Canna - Learning to Subjugate Color

Today's post is a Canna foliage portrait. You can see from the snapshot below of the Canna bed, that it would be easy to overlook this patch as completely unremarkable. Pursuing the back-lit foliage, I was up close and personal when I noticed the lovely texture of the palm trunk in the background. From then on, the goal was to find some arrangement of foliage that included interesting spaces.

You can see from the snapshot that the foliage is a luminous lime green edged in wine. I am a sucker for color, so naturally took the initial processing in the direction of purple. I was enamored of this version for quite a while (third image below.) and was preparing to paint it in watercolor, when I realized that the values were misplaced for a painting composition. The lightest areas were in the background, while the large shapes were colorful, but too dim to function as a subject.

I went back to Photoshop several times over a matter of months seeking an improvement in values and coloring and eventually arrived here, at this more neutralized version. It was a long journey because I had to fall out of love with purple before I could accept that what worked for this image was to subjugate color, brighten the canopy leaves, and allow the lines to carry the composition.

Using Digital Tools for Artful Purpose

This picture is an example of a photo that was improved dramatically, made artful even, with careful cropping, big color changes, and Photoshop filters. This daylily from the Atlanta Botanical Gardens summer 2011 held its blooms at about 6 feet high. The blooms were yellow, making little contrast against a hazy blue sky. Why even look for a shot? Because I liked the slender simplicity of the plant and the distant foliage  had interesting texture, though the eye homogenized it all into summer green. When I found a bronzy green that made the foliage interesting, it led to the idea of pushing the yellow of the daylily into a contrasting orange red. The flashed out highlights on the petals suddenly became graphically important, knitting together sky and subject and lending fitting emphasis to the flowers. The fresco filter pushed the darkest color even darker, further highlighting the subject and granulating the color values  in the tree canopy.

What is the story here? Exuberance. Fearless simplicity, Openness....a daring and refreshing attitude in an overly complicated world.

Consider the Story in the Composition

Trumpet Vine (Campsis) with Canna.
One of the things that digital art is teaching me is how to think about story while I'm composing and deciding on artistic treatment. Stories don't have to be complex, as long as they transmit a concept.

One is accustomed to thinking of the flowers as the star of the show, especially red ones, so the eye finds the flowers first, but in this case, it's not about the flower, which is uncomfortably washed out. Notice how quickly your eye drops to the beautiful bark that glows beneath the flower and flows along the trunk. Then it slides up the colorful stained glass canna stems where the cool elegance of  emerald foliage stops you, makes you linger in the canna shapes. Finally you realize that under consideration is a trumpet vine flower,  hot, glaring, and leaning against a pole with a magazine-model's studied coolness basking in a lavish setting.

The subject is not the flower, but the attitude. I keep hearing that song..."I'm too sexy for my shirt..."

The Spirea Series

For a while now I've been trying to think of a nice presentation package for my digital art work. Because it's not traditional imagery and treatment, I am hoping that providing a sense of 'presence' will help viewers consider the imagery as interpretation, not journalism. Here's an idea that has stuck with me.

In these images I have used Illustrator to help me work out a plan in which I print the image with footer signature, title and print number. I intend to print on Polar Matte paper for the most part. It's a luxurious velvety finish. Then mount this as a float, and print the colored 'background mat' so I have control of available colors. The complete package is assembled of rag mat or foam core with background mounted, float with image on top of that, and a mat spacer at the perimeter made from the  foam core I used for the float. Topping this off is a hinge-mounted top mat. The assembled package is sized for a 16x20 frame (image on the print is about 8x12), and will be slipped into a cello bag for sales. While I will strive for white mats, I am finding that images that feature significant darks are overwhelmed by a white mat, but seem to pop in a colored mat of proper value. Here are Illustrator samples from the Spirea work of December 2010.

For the Love of Cabbage

Winter of 2011 I grew some ornamental cabbage on the patio. I love how the thick veins branch in ruffled leather and how beads of rain dance on the surface. It's very textural, but it's still just cabbage, right? I think of the digital production process as a puzzle and a journey. When I'm thrilled, I know I've found what I was seeking.
I see a good metaphor here as well. We are each simple cabbages,. but God sees so much more than that. God sees our spirit, our design, the life and the art flowing together. In God's eye, cabbages are so much more interesting than they think they are.

