Baby Sequoia

Author: n_n_hui

  • Shane Neal’s Process

    1. talk to the subject, get to know them, understand them, see their characteristics.
    2. Do a informal sketch, head and neck, informal
    3. Then take a lot of pictures for the final painting
    4. Take some pictures with the sitter when they aren’t sitting either, to see their facial features and planes
    5. Then do the effect study, with color shapes, resolve all the design problems before painting the full size
    6. Then paint the shapes on full canvas, paint the head egg and more if possible
    7. Second day, work from life. Focus on the features, value, colors and small details. Work from life, ignore the photo. Pay attention to the subtle value and plane changes. Lay the ground work for the photo session.
    8. Once the sitter leave, keep working on the painting with the photo reference. Don’t modify the value or color by the photo, stick with the life information.
    9. Final day, details. Time for highlight and accents. Day two should have a little bit of highlights and accents developed, but the last days are the final pushes. It might required 3-4 sittings, and each would be 2 hours or so.

    My important take aways:

    1. Start from the mid tones, and increase contrast gradually. The light and shadow differences should be small at first.
    2. Sculpt the form. Think and paint like a sculptor.
    3. Planes, planes, and planes. Paint the plane changes. Paint big planes first, then smaller planes. Look at the Asaro head, one has big planes and the other has smaller planes. Remember that approach.
    4. We might need to take some caricature class.

  • Velázquez

    There are so much to say about Velazquez from this trip. Let’s break them down a bit and see how they work together.

    Drawing is the foundation for everything else. Without accurate drawing, we won’t be able pinpoint the exact lines, or the lack of. But there is more to accurate drawing, which is to omit certain things so the illusion of space is more obvious.

    Sargent does that really well. Sargent understands that what’s important and what’s not important, and paint accordingly. For example, from distance, you don’t need to fully render a ring, or the individual pearls on the necklace. You need to abstract the shapes, and distill the most important value contrast, and get the value contrast right, then you can paint a lot with very little.

    Abstraction, abstraction, abstraction. How we abstract indicates what kind of artist we are.

    The conversation with Paul really makes me understand the importance of soft edges. The biggest take away is the distance from the picture plane to the subject. If everything is very clear, that means the viewer is very close to the object. If everything is blurry, then the distance is much larger. Take the mirror image of King Philip IV and his wife on the wall in Las Meninas, and see how blurry they are. That’s what soft edges mean.

    But besides the soft edges, I think Velazquez used wet on wet techniques too. The dazzling brush works on top of the dried layers indicates that he leveraged the brushy and free looking brushes to bring more energy to the painting.

    Use long brushes to paint. Use the shoulder and elbow, not too much in the fingers.

    Squint to see the soft edges!

    The direction and orientation of the planes are super important. It really communicates the form in space, and we are in the space depiction business.

    Velazquez use color shrift alone to indicate plane changes.

    If Velazquez paints light, and the atmospheric effects, then what can I do with light to paint what I want?

  • Difference between fine art and illustration

    One of my Illustration professor said that there isn’t a lot of differences between a fine art painting and an illustration, the only difference is the context in which the artwork is in. Same work displayed in a gallery verse in a storybook could give the work different meaning, or value.

    I think I start to disagree with him a little. There are a lot of illustrations that could be considered fine art, but a lot of them can’t. After seeing many illustrations and fine art works, I start to think one of the main differences is that illustration is about a very narrowly defined subject matter, and there isn’t a lot of ambiguity in them. Fine art paintings could be about a narrow defined subject matter, but the amount of ambiguity exceeds illustration by a large margin.

    A fine art piece needs to stand up on its own, while an illustration is to serve a purpose. Illustration’s purpose is to illustrate a certain ideas, stories, or messages. It aims to get a point across to the audience. Meanwhile, a fine art piece has way less directness, but more room for interpretation within the work. The amount of ambiguity a fine art piece carries far exceeds an illustration can. Fine art pieces often try to get a point across too, but the great ones often is less direct, and more muddy and blurry in terms of subject matter, or why it exists.

    I am not saying there isn’t overlaps between illustration and fine art. In fact, I think most illustrations and fine art overlap each other. But a great piece of fine art is a conversation piece, and it keeps generating talking points for the audience. It just exists there on its own, without any supplement explanations, waiting for the audience to discover its beauty and charm.

  • Knowledge tree(s)

    It has only occurred to me recently that I need to build my knowledge tree. The reason I have been procrastinating for so long is that I want to have a one tree that everything in my head can hang onto. Guess what, I haven’t found such big tree trunk that could rule them all. Then, I realize I can have many small trees in my garden! They are still great! I can merge them when my knowledge grows.

