Watercolor WIPs- Sharing and Learning

[vapsman88]

Steve,

Thanks for starting this thread, it is very interesting to see more attention to Watercolors in Artrage.

~John

[Steve B]

Well, you're welcome vapsman. Thanks for subscribing to my YouTube channel!

This thread was cool before, back in the Spring and last Winter, but it's hit a whole new level of fun for me now that 1) I'm doing these videos, and 2) others have engaged in the conversation. So, I'm getting a lot out of it all too.

Clearly, I agree about digital watercolors emulating natural media. I just don't see the issue with it. ???? It's really weird. I haven't been going around somehow suggesting that natural media techniques are inherently better and that that's why we should be emulating them, just that I happen to like them more. Additionally, it's been odd getting critiqued for making my digital watercolors look "real", when all I'm actually doing is using a fuller array of the digital tools available to me. I'm not doing much that's so fancy, really-- Layers, Blend Modes, Palette Knife, Brush Settings, Sticker Sprays, etc. Sure, I'm using them all, but they're all made for us to use, right?

I think the desire for "real" watercolors has more to do with the desire for an object by the viewer of the piece, and a desire for the process by the artist. I've got nothing against the process of natural media-- I love it frankly. But I don't believe that it necessarily means it produces a somehow more valid or "better" final art piece. I think those who are critiquing what we've been discussing here (or other digital media for that matter) are conflating the two desires-- they love the process of natural media so much that they think it invalidates a digital art object, even if they look the same.

And I would pretty vividly critique the concept that natural media is somehow easier or quicker to do. IMO, frankly, that's... not true... or worse a statement based on ignorance. Take the kind of experience a typical natural media watercolor artist has devoted to painting, and apply that same fervor to painting digitally, and I think you can learn to produce quick powerful flexible pieces if you wanted to, or giant, complex, slow-moving pieces too, just like you do with natural media.

What I find particularly peculiar, is that I think this opinion relates most directly to watercolors still. Yes, there's stigma still against digital media in general, but there is, IMO, a far greater acceptance of digital oils than there is of watercolors, for some reason. And outside of the tactile difference of sketching, I think most people would suggest that inking or pencil work is totally appropriate digitally. I mean, that is, to my understanding, the way the entire professional comic book industry works, for example, but no one seems to miss a beat when told that. It's an interesting double standard, but as the tools move forward, and we're able to capture a wider array of techniques and watercolor experiences, I think that divide will shrink.

[chinapete]

... I've gotta switch to decaf, morning coffee and this thread now bring a rush of ideas and a kind of "can't wait to paint" feeling, also a gnawing sense that there isn't enough time in the day to paint and to talk intelligently about it ... miraculously, steve is able to do both well, and that's inspiring -- thanks, steve, for the sticker spray video ... it's a feature of AR that I've avoided, mostly because it's enabled only in AR Pro, and I prefer the iPad or iPhone, but also because the name "sticker spray" always sounded a bit gimmicky, and I like to do things the old-fashioned human way by working laboriously, like a medieval manuscript illustrator, at painting patterns and motifs ...

... what makes repetition so interesting in the visual arts is the chance for error and accident, the eye appreciates motif and looks for deviation from an established pattern ... mechanically precise repetition risks being boring visually, so the greatest visual artists create only the illusion or suggestion of repetition ... thus, mona lisa's famous asymmetrical smile ...

... there is a deeper point, though, in the patterned effects that digital tools allow us easily to produce ... it has to do with an original act and its repetition ... ease of repetition, including duplicating, copying, imitating and reproducing, is a hallmark of digital art, and in many respects does help with workflow, as steve often remarks in his videos, but this raises awkward questions about the role of the individual in the act of creating works or art, and of the privileged place of originality in art ... the rise of social media -- this forum is an example -- speak to a kind of collaboration now possible in the arts on unprecedented levels (touched on in the keanu reeves interview with tavis smiley that maddog posted, along with the "democratization" of the arts -- another threat to professional artists, since if everyone can do it, it will be harder to single out the professional, and the distinction "professional/amateur" soon may disappear) ...

