Digital Painting - continue learning

Never been a good portraitor. Spent two days on this just trying to learn how to play with the new toy. I think I get a good handle on the brush, palette knife, mixing and picking colors. There is this airbrush that is not readily available when painting in real oil medium. It is very handy for manipulating the soft edges and the transition. One thing that is very different from painting in real oil is that you don't always remember what tool is in your hand. It is just the tablet pen for all tools. You forget that you have a brush in your hands. Actually you have a palette knife. Only when you start puting the paint down, you discover the mistake. There is an "undo" comend. But it only takes out the last stroke you did. There is a "layering" tool that I have not yet explored extensively. It is supposedly equivalent to glazing technique in real oil painting. But the advantage is that you can take it off if you are not happy with the result. That is not possible in real oil painting. You can glaze quite a few layers, trying them out before you decide that is what you want. You can then merge them in with the under-painting.

Working pretty hard for two days. Wanting to see "Dark Knight" on IMAX. Probably should reward myself for working hard.

The Foreigner - by Francie Lin

Just finished reading this wonderfully written book. You can see the critical review here.
The first word came to my mind if I want to characterize this book is crafty. It is very visual to me. Scene after scene unfolding in front of me in fast pace, much like an action movie. Yet, every detail: the set, the atmosphere, the psychological state of the character, are not missed under Francie's wonderful writing. Urged by the tempo of her writing, I can't help turning pages faster and faster. I think I need to go back for the second round; this time go slowly to appreciate the detail of her writing.

Just wonder how well the book can be accepted by a person with no Taiwanese experience. I googled, and found all the reviews and the bloggers are equally enthusiastic about the book as me.

I always thought what a viewer receives by reading a work of art (yes, we do read paintings) is the combined result of the artists creative intention and the life experience of the reader. The book is categorized as a darkly comic thriller. I do not see much of comic there. To me, I feel a bit of an existential crisis in addition to the family, fraternity, conscience, cited on the book leaves of the cover.

I am very proud to say that Francie is my niece!!

Joy of Learning - Continue Computer Painting

My original intent to acquire the Artrage+Wacom was to use it as a tool for studying composition for painting, before I embark on putting paint on my canvas. So, I use the previous drawing of the old man as a motif for a painting. The steam room scene in my health club came to my mind. The two additional figures were painted out of my head. So when it comes to actual painting, I may have problem making them convincing. I won't have the actual models to work with. This is the second composition I made. The first version has the right side figure siting at lower height than the center figure. It was not good. I am not happy with this version either. The figure on the right is too close to the central figure. That makes the picture look cramp and feeling pressurized. I need to space him out. I have not yet learned how to move things around, resizing the canvas without much erasing and repainting. I may want to do a few more variations of composition before I actually paint it.

My friend Jason gave me quite a few tips on the use of Artrage. Picking colors from other part of the painting surface helps to keep the color consistency and value accuracy better. The use of airbrush which is not available in actual oil painting is a great tool to blend colors and to create soft edges. There are a lot more to learn in doing this. I think computer painting can stand on its own as a fine art tool. It was simply not available to Michelongelo. That's all. Heard from Jason that there are now archival inks available for printing out long lasting prints.

This is not by any means a finished painting. But the learning process is fun.

Playing with My New Toy

Downloaded Artrage 2.5 for $25. It is a much better tool than Corel in the bundled software. It has many controls, e.g. the amount of paint you put on the brush, a palette knife for spreading the paint, ...etc. I only use very little of the features so far. For example, I have not yet learned where the palette is for mixing colors. So the colors are all mixed on "canvas". I am not skilled yet in controlling the brush and other tools. Continue using the window and the lamp on my desk for practice.

My New Toy

My friend Jason (BLOG) and Jessie are computer artists working in the animation industry. Both are also fine artists. I have been watching how they use computer to create fine arts. It seems to be fun, and you can do pretty much what you can do on canvas (with the exception of paint texture), ONCE you MASTER the use of the pressure sensitive tablets. With their suggestions, I bought this WACOM tablets (approximately $300) which arrived yesterday. I installed it today and used the bundled simple art software called Corel Painter to paint a simple painting of this lamp on my desk. Don't think I did very well. I spent 3 hours includng getting familiar with the software functions and to get a feel of the tablets (various brushand their size selection, pressure, hand-eye coordination, color mixer). It is interesting to learn new things. The next step is to get a better software. Jason suggested ARTRAGE ($30). I will download it soon. Will see how far I can go with this new toy.

Garlic Chive

I built a vegetable garden in my back yard. But never succeed in producing good crops. Squash and tomato plants kept growing beautiful foliage but not fruits. At an elevation in Seattle area, the growing season is short. Both of my neighbors' yards have tall trees blocking sun lights in the evening and in the morning. These may be contributing factors. Only these garlic chives do extremely well. Just this little patch gives us more than we can eat. Our friends Cathy and Ching came and harvested most of them and treated us with a chive dumpling dinner in their home. Only less than two weeks, they grow back and ready for harvesting again. Almost everyday, we have chive and eggs for breakfast. We also had my niece Nancy and her husband John came over for a chive pouch (韭菜盒子) dinner. And we still have surpluses. Fish fertilizer and diligent watering really help. For variety, I am looking for other vegetables that may do well with limited sun exposure.

Tense Up Again!!

I never like to draw/paint these beautiful young hunks/gales often offered in the public studios. They are good for studying how to draw/paint human anatomy convincingly. They just don't interest me. This young man posed twice last week. He has excellent physique and posed in heroic poses. When I painted in oil using a discarded "experienced" board, I was able to stay loose. It is not particularly a good picture and I didn't learn much in the process. I did play with non-realistic flesh tone. You can click on the picture to see some of it. At least I stick to the purpose of my exercise. The second picture of a charcoal drawing is a failure. I tried to get into the detail middle tone variations. I tensed up. The picture is "dead". I didn't enjoy much either. Perhaps next time I should just use the pose as a point of departure for an abstract or semi-abstract painting/drawing instead of describing what I see. My mantra: Stay loose.

I find my "point and shoot" camera does not do a good job. The flesh tone color variation is quite a bit richer than what is shown. Time to invest in a good SLR camera?