I'm not alone

While walking in the Village, running errands, I passed this.  See? Others are keeping their decorations up, too!  :)

Also, here's a snippet of a WIP digital painting I'm working on.

Selfie Collage

I'm not much of a blogger, I think this has been established, but I'll try to post randomly like I do from time to time.  Here's a crop of a self portrait collage I've made using multiple photos, paint, and doodles.

Forgot I Had a Blog!

Oops.
Hope all have gotten through the winter time well, and are finally seeing signs of Spring.  I'm sure it will be fleeting, and we'll jump right into full-fledged Summer before you know it, even though we've had two snowstorms within the last month.  ;)
Here are some of a recent series called "I Am Not Your Clown".  They are digital paintings.

Some Little Paintings

Acrylics on cold pressed water color paper....

One Handed

I've recently had an injury to my non-dominant hand and wrist which has made completing daily tasks quite difficult.  I am able, though, to paint and draw, and have been doing that quite a bit as I heal.  This is a new series called 'Beach Club', perhaps due to time spent at the family beach house last month, and the fact that I'm still clinging to summer.  It seems so short each year.

Latest in the Redhead Series

I'm finding that it helps to start out in greyscale and then paint over in color.  I have 22 saved iterations of this face, here are step 1, 3, and 22.

Evolution of a face

While making my digital paintings, I will either start painting over a rough scanned sketch, or start from scratch.  If I can't get the face right, I'll turn it upside down, or put it in a monochromatic scale to reduce the distractions that my brain wants to see (which are not there).  It doesn't always work, but when it does, I'm happy.  You can see one such evolution here.  There were, of course, many steps in between each thumbnail I've shown.

Once I get the face finalized, I play with adding background detail/texture, and/or color.

Green and Gold

Certainly not colors I'm seeing outside today with the blizzard (ahem, if you can call it that.  We got far less than the 27" called for) yesterday.  These are two variations which ended up looking similar in color palette after playing around with the color versions I am working on right now; additions to the Royals Series.

More Details!!

Another from the same 'Royals' series.  The hustle and bustle of the season is slowing down personal art time, but here's some of the latest ....

Details, Please!

Part of me likes the nondescript, generalized rendition of the 'details' in my paintings: the 'placeholder' brushstrokes used to indicate hair, or accessories, or clothing which I start out with and paint over with more and more accuracy as I go on.  Another part of me feels impelled to continually add more realism each time I sit back down to paint more.

The need to show this increased detail may come from somewhat of a lack of confidence on my part, as well as a need to see if I can render certain parts more realistically so that I will not be judged as someone less skilled than I might otherwise be assessed.  I'm generally less comfortable showing my 'looser' work without explanation - - that it's somehow intentional, and that while I am capable of painting more realistically, ["better" ?] I just happen to prefer this particular work the way I have it ["unskilled" ?].  I hope that will go away in time, both the lack of confidence, and the fear of simplicity.

Above are details of a recent painting (which I showed in a sepia version in the last post).  I'm not done with the jewelry, I have much more to do.  See the sepia version for a general sense of how it looked before.

Recent Works in Sepia

 From my Stepchildren Series

 From a new series, The Royals (WIP)

Recent Polaroid scan from this past summer.

Re-covery

I have three Polaroid SX-70 cameras, the original, the Alpha, and Model 2.  All are in varying states of distress, but the Alpha, which was the first one I owned, had a leatherette covering which was so dried and crumbly that it caused anything it came into contact with to be stained with a rusty brown filthy dust.  I had to carry it in a plastic bag, and as I often go withs several cameras on my shoots, not being able to just sling the long strap over my shoulder was a pain.  So this summer I said no more.   I took a heavy rasp and sandpaper, and tried to remove as much of the cover as possible, and then commenced with a variety of duct and electrical tapes.  The whole thing is eyeballed, and not perfect, but it's so great to be able to pick it up without getting dirty hands.  :))

Redhead in Blue

Continuing with my 'Stepchildren' series....

Monster Photo Gestalt Exhibit

I'll be in this show which opens tomorrow at bG Gallery in Santa Monica, CA tomorrow.  (Would love to hear from anyone out there able to attend.)

