Another Pear - A Test for my SquareMess custom brushes

[DarkOwnt]

D Akey

Recently, I've been thinking a lot about digital art, and what makes art, and what is not art.

Strangely enough, having ultimate control of a layer or an undo button, or the ability to sample colors is not what makes something art or not. Neither is the level of difficulty... painting a masterpiece with a blade of grass or only three colors or in a rainstorm does not make the painting more legit.

First, I think photography, mixed media, or 3d art is one thing, any time you are the author of every stroke though... then I think you can refer to it as a painting.

Now what does one strive for in a painting? I think it must be something more than mere exact copying... that is what photography is for. The aim of the artist is not to turn herself into the equivalent of a perfect set of lenses and CCDs, nor a perfect robot who can reproduce things photographically. An Artist brings something of herself to the work. Perhaps a slight variation in the composition of reality: moving a tree here, or shifting a house there. Perhaps varying the color, or textures of certain things to elicit a feeling of what the artist feels about the things, blurring certain edges, emphasizing others, making other areas blurry or unsaturated... there is something in the way of the unreality in the work's actual shapes, colors and values (in comparison to the subject as it really looks) which makes it more true to the artist and more real to her vision of the subject.

So what IS wrong then with color sampling or tracing or using digital tools is not that it is easy, but that it can encourage a person to create (in a very inefficient way) nothing more than photography... placing the exact same color at point x,y in the reference on the same relative place X,Y in the painting would be a pointless exercise. The tragedy is the absence of the artist's view, the subjective element in the act of seeing, of perceiving, of valuing, or of contemplating the subject. To the extent a digital tool can be used in a way that encourages creativity, exploration of possibility, quite frankly to the creation of happy mistakes, I think the artist is served better. Those happy mistakes although not in line with reality might be closer to the artist's vision, and happily can be kept after the fact.

In the end the digital tools are not the problem and they never have been, it's been the temptation to use them simply to copy something, which replaces the artist's eye with the perfection, inhumanity, and pointlessness of a Xerox machine.

Using layers then is no problem if you use it for your vision of the subject, since THAT creation, whether through happy mistakes, or messy strokes, or careful attention, is all that matters.

[HwyStar]

I agree with everything you both have said since there really isn't a right or wrong answer - right?

We sometimes forget that we have spent countless hours watching videos, studying pdf manuals, setting a layers blend mode, tweaking a brushes settings, yada yada yada... The average person does not understand anything that I just wrote except maybe watching videos. And usually, those videos are of a monkey and cat cuddling. There's nothing wrong with those types of videos but we spend "our time" learning our art trade. Just like the "Masters" used to sit around in coffee shops learning from each other 100 years ago. Art is a learned trade or vocation that takes years to understand and apply. You both have heard of the 10,000-hour rule, right? To really do anything properly and with finesse it requires 10,000 hours of practicing your trade until you really learn your craft. Whatever it may be.

We are getting there one step at a time. Let the rest of the people decide what is right or wrong with digital versus media painting.

When I walk away from my art and it expresses to me what I wanted to say in my painting then I am happy. Not everyone is going to get our brush strokes. And that is okay! Look at Van Gogh. I don't always understand all of his brush strokes but somehow they seem to work. But for me, not always. And I do dearly love his work. When I am in the mood for it. I find his work out there. The reason I bring this up is that some of my brush strokes are simple brush strokes like VG used in his paintings. But I struggle with my own brush strokes too. It doesn't always make sense, but sometimes it is better to just let them lie there. Even if they came out; different than you had ever planned for them too.

I never planned on those tulips to fall as they did in my painting. I just left them there because they were interesting. Had they fallen over, was it the wind, was I moving in a fast moving train looking out a window; all provocative questions and any one of those questions could be the answer. It's up to you to decide. I still haven't but I had fun painting them! It was a great release.

Thanks for chatting guys! I have enjoyed it. Great insights.

Now what am I going to paint?

[D Akey]

D Akey

Recently, I've been thinking a lot about digital art, and what makes art, and what is not art.

Strangely enough, having ultimate control of a layer or an undo button, or the ability to sample colors is not what makes something art or not. Neither is the level of difficulty... painting a masterpiece with a blade of grass or only three colors or in a rainstorm does not make the painting more legit.

First, I think photography, mixed media, or 3d art is one thing, any time you are the author of every stroke though... then I think you can refer to it as a painting.

