Learning and Gathering Phase

When the artwork is not being produced there is much absorption of information. Currently going over the old typography books and falling in love with fonts all over again. Which is probably obvious from the exemplars I've posted. I am also trying to dig into the brain pan and find all the places that I have hidden some great informational gems. I have to be honest and tell you that this political campaign season has really piqued my interest and is taking up much of my time.

So while things swirl in a chaotic cloud in my head, I leave you with a few bits to absorb on your own. When the dust settles we will see what has been left.

First: Print Magazine's online source has a variety of great visuals and some in depth articles. This one featuring Czech poster design was fascinating.

The magazine covers all things related to design, color history and meaning, typographers and foundries, theory and application.

Print will also clue you in on some great things that you may not have otherwise discovered in terms of small imprints and magazines from around the world.

In other places around the web, art seems to abound. I found a drawing on pintrest and followed the story here. It takes a while to navigate this blog. But Tommy Kane has an interesting take on life and art in his surroundings.

And of course there is the work that keeps the bills paid. Winter is not really cooperating with the light for photography when I am home so I am also focusing on the baking of recipes and translating of said recipes. It looks like the busy season will commence for us in the middle of the grey bleak midwinter. Oh well... I guess that is how life goes.

Pantone 2016

The 2016 color of the year has been announced from Pantone. This year, it is a winning duo the pale pink of rose quartz and the pale blue of serenity. Why two? Gender equality.

A politically correct choice of color?
No secret, I hate pastels. And I am a little bit biased against the colors because I so strongly dislike pastels. I don't know why we can't have more jewel tones. Last year's marsala was a nice deep color at once serene and bold. And so perfect to go with jewel tones as a balance.

Now these colors, the shade of a tepid sunset. I can't wait to see what next year's color will be.

More Fonts to Play With

New Fonts 'Nuf Said

Illustrated Sayings

It seems that art and life can not be easily disentangled. Nor does it seem that life allows art to be made without there being some amount of sorrow or pain associated with the creation. 2015 has begun with a series of personal tragedies following a rather large dry spell in the art department throughout the later half of 2014. And from this perspective it seems that art is going to have to wait for a while longer before it can take center stage in life again.

As has been the case in this past year, digital art production is a quick hit for getting the creativity going. And I am still working on my photographic skills, honing the set up and snap shot process of capturing the essence of food before it gets lost to the ravages of too much counter time. So it isn't like ABSOLUTELY nothing is getting accomplished. I do have to remember that and not get down on myself for being unproductive. It's just that the kind of art I am doing is a bit of a departure from the art that I am used to presenting here.


Take, for instance, this set of images I made for my facebook page. It uses 4 layers of textures, the first of which is my own painting of the sacral chakra which was heavily manipulated. Then a series of overlays from my own files that were culled from graphicstock and voila!

One of the things that I hate about the internet is how fast snark and sarcasm spread. It isn't just snark and sarcasm though. It is the way that trite one-liners and pseudo-proverbs that are woefully one dimensional spread. One of them that got me riled was the saying that Actions Speak Louder Than Words.

When a promise is made and broken that says something about the person who made the promise. When a secret is shared and then blabbed about town that says a lot about the person who broke confidence. It says you don't care. It says you lie. Two times the saying is true. The problem with this saying is that in other situations, you have to be able to interpret actions objectively.

I do not know too many people who are objective enough to be reliable interpreters. One has to be able to understand human psychology and behavior and disciplined enough not to run another's actions through the filter of your own pain. Even with my considerable skills as an empath, I don't get it right all the time. Few people get it right at all.

This is the placard that I created in response to the haphazard application of the pseudo-proverb Actions Speak Louder Than Words.

You're Ruining the Art Market, Sotheby's

In a short list of things that really make me angry this is one of them. Let me introduce you to Barnett Newman. While being a fellow artist and Aquarian, I am tempted to love him in spite of my anger just because we have to stick together. Why am I angry?

