Painting With Photoshop CS6, #2 (Found the Flow!)

After a couple weeks painting with Photoshop CS6--getting a handle on those wild "creative" or "painterly" brushes, tweaking the Mixer Brush options, and settling into a rhythm with my Intuos4 to zoom in & out, switch up brush size, and rotate this way and that with ease--I think I have finally found that highly sought after, heavenly flow that brings immense happiness and relaxation in life. I can't wait to get back to work anytime I have to step away!

One digital painting on which I am currently working, is a compelling project in itself, involving blending a gorgeous mountain waterfall cascade with a pair of intertwined lovers. This is one unfinished part of a larger work in progress.

It's actually quite a lot of busy work, using the Mixer Brush to create a "painted" digital image from several photograph pieces, and then knit them together and sink one into the other with the Photoshop painting tools. Zooming in close will give you and idea of the amount of work, just in the Mixer Brush phase.

Yet, once you get the hang of it and set your options the way that feels most like paint (in my case, going for an oil paint on canvas feel), using the Mixer Brush can be quite meditative and relaxing. You can really get into that flow of mixing and pushing paint around, which is so famously therapeutic in painting with real paint. Close-up, the photographic forms melt away and you begin to see only colors and basic shapes.

Photoshop has an interesting way of inventing strange color spots, called artifacts, when you add resolution and use certain color adjustments. That would normally be annoying and corrosive to the image, but when painting like this, you can use that to your advantage, pushing and enhancing those spots of colors for beautiful effects.

Add to that the ability to plug into millions of free music channels on iTunes, and Photoshop painting can turn into downright bliss. On an iTunes radio station, I found "Calm Radio" and I was so impressed with their mixer app that I signed up for a membership:

https://www.calmradio.com/index.php

So now, while I paint waterfalls, I can listen to Gregorian chanting monks, mixed with a waterfall background. I throw in wind chimes and a roiling thunderstorm (they let you mix 4 channels) for good measure, and I paint in a sort of calm pleasure coma for hours.

I think it may be affecting my work. Just gotta make sure to choose the right channels...

Another piece that I first started noticing the flow while working, I found myself thinking of as "making love to" when I would get to work on it. In this case, it was fig leaves--I know, sort of a weird way to think about fig leaves, but take a look!

How else do you make love to a painting of fig leaves than this? (Yes, fig leaves are what is usually depicted covering private parts in classical paintings, that's not what I had in mind, but that imagery actually works for the final product...)

Again, it comes down to colors and shapes, when zoomed in so close. And since you don't need to bother with the mess of mixing those colors in the physical world, it's even more relaxing.

I hadn't found Calm Radio by the time I finished the fig leaves, and I wonder how that might have affected them. That's worth keeping track of...

Painting With Photoshop CS6, #1

It's funny how one can over-analyze plans and concepts, pondering and weighing, and letting those little worms gnaw into your gray matter...then, once action is actually taken, all worries cease and problems disappear!

Painting with Photoshop is just plain fun! Who cares about the meaning of art or the tradition of painting, when you have beautiful images right there on your screen, ready for print, sale, enjoyment, what have you:

What a nice little pomegranate flower painting, that took me only two days to paint in CS6. Look at all the yummy details possible, since I can zoom in to 500%+.

In fact, all those details are where I ran into trouble in the beginning. If I perfect each stroke, zoomed in so close, the finished result just looks like a photograph.

Even in the detail view, there isn't much in the way of color or brush stroke quality to distinguish the painting from the photo from which it was inspired. Why bother anyway? Well, I think I'll save that for my next post, as I get more advanced with the Photoshop CS6 "painting medium". Tutorials to follow, as well.

Add Adobe Illustrator to the mix, along with the previous hand-drawn and hand-painted images, and we have the beginning of some rather exciting new imagery for my pending project!

"Actual" Painting vs. Digital Painting?

Oil, acrylic, watercolor paint on paper. 

About to unwrap my beautiful new Mac, and install Photoshop CS6, I find myself wondering when I will be painting with the messy stuff again (oil, acrylic, watercolor). We're moving to a new place this week and I am pointedly NOT moving my painting studio in with me. Nope, saving the little work nook all for the Mac, etc! The idea is that I would rather rent a small painting studio somewhere else soon, but I'm a realist; how soon is soon? Easels, drawing table, paints, canvases, and all, are for the moment going...into storage.

