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Monday, September 17, 2012

Nasty but posting anyway!


A quicky from this eveternoon :)  I've been trying to learn more about architecture and spatial lighting.  While not a masterpiece, I feel that I definitely learned some things working on this one.

This is a church across the street from Smith's Supermarket that I've had a hankering to paint for some time.  This afternoon I parked across the street, rolled down my window, and painted from my laptop & wacom; twas cramped, but the fun. I may give it another go lol :)

As much as I love working with traditional media, I feel that digital tools offer some flexibility and insight that couldn't be obtained with pigment and canvas.  In a way, digital painting is an even more "raw" form of image-making than painting in oil or watercolor.  Rather than mixing from a pre-packaged set of colors bought at the store, digital painting forces you create your own swatches and deal with the properties of value and color at their most fundamental level.  You pick the hue and saturation from a limitless palette with no limitations or reference points, and no where to hide.  This makes it hard at first and often the initial paintings can look really bad (for that and other reasons).  It also makes for a lot of brain-work, but the understanding it brings is worth it.  Again, all respect for physical media, but for me digital is just as valid and respectable a media as oil or marble, not to mention much more flexible and full of potential for innovation.

Last and unrelated, something to make you smile:  Link

4 comments:

  1. Josh, what you would shark, I would laminate.

    And, okay, maybe this isn't some earth-shattering masterpiece, but it's a great little study. You've got some good things going on with the light (I especially like the shadows being cast by the overhanging peak of the roof; I'm sure there's a technical term for that). And I like the way you did the bricks. ;)

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    1. :) Thank you so much for all your kind encouragement, you always make me feel good :) Also, way to be shpeedy! I don't know that I've ever had a comment that fast after a post lol You're awesome, do you know that? ;)

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  2. josh, i bow down to you for your passion with digital painting. i'm working on trying to embrace it. i'm getting there, but i agree with you about the huge range of flexibility. touche.

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    1. Lol and I "bow down" to your gesture drawing skillz ;) Digital painting is hard at first . . . painting in general is hard at first. The main thing is sticking to it. I eventually decided to paint every day, and I feel that the sheer and willful consistency is the primary thing that has helped me grow. You should see how many nasty, terrible paintings are stored on my hard drive both from the early experiments and some more recent than I'd like to admit lol, but regardless of final image quality, I've learned something from each one

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