Because of this article. http://twentytwowords.com/canvas-painted-blue-with-a-white-line-sells-for-nearly-44-million-4-pictures/ Because ANYONE can paint these paintings. Maybe not 10,000 monkeys with sable bristle brushes as they lack sufficient attention span for such a huge undertaking. But any, ANY, human being on the planet can paint this! I can make this on pickmonkey in about 4 minutes if I didn't have a monkey's penchant for distraction.

This is his wiki article. In it, the author states that he is considered one of the foremost of color field painters. So first, we have a term for what this is called; color field, a sub genre of abstraction. And this seems to suggest that he is on par with Rothko, Kandinsky and Mondrian, more so with Mondrian obviously. Secondly, let's face it... blocks of color representing whatever the artist tells the audience it represents is the same thing be it color field abstraction or neoplasticism, associated with Bauhaus, de Stijl or whatever. It is the same thing!!!!!!!

The difference between these guys hawking their wares and the average Joe Painter is that their prowess for bullshit is unmatched by any other skill which they might possess. How can I say that? For one, anyone with a huge canvas, a roll of frog tape and some paint can paint a pane of blue with a white stripe. For two, this excerpt from Wiki:

 Utilizing his writing skills, Newman fought every step of the way to reinforce his newly established image as an artist and to promote his work. An example is his letter on April 9, 1955, "Letter to Sidney Janis: ...it is true that Rothko talks the fighter. He fights, however, to submit to the philistine world. My struggle against bourgeois society has involved the total rejection of it."

He wrote this to Mark Rothko's agent Sidney Janis. And in the 40s he destroyed a good chunk of his work. I'd say in destroying it he really did totally reject the bourgeois-iness of the bourgeois. I don't know how you can call this skill. It isn't like Impressionism, in which the entire structure in the creation process is flipped on its head. There are no gradient under paintings, no washes of color built over the tones, smooth brushstrokes to emphasize the ploy of reality. Impressionism was thick, visible, bold strokes of barely defined planes in which color and light do all the work of the under paintings in the realism of the Old Masters. And it was so different, so ethereal that it jarred the senses.

I will grant you that abstractionism is as jarring to the senses of one accustomed to the work of preceding eras. I will also grant that some abstraction is wildly fascinating. Kandinsky's work does have structure which try as I might, I can not fathom. His is not the work of an elephant with a brush and 14 cups of tempera paint. It has rhythm and motion, pattern. Mondrian as well is pattern. There is something to the work. But Barnett Newman's work is all in his words..... his skill as a busker.

Enter Sotheby's. As the link says... they sold it for 44MILLion dollars.
As I said on Facebook:
At that price you'd better be able to hold a black light up to it and find the cure for cancer, AIDs and class stratification.


You can call this whatever you want. Cathedra is what Newman called it. So on the right.... any number of options I could call this. Other than the fact that this is a statement of protest, this is not art either. It is expression. But it isn't art.

Go home Sotheby's, you're drunk.

as they say.....

 

 

 

 

Playing with picmonkey again, this time with the pics I took at Fred Meijer park. 

Thinking Spring

I think this is going to be my facebook cover.... I don't know. One of my friends asked me if she could use the last post as her cover which got me to thinking. The previous post really was not formatted for facebook. So I have no idea if it is going to let her do what she thinks it will.

But it did give me an idea for this one.

So more noodling........

3 in a Series

You could use your new found Picmonkey textures to create a whole post.

I saw a book for sale at Christmas that takes the right kind of humor and mixes it with my love of the German language. And I am going to steal the layout idea for my Wordpress blog on the subject of Words.

I took the same Tardis Blue™ texture I've been using and applied it to the facebook layout option under design and formatted the thing like so....

This is not the final draft for the blog project.... but an idea. It will be the only thing in the posts on this subject. So it is the post.

How can you use this idea in your own blog?

A Short series

Since just before the New Year I've been in love with the Picmonkey website. And you can see the wonderful things that can be done with a few simple tools and some creative interpretation. In the last post I showed you some textures in a shade of Tardis Blue ™. Sadly, somehow this is more purple here than what I was working on at picmonkey and my file reading program says it really was Tardis Blue ­­™ before Blogger© got a hold of it.