Dreamer

Brave Heart

Happiness

Life is a River

I love rivers as metaphors for life, and this image is particularly rich with metaphoric possibility.

Today’s piece is again from the Nantahala River trip. The steep mountainsides keep the ambient light low and the reflected sky cobalt clue. Golden fall colors set the river aflame. Nothing special was done to this image aside from standard brightness and contrast adjustments…and creative cropping.

Nature is such an enormous canvas; there are dozens of stories being told everywhere we look. Our minds average them into an overall experience. Even within the viewfinder, what was aimed at one story, on closer inspection may reveal a composite of several woven stories. Maybe it’s just my perspective, but I find that these competing threads dilute the impact of an image. I always look forward to the gems my cropping tool and I will uncover as we sift through a photo shoot.

Reflections In Old Nantahala

One of my focuses on the Fall 2011 trip was to photograph reflections in water. I hoped to capture some inspirations for abstracts.Across the road from the big aqueduct I wrote about in the last post is the old Nantahala River. It's a demure little creek now, with a couple decent falls along it's path.We had stopped at one of those falls. To my left the falls, and to my right...this.
Well, this was part of it, anyway.
There is no enhancement here, the colors were satiny glorious just as you see them here.

Nantahala Aqueduct

 (edited May 4, 2012)
I have not shared much from my body of digital art online for several reasons, but the ‘Just 3 Years’ thought frame has really challenged the validity of those reasons.It also launched a wave of deep thought, that just today has clarified something for me. My digital art is it's own journey. I use the camera to explore my world. I bring to it my own perspective, and in post processing, I reveal even more of what I was sensing in the field. I'm usually not happy with it until I'm surprised.

Today’s entry is a piece of the Duke Power plant's aqueduct photographed on a recent trip to the Nantahala gorge area. I rarely do landscapes or architecture, but this hunk of pipe was just so beautiful, I couldn't resist.

If you’re not a local, Nantahala means ‘land of the noon day sun.’ The gorge itself, for which the national forest is named, is a rather limited area of steep and closely set mountains in western North Carolina. It gathers the area waters into the Nantahala river which is collected in the man-made Nantahala Lake. The Duke Power company siphons off lake water through a giant aqueduct running along Old River Road, which appears to be the original Nantahala river, (now a quiet creek along a sandy road). I recently came across a mention that this pipeline may not be in use any more. A much larger creek spills out of the bottom of the lake. Locals call this Dick's Creek as nearly as I can gather. The two merge again later while still in the gorge. (You can see a snapshot of what I think is called Dicks Creek Falls on my nature blog.) The water from the aqueduct pours (or poured? might not be in use now) through the turbines at the bottom of the gorge where it joins the smaller creeks and creates a great river famous for exciting rafting.

The exact name of this aqueduct pipe is unknown to me. Given it's location, Nantahala seems to fit best, but there is a nearby wide spot in the road called Aquone that gets credit for an aqueduct, apparently bored through the mountains with a waterfall inside of it...so the more I research the more confusing it gets.

Marketing is Art Too

Today, Alyson B Stanfield of the ArtBizBlog asks why some artists are uncomfortable with commercial promotion of their work. Is there such a thing as too commercial?

Personally, I think when artists express this concern, they are really asking a hidden question and revealing a hidden fear:

• The Question: Do they have permission from the ‘star-makers’ to do their own marketing? The anti-branding of Thomas Kinkade by snarky critics was very effective. Their derision was irrelevant to Kinkade's market, but it certainly instilled fear of commercial marketing (and distaste for one very effective body of work) in the minds of artists! What they all seemed to ignore, was the fact that Kinkade's market was not the typical artist's market. He was targeting the people that artists (who want to make a living) abandoned long ago.
• The Fear: Due to the widespread misuse of statistics and language, and to its association with mass produced goods, 'commercial' marketing in general smells in-authentic. It also sounds like it's out of scale for the typical artist career. The very word 'commercial' may be the source of resistance.