Actually, I have been slogging along with the many, many paintings required for the illustrations of a new book (the above is just one), and I am seriously considering finishing them digitally. I had always meant to edit them in Photoshop, to get them ready for inclusion into the book, but maybe I will do a little more than just editing. Is that a cheat or the easy way out? Why does it matter?

Acrylic, watercolor paint on paper.

In many ways, painting more of these illustrations digitally would be easier, and more fun. For example, the playground above is a full two-page panoramic, with about a million leaves, pieces of mulch, a complicated architectural structure, and a dozen people. It makes sense to finish this one digitally, zoom in close to paint details, measure structural supports with guides, and copy and paste repeatable elements like leaves. Why not?

On the other hand, all of the best nuances of my favorite work, like the one used as a background for this blog, come from experimenting with whatever I have at hand: pencils, pastels, gouache, ink, gold leaf, throw it all in! Never underestimate the power of a serendipitous ink spill or an idiosyncratic doodle.  

The image used for the background of this blog, a painting from 2007. Watercolor, acrylic, gouache, pastels, graphite, ink, charcoal on paper.

Another painting from the same series. Similar materials as above.

This is my favorite way of working! Here are some new paintings from a series, "40 Paintings" about which I'm currently writing an instructional painting book (boy is that a lengthy project, don't look for it for years, whew!):

Watercolor, ink, gold leaf on paper.

Watercolor, acrylic, ink, pencil on paper.

But then, think of all the happy accidents that I might harness while learning all the cool new tricks in CS6! My guess is that I'll use plenty of both "real" paint and digital paint like in this earlier example of my learning to paint in Photoshop a couple years ago. Here's a link to the tutorial.

Digitally created image.

I had a hard time titling this blog entry, in fact, because I believe that painting is throwing in any and all materials at hand to make the image closest to what I imagine in my mind. Why should digital tools not be included in that? Somehow, I think a couple of my Parson's professors might argue against that idea. Then again, more would argue for it.

Pen & Ink Ramblings #3

My answer is Photoshop CS5 or CS6. The difference in the newer versions is the realism allowed with simulated traditional media.

Yes, practice makes perfect, and a steady hand is a golden one. Yet, nothing beats zooming in to 500%, being able to choose your "nib" size and shape as you see fit, with a pressure-simulating Wacom pen, and erase or undo, at will. I'm not even getting into the power of layering and selecting. I just don't feel as nervous when I know I can always "fix" it or just start over in a second. No drying ink. And well, in a lot of ways, finer work.

Actually, I didn't erase much, change nib sizes or need to undo at all. But, I had been so worried to lay down lines of real, unalterable black ink on white paper, while working with such a delicate subject as Bernini's Ecstasy of St. Theresa, in marble and, therefore, tones of white.

The thing of utmost importance, which working in Photoshop allowed me to see and have the confidence to do, was to just put those lines down where I believe they should lay. The more, the better (as long as they truly reflect the curves of the subject), and the denser the line and darker the black, the more delicate the opposing surface seems. The example in the first image needs even more line, not less, to look more delicate. Beard, shmeard.

And plus, so many other cool things to do with Photoshop, like making St. Theresa's habit out of Lily of the Valley.

Pen & Ink Ramblings #2

When in doubt, go back to the 3 F's: fruit, flowers, and fur.

Not only do you get the chance to polish your chops with different textures, but you can fudge a little while practicing with the pen. Especially with flower parts, your subject is usually so abstract to most viewers that you can get by with plenty of mistakes and, best of all, experimentation!

Have you ever actually seen grape blossoms? I hadn't, before I researched the imagery for the particular project, pictured below.

Turns out, not only are they incredibly phallic (made even more so by my orientation, to complement the curve of the leaping gazelle, chuckle...), but it's the type of imagery that I wouldn't even have considered in paint. Look at all the tiny details, in the close-up:

This would have been frustrating work with wet (and thereby drying) paint, on a flopsy brush tip. Yet, with ink and a tiny metal tip, the variations in line quality are endless, just like the whim of mother nature. I could make this kind of image with an ink pen on either a couple cups of coffee or a couple glasses of wine. In fact, either is essential, with some good music, to get through the monotony of all those tiny little marks. Gotta keep it exciting, or either the boredom will show in the final image or there will never BE a final image!