What do you do with these textures once you've made a handful of them? Here's an idea....

This is simple. Just throw some typeface over the top of it.

Strength in Solitude

As I am embarking on a new personal journey, the question of solitude has come up. Again. In many ways introverts are completely comfortable with the concept of seclusion, especially in the creative arts. However.... and you thought there was a but coming, however; introverts don't always want to be alone. Ideally we would like to be with an extrovert that can be our world representative. I think. Maybe it isn't fair to speak for all introverts. I speak for myself and say it is nice to be able to share the quiet and be connected to someone.

It's hard to find people to do that with though. So many people in the World freak out over the concept of spending time alone that we seem weird. There is almost always something wrong with people who need a lot of time alone. I have a friend who just made bread from the mold of a grape found on a walk.... it's yeasty good bread raising mold. But those things take time to cultivate and work out to perfection. Those things don't need an audience in the experimental phase. But they do need an audience for the reveal and the applause. Accolades are just as important to introverts but we feel like we have to work harder. And that takes some time alone to be the genius.

Reflecting on that, I found words from the Impressionist Paul Gauguin. And this is the result:

Monument to Sucess

I've talked about Michelle Ward for forever because I love her stuff. I especially love what the graphic design world has been calling "Maximalism". I noticed it but didn't really connect with the trend until Michelle blogged about it. That was back in 2006 and I am just now getting around to being brave enough to try it. Of course this style goes hand in hand with the cool things that she is doing with stencils & spray paint.

As I am not set up for elaborate processes, I have chosen to play with the picmonkey and explore what I can do with the concept. No physical space required. No wasted material in failed attempts.

Tonight's issue:

The background was generated using picmonkey layers and editing the crap out of them. The engraved drawing is from the British Library collection I mentioned yesterday. And the rest was a lot of frustrated picking and deleting.

I'm not normally found of mixing cool and warm colors, which is what holds me back a little. But this red and blue/green combo is starting to grow on me.

Random sketches

Some more ideas to go with the Egypt thing and the sketches for the chakra series of acrylics. I think that the only one that stayed as planned was the sacral chakra. I really like the idea behind the lekythos but it needs to be reworked. That top olive branch needs to be a bit more droopy with the weight of those fruits.

Pacioli in San Sepolcro

 

 

 

My favorite part of art class in college was the art history. I learned so many things that I did not know that I wanted to know. And the fun parts were about typography and how the fonts were made. My favorite font is Fritz Quadrata. Fra Luca Pacioli is primarily responsible for figuring out how early Romans chiseled letters into their buildings using the Golden Mean and disseminating that information. Pacioli's formulas helped daVinci (which might be an overstatement, collaboration may be more accurate) break down the Vetruvian Man.

 

He grew up in San Sepolco, a north Umbrian town southeast of Florence, returning periodically as life got a little weird for him. I developed the ink drawing as a stamp idea in school to commemorate Pacioli's typographic contributions. Then of course I've added layers of textures, text and designs.

 

 

 



Digital Art flexes the Brain Cells

Revised for the new Holiday season coming upon us. I like this treatment in many ways. But I am still not one hundred percent sold on it. I really want this to work for more than Christmas. I originally had thought to do a stargazer here and blend two themes. But I am not sure exactly how that is going to happen. That is not the fault of picmonkey so much as it is the fault of the operator. I just can't figure out how to finagle it.

But I am pretty damn stoked about the things that I am doing with the limited editing palette. And by limited I mean the range of tools and images is decidedly smaller than my rubber stamp and ink pad collection.

For Dawn: Thinking of You All

This patchwork of my stargazer watercolors is not quite done yet. So far it's been a two hour process and I am a little stuck. Not horribly stuck. But a little stuck. One of my favorite bloggers is having a helluva time with Life the Universe & Everything™ right now and the "stuck in the process" seems like an important thing to acknowledge as much as trying to brighten up the day for her.