... at the core of the debate over digital and non-digital is the role of the human in technology ... I assume we all feel original (individual carries this sense, as does unique) and not a clone of ourselves ... but we all are aware of the awesome powers of Hal, or Spock, or Blue, and now we can see robots painting or drawing by "looking at" a real model and sketching a face by using traditional art materials ... and suppose you were told that the "b" in steve's name actually stands for "bot" -- and you've been conversing all along with an intelligent, witty, warm and artistically talented robot ... would that change how you feel about all you've seen, heard and read? ...

... in the keanu reeves video, tavis asks keanu whether he feels threatened as an actor that one day he will be replaced by a credible animation of himself, basically an avatar ... and keanu doesn't rule out the possibility, but he makes an earnest plea for the human element in all this technology, just as steve is doing in his videos ...

... I'm not having a second cup of coffee, and this spares you, dear readers, my thoughts on the "natural media" watercolor that steve created and posted in this thread not very long ago ... but I'm not switching to decaf, and there is always tomorrow :-)




...

[Steve B]

edit-- ok, excuse me while I motor off at the mouth for a while. My brain has been working overtime after watching that interview with Keanu Reeves about digital film, and I've just not been able to stop typing. If you're up for a read, plus go over the next few posts, but I won't hold it against 'ya if you skip them and want to get back to looking at pieces of art.
end--

Ok, I just sat down and listened to that Keanu Reeves interview-- what a fascinating watch! And how directly relevant to our discussion. It's such a great frame for a discussion of digital watercolors and digital art in general, because it allows us to discuss the subject "askance".

There's a point in the interview when Keanu discusses the value of an object to the makers of a film, and I thought that very strangely and neatly tied into what I was discussing last night about the physical process of making art. What I thought was missing in the interview was the discussion of the audience as viewers-- the other half of the equation.

What occurred to me was that viewers of film know its not real-- it's all dreams, and we're very educated on that fact, right? That ol' Hollywood Magic. And so, I've found that most viewers of films aren't disturbed in the least by the notion that a film might have been recorded, processed, and projected digitally. The makers of film might be disturbed by the change, but audiences? Who cares? It's all a story, an image of reality, etc. Digital film is just another way to tell a story, sometimes so seamlessly that you can't even tell if the movie is digital or "real" film. And as all movies are dreams or stories, in essence, is a movie filmed on physical film with emulsion somehow more "real" or is the process of its creation a mere accident of history and technology? I mean, what is a "real" movie?

What is "real" art?

I would say that film has the historical oddity as an art form to have been born in an era where mechanical reproduction of an object is expected. I think that gives digital film (and the loss of the object of physical film) a sort of cultural leverage in the eyes of a viewer, compared to something like painting. Painting is obviously much older (LOL!), and (to speak the obvious) was born in an era where you couldn't mechanically (or digitally) reproduce it at will. Therefore, the idea of the totemic object of the art piece becomes very central to our notion of painting on a cultural level. Not so for cinema or it's father, photography, with both which we've always had the presumption that they would be reproduced en mass, so that we could view a work the world over. That difference is, I think, pretty critical to why digital film has achieved a faster level of acceptance publicly, compared to digital art. That, and $. !!

If fine art produced more $ (like movies do), digital fine art would have more power. Of that I'm positive. Currently, art has value commercially because of museums and the purveyors of value, and how they bestow commercial value to art pieces as objects. Of course, commercial value ends up = artistic value in the eyes of most. Perhaps digital art will democratize art making in general, because it will erase the idea of the object as the most important thing in the public's mind, and replace it with the idea of the image being the most important thing-- which is how most of us think of film, whether we recognize it or not. I think one of the big fears with digital art, and the democratization of the making of art, is that it will also democratize the $ in art. You will no longer buy pieces of art for 2 million $. Instead, lots of people will buy the image, or the print of an image, at a reasonable price. I think that's a big problem for certain people.

