam isn't bad either.

Fanny Cradock* eat your heart out

Fanny Craddock, eat your heart out, a photo by Julie Oakley on Flickr.

The perfect centrepiece for a birthday party for my dear step mother in law, who probably doesn't have much time for Jamie and Nigella.

*For any non-English readers, Fanny was a TV chef famous in the sixties, whose recipes seemed to be more about elaborate decoration than flavour.

My sheets were still white!

The great thing about digital art is that you can use charcoal and paint in bed and go to sleep without even needing to wash your hands!

Driving to Dorset

Fortunately we picked the two days of summer to visit my dear friend, Shulay, in Dorset. I was able to wrest my iPad for a few moments from Xavier to once again create another profile portrait of the driver.

Up at five in the morning

Oh the devotion to duty – up at five to take photos for a book cover. This one was just for the blog, however.

Another go with Procreate

I think Procreate is going to generally be my painting app of choice on the iPad. It's not possible to do a video of the process like you can in Brushes. The final size of the image is very small for printing. The last issue is something I hope the software designers will be able to address in the future, but quite honestly it's a fantastic app for very little money and personally I find it much more usable than Brushes.

Trying out another iPad app

I'm not sure that I will get to grips with "Brushes" the app that David Hockney uses. There aren't enough choices of brushes and effects. However "Procreate" which is so much cheaper (only £2.99) seems to be a much more instinctive and better package. This picture reminds me of sailing in the Greek islands, getting up very early to set off for a long sail.

Sketch with free Bamboo Paper

Second brushes experiment

Untitled #5, a photo by Julie Oakley on Flickr.

I'm beginning to get the hang of this app. This is based on a watercolour I did in Langley Wood for my 'One Mile from Home' project.

First brushes pic

Untitled #4, a photo by Julie Oakley on Flickr.

I know this ain't great. But ever since seeing Stephan Kardos's wonderful iPhone pictures I've wanted to try out a touch screen app. As I've been forced to buy an iPad (for ePub work) I now have the chance to try out one of these apps. I'm finding it a lot more difficult to use than photoshop or any of the other software but I 'm going to persevere!