Now what does one strive for in a painting? I think it must be something more than mere exact copying... that is what photography is for. The aim of the artist is not to turn herself into the equivalent of a perfect set of lenses and CCDs, nor a perfect robot who can reproduce things photographically. An Artist brings something of herself to the work. Perhaps a slight variation in the composition of reality: moving a tree here, or shifting a house there. Perhaps varying the color, or textures of certain things to elicit a feeling of what the artist feels about the things, blurring certain edges, emphasizing others, making other areas blurry or unsaturated... there is something in the way of the unreality in the work's actual shapes, colors and values (in comparison to the subject as it really looks) which makes it more true to the artist and more real to her vision of the subject.

So what IS wrong then with color sampling or tracing or using digital tools is not that it is easy, but that it can encourage a person to create (in a very inefficient way) nothing more than photography... placing the exact same color at point x,y in the reference on the same relative place X,Y in the painting would be a pointless exercise. The tragedy is the absence of the artist's view, the subjective element in the act of seeing, of perceiving, of valuing, or of contemplating the subject. To the extent a digital tool can be used in a way that encourages creativity, exploration of possibility, quite frankly to the creation of happy mistakes, I think the artist is served better. Those happy mistakes although not in line with reality might be closer to the artist's vision, and happily can be kept after the fact.

In the end the digital tools are not the problem and they never have been, it's been the temptation to use them simply to copy something, which replaces the artist's eye with the perfection, inhumanity, and pointlessness of a Xerox machine.

Using layers then is no problem if you use it for your vision of the subject, since THAT creation, whether through happy mistakes, or messy strokes, or careful attention, is all that matters.

Hi DarkOwnt,

Very interesting fine distinctions. I get where you're coming from. And on the whole I agree about just copying photographs. But just because I feel a certain way does not negate what others are doing. I tend to lean in your direction regarding my own work. But I'm a trained artist and have been doing this stuff a long time and as such what I have been out to accomplish has morphed many times. There were times when I copied photos although direct copying was not where I usually aimed except in rendering class and knowing how to make things look photographic that I rolled over into my more original work. As a learning tool it was important for when I did deviate, and as a point of satisfaction it was easy to see if I hit the mark or not.

Personally I've never been terribly judgmental about how others approach their art mechanically. I figure it's all a spot on their artistic journey. I figure if they're doing their process in an artful state of mind, whatever it is, it qualifies as art and it's answering their own questions. Having said that, I do learn a lot of technique from looking at others' process as with this video posted above. Not saying I would necessarily paint that way, but I can pick up bits, without a doubt.

I hold myself to a different standard because of the voices in my head evaluating as I work because I'm aiming at a specific target usually, even if that target is new and hazy. And so I'm looking to see what happy accidents happen. I hear the internal chatter coming out: Is there something new emerging? How does it compare with my previous work or with others' work? Would a potential customer like it? Would the model like it? Is it telling the story I want to tell? Is that blue the right shade? Should I smudge that edge? Is the light working? How much could I sell it for? Have I lost my touch? etc etc etc. And often time I'm not even thinking. These questions come up on their own because I have had to hit a particular standard of professionalism, and if I slip below that I won't make any money. It's an automatic thing for personal evaluation. It's often a noisy business until I get into the groove at which point everything becomes quiet and I can soundlessly ride out the painting. If that quiet spot happens it's almost certainly going to be a good piece. And needless to say I want to get past the noise as early in the process as I can safely do it.

You speak of there existing for artists a temptation in digital to use the photo overmuch and if gone with it runs the risk of losing the humanity or the personal artistic expression. I agree. Then it comes down to how much that personal quality matters to the artist doing the work. Some folks like making the painting look like a beautiful model or location because that's what drew them to it -- because they want to recreate beauty at that level. More power to them. But that's not what it's about for others, including myself. We want to use it as a springboard into the personal. And that level of art is exciting and it is one of the criteria for the more evolved artists who have graduated beyond mechanics.

Being on the internet, specifically in this forum for so many iterations of the various groups of artists who come through, it has really taken me outside my own process to see what others appear to be getting from doing art in so many variations and levels of appreciation for the creative process. And it's developed in me a duality: that there's my personal work on one side of the line which has its parameters where I do judge pretty strongly, and then there's all the rest of the artists on the other side and how to remember what it was like when I was there and I can readjust my viewpoint to try to spot where they're coming from and what they were out to accomplish. It's fascinating and most expansive.