Finally, on the note of whether or not it is "ok"/a good idea for a digital film to emulate the results you get when using physical film, and whether or not that is an acceptable aesthetic goal-- I think most people would say "yes". Why? Because physical film is part of our tradition. We're educated as an audience to understand it. It's part of our vernacular when we watch a film. We know how to "read" it. It's arbitrary in some sense, when we're discussing digital film, that it's made to look like the results we get when we use physical film, but I don't think that invalidates it in any way-- it's an aesthetic choice that is directly important to some of the makers of film and some of the watchers of film, because it's born from our artistic history. I'm ok with the aesthetic results of history and tradition. Doesn't bother me in the least.

We are culturally trained to read art, or hear music, or understand plays. Thus, a western audience expects one thing from music and an eastern audience another, for example. And even though we produce music digitally, and could produce any possible sound imaginable, we emulate those results we find desirable on a cultural level because it's part of our tradition. It's what we want to hear. It's a beat we understand. A melody with a correct place. And because of that, it gives a western audience pleasure. I mean, it's pure chance that each of us has our specific notion of cultural musical history, but that doesn't invalidate the aesthetic specifics of that experience.

For me, I think that it's rather directly the same with digital art, and digital watercolors specifically. There are some pretty valid reasons for why a person would want to emulate natural media. I know that's a pretty esoteric path to get to that point, but there you go. It's a pretty esoteric question I was asked.

[Steve B]

I also wanted to take a quick moment to discuss the technology they're using to make digital film and how that relates to the technology we're using to make digital art. In the interview they talk about how the sensor reads photons, etc. and correlates a color to it, etc. and how that's not "real". Not as real as the photo-chemical process of emulsion reacting to light on a piece of film. I don't understand that. It makes no sense.

Well, I understand how they might feel that way, but I think it's an inaccurate presumption. I think that perspective purely stems from knowledge of a subject on one hand (physical film and emulsion), and the magic of a technology that's still largely not understood on the other hand (photons hitting a sensor which translates that for us). Film makers, I'm sure, understand how an image is captured on a physical piece of film. They've learned it. But I'll tell you, it's pretty much magic to anyone who isn't into film. Alternately, I think most film makers don't have a clue how an image is recorded digitally, and therefore it's not "real." It's still magic to them.

Well, of course it's real. It's photons. It's light. We just can't touch them with our hands. All the images they're recording are born from light-- whether it's recorded digitally or with a physical piece of film. And it's exactly the same with painting.

I love the idea that we're painting with light when we work digitally, as I've heard it said. What could be more pure visually?

When we work with a material like physical pigment or water, we use them as a medium, through which we express our ideas. We are bound by the physics and limits of the medium, and it is only through the medium that we express ourselves. In truth, through is the really operative word there. For how do we view a painted image but with light, as it passes through an object and returns to us. We are painting with light when we paint with natural media, it just has to pass through the mask of pigment first. When we paint digitally, we bypass that middle man, and deal directly with the source-- light itself, like a plant.

Chinapete, when you brought up the discussion with your friend about painting digitally, and he was so hesitant to do it because it "wasn't real"-- doesn't it seem like the real issue is that he thinks he's painting with ink or pigment instead of light when he uses natural media? I think the disdain many natural media artists have for digital work is less because of the limits of digital art and what it produces as an image (which is there still, I wouldn't deny that-- the technology is still progressing rapidly), and more because of the misconception about what they're actually manipulating when they make an image. They think they're manipulating a physical object. And they are, right? They not only had to learn to make a compelling image, but they had to learn how to master a physical object (the paint medium). But in the end, what they're really manipulating through those marks they make on canvas... is light.

Which is what we're manipulating here.

[chinapete]

I have tried to write Paradise
- Ezra Pound, notes for Canto CXX


... steve, about the anecdote of my Chinese friend, he and I are a lot closer to the age of 70 than you ... so for that reason alone I understand and forgive him his conservatism in things traditional :-)

... a note on painting light, painting with light ... it's something I've discussed in another thread on this forum, here I just want to say that light = dematerialization (this gets obliquely to your thoughts on "object" and "process," but I'd like to return to that valuable distinction another time) ...