I am hoping that some good news can come her way soon. I know a lot of people in Arizona close to her in geography but no one who can do too much to help her out right now and it is frustrating. To be part of a network that is helpful for the commiserating but not terribly potent in the realm of help is as frustrating as being in the middle of major life issues and having no clue what to do. But Dawn just keeps putting one foot in front of the other.

I guess the important thing to remember in those instances is that, because of the nature of the Universe and it's own healing mechanisms, these are the times when the thoughts count the most. A good thought sent to a hurting friend will find them eventually.... like that laugh that comes out when no one has told a joke. It might be a delayed reaction. But it is a reaction. And it helps. Just because I want to be able to do more, as do all of her friends, doesn't mean that what we are actually able to do doesn't count. And that is where we get stuck as the support team.

And even if you don't know Dawn, or read her blog, when you see this post, think of her and wish her strength, energy and a safe place in her emotional cycle to let out some of the tears that get stuck when you try to stay strong and downplay the stress/grief/etc...

Thanks.

Being Yourself

I admire a lot of art out there. Some of the sketches I've seen the last few days have awed me. Many of the entries for ARTPrize in Grand Rapids set me back on my heels. Moleskine is running a sketchbook series that I find absolutely astounding. I guess I can not get passed a notebook for writing because I have a hard time thinking of anything worth drawing in them... I save it for the sketch books.

And sometimes I am overwhelmed with the "I Wish I Could_______ Like______ Does." Perhaps that is not a good thought to have. I start doubting the awesomeness of my own stuff. If you are going to sell it you have to think it is awesome. If you don't no one else will. Really though.... I do a very decent job. And there are a lot of things that I like about my own stuff. So I shouldn't let the fact that I love other things diminish what I do. Comparison is not always helpful. Now if you evaluate yourself to see how you are doing day to day or with projects of a similar nature than you are doing something healthy.

Today's digital art is a Birthday Greeting that I can pop across time and space with email. Yes, it is the same style as yesterday. It is also in a color scheme that I am not always comfortable with. And let's face it. It's been 4 years since I have rightly had my hands on my physical art supplies. So I do need to get some of my principles down and remember those art rules that used to come so naturally to me.

This is my style. It is a fact of my life. I could want to be a hundred other artists but I am me. The choices I made with my art lead me to this place. And so it stands to reason that this is who I am as an artist. I am much softer and romantic in art than in life. Which is good because there needs to be a softness to me. I can not be all horns and thorns all the time. I like visual texture and elegance and have very little of it in my daily life. Again... this is me and I need to be me somewhere. It may only be at the easel (physical or digital) but at least I am getting back to being me.

And my art is reflecting me more now than it has in recent years.

Making Memes

It's a thing. It is officially a thing... the crafting of a meme, to put words to pictures that might or might not belong together that may or may not get a laugh but is always intended as an homage to a person, place, thing, concept. Grumpy Cat, a.k.a Tardar is the number one meme on the webs. I can not begin to guess who comes second. Who's on first, What's on second. And cue the Doctor's music......

Ear worms used to be comedy sketches as well as music (like the afore-referenced "Who's on First" routine from Abbott & Costello (see "Before our Time" in your parents book of things kids don't understand) That is not a real thing but should be. It used to be if someone was whistling the Andy Griffith theme, you'd catch a snippet and that would make your brain playback the opening credits in your head. You had it to yourself and then that would release a flood of memories from the show. And it happened with any show tune that someone came up with. You had some happy little memories dancing in your head. These days rather than just let the accompanying imagery from an audio memory trigger dance around in our heads, we clip, cut & paste, disassemble and reassemble then photo edit those snippets and post them on the web.

I thought you could only do this with photoshop. And then web pages started hosting editing functions. It is like having your own little Scrapbook fest. Except there aren't 30 women gathered around talking about layouts and inspiring each other. It is you and the music of choice and the only inspiration comes from the other memes you've seen floating around. And I got to thinking, after seeing some very good Sherlock memes lately...