I know I digressed, but I think we're generally talking about the same things and it's a big topic. Yours was a great post by the way and sort of hits big questions facing people who do digital art.

[D Akey]

I agree with everything you both have said since there really isn't a right or wrong answer - right?

We sometimes forget that we have spent countless hours watching videos, studying pdf manuals, setting a layers blend mode, tweaking a brushes settings, yada yada yada... The average person does not understand anything that I just wrote except maybe watching videos. And usually, those videos are of a monkey and cat cuddling. There's nothing wrong with those types of videos but we spend "our time" learning our art trade. Just like the "Masters" used to sit around in coffee shops learning from each other 100 years ago. Art is a learned trade or vocation that takes years to understand and apply. You both have heard of the 10,000-hour rule, right? To really do anything properly and with finesse it requires 10,000 hours of practicing your trade until you really learn your craft. Whatever it may be.

We are getting there one step at a time. Let the rest of the people decide what is right or wrong with digital versus media painting.

When I walk away from my art and it expresses to me what I wanted to say in my painting then I am happy. Not everyone is going to get our brush strokes. And that is okay! Look at Van Gogh. I don't always understand all of his brush strokes but somehow they seem to work. But for me, not always. And I do dearly love his work. When I am in the mood for it. I find his work out there. The reason I bring this up is that some of my brush strokes are simple brush strokes like VG used in his paintings. But I struggle with my own brush strokes too. It doesn't always make sense, but sometimes it is better to just let them lie there. Even if they came out; different than you had ever planned for them too.

I never planned on those tulips to fall as they did in my painting. I just left them there because they were interesting. Had they fallen over, was it the wind, was I moving in a fast moving train looking out a window; all provocative questions and any one of those questions could be the answer. It's up to you to decide. I still haven't but I had fun painting them! It was a great release.

Thanks for chatting guys! I have enjoyed it. Great insights.

Now what am I going to paint?

Hi HwyStar,

I think we overlapped when we posted and we covered similar things. I agree with what you're saying on all counts.

As far as what to paint, I don't know about you guys, but I'm painting my kitchen -- on the walls and cupboards. I also spent days stripping the paint and sanding cabinets making all kinds of noise and dust -- all the time wishing I could have just hit [Undo] and I could be back at bare walls. I understand the envy traditional artists have for digital artists. Digital artists don't suffer enough.

[HwyStar]

Her is another one of Tulip Town. No waving tulips! I finished this right before I got your new brushes DO. I plan on using them when I get back to Virginia next weekend.

[DarkOwnt]

Wow. Robert, I like this one very much!

[Chad Weatherford]

Hmm, it does create a bit of an impasto effect, maybe you could combine the two, and keep the thicker paint on the highlite only?

That Simon Stalenhag gallery was such a trip. I've not seen so many detail shots of his work before. Curious about his process. One of the painters I work with, Michael Macrae, does similar work in that it appears really tight, but up close it is a pretty loose network of brushstrokes.

[D Akey]

Hmm, it does create a bit of an impasto effect, maybe you could combine the two, and keep the thicker paint on the highlite only? . . .

That's the way I was taught when learning to do painterly paintings -- to save putting the thick impasto till the last because in traditional media it was a fight to paint over thick paint as one built their picture. So generally thin to thick. I learned that the hard way since in real life I had been a poor student so I used only as much paint as necessary. In the commercial world, thick paint makes it very difficult to make changes from an art director. The good news is that impasto gives the painting a fine arts look where the artist is the last word.

I defer to Chad on the digital side of things since one doesn't have the same constraints as real world impasto painting, but I think it remains a good rule of thumb. And we can look at his work to see. What I see in digital as the potential problem is that the illusion of impasto is created somewhat by casting a slight shadow to make it look like raised ridges in the streak of a stroke which if one paints thin over it in a different direction, it defies the illusion and feels artificial. So his is a good rule of thumb.

[D Akey]

Her is another one of Tulip Town. No waving tulips! I finished this right before I got your new brushes DO. I plan on using them when I get back to Virginia next weekend.

Nice painting. What a great thing to be able to paint fields of color that was actually there rather than having to invent it all. Where did you come across these flower farms? Where is Tulip Town?

[Chad Weatherford]

Sorry, my impasto comment was meant for DO. I didn't see there was a few pages of conversation after the filter experiment with the pear!

Love the tulips, Robert.