The Highlands - Capturing Scale

Artists should always try to expand their visual library to be more creative and understand the world around them better. Thereby photography can be used as a method for observational studies.

The wide landscapes and coastal areas of the highlands offer great variety in form of high valleys such as Glen Coe to famous islands like the Isle of Skye. The highlands have some of the most fascinating sceneries I have come across so far and are definitely worth documenting. On recent trips I set out to particularly capture the large scale of their nature (environment observations).

Dunnottar Castle

Killin & Ben Lawers

Eilean Donan Castle

The Isle of Skye

The Cuillins

The Storr

The Coastline

Honours Workshop Diary 7 – Clarifying the Research Project

What is the proposed research about?

The proposed research is about the creation of meaningful art through emotions.

•   What is it trying to find out or achieve?

The project trains observational skills and helps understand emotions in society. The project will be beneficial to other artists attempting to integrate and emphasize emotions in art effectively.

•   What is the body of relevant literature?

Literature addressing art history: Impressionism, expressionism, new objectivity, social documentary photography, photojournalism

Literature on interactivity, animation and cinematography: 2D, 3D and silent films

     Literature covering technical aspects: Colour, value, lighting, composition...

•   How does the literature support your arguments?

The literature covers a range of attempts and strategies to portray emotions through different art forms and offers technical solutions concerning the work flow.

•   How will you undertake your research?

The honours project will mainly be a practice-led research project. Additionally it will cover some case studies.

•   What methods, materials and tools will you use?

Practice-led and case studies.

Blog, sketchbook (traditional materials: pencil, charcoal, pastels), digital sketchbook (photoshop, photography)

•   What are the expected outcomes and benefits?

The outcome could be a new personal art style with future art benefiting from stronger emotions (, in other words the creation of more meaningful art). Furthermore observational and technical skills will improve.

            It could also serve as inspiration for other artists.

Life Drawing No. 4

2 hour lighting study (in colour) with pastels

Revision in Photoshop. Digitally improving face and background.

Honours Workshop Diary 6 – General Art History Research

What reasons exist for the change in art? How did it come to the complete abstraction of the mid-20th century? 

In able to answer this question I had a closer look at general art history and the cultural events taking place during this time of change. Especially the turn of the 20th century seemed to be a major changing point for artists. Donald Kuspit speaks of the "Matrix of Sensations", as he calls it, the evolution of art how we know it. The journey takes place from the beginnings of Manet's colour patches to postmodern digital art grounded in codes and is summarized and explained nicely in his article. I will focus on the shift of the artistic mindset at the end of the 19th century. The whole article can be accessed here:  http://www.artnet.com/magazineus/features/kuspit/kuspit8-5-05.asp

This meant artists would once again search for purpose in art and evolve. The focus was all on the means of expression. And this is when and why different art movement formed. Soon there were many different theories and opinions and art became more diverse and possibly creative.

A Shift in the Artistic Mindset
Therefore the means of art up until the 19th century must be explained. In medieval Europe paintings are exclusively religious and the proportions of people are incorrect. The sense of depth is also largely missing. This is because the story of the image is the main goal and not duplicating reality. With the time of the Renaissance artists, philosophers and scientists start celebrating the natural phenomena, especially humanistic values. The main goal has therefore changed to translating 3D forms into realistic looking 2D images. This is possible by relating science and art like Leonardo da Vinci or Albrecht Dürer did. Just as Marshall McLuhan explains a few centuries later, “it is the framework which changes with each new technology and not just the picture within the frame.” (McLuhan 1964). In this case it was the geometry that can be related to a painting. Technology changes art and the way people think.

Soon the qualities of oil were found and used as a painting tool. Because it dries so slowly, paintings can be changed and optimized for a long time. The main focus was still on the depiction of realism though. This first changed with the invention of photography in the 1800s. Photography then took over the main purpose of existing art up until then. It captures reality in a picture. Photography can just as well be art though, as it is merely a new expressive way to use one’s aesthetic vision.

Sketchbook Development

Some sketches that evolved into a small story.

