A Kind of Paradise

We resisted buying an iPad until about a month ago – I needed to see how our website Notes in Spanish looked on one after a big redesign. And we have listeners who download our Spanish products onto iPads, and it was a bit embarrassing to admit that as a podcasting multimedia company we couldn’t troubleshoot their iPad download problems because we didn’t have one.

Well, now we do, and inspired equally by my super creative youngest sister and David Hockney, I couldn’t resist installing the Procreate drawing app. It’s the only thing I plan to do with the iPad, and I have to admit, it’s great fun. The image above is a finger painting with virtual oil paints, remembering a walk in the snow from the day before.

Below, more early experiments:

I love the bright colours, the way you can send the work immediately to friends and family. Hockney did this when he started painting with his iPhone, and later the iPad, he’d send his daily sketches to friends, joyous, colourful, virtual postcards. I love that! Sending a bit of joy around.

Here, a lovely evening in:

Next, the memory of a favourite stream in the French Pyrenees (this started in a sketchbook with felt-tipped pens, then got fiddled with in Photoshop, then put into the iPad to paint over a little more – what fun!):

And finally, below, is the master himself, with some lovely wisdom about the news. The title of this video, “The World is Beautiful”, is Hockney’s guiding force. It’s “a kind of paradise” he says elsewhere, and I’d like to remember that every time I look out of the window or walk out of the door.