This is what will be in the show.  

Titled: Hand me down to the soft Earth and let me start from scratch.

Sales and inquiries can be directed to the gallery:

T: 310-906-4211

info@bgartdealings.com

I cut and put my mats together myself.

The biggest stressor for me while framing for galleries is removal of all dust particles from between the art and the acrylic.  I don't know what it is, but no matter what I do... antistatic cloth, clearing the work area, brushes, and careful attention, there's always that one little speck which stands out like a sore thumb after I close everything up.  Then I have to open it up and start all over again.

Thursday's Screenshot

Work on my 'Stepchildren' series continues.  I start with a scanned sketch, paint in Adobe Photoshop, all on separate layers.  When a file gets to be a certain number of layers, say, 15 or so, I save a flattened version, rename it with a numerical suffix, and continue to the next 15 layers, and so on.  The face and features change a lot during this process.   And as you can see, I often have a few windows open at the same time.  The redhead on the left is the preview in Adobe Bridge of another painting I've done.

'The Stepchildren' Series

I'm currently working on a series of redheads, all painted digitally with my Wacom tablet.  In the end, I'll compile them into a small book or maybe even a 'zine' called "The Stepchildren".  

Variations

Test prints of some illustrations.  It's snowing outside, and warm inside.  Hope all who are dealing with the blizzard are safe and sound.  I'm going out in it in a while, and from the looks of it out my window, I'd benefit from some goggles.  There's a little bit of a windy sidewards snow thing going on.  But that won't deter me.  Tonight, I'll go out as well, late.  For adventures.

Two Devils (with sons)

Two Kitty Cats

Two Puppies

Uncovering The Magic

In a recent post, I spoke about scanning the 'duds' - those photos which came out either way too overexposed or underexposed.  I showed examples of an underexposed Polaroid, and my scanning methods used to uncover the magic hidden within.   Today I'll share one which was overexposed, a Type 600 version of Impossible Project's color film (a 'skins' version with animal print frames).  My cameras are sx-70's, so this film will result in an overexposed image.

The original

The original cropped, after adjusting data in the individual color channels.

Why Scanning Film Is An Endless Task

There's a reason my film scanning is a never-ending process. First, I am always taking pictures, so the rolls of film and stacks of polaroids continue to grow. Second, since the majority of my cameras are low end and quirky, they can cause double exposures, uneven spacing between frames, and, due to unsophisticated or absent focus/aperture controls, too dark/light and/or blurred images. All these lend to far more time necessary in the scanner with each of these types of images as I attempt to find and make a picture.

Generally, if I take a photo with a sophisticated camera (ahem, I have only one, the Pentax 67) then scanning is a breeze. I can do an entire roll of film in a couple of hours; one evening. With the lo-fi cameras, I spend more time first making a 'reality' scan of the image "as is", and then doing multiple variations of the same image through adjustments to each of the color channels in attempts to 'find' a better photo, more detail, or more character and soul. I may also increase or decrease the saturation, or convert it to black and white, and save all these versions for later comparison.

Pictured above is one of my recent scans. It was an image taken last month in a plastic camera with an attached polaroid back. The film was a black and white Polaroid type which expired 9 years ago, and while I should have shot this as a long exposure, because it was very early morning, very cloudy, and I had a dark filter over the lens, I forgot. All this resulted in an underexposed photo with barely any image, as you can see.

It doesn't end there, however.  All's not lost.  There's nothing to lose in trying to pull something out of these types of images when scanning. Sometimes I find my best images this way. Lightening it, manipulating the color channels (I always scan as 24bit color, even if it's black and white) and other adjustments will cause distortions, and exaggeration of the film emulsion's aberrations, and the dust particles, but all that adds to the character.  The following are three of the 5 or so variations I made of the above photo:

End of Summer

Well, I tend to cling to summer for as long as the weather cooperates, but I guess for many, the Labor Day weekend which kicks off today is the last hurrah.  Back from the beach house, ending my official annual summer vacation, I'm adjusting to city life again, and embarking on the love-hate relationship I have with the task of scanning stacks of polaroids and film.  Happy Labor Day for my U.S. readers.