Both the question and the fear reveal a need for more information:

• Everyone who wants to sell their art needs to self-brand. It creates a consistent and ‘sticky’ message. When you pay big money for Manolo Blahnik shoes…notice that it’s the artist's NAME which accrues all the mystique and value created by the quality of the shoe.. A marketing professional can help you assemble a memorable and classy combo of  typeface, coloring, and catchphrases to use throughout your marketing pieces.
• Placement is essential. Your brand will acquire the  perceived economic value of the product that surrounds it. This applies to art shows, galleries, print publications.(This is why Kinkade needed his own galleries.) If you show in a yard sale, you can make a sale, but only at yard sale prices. The higher up the socioeconomic ladder you travel, the more it costs to be presented and presentable, both in marketing production and in your own social skills. The price of your work reflects these costs.
• Marketing can begin as simply as determining the subject matter and style that best reflects your spirit and promises a long creative pathway. Fill show walls, website pages, newsletters, and gallery fliers with that style work + your name. Repeat.  Repeat some more.  Ta-da! Branded and marketed. If you desire further reach and  targeting of your audience, professional services are well advised.
• Use the commercialism necessary to reach your buying audience. Marketing makes the knowledge of and access to your work convenient to the buyer. Each target audience (and there are subsets within each), has a specific expectation in price, subject, and quality.
• The mass market (suited to prints, mass production,)
• The upper middle-class market (suited to artists with local reach and local pricing with traditional and regional styles and subjects.)
• The academic and private collector markets  (Unique artistic voices reflective of a collection theme or of private collector taste.)

If you want to sell your art on a regular basis, 'commercial' is not a bad word. After all, its root is 'commerce' which is your espoused goal. A marketing professional designs the whole package, from commercial art to messaging and publications to suit YOUR art style and target market. If you look at the package and don't LOVE the way your work is packaged, then pick another marketer. Marketing is art too.

Golden Moment

"Golden Moment" Watercolor on 300lb Arches Cold Press

Oh my, it’s been so long since I posted last. Whatever have I been doing?
Well, I embarked on my study of watercolor. One needs paints. Which ones? That lead me to books on techniques that specialized in glazing, mixing, textures, and color theory for palette selection. 

Along the paint education path I found Hillary Page’s encyclopedic reference book, Guide to Watercolor Paints. I learned a great deal about pigments, light-fastness, why certain ones mix better than others according to their light refraction curve, paint names, and how paint handling varies by manufacturer. Wow. I love this stuff. I sadly dumped some Holbein favorites that were not light-fast, others that were opaque, and ordered some Winsor Newton and Daniel Smith paints to go with the remaining Holbein favorites.

I spent months mixing colors and creating charts to explore and document proportions between 2 mixed colors. In every chart was a surprising discovery. I could be a professional chart maker. (LOL)
Finally in June I felt ready to try putting the elements together into a painting. The first one worked out well enough, but I won’t publish it here, because it was soon eclipsed.

The second pass was with a very flawed photo of Alocasia leaves as seen in the Birmingham Botanical Gardens. Fortunately I had a good memory and my trusty Photoshop to help me find my way back to inspiration.

I used wet in wet to mingle complimentary colors into browns. I carved in veins while wet. I masked to save hard edges. I mixed and glazed and painted wet on dry. Finally, I used Pitt Pen to build in texture and contrast in passages.

**I have since darkened that pale stripe up the center leaf...but have not re-photographed because it is now framed.

The knowledge gem that this piece delivered was about the additive property of colors in glazing.

The background was giving me fits. Having removed it twice, this final pass produced results I could accept.

I began with a rich coat of Hooker green (which is PG7 and PY150-Nickel Azo). It was grass ‘green’ so I glazed it with a coat of Holbein Peacock Blue (PB15-Phthalo blue + PG7) which I had used in the large leaf already. I did not get blue green. I got a richer Hooker green. Why? The extra layer of PG7 and the fact that PB15 and PY150 make green, I had nothing BUT green on the paper! Note to self.

