DweezelJazz Art Blog » Jura

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

DweezelJazz — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 18:49:01 +0000

Here we are at the end of another year. This year has gone very quickly!

It has been a year filled with many challenges and also beautiful things.

As nature sheds its leaves, resting and in preparation for a new beginning next year,

I hope that this coming year will be even better, and that we can each, in our own way, make the world a better place.

Thanking all of you who take the time to read this blog and wishing you a very good holiday season and new year.

Snowy Peaks Jura Mountains, France

best wishes,
Nat Wildish, aka DweezelJazz

Working With Photographs As Reference For Paintings

DweezelJazz — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 13:49:17 +0000

There are many stages involved in creating a painting of a scene. I’m an indoors type of painter so I like to use the convenience of a camera to record the details of a subject for future reference. Using photographs for reference is really great, if a few things are kept in mind and a couple of pitfalls avoided. The main elements that I have found to be of vital importance are:

composition
color
perspective
free nature of the art

Attention to Composition

The first thing to do is to capture the subject or place that you’re interested in with the camera. This can be a bit tricky. The number of photos I’ve taken only to find, when I get home, that they just don’t have what I’m looking for to inspire me to a painting. I’ve written a few posts about what I look for and strive for when taking photographs.

Cropping a photograph can make a tremendous difference to the feel of the subject. Understanding composition and using it to show off your subject in the most flattering way can change a prospective painting from dull and commonplace to really eye-catching.

I really liked this photo of trees in a park in England.

"Stourhead Majestic Trees" Reference Photo

Cropping it to an oval brings focus and a kind of movement to the trunks as the eye is drawn into the painting.

You can see more about the park that inspired this painting in a previous post: Egg Tempera Painting of “Stourhead Majestic Trees”.

It’s also fun to put together a composition from a variety of reference photos, as was done with the “Knight and Monument” watercolor painting shown below.

The monument is a war memorial from a photo I took in London from a double-deck bus; the trees are from the French Jura mountains; the greenery in the foreground was taken from a flowerbed in Geneva; and the Knight and his horse are taken from a variety of shots of people on horses from a movie – the man on the horse is different from the one on that horse in the movie. Creating this painting was a lot of fun.

Another facet of composition to be aware of is to exclude any details that are present in the photo that aren’t essential to the meaning of the piece, or may even be distracting from it. In this reference shot of a road in the town of Gex, France, the removal of the trash cans and cars, along with all the markings in the road, helped to focus on the real essence of the scene.

Reference Photo for View of Gex Town Hall from houses and church

Below you can see the watercolor painting, “Gex Church View”, that resulted from using this photo as a reference. The lamp that you can see at the top of the photo wasn’t included because it distracts from the main focus of the scene and draws the eye up, when it’s important for the art to draw the eye into the painting.

The painting is for the Gex Book. The back of the Gex Church is to the left, and there are houses to the right. Looking down the street you can see the dark grey turret of the Town Hall; it has the same distinctive clocks on all four sides. Beyond is the Geneva valley. In the distance, Le Saleve is visible to the right.

The Importance of Color

Color is one of the things that is probably the most influential of all factors in a painting. At least, I’ve discovered that this is true in my perception of artwork. If the colors are appealing to me, I am often immediately drawn to a painting, and then I look closely at the subject of it.

Even though I’m strongly driven by color, it has taken me quite some time to begin understanding how to use color to the most benefit. A short, but very clear article, that I’ve found very helpful is at Indezine.com: “What Is Color Theory”. I have also found the image of the color wheel shown on the book called “The Color Star” by Johannes Itten to be useful.

I haven’t read Itten’s book however, since one of the customer comments on Amazon.com mentioned that his books are extremely good, but that they are rather heavy in theory and somewhat complicated. Perceptions of complication are somewhat subjective, and whether it’s the case or not for this book I don’t know, but I decided to wait and see if I could achieve what I wanted with paintings before committing myself to further study!

The thing about cameras and computer screens, and printers for that matter, is that most of them all portray the same colors a bit differently. Some cameras are set to give a very bright, colorful rich image, while others tone down a lot of colors and almost give a blue tint to everything. My larger camera does the latter.