Two boys are using cooking utensils as swords and pretending to fight out an important combat between to noble knights. The battle shall first end with the death of the opponent. When the mother arrives they are forced to stop, hiding the utensils they snuck out of the kitchen earlier behind their backs. The mother sees them though of course and demands them to give the cooking instruments back to her, so that she can finally prepare dinner. This upsets the 2 boys and leaves them with their heads down on the doorstep. One of the boys didn't take it too badly though and is daydreaming out the rest of the brave knights' story silently in his head.

Some medieval house sketches

Some sketches from Halloween

A typical Monday lecture with Robin? almost, but not quite hehe.

Don't know where that foot came from.

A medieval town surrounded by a city wall concept.

Using the two concept sketches to block in value and create some atmosphere.

Some more quick sketches focusing mainly on movement and dynamics. The very bottom sketch represents a Mayan temple/town.

"Under the Roots" - A Lighting Study

"Under the Roots" - It's a warm summers eve and fireflies are everywhere. The air looks as if it were filled with golden particles. And the residents of this little house just arrived back home after a long day of travelling.

Reflection

I worked with many layers and their settings to achieve different lighting effects in "Under the Roots". The sun shining through the leaves of the woods (especially in the day version) and the shadows they cast were one of the key challenges. I wanted to keep a welcoming atmosphere despite the dense and massive trees. Therefore I avoided sharp corners and used a curvy and elegant design for the tress as well as the house. This contrasted the first concept of the house.  

For the night version I also integrated technique researched a few days ago to let the lights glow more. As described in the post "The Importance of Value" I dimmed down the image and added an extra layer to let the lights of the house and the glowing particles stand out more. Glowing through value and saturation. Despite the yellow not being very bright it seems as though it were. There is also some colour contrast that enhances it further though, as the yellow/orange lights are complementary colours to the purple/blue background. 

Painting Process

My first step was a pencil sketch of the environment. 

Now I scanned in the image and imported it to Photoshop. It was time to block in the values to achieve a general feel and atmosphere.

These values were improved before adding colour. I also added in some darker areas now to add some contrast.

While colouring the environment I started to add layers and set them to "Soft Light" (in Photoshop) for example to achieve more detailed and brighter lighting. 

From the final version I adjusted the colours and produced a night version as well. Here I would now add light sources and create some more contrast in certain areas.

Life Drawing No. 3

Some quick pencil sketches

 20 min pencil sketch

30 min pencil sketch

25 min pencil sketch

The Importance of Value

In art one has the freedom to arrange values. The placement and arrangement of these values depends on the desired outcome. Value creates contrast between objects and is able to create a theme. It also helps the staging of characters or scenes in general. Therefore experimentation with value should occur to find out the best possible solution in the creation of depth and atmosphere. 

Beneath are some examples of how value works and helps clarify the scene. The images are from the book "Dream Worlds". (Bacher, H. 2007. Dream Worlds: Production Design for Animation. Focal Press)

Images from "Dream Worlds"

Despite having a very simple composition and staging the value changes the mood in each version. Value is something that should be planned from the very beginning of a painting as it allows the painting to build onto the atmosphere and mood.  

Images from "Dream Worlds"

In the paragraph beneath Hans Bacher explains once more the importance of value and how it acts as a foundation for the colour, as guidance as one might say.

 

                       Images from "Dream Worlds"

How to Create Glowing Objects with Value

Dan dos Santos wrote a nice article on how to create a glowing effect through value. There are different methods to create such a glowing effect, for example one could use complementary colours for instance (see more under the post "Colour Theory"), but what if you have a different design in your head where the surrounding colours are similar to the colour that's supposed to glow?

In that case saturation can do the trick. Value and saturation control are a very important aspect in painting. Dan dos Santos describes his process here: http://muddycolors.blogspot.co.at/2012/10/not-so-bright.html

Image by Dan Dos Santos

"By placing the darkest values right in the pupils of the eye, I made the whites appear much whiter than they really are. Even at the drawing phase, the whites of the eyes already appear whiter than the board they are drawn on. This is obviously impossible (and in fact they are actually a little bit darker than the board), but our eyes perceive it otherwise. Go ahead, zoom in on the image above. You would swear the eyes are whiter than the rest of the image, but they are not." (Dan dos Santos 2012)

Image by Dan dos Santos

The trick is to paint all surrounding colours a bit darker and greyer than one usually would. The duller one paints things, the more the object, in this case the eyes, stand out.