... much of the beauty of watercolor is in its fragility, few other painting mediums can achieve its transparencies, I'm sure this is one reason you are attracted to it, since in your videos you emphasize delicate thin washes, glazes, overlays, the creation of depth through light as if these were second nature to you ... and I applaud your courage in tackling the difficult task of exploring and teaching methods for painting watercolors digitally or non-digitally that are meant to meet standards of "fine art" (defined culturally) ...

... the quote from Pound, poignant in itself, comes after his main Cantos, a long poem some 50 years in the making, and is written from a god-perspective, looking down, if you will, at what he has created ... here on earth all is heavy, dark, obscure to our understanding, but there in Paradise all will be revealed in a light beyond human understanding ... this, at least, was the theme that Dante took up in the Divine Comedy -- its final cantos, in the Paradiso, are written almost entirely in metaphors for light ...

[chinapete]

Alternately, I just wanted to share a natural media watercolor image I did last month. This image teeters on the edge of abstract, but it really does something that I don't think digital watercolors can do, therefor I used natural media to do those wonderful things playing only water and pigment and gravity can accomplish. It's for images like this that I paint natural media.

hi steve,

I'm bringing back in thumbnail the natural media watercolor image you posted recently, if you have time and interest, could you expand a little your idea that this painting can do things that digital can't do ... if I had to guess, I would say that for some effects here, the paper was held vertically, maybe even upside down, so that the color flowed up to the top of the painting, defying gravity, hehe ... this is a common way to have a watercolor dry more quickly and often more evenly ... having the water/color flow after the basic stroke has been laid down is not easy to achieve in digital (I know of only one program that can do it credibly) ...but I may be wrong about all that, so I thought I'd ask ...

[Steve B]

This is the image I was working on in the recent video, to share. An idea for a kids book.



Re: the natural media pic I shared-
I did do some tilting of the board upside down, yes. Painter tries to emulate this, but I'll be honest-- it doesn't really look like watercolors to me, it's way to rigid. Their new "flow patterns" allow more variability, but I've not been impressed with the results I've seen on that either. They both look very cool graphically, but I don't know if I'd call them watercolors. I think the Smudge tool in Artrage, being guided by the hand rather than the computer, does a much better job of creating the kind of organic movement you can get with tilts, compared to Painter.

Additionally, I did some splatters by flicking my brush-- you can see this across the "waterfall" and to the lower right, for instance. I can create some splatter-like effects digitally, but they don't have the sense of velocity and movement that you get with natural media, where it's clearly coming from one location and going to another.

Third, for example, on the far left, you can see a lot of bristley dry brush effects. I can get some dry brush effects in Artage, as I go over in the videos (by using a low Loading % and a good rough Layer Texture), but it lacks a bristly quality that I'm after. I've still not seen this done well in other programs, even Painter, honestly- not with watercolors anyways.

Fourth would be blowing-- you can see this on the tree-like organic elements at the top left. I suppose I might be able to get something like this digitally if I worked at it, but I'll be honest-- this is one of those things that's a "breeze" to do with natural media (pardon the pun!).

Basically, this piece is an abstract that I inked on top of. There's a loose, ergonomically engaged quality to abstracts to me-- they involve a lot of the action of the body, as well as the effects of gravity, etc. Atleast mine do. That's the sort of stuff I find difficult/not really possible to do digitally. Besides, doing it digitally, atleast with the current tools we have, would take all the fun out of it-- half the pleasure of doing abstracts for me is the dance of the body. I _was_ just thinking about stuff like the Kinect, which uses motion capture for games. That would be a fun thing to combine with Artrage-- paint with your body movement, etc. Very Pollock! 8)

I would also say there's a slightly gritty, textural quality to the inking here, for which I used a nib pen. I really wish the Artrage inking tools had an ability to interact atleast mildly with textures, but they're all way too smooth for my tastes. As such, if I want a grittier ink feeling, with some action in relation to the paper, I need to do that with natural media.

[gxhpainter2]

Steve.. I totally agree with you and I have thought for sometime that we are actually painting with light and at somepoint we will be able to tear off some digital paper to display our works ( chinapete and I had this disscussion somewhere along the way also) so I am glad to see you share this point..

[Steve B]

Yeah, isn't it nice when beauty and truth agree??