So it’s important to remember the colors and lighting of a place or subject that you saw as best as you can. Some artists do quick sketches and watercolors on site so that they can better remember the essence of the light and atmosphere of the place. Then they combine this with the use of photographs to provide more details. James Gurney has good articles on this and many other subjects at his blog Gurney Journey; one in particular on this subject is Using Photo Reference.

The reference photo shown below is somewhat limited in its color appeal. And there’s a tourist in the way! (No, I didn’t take this photo, but I was there.)

Reference Photo for View of Le Saleve and French Alps from Gex

I decided to portray what I know of the atmosphere and feel of the place in the following way with the painting, “Gex View Across The Valley”:

This painting too is one I’ve just completed for the Gex Book. There are spectacular views from the town of Gex, which is located in the foothills of the French Jura Mountains. In this painting you can see to the south of Gex, across the valley towards the city of Geneva in Switzerland. Le Saleve is the first set of hills on the other side of the valley. Le Saleve is in France and not Switzerland, the Swiss border ends pretty much at the foot of Le Saleve. The mountains beyond it belong to the Mont Blanc Massif.

Draft page layout Gex Book

Here you can see how it looks in the page layout for the book. In a previous post I mentioned that the other sketch that wasn’t yet completed on this page (which happens to be this painting, and is now completed) would be of a view down the valley towards Bellegarde – well, turns out it wasn’t – this one also faces towards Le Saleve! But there is a view looking down towards Bellegarde in at least one painting still to be done for the book, and it will be painted and shown here on DweezelJazz Art blog eventually.

Look out for Proper Perspective

Many camera lenses distort. Even with anti-distortion on, the distortion of lines, especially towards the edges of the image, can still be very pronounced. I was so surprised when I started looking more closely at just how much distortion can go unnoticed by the casual glance at a photo. It’s almost as if the eye makes up for it. But in a painting, I think it’s a different story. If the perspective is odd, then it most likely will get noticed, especially if it’s unintentional!

Making the Art Unencumbered and Expressive

It’s super easy to get lost in all the detail that a photograph provides. It can become an all-consuming goal to try to portray the scene or subject in all it’s complexity, with the utmost accuracy. Unless this is done with extreme care, this can quickly kill the feeling, life, and atmosphere of a piece. It’s very good to consciously decide in advance how much detail is wanted, and how it will advance the aim of what the painting will convey. Always staying aware of atmosphere, feeling, and even the emotions of the piece will help to maintain the focus of the goal for each painting. It will also help to consider these things when choosing the predominant colors for a painting.

More important than detail or accuracy is the conveyance of meaning, atmosphere, life, and what the artist finds uniquely interesting in a scene or object, rather than to present all its details in accurate duplication. Individual expression and viewpoint is what makes creating and observing art so endlessly fascinating.

Snow and Deer in the Jura, France

DweezelJazz — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 22:28:28 +0000

A couple of evenings ago I noticed a few deer running down from the hills. This is a real event here because the deer are totally wild and wary of any human encounters – they are hunted here during the hunting season, unlike those around Shannon’s town. You can see lots about deer in Shannon’s blog “Chipper’s Alley“. I grabbed the camera and ran to the upstairs window.

Three deer crossing a field

There were three deer. Two of them were circling one another and playing in the snow, dashing here and there. The third hung back.

Two of the deer play in the snow

After jumping and generally horsing, or maybe I should say deering, around the two playful deer stopped and looked at one another. They moved closer.

Two deer together

Then, it seemed it was time to move on again, and all three made their way into the next set of trees and out of sight.

Three deer heading into the trees

Yesterday afternoon the sun came out and we went for a quick walk up the hill.

Snow in the Jura Foothills

Footprints made by critter in the Jura Snow

We saw lots of tracks, some clearly made by dogs, other that seemed to be made by deer and then this set, which we see very often. We’re guessing they’re made by a fox (we have seen a fox a few times near our place). Do you know what kind of tracks they are? I didn’t think to add something for reference of scale, but they’re a fairly small size.

We were the first ones to take the path up the hill, and it was so satisfying to trundle through pristine untrodden snow.

Jura Snow

I was wearing ski pants, leaving me at total liberty to lie down and roll in it! I always wanted to lay in a cloud… this is the next best thing. We had five inches of snow this morning and afterwards the sun came out even more gloriously than yesterday. The snow is so powdery and light that when we tried to make a snowman it wouldn’t adhere and we ended up with a very crumbly stalactite (oops, I actually mean) stalagmite.

