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I went to the De Young museum today with my mom having no idea what was actually in it and ended up spending a good hour in a room with a couple of Sargents. I don't know if this nerdery will interest anyone but me, but you guys seemed pretty excited about that Adam Hughes observation I made so here's another of my rambling thought processes!
One of the paintings was this one- www.artrenewal.org/artwork/187… which I never really took the time to examine before. I admired the colors and general mood but, as always, seeing a painting in person is quite a different experience. His bright, not-quite-white highlights are slapped on chunkily and they come out quite far from the canvas. And they "pop" in a way no highlight has any right to- they're super juicy and effective.
When I got up really close, (this is a totally unjustified flight of fancy here guys) it looked as though he had waited for the highlights to entirely dry, and then had used a translucent layer of some sepia color, probably with lindseed oil or similar medium, and literally wiped it over the highlighted areas. Where they were raised, they were not effected, but it gave a negative halo around the edges of the highlights.
So, without any actual science to back this up, Sargent's (wildly fantasized) technique, is based off a natural phenomenon of vision. Where there is an edge of a bright object against dark, our eyes/brain heighten the contrast right at the border. So right where they meet, the bright looks brighter and the dark looks darker. This sounds totally nuts but I swear it's true, look at a white piece of paper on a dark cloth and you'll see what I mean. Knowing this to be the case, Sargent sharpened those highlights using a super simple, super self-conscious (in the best way) post-production technique. Basically, Photoshop.
Now, I don't have any immediate plans to get back into oil paintings, but I gotta say, regardless of your medium, that is pretty darn cool.
<edit> Here's something cool! The knowledgeable alexandergras points out that this phenomenon is called "Lateral Inhibition" and you can read up on it here! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lateral_… </edit>
One of the paintings was this one- www.artrenewal.org/artwork/187… which I never really took the time to examine before. I admired the colors and general mood but, as always, seeing a painting in person is quite a different experience. His bright, not-quite-white highlights are slapped on chunkily and they come out quite far from the canvas. And they "pop" in a way no highlight has any right to- they're super juicy and effective.
When I got up really close, (this is a totally unjustified flight of fancy here guys) it looked as though he had waited for the highlights to entirely dry, and then had used a translucent layer of some sepia color, probably with lindseed oil or similar medium, and literally wiped it over the highlighted areas. Where they were raised, they were not effected, but it gave a negative halo around the edges of the highlights.
So, without any actual science to back this up, Sargent's (wildly fantasized) technique, is based off a natural phenomenon of vision. Where there is an edge of a bright object against dark, our eyes/brain heighten the contrast right at the border. So right where they meet, the bright looks brighter and the dark looks darker. This sounds totally nuts but I swear it's true, look at a white piece of paper on a dark cloth and you'll see what I mean. Knowing this to be the case, Sargent sharpened those highlights using a super simple, super self-conscious (in the best way) post-production technique. Basically, Photoshop.
Now, I don't have any immediate plans to get back into oil paintings, but I gotta say, regardless of your medium, that is pretty darn cool.
<edit> Here's something cool! The knowledgeable alexandergras points out that this phenomenon is called "Lateral Inhibition" and you can read up on it here! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lateral_… </edit>
Teaching in Boston
Hey All! As some of you know, I've been tutoring via skype for some time, but this winter I'm expanding into the REAL LIVE WORLD of teaching classes! For the month of December, I'll be doing a trial and seeing if this is a tenable arrangement, so I get to teach WHATEVER THE HECK I FEEL LIKE.
So I wanted to A) let those among you who are Bostonians know this was going on, and B) ask you for feedback. What classes would you be most interested in taking? Have you taught/attended independent arts classes before and you have suggestions or anything? What days/times would you be most likely to go to? All RIGHT!
P.S. this IS connected to the
DA's Commissions Shop
So this is a thing! http://www.deviantart.com/commissions/
So. Your friendly neighborhood Auntie Toerning is going to step in for a second here. Firstly, I think it's very groovy and awesome that DA is establishing their own marketplace. It's a scary world out there of work for hire and it's totally awesome that DA artists now have this stepping stool to practice professional habits in the same way that we practice artistic skills!
A
BIG
FAT
HOWEVER
I would like to take a moment to discuss the rates here. I was just exploring quickly, and saw on the navigation on the left "price," and, like every other human on the planet, clicked
Comic Composition Geekout
SPECIAL GUEST STAR (against his knowledge) IS ~Andrew-Ross-MacLean (https://www.deviantart.com/andrew-ross-maclean)
You guys know when I get really excited about art geekery, I JUST CAN'T KEEP IT IN. I also feel like composition is a really hard thing to learn, and all you can really do is try to learn "what is good" in composition, and then try to find examples until you can recognize it. In addition, composition for comics is extra hard because you have to worry about the overall flow of the page as well as the composition of each individual panel.
So I was doing my spring cleaning of my message center and came on some new comic pages he uploaded, all of which are awesome, but ta
Shared Studio Spaces
This is something I've been thinking a lot about. The fact of the matter is, as much as it's awesome, I don't work my best from home. I want to be able to "go to work" in the morning, see people, do my thing, and then come home. There are too many complications and distractions working from home, and too few opportunities to participate in the world as a human being. And I know of co-working spaces, to be sure there are loads of options in San Francisco, but having visited a bunch of them, there aren't any just right. I've always had a fantasy of starting a shared studio space, a small one, not a big vaulty warehouse style thing, maybe a
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So now I think I need to go revisit the Sargent that's in Kansas City, where I'm at, and look for some of those moments. While we're speculating about this natural media phenomenon, could it be possible that he applied a varnish to the painting after he was done and that over time it's yellowed more where it collected? I know that happens to a lot of paintings from antiquity, because that's just what varnish does.
Also, you should definitely go to the Legion of Honor, I've been there a couple of times and they have a really wonderful Bouguereau there, amongst others. The DeYoung is just a crazy building though.
Anyways, yes. I appreciated this post.
Also, you should definitely go to the Legion of Honor, I've been there a couple of times and they have a really wonderful Bouguereau there, amongst others. The DeYoung is just a crazy building though.
Anyways, yes. I appreciated this post.