Monday, September 14, 2009

Watercolor landscape practice

Did a few watercolor sketches tonight. I've got a long way to go, but they turned out better than I expected. Both are, um, about 4" x 7" I think.

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Inspired by a photo I saw, modified a bit.


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Looked up some reference photos for the bridge itself, otherwise from imagination. Need to get out and do some real plein air location painting. Um, so yeah, the truck is there to cover up a "slip" of the brush.



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Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Back to it

Ok, so, I've been doing other things lately but it's time to focus on teh artz again.

JPR_20090830

I'm sure I've seen something like this before so nothing original. I was going to have her hold a teddy bear in her left hand but I decided it would be too cheesy and cliche so the Thermos instead. Hey, a girl's gotta have her coffee. The gun was originally going to be an M-16 but then I realized it would look too obvious that I did it from memory and screwed it up, so I just sort of made something up. I used my Space Pen, my favorite pen that I lost and just found. I've since lost it again.

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I keep calling myself a "painter" but I never get around to it, so there, a watercolor sketch in the Moleskin. Probably should have used some of the proper 140 lbs. paper I had with me considering how much I layered and worked it, but hey whatever.

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Some disembodied heads, digital. Haven't sat down with the tablet and sketched while watching TV in a while, should do that again soon.

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More disembodied heads, from the sketch group that meets bi-weekly at CiCi's.

So, near as I can tell it, there are two types of "professional" or semi-pro photographers that I've run across. The first are people who think they're artistic but are too lazy to learn to properly draw or paint, so they take a bunch of photos and run some Photoshop filters on them. The second are people who truly understand the strengths of photography vs. other media like painting and choose it because of, not despite, the differences. If you want an example of these guys, try Joe McNally. Since I don't want to be like the former and I don't care enough to put in the incredible time and effort to be like the latter, I think I'll give up on doing "serious" photography as an art itself, and just be content taking above-average snapshots and using it as a tool for other media.