I wanted it to be earthier and much darker, so I mixed Hooker green with Quinacridone Burnt Orange (also already in the painting) until it was a perfectly balanced coffee brown. What I got was a rich forest green now with a granulated brown texture. Hooker does have a slight granulating tendency, but it doesn’t always show up. Another batch of rich coffee-colored glaze, and I had finally found the value and texture I had been seeking. Lucky me!

Fortunate Event Number 4

This fall stacked up to be a series of fortunate events that began when the printer head clogged beyond repair. Weeks of brain-draining research and assessment later, that decision was made which opened up art card printing right about the same time I was making concept break-throughs that needed a different media than Pastels. I just didn't want to even think about these using pastels.

That's where I was back in November when I discovered Joseph Raffael. He was featured in Watercolor Magazine. After a visit to his website I bought his book, (which I highly recommend). I fell in love with his process and especially his older work. In it I saw what floats around in my head: A mixture of abstraction, realism, and jewel-tone color. It combined neatly with what I was discovering about value, color inversion, and abstraction through Photoshop.

So in the first week of December we had a morning with pretty light. I went to the garden to see what could be found – Joseph Raffael abstraction+realism still strongly in mind. For an instant I was disappointed-what will I find in a garden of brown bushes and sticks? And then I kicked myself. “Think like an artist, look for the shapes of shadow and light, the edges, the movement of these shapes and spaces…color can come later.”

Here is 'Spirea Dreams 3' from that session. There were quite a few that worked out (7) and I had fun turning them into cards…which I’ll post on the card blog. I keep thinking they would make really cool watercolors if done much larger than life. It will be a while before my watercolor legs are strong enough to take on a project like that, so until then, the digital versions are really cool.

New Year, New Directions

Happy New Year everyone. It’s been a while since I posted, but a series of fortunate events has kept me quite distracted.

Since I first entertained this idea of learning to paint and becoming an artist I have been racking my brain to get a fix on my visual voice. Knowing what it looks like drives selections in reference work, media, and focus. I knew it was nearby, practically underfoot, but I could not get a solid glimpse of it. This led to a feeling of creative resistance as I made myself do ‘something’ until I could figure it out.

 Two of the fall events led to what you see today. First, I began to explore the Photoshop filters and an adjustment layer I had never tried. These tools allowed me to explore the relationship of nature’s values in an image to the visibility of the architectural design in the image. I found that frequently the brights and darks were in the wrong places, and the mid-tones suffered from tonal muddiness. This is just nature, but it is also why we don’t even SEE what’s right in front of us. I don’t have any qualms about turning values and colors on their heads if it helps me find the music. Reality is overrated.

In this image we see the photo crop of the tree canopy. The sky is brightly overcast and the branches dark. This means that the sky fights with the red canopy for attention, and the branches are a non-item.
However, change the sky to black, the branches to white, and tweak the mid-tones into a neutral...and vio-la! Now the branches and canopy are subject and the sky recedes into graphic support.

That was so much fun I tried different color combinations of sky and foliage and found that I could do a whole series with one image. Now I really think these would benefit from watercolor as the backgrounds have lost their luminance, and with dark branches they would benefit from a ‘cleaning up’, but it’s exciting to see the possibilities laid out so clearly.

This break through begged the question: Now what? Is digital art 'the' medium or is this just a step towards painting? Is Pastel really what you want to use for this crisp graphical look? More on the answer in the next post.

Wayah Creek - Rubies & Rhodies

I've noticed a thematic perspective recently. I love to be deep in the embrace of the forest, looking upwards. It's a natural perspective in the Blue Ridge mountains, where the vegetation is thick and rich, and the small, smooth mountainsides are steep. Rhododendron again clothe this dell. Columns of deciduous trees vault their canopy against the sky, sheltering the ruby dogwoods. From a scene along Wayah Creek in NC.

12x17.5" Soft Pastel on LaCarte Pastel card

Wayah Creek - Rubies & Rhodies

Hope Rises at Rufus Morgan Falls

This week's painting is a bit of glorious fall color from a trip last fall to the Rufus Morgan Falls trail area. That particular day netted a rich collection of references.