Are memes art? Are they craft?
Some, undoubtedly, are literary to be certain. The word play, more than pun and as sophisticated in logic & humor as a Calvin & Hobbes comic strip qualify as word art. But is it graphic art? Not always. Not unless you are talking about the "Keep______ &"... meme. It has a very strict graphic layout and set up for it's execution. Oh... and that would be meme #2. My personal favorite is the new firefly Keep________& meme. So while literary because it is composed almost entirely of words it is graphic because the words are the thing.

To be sure, I have seen a lot of things that are just slapped together. And then some that are just breath-takingly composed and executed. So I thought I would give it a go using picmonkey.  And this is what I came up with:



obviously the photo credits belong to the original photographer and the
graphics belong to Picmonkey. My only contribution is the composition
 & the wit.

About choices: the memes I like best have photos that reflect the idea of the chosen text. Since it is a question and the question follows a basic "if/then" statement with references to time elapsing I wanted a picture that was "current" as I already had the Edwardian era picture as an end goal. And let's face it, this is my favorite look on him. The expression seems to say: "How thick are you?" or, my most hoped for interpretation of the top photo, we think that Richard has asked a rhetorical question and is waiting for the answer to sink in.

The second photo reflects deep concentration. That rhetorical question is being considered and answered and about 30 nanoseconds after the shutter clicks a mental "D'oh" will register. My hope with this composition is that the elements all blend to lead the viewer through the same thought process I had in trying to answer the question for myself.

The whole thing reminds me of the format that we used to use to make hand stamped cards back in the day. Which is essentially how my scrapbooking style developed. It is similar to ad layouts I've seen recently. And there is not too much to think about. Picmonkey did all the math, and suffered the headaches of trying to figure out what the optimal layout options should be. You just chose based on the number of photos you are working with.

The color scheme is analogous because I wanted something elegant that did not distract from answering the circular question or from such well crafted stills. Not to mention that the focus is more on Richard Armitage than on the humor. Though both were essential in cheering my friend up.

And yes. It did cheer my friend up. It has been submitted to an RA fan site. And I am hoping they will share it with the world. If not.... I share with a handful of my friends around the world and hope some RA fans will find it and enjoy.

And....... I just remembered I have some thoughts in draft that I wanted to share for his birthday last month. Don't feel bad RA, most of my friends didn't get theirs this year either.

Digital Art is Quick Success

It's like my mom always used to say, "You can't do for one without the others screaming." So instead of going to bed when I got home, which would be the smart thing to do. I made a banner for this blog. With luck I can show you the progression before I dump the scraps from the computer. Keep your fingers crossed that I kept a good record of my work.

You were supposed to keep your fingers crossed. Of course I only saved twice.

Well, at least you can still see what I did. After cropping out all the background crap from the watercolor, I added some filter layers which put a wee bit of a spotlight focus on the forward most plum.

Then I added some overlays from picmonkey's postal collection. Each "stamp" was hand tinted to color match the plums, faded and the eraser tool removed the marks that fell across the plums so that the fruits would continue to stand out. Then a layer of blood splatters tinted to look like spilled paint because that is the idiotic thing that I did in the original painting which I've not known exactly how to work around. So... play up the mistake. And since the blog is called "spilt paint" it seems to make a lot of sense.

After that the corners and the text were the only things to do. Except... I wasn't exactly happy with the flatness. So I added a drop shadow and fiddled with it. Picmonkey lets you adjust all of the shadow elements just like a regular photoshop program. With the color picker tool I was able to keep a harmonious color scheme. Because of the choices I made I was able to make it look like the kind of hand stamped cards I used to do, using double sided foam to add depth. This gave the effect of the stamped postal images being stamped off onto the "scrap" which instead of being thrown away became the matte for the main image. That was a framing trick we employed at work to avoid the waste that otherwise might pile up while making sample cards to send to clients.

I even thought this would be a cool print without all the officious poop that has to compose a blog header. I was quite happy with it at that point. More than I have ever been with the original. Though I do think that I am being quite hard on myself. And should probably stop.

