Category: Art

Svetlana and I were walking with our daughter Anna in the Mount Doug Park on a typical Victoria afternoon (light rain interjected with sunshine) when I took a picture of a wall of cedar trees with my iPhone. The bright green leaves were catching the sunlight, and I thought it would be fun to play with layers in the Brushes app on my iPad to try to replicate this effect in a sketch. Transfer of the reference photo to the iPad happens automatically if the Photostream feature of the iCloud is enabled. Later that evening, I made the sketch, by creating separate layers for the inking, the background, the tree trunks, the dark leaves, and the highlights. I tried to complete the entire sketch quickly in order to preserve the spontaneous impression of the scene.

Actually, I find the ability to endlessly adjust a digital painting to be a double-edged sword. One needs to be able to decide when the painting is finished. In fact, the painting needs to be declared finished at a certain point. Otherwise, the perpetual process of refining it would become and infinite source of frustration.

The painting of the sakura was done using a neat app called ArtRage. This app also incorporates layers, similar to the Brushes app, but the distinguishing feature of the ArtRage is its ability to realistically simulate various watercolor and oil painting techniques, from dry strokes to wet-on-wet painting. Realistic rendering of watercolors is particularly challenging in a software, since the algorithm needs to take into account transient drying and wicking effects. The ArtRage simulates various paper textures and also keeps track of the amount of paint applied to a specific area, which allows for some very realistic effects. The downside of this is that the app uses a lot of memory, which sometimes causes it to crash. (Save often!). I was in the middle of a pointillism-inspired painting of the flowers, when the app crashed, and the layer with my beautiful sakura flowers was gone – a symbolic Zen experience, which was appropriate for the subject of the painting, but exceedingly frustrating at the same time. (Save often!!!)

Click on the images to see larger versions or visit my Art gallery.

 

The main challenge with this assignment was to balance the four characters on the page. The makoto in the lower right easily overpowers the top-row kanji.

See my calligraphy gallery.

 

Last month’s calligraphy assignment featured a famous saying: たのしいかないちじなし. The Japanese explanation of the meaning is as follows: 何と楽しいことではないか、手足まといになる事は一もない. The exact translation proves elusive, from “What joy! Nothing troubles me” to “To have no antagonisms is fun”. I like the latter version because of its instructional tone. If you can suggest a more elegant translation, please let me know.

See my calligraphy gallery.

 

Here are two image manipulations done in Snapspeed on iPad. I tend to go for an antique look in an image when I use Snapspeed. I have a rough idea of the finished image in my mind, but an important part of the process, and the most fun part for me, is the surprise of discovering unexpected effects. This aspect is inherently present in analog painting, but the ability to combine filters in software begins to approximate it in the digital realm.

Of course, there are many ways of creating an aged photo look in Photoshop, etc. using existing filters and plugins. One way of avoiding a “cookie-cutter” look in a processed image is to stack multiple filters. This creates a unique effect, or at least increases the probability of achieving one.

The photos are taken in Holland in the summer of 2011. These windmills are located in a very picturesque town called Zaanse Schans, just a few minutes from Amsterdam by train. The windmills are operational: tourists can visit a wind-powered saw mill, a peanut oil mill and  a chalk mill.

The image of the bicycles on the bridge is taken from a tour boat in Amsterdam. A boat tour of the canals is a great way to survey the city for photo opportunities and to grab a few shots. The low viewpoint provides variety to the usual photos taken from the street level.

Taking a trip to Vancouver by ferry, I had an opportunity to spend a couple of hours, in short periods, to work on some images on my iPad. I used the Snapspeed app by Nick software. It is very intuitive and powerful. The app allows stacking of multiple filters, but the intermediate steps of the editing process are lost as soon as the file is saved. I experimented with several combinations of adjustments, saving the various versions in separate files.

Of course, image editing on an iPad is technically limited, compared to doing it using a full-featured computer-based software. Nevertheless, as the demands in our lives increase and time becomes more and more precious, it becomes apparent that unless one can utilize brief moments to experiment with images on a tablet, this kind of creative work may not happen at all. In my case, this is certainly the case: by the time I have an opportunity to sit down at my desk, with a Wacom graphics tablet and a large, color-calibrated screen, and, most importantly, a large uninterrupted chunk of time, the idea of a creative image that I had at the time of pressing the shutter has usually disappeared.

I see digital artwork on an iPad as sketching in an old-fashioned notebook – it is not a substitute for work in an artist’s studio, but it allows one to capture an idea, and it can be done, from start to finish, in a short period of time.

Autumn tree

Back in October, while taking one of the first walks with my daughter Anna around the Majestic park in Victoria, I took a photo of this tree with my iPhone. Half of the bright yellow leaves had just fallen, and the remaining leaves, contrasted against the dark background, still allowed the spherical shape of the tree to be recognized. This transitional stage of the tree reminded me of the image of the unfinished Death Star from “The Star Wars.”

Irish landscape

This photo was taken in February of 2010 in Ireland, during my sabbatical there. I tried to create a look of an old etching, while keeping some color in the sky.

Sumo

Svetlana and I had a chance to attend a sumo competition in Nagoya in July of 2010. This photo was taken from the first row, just by the dohyo, with a Canon 70-200 f2.8L IS USM lens. I added colder tones to create a sense of confrontation and conflict and overlaid some texture, aiming at a weathered look of terracotta warriors. After all, sumo is the oldest martial art that is practiced today.

Please visit my gallery of to see more sketches and digital artwork.