 "Hope Rises"

12x18 in. Soft Pastels on Wallis Museum Grade paper

Rapture and Serenity

'Rapture & Serenity' 11x13" Soft Pastels on Wallis Museum Grade Paper

Early one evening my darling and I took supper on the patio. As we finished I took note of the fringe of white fire that the late day sun was striking in the edges of the Sieryu maple. The Buddleia was still in bloom, and despite the contrast, her purpleness, and some lovely orangey glow was twinkling in her canopy. I ran for the camera and after snagging some shots, I continued to study the scene for the few minutes that it continued.
As you might expect, the photo darks were very dark, near black, but I knew they were not quite as inky as they appeared. There was a ‘smokiness’ to those darks in the real garden. As I prepared to paint I considered two conflicting strings of painterly advice I had picked up:

• “Students go too dark too soon. It’s a common problem.”
• “In pastels, if you don’t get your darks ‘dark enough’ early, there’s really no going back to fix it late in the game.”

Hmm. Definitely some serious darks here, and some serious brights. I decide to set the darks at absolute and layer in lighter values of color as needed for texture until I found that ‘smokiness’, whatever that was. It went slowly for me. Long periods of looking and thinking between small bits of painting. I tried a blue in the darks to push them back…but ouch! It was all wrong. Broke the warmth of the scene. In brushing it off, I found my way back in. The brushed out areas left a dark haze, but some tint of light was shining through from the white paper. There was that suggestion of smoke! I do love how the process of painting can be a continual puzzling out of problems, approaches, fixes, and yes, that sweet rush when some little thing works.

March 2011
I renamed this piece and post 'Rapture and Serenity' after cropping it hard on the left and studying it some more. I just couldn't escape the sensation of 'standing in the presence of God.' Here it is cropped and framed for printing on greeting card stock.

Following My Joy: Year One in Review

"Vocation is Where Your Deep Joy Meets the World's Deep Need."

This quote from Oprah, made many years ago, has long been my mantra. It has guided me to make career choices that were intimidating in scope and demand. Each has become a foundation block on which the next choice was laid.

It’s been very nearly 12 months now since I ‘got serious’ about my development as an artist.(30 months since I first dabbled at painting.)  This week two of my paintings were accepted to a local all-media juried art show.

Immediately I needed to design business cards with a brief artist statement. I found the experience surprisingly ‘focusing’. Crafting a message that communicated my media, subjects, passion, and status in such a compact space brought me to a laser focus on the artist I WANT to be. It also sharpened my expectations for my blog and my painting efforts.

I am pleased with what I accomplished this year:

• Joined two artists groups and volunteered to help with a group art show,
• Attended a 3-day pastel workshop, studied artist DVD’s, and solicited a professional critique
• Attended several art shows and a couple museums
• Changed to sanded paper, purchased more pastels, tried new techniques
• Subscribed to and consumed several blogs and magazines for artists, art business, and artist websites,
• Studied everything I could find about painting in pastels and otherwise,
• Learned how to use Photoshop and Illustrator,
• Hunted for photo ops and possible painting subjects,
• Tracked my painting and ‘art related’ hours (which average 15-20 hours a week above my day job)
• Submitted my work to a local juried show and got accepted

And yet…I am disappointed:

• I didn’t paint nearly enough
• I STILL struggle to settle on a subject, interpretation, and style.
• My dithering has made for inconsistent quality in the little production time I had
• I don’t have enough good work to make a website feasible, which leaves me with only a blog to put on the business card.

There is now a large disparity between the me I see on the business cards and the me I see in the blog.
I suppose these disappointments are a good thing, they show me what needs to improve over the next year.
And so concludes year one of the pursuit of my vocation.

Joy of Man's Desiring

Out Highway 20 at Arbor Ridge road is an unnamed garden center housed in an old barn faced with galvanized sheet metal. On the morning that it caught my eye, the nearly noon sun was barely peeking over the edge of the 'cowboy town' facade where it happened to strike a few purple muhly grass in full bloom and the variegated yucca beside them. Ever since then I've been determined to capture that muhly grass and the lovely rusting wall.
In the actual painting that deep watermelon halo on the muhly grass is hardly noticeable behind the creamy salmon froth of light. I just haven't figured out how to quiet rambunctious reds in Photoshop without losing the jewel-tones in the other colors.

