Series In Progress: Deity Series

I’m beginning work on the “Deity Series.” I actually started it and a few years back, with about three images, and then got to work on different things.

The idea is to recreate religious imagery of the plethora of Gods in the Hindu religion and perhaps some of the saints from Catholicism. I’m thinking in particular of the kitschy imagery on candles to be used on altars of the Hispanic flavor of the Catholic tradition.

I’m also using “India Bazaar” as reference, which has a great vintage look.

I’m not going to try to be ironic and clever as some sort of statement about religion, but rather to try and create vivid & enchanting imagery with current technology in this rich tradition. I won’t replicate the look of the pastel and airbrushed colors but try to make some really photo-realistic representations of the Gods and Goddesses.

I’ll be using the green screen I have set up in my studio space at tockwotten so I can make the backgrounds in post-production.

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1940's Style Pin-Up Illustration

I’m looking for models to shoot 1940′s & 50′s style pin-up illustrations.

http://picasaweb.google.com/jay.gidwitz/PinUpsProjects#

I would shoot the photographs in front of green screen and then create the (usually sparse) environment in photoshop and then import the image into Painter X to make it look more like an organically painted image.

I would not just be recreating the look of pin-up illustrations, though; I want the models to have the “look” of belonging to various sub-cultures: hipsters, goth, with tattoos or mohawks etc. (Which I can do in photoshop afterwards if necessary).

The images would still be relatively tame to modern standards; the “oh golly!” look on the model’s face as for some reason a little bit of thigh or bum was being revealed, as was that style of illustration.

Or feel free to comment on the concept below.

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Dream Logic: Art Exhibition Pictures 3/09

The best part of the night was hanging out with friends, munching on food and sipping (more than a few) drinks.

But also when Richard Fishman, my teacher & mentor and friend looked around the room, and said: “You’re ready for a show. I mean this is a show, but you’re ready for a show.”

Wow! A real show not a student show. It’s been a long time coming… and the best part about it was I really respect Richard’s opinion. He really knows his stuff and doesn’t say things he doesn’t mean.

There’s some people who when they tell you things is means a lot more, because they don’t give compliments lightly and only do when you’ve really earned it.

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First Dip: Kathy Honey's Painting aquired by David Lynch Foundation

A Child's First Exporation into Meditation

A Child's First Exporation into Meditation

My good friend Kathy Honey created a painting titled “First Dip” a while back.

It’s about a child’s first exploration into meditation. The painting is autobiographical: Kathy studied Transcendental Meditation with Maharishi from a young age. (The same man the Beatles studied with in India.)

The David Lynch Foundation promotes teaching meditation to kids in school to cope with stress and improve their lives. They provide scholarships for kids to learn transcendental meditation and to go to schools, colleges and universities that provide a consciousness-based education.

Kathy got in contact with the foundation because they would provide a great home for “First Dip.”

The foundation was happy to acquire the work.

Update: 6/16/09

They showed David the picture of Kathy’s painting, and here’s what he said:

PLEASE TELL KATHY HONEY THAT I LOVE HER NAME – AND PAINTING !!! ….. WE WOULD BE HONORED TO HAVE IT IN OUR COLLECTION OF ART INSPIRED BY MEDITATION …… THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT DLF.TV IS ALL ABOUT ….. SUPER COOL!!! ….. JAI GURU DEV ….. DAVID

Email ends:

Thank you very much for sending us your beautiful painting!
–

I love David Lynch’s movies, so this makes me really happy for Kathy. (And a bit envious.)

Reminds me to see “Inland Empire” soon.

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Rachel: Time & Decay

Surrealist nude female figure expressing time and decay

Surrealist nude female figure expressing time and decay

I finally got a decent picture of this model finished.

Most of the pictures I made from this photoshoot received little acclaim. Richard Fishman actually liked this image!

Yay!!

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More from the Interacting | Processing Series


Bride Stripped Bare 2 (Large Glass)

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Art Competition: "Humans in the moment"

About a month ago I submitted to “The TOPTEN Human in the Moment“– an online competition put on by ARTROM gallery based in Rome.

One of my pieces got in!

The Winners’ Exhibition opens Sunday, May 4th at 7:00pm (Rome time) on artromgallery.com.

The picture was an unpublished image from the Erich Zann posters.

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Funamentals of Drawing

Drawing breaks down into only three fundamental strategies.

  1. Drawing what you see
  2. Drawing what you see in your mind
  3. Automatic drawing

1) Drawing from life

Drawing from life, or drawing what you’re looking at, can have smaller strategies contained within that strategy.

Drawing from life is about training your eye to see relationships. The relationships of the shapes, the relationships of the lights and darks and middle-tones, and color. While life drawing is a difficult skill for many to master, and I still have a long way to go, it is certainly a very learnable skill.

As a mentor once told me: “the more you learn, the more you realize how much more there is to learn.”