The monotony helps an artist learning the craft of pen & ink, as a matter of fact (and experience, sigh). The first try of a shiny, round seed, oozing out of a pomegranate fruit may be a disaster, but after 30 or 40?! By then, it's old hat. Mistakes are unavoidable, yet oddly desirable, since they are so inherent in this kind of work, and lend charm and nostalgia to the medium.

Do my markings really reflect the actual form of the pomegranate blossoms in the following image? How would you know, unless you have them growing in your backyard and gaze at them everyday, or maybe you cultivate pomegranates for your business, or possibly you have drawn them yourself, AND you happen to find my drawing? To any of those folks, I would say, "So nice to meet you, please help me with my next pomegranate drawing." On an ordinary day however, I am the expert!

On the other hand, we all know human faces pretty darn well and have the authority to know, "That's not a shadow, that's a beard!" Yikes.

But, when was the last time you actually saw a sleeping fawn, in real life? Even if you have seen one recently, did you study its fur, and could you disagree with my interpretation of the fur on the fawn, pictured below, that you have never seen yourself, personally? Nope. Or, if you could, I would like to talk with you about something other than fawn fur represented in pen & ink...

What kind of flower blossoms are these above? If I told you they were apple blossoms, could you argue? Would it really matter if you could? The fact is, the image is compelling in its own right, whether I nailed the flower forms of an apple blossom, or not. It's successful, even beautiful, to be debated all day I'm sure. But, I am much better armed for a critical debate on the meaning of beauty than perfecting an apple blossom drawing, so bring it on!

And now, back to human faces and draping cloth. I'm nervous already, but my skills are sharper now!

Pen & Ink Ramblings #1

A painter switching to exclusive pen & ink may sound a little crazy, but I assure my readers that I have not chosen to exclusively switch to pen & ink. I am merely finding a new outlet, a better way to illustrate efficiently, and yes, I have finally decided to honor my father and his father before him, in our family tradition.

Yet, there are so many differences between the two mediums of paint and pen & ink (I don't mean ink in general, as I have often used ink in my paintings or in prints, but the ink pen with a nib, dipped into a pot of ink), that I have to find an outlet to vent frustrations and record epiphanies.

Firstly, I have decided to avoid any ink washes, and to rely solely on rendering with black dots and/or black lines on white paper. I'm a purist in certain corners. So, the first thing that I notice is that it sure is easy to pour down ugly, gruesome faces with that metal nib, like Mr. Grendel's from Beowulf...

...or a gnarly old man's face...

...but, when attempting young, delicate, beautiful faces, the task becomes a little more difficult.

As you can see in the above drawing, I am so hesitant to lay down lines in the woman's face, for fear of being overbearing with the black. In other drawings where I'm having the same issue, I have used heavy black areas to make the linework seem lighter. But, in the drawing above, the flowers that I want to render around her face are light in color, so I don't have many dark counter-weights. Hmph.

I'll keep learning, but at this point, I'm very thankful for Photoshop!

Aaaah, Art! This Is What It Is All About

On my work table are my encaustic palette, with freshly waxed boards lying in wait for more, and oil paints, brushes, solvents and the heavenly (I'm addicted to the smell) linseed oil shoved aside after a day's work, the remnants of which are tacked up to dry on the wall behind the table. Elbowed into the mix are my watercolors and an inspirational photo, with my frantic, wet, painted paper, now primed for the next two paintings of my book-in-progress. I think I may have returned to my life as an artist.

For many years, I have felt bogged down by looming adulthood (I still don't really believe it), and lulled by motherhood and family life. Yes, I kept working all the while, but I felt in a sort of daze, with a non-committal nature that spoke to my secret suspicion of, "I can't really do it anymore."

Maybe I never was lulled or bogged down, but rather compiling, churning, investigating, fortifying. Because the mind I have to use now is so much crisper than before, my goal so much more concrete and exact, and the rewards will be that much richer. These things take many years to cure, I suppose.