Joy of Man's Desiring

9x9" Wallis Professional Sanded Paper

I've been trying a new approach this week. I didn't use an under-painting, but used the brown Wallis paper, and did a very loose color study on a scrap piece to work out most of the values and color choices. I just wanted to see how throwing down color fast and loose would work out. I knew I'd make color mistakes and was happy to scrub over them until I got closer to what I wanted. In that process I discovered the joy and necessity of that delicious grass apron, which I extended for the painting. In that discovery the final painting became all about the three color fields, with the elements themselves as mere excuses for placing and layering those colors.

As I considered the title for the finished piece, this indulgence in the joy of color brought to mind Bach’s famous treatment of the old hymn, and suddenly the fact that the subject was a garden center became essential. What better place to see the joy of man's desiring than in the plants he grows to recreate the Garden?

Rufus Morgan Falls and Life in the Shadow

Today’s pastel painting began with a photo from a lovely hike in the forests of the Rufus Morgan Falls area of North Carolina. I wanted to do something different with the picture, something that is focused on color, something that keeps the mystery of the dark wood alive while celebrating the sparkling fall sunlight. So I dove in, and when I was done I had landed here.

And if you didn't see it yesterday, too bad. I decided to crop it today and that crop is now posted. I'll probably catch some flack from the Mathemagical Cowboy who made me promise not to ever throw any painting away no matter how bad I thought it was. Guess I'll save the scraps for him. Now I have to change the title, as the focus is a little different.

4 o'Clock Shadow
10.5 x 10.5" Soft Pastels on Wallis Museum Grade Sanded Paper

This week I also ‘discovered’ Wolf Kahn. I had viewed his work a few years ago, and didn’t really get it. This time I watched a couple video interviews and I heard him articulate precisely what has been bedeviling me. I Love color. I Love working from the inside out. I have little interest in ‘representing’ a scene realistically, yet it seems that’s the only approach I know. Kind of maddening.

Here are my Wolf Kahn Take-aways:
• He always wanted to get away from ‘description.’
• ‘Get away from the brushstroke, just let things happen.’
• ‘Get away from deliberateness.’
• ‘To Paint is to live in the moment, trust our intuition and freedom of expression.’

At least my natural impulses are in good company. There is some comfort in that.

Hoping to go see his exhibit at the Morris Museum of Art in Augusta GA this month.

The Diva of Cullosaja Falls

Last fall I was traveling up the Highlands Highway in North Carolina and stopped to take my tourist shots of Cullosaja Falls.The shadows were long. The river poured out of the blue forest before me onto the giant golden-rock falls caught by the hot evening sun. At the top of the falls stood this distinctive tree. She reached into the spotlight and presided over the crashing drama below like an Opera Queen in her final aria. I knew I would paint her one day.

I've removed her from the big stage so I could concentrate on her unusual structure and the fall foliage. Second in the tree series.

'The Diva' 8x13" Pastels on Wallis museum grade paper

The Goldenrain Tree

She just seems a bit shy to me, as though she would happily hide, but the harsh afternoon sun and her own exotic foliage conspire to make her a star.

'Reluctant'

5.5"x11.5" Pastels on Wallis Museum Grade

The challenge to myself was to take an utterly boring photo and do a painting using Richard McKinley’s watercolor under painting technique…and try to make the painting more interesting than the photo. You see the journal entry here with color sketch and photo.

The first time out I used a rather strongly colored under painting like I see so many artists use. My colors got too hot though and I couldn’t get harmony between a lemon-lime sky and hot orange leaf litter.

Version 1

So I tried again. Here is a series of snapshots as things progressed toward what was the final piece at the top of the post. This time I spent much more time on the sketch, trying to get the radial arms placed properly as shapes. When I wing it, my drawing mind gets lazy trying to keep up with my color hand (as we see in the first attempt). In the end I could see from the watercolor where the painting was supposed to go.  That’s much more than I could say for the first attempt.

So okay—it’s a tree in the woods and it’s not a riot of circus colors...it’s nearly normal looking, and yet I am pleased. 10 hours today from decision to the declaration of  ‘done for now.'