Box 2 continued...

I am not sure why Blogger does that when I am uploading multiple images. This is the second time that I have tried to add a second batch to a post and it decided not to let me see my library. If I were a paranoid Spook* I would think it was the Russians. It doesn't help that all of the spam in my stats is coming from Russia. So stop it if you don't want to get blamed! Oh... right. The bots don't actually read the posts.
So, moving on with the last post:





These lemons were from Jennifer Harrison's art class. The graphic representation of 5 in a complementary color was the assignment, if I am not mistaken. The left is done in acrylic. I love acrylic because it let's me work with texture. I am a very tactile person. The left is in watercolor. The graphic "advert" style on the left is fun to do once in a while. I need to do work like that to take me out of the rigid adherence to reality that sometimes I get mired in. I can not do that kind of simplification on a regular basis. Jennifer kept encouraging me to make more decisions in the realism with the reduction method in mind.

It helps your brain edit out the things that just don't matter. And she is right. The acrylic makes a strong statement. Those lemons are "gift wrapped". Definitely a life lesson in there. :)

 

 

You might think that these apples are watercolor. In a way they are.... it is acrylic wash. A lesson from Jennifer about playing with your medium to see what all it can do. 

 

My hands. I purposefully did two left hands in this drawing for Glee Fenby's class. I can not draw left handed. And  my right hand is not exactly photogenic. That is my own bias, I have no deformity. I just don't like my right hand.

The self portrait is woefully misshaped and distorted because it is a vertical orientation on an 18 by 24 inch piece of paper and I was working flat. It is the same issue I have with the peacocks that I started this past Winter.... accidental forshortening. It is me.... one of the best self portraits I have done. But I look like I got caught in one of Wesley's distortion field projects in school.

 The drawing pad containing all of my assignments from our text book in Glee Fenby's class and the only project I was not going to be embarrassed to post: from Commander Mark's book that I taught my daycare kids with 10 years! before I got to school myself. I loved Mark Kistler's program until my mom did what she always did and went off the deep end competing with him and then me. There is some thing distasteful about an adult that has to find a way to put down little kids.

Speaking of Russians. There was a kid who got to be on the show quite often. He was good. He could out draw Commander Mark, and Mark said so. He also said that was the point and the hope of every teacher: to have the student surpass the master.

 After a full 6 seasons of Doctor who I look at these chess pieces as Daleks in disguise. I need a break from BBC.

And I need to figure out what my eyes are doing when I have multiple objects in a painting. At first glance this watercolor still life is astoundingly talented for someone who at the time was new to watercolor. My glass is not as screwed up in the symmetry department as is usual. The banana and peach are well shaped, shaded, balanced and placed in the composition. The purple fabric is very natural and soft looking as it should be. But then you look at that apple. WHAT THE FUCK!!!!!!!!

It looks like the peach smashed into it and collapsed the thing! The apple should have it's left side behind the peach. Instead they look like they are competing for space and it ruins the whole thing. I'd like to say that was a freak, one-off accident. But it isn't. As I was taking photos today I noticed that is a recurring problem in my work. Now if it is something that is happening with my visual cortex then I have a huge problem. If the issue is that I don't stop often enough to step back and look objectively then I need to change my methods and the problem is fixed. Of course by the time I get the  drawing done I am so starved for color that I could just be rushing myself... in which case that is a discipline issue.

either way.... that is at least 15 hours wasted. There is just no way to make that yellow apple melt into the green background behind that damn peach!

 And then there is this: yet another reminder of my ex-fiancé. A graphic representation for Jennifer Harrison's class. I think that this was the last project of the first year. Matt and I were either in constant competition or constantly encouraging each other. This is a project in which he gave me permission to use his handwriting to model the letter "A" in an art nouveau style. And the homework is explained in the 5 areas of the project itself. The technique used tricks from my rubberstamping days. Glossy paper, alcohol inks and gold leaf pen. Simple. But stunning.