    Here is some trees that are important to me:

    1. Economics
    2. Artistic knowledge
    3. The knowledge of creating things, building things
    4. Finance
    5. Evolution biology
    6. Investment
    7. Sport
    8. Psychology
    9. Perfumery?

    The list could go on, but I feel like I do need to consolidate some and find some common themes to merge some of the trees. It’s best for me to acquire and apply knowledge once I could find the common principles for many domains. It’s more efficient and effective to operate from a set of limited principles.

  • Reality inspired art

    While I was eating dinner tonight I was thinking that all art draws inspirations from reality. I mean, it’s a cliché to use that phase, but my interpretation, or my take is that we don’t want to be slave to the reality, but we need to, and must, create artwork based on the reality.

    For example, there are a lot of figurative drawings that have spot on accuracy, and perfect rendering, but often they don’t move me. Or they have this quietness to them that doesn’t make me feel much. It’s a great drawing, but they are a bit mechanical and too factual. There is no fire nor energy in the work. Does great drawings require this passion to be great? Not necessarily. Quiet drawings have tremendous power that could transform the viewer and the creator too. Even a technical drawing could move people sometimes. But for god’s sake please don’t make something without our heart in it. Great art demands the artist’s energy from the deepest level of the self.

    I believe great artwork is based on reality, and transcends reality. That’s why I like Egon Schiele’s work. Not that I like his tormented sexuality stuff, but his ability to create energetic, and emotionally charged artwork that’s based on the human figures. Schiele has a good foundation in academic drawing, and human anatomy, and I believe that’s why he could manipulate the figures to support what he wants to say, through the human figure. Another cliché “you can make anything about anything” also applies to human figures too. Schiele use the figures to express who he is, which I believe is one of the major functions of what art is about.

  • Quality

    It just hit me yesterday that I need to make something of quality. Probably it’s David Dornan’s teachings are taking effect in my brain, and somehow it resonates with me at a deep level.

    The truth is, I felt like I haven’t made anything of quality for a long time. I need to leave something great in this world. A nice painting, a good website, some nice sculptures, or whatever. Quality is much more important than money, and I start to understand what quality means in the Zen and Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Quality is something beautiful and unique, and it has integrity, a life of its own, and it’s uncorrupted. It might have flaws, and it’s definitely not perfect, but it’s good and shines an energy that’s recognizable universally.

    I need to make something of quality.

  • No coding for four days

    What should I do in those four days? I don’t think I am going to read any programming books. I probably will read some printmaking books, or maybe JB’s behavior books. Who knows.

    I am excited to write a little parser using Python though, when I come back. It shouldn’t be too hard.

    Maybe I should start thinking about the game while I am gone. Maybe I should dive into the creative side a bit more in those four days.

    That sounds exciting, some game design!

  • The Yin and Yang of Printmaking

    One Yin/Yang dissection of printmaking is treat the image creation as the feminine, and the techniques as the masculine. Because the masculinity of printmaking is so unique, compared to other mediums, the images are predetermined to be different from those mediums.

    There is a certain kind of femininity only goes well with certain kind of masculinity. Printmaking’s femininity has its own masculinity, and we need to be aware of that.

    At the end of the day, why do I use printmaking to make an image? Why don’t I use painting to make the same image? Is there any differences?

    Why am I in the printshop all the time, but not in the painting studio? We need to think about that.

  • Is Technology fundamentally automation?

    Printmaking is a technology. It speeds up image creation and duplication dramatically. The invention of printers is another break through in image duplication, and in its essence is automation.

    Automation is elimination of human intervention while speeding up the production. If you have a billion summations you need to calculate, but you can let the transistors do it, that’s a computer. We can also have a million humans do the same calculations, if everyone’s results are correct, the results are exactly the same, the speed is a lot slower though, haha. The magic of computer is that it’s fast and auto.

    A huge part of printmaking is the involvement of technology. The nature of technology is automation and scalability. If we are looking at the technological aspect of printmaking, then we are talking about scale.

    Then there is the artistic part of printmaking, which relies on technology, but technology is not what’s important. The art of printmaking is what we are really looking at.

  • Tests are much more than they appear

    1. They are small steps toward the big goal
    2. They are scouts gathering important information for the real effort
    3. They are small steps bringing down the dream, down to earth to make it a reality
    4. They are exercises that help you prepare for the big effort
    5. They are low cost
    6. They are experiments
    7. They give you pointers for things to avoid