2) Drawing from your mind’s eye
Drawing from your mind could be into drawing from memory, or drawing from your imagination, or both. Training your visual memory is the quickest and easiest way to develop your ability to draw better what you see in your imagination, and to make that more vivid, and containing more details.

3) Automatic drawing
Automatic drawing is when you look at the pencil on the paper and just watch what comes out without thinking about it or thinking about it less and less, or not looking at the paper at all.

A note on flexibility and the integration of these techniques
Seasoned artist’s will probably end up using all these techniques together in various ways within the same image. The flexibility an artist can develop to call on any of these skills in any sequence and whenever the image requires it is key.

Credit to Richard Bandler for pointing out these three distinctions in strategies of drawing.

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On Symbolism

Symbolism
From Wikipedia

Symbolism was a late nineteenth century art movement of French and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts.

Precursors and origins

Symbolism was largely a reaction against Naturalism and Realism, movements which attempted to capture reality in its particularity. These movements invited a reaction in favor of spirituality, the imagination, and dreams; the path to Symbolism begins with that reaction.

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Distinct from the Symbolist movement in literature, Symbolism in art represents an outgrowth of the more gothic and darker sides of Romanticism; but where Romanticism was impetuous and rebellious, Symbolist art was static and hieratic.

Movement

The Symbolist Manifesto

Symbolists believed that art should aim to capture more absolute truths which could only be accessed by indirect methods. Thus, they wrote in a highly metaphorical and suggestive manner, endowing particular images or objects with symbolic meaning. The Symbolist manifesto (�Le Symbolisme�, Le Figaro, 18 Sept 1886) was published in 1886 by Jean Mor�as. Mor�as announced that Symbolism was hostile to “plain meanings, declamations, false sentimentality and matter-of-fact description,” and that its goal instead was to “clothe the Ideal in a perceptible form” whose “goal was not in itself, but whose sole purpose was to express the Ideal”:

In this art, scenes from nature, human activities, and all other real world phenomena will not be described for their own sake; here, they are perceptible surfaces created to represent their esoteric affinities with the primordial Ideals.

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In painting, Symbolism was a continuation of some mystical tendencies in the Romantic tradition, which included such artists as Caspar David Friedrich, Fernand Khnopff and John Henry Fuseli and it was even more closely aligned with the self-consciously dark and private movement of Decadence.

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The Symbolist painters mined mythology and dream imagery for a visual language of the soul, seeking evocative paintings that brought to mind a static world of silence. The symbols used in Symbolism are not the familiar emblems of mainstream iconography but intensely personal, private, obscure and ambiguous references. More a philosophy than an actual style of art, the Symbolist painters influenced the contemporary Art Nouveau movement and Les Nabis. In their exploration of dreamlike subjects, symbolist painters are found across centuries and cultures, as they are still today; Bernard Delvaille has described Rene Magritte’s surrealism as “Symbolism plus Freud”.

I love Symbolist art the most out of any genre, and though I’m not sure about the aims of those artists to “clothe the ideal in perceptible forms” which is “only accessible through indirect means,” (that sounds almost dogmatic) I am interested in some of the more esoteric topics, but simply put, I love art that depicts fantasy worlds.

It comes down to that. That whether it’s a few of Dali’s paintings, or Magritte’s, or Jacek Yerka, I love dream worlds, fantasy worlds, the inexplicable, painted in a way that looks as if you could almost walk into that reality.

To really get into that sort of work I have to feel like there’s something below the surface; a girl with fairy-wings in a forest may look nice, but I have to wonder about it. When you really get curious about a picture and want to know more about that world, you’ve hit the “hook point.”

It’s analogous to the hook in a good song, or a bad commercial. You get the melody in your mind and your brain starts to play it over and over. I’ve heard that referred to as “brain-itch.” But that sounds like someone needs some ointment or at least a different description for that.

In a good picture it’s that part where the artist gives you just enough that you want more but not too much that everything is explained.

And then the artist gets the question; “…but what does it mean?” I haven’t found a good answer to that.

Recently I’ve been alternating between:

  • If I could say it, I wouldn’t have to make the picture.
  • What do you think it means?

Often artists make pictures because we don’t have the words.

If you can think of any other good answers to “what does it mean?” let me know.

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Andrew Loomis Illustration ebooks

Andrew Loomis was an American illustrator known for his drawing books.

“Figure Drawing for All It’s Worth” is a must for any artist that works with the human figure. I’m not sure what the copyright status is on these, but it’s out of print.

Figure Drawing for All It’s Worth
by Andrew Loomis
First Printing 1943

Drawing the Heads and Hands
by Andrew Loomis
First Printing 1956

Eye of the Painter and The Elements of Beauty
by Andrew Loomis
First Printing 1961

Fun With A Pencil
by Andrew Loomis
First Printing 1939

Andrew Loomis – Successful Drawing

Creative Illustration
by Andrew Loomis
First Printing 1947

Enjoy.

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