We’re having loads of fun in the snow and the views are beautiful!

Unexpected Development

DweezelJazz — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 22:16:05 +0000

One thing led to another and I’m finding myself in completely new creative territory. It started when I realized I wanted more life, more spark, in my paintings.

I decided I needed to do loads of sketches, learn about perspective in depth, and find a fluency with drawing rapidly, to capture those values that hide in the subconscious so I could successfully accentuate and emphasize what I find important in an image. I’ve learned that too much premeditation or too great an accuracy in portraying many details can dampen the spirit of a drawing, painting, or whatever form of creative expression it is.

I’ve been doing sketches with pencil on paper. A week or so ago, just before I created the sketches in the last blog post, “A Couple of Sketches In A New Vein“, I decided to try drawing in Adobe Photoshop. I drew a simple doodle cartoon, and it was such a pleasant experience I decided to try painting and sketching in Photoshop. The Jura mountains with snow on them, in the last post, was my first result. And I enjoyed doing it more than anything I’d done so far, and I have enjoyed my artwork before that too!

So I decided I’d do my sketching using Photoshop. What was most freeing about it was the fact that I wasn’t using valuable paper or paint (which can be quite costly and I hate using valuable earth resources when there is an alternative). This allowed me to start whatever I wanted, not caring what would happen if it failed or wasn’t useful as a result. This was extremely liberating. It seemed a great way to experiment and learn the fluency in drawing and styles of painting that I’m looking for.

My second sketch in Photoshop was the portrait of Virginia Woolfe. It’s just like working with pencil and paper, except that the paper is replaced with a smooth Wacom tablet. I’m enjoying it so very much that I’m going to continue working in Photoshop to do my painting. I have tonnes to learn of course.

I’ve learned that tracing an image and then painting it in makes the resulting painting lifeless; painting really does require emphasis of elements that the artist finds interesting and charming. So, even though the computer does provide a perfect medium for producing quick art through tracing and manipulating, I prefer to continue to learn and develop the fundamentals of producing art the ‘traditional’ way, but to apply these in digital painting using the computer as my medium.

This is my third exploration in digital painting. For reference I used a photo that we took on a walk with Jasmine, our beautiful african grey parrot, one evening up in the mountains. If you’d like to see photos of that walk: see previous post, “An Evening Walk At La Col De La Faucille, Jura, France“.

Digital Painting of Jura Sunset, Col de la Faucille, France

Tony and I have called this painting “Jazzy Jura Sunset”. You can click on it to see it larger.

The real advantage to using Photoshop is that I can explore all sorts of ways of painting. I have asthma and so I experience difficulties breathing if I use many of the art mediums traditionally available. But I love brilliant colors and soft colors, and well, just colors. I chose egg tempera because it was brighter than watercolor and didn’t cause any breathing difficulties when I used it. All of those considerations vanish with digital painting because it’s so versatile.

I’m very much a beginner, but experimenting further with it this, here is the next one I painted.

Digital Painting of Horse Chestnut

The photo I used for reference was taken on one of our trips to the market on a Saturday (yes, of course, Jasmine was with us). This little jaunt is described in the post “Sugar Cube Cartoon“.

This is one area of experimentation I’m involved in right now and there are a number of other areas I’m branching out in at the same time. I’ll talk about those in other posts. My hope is to put them all together and make something of them. I have no idea if I’ll succeed in that, and it sure is scary even discussing it here, in case I don’t… but then, when life presents the possiblity of chasing a dream it’s a very precious opportunity… so here goes.

Hopefully everyone gets a chance at some point to follow their magic. I hope you do too. I’d love to hear about the things that bring the beauty of life to you.

A Couple of Sketches In A New Vein

DweezelJazz — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 22:11:37 +0000

‘Thank you’ are the words that keep coming from my mind and heart today: thank you to my dear friends who visit this blog and do me the honor of reading it, and thank you for your encouragement and love. You have made this a very special moment in my life.

I mentioned that I’ve been doing a lot of thinking and rethinking about how it’s possible to look at things and how to illustrate feeling. I looked at the artwork I’d done so far, and it just didn’t capture the movement, joy and magic that I find special in life. So… thanks mainly to a fantastic book, called “The Illusion of Life” by Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston, I have come to understand that the flow and movement in a piece of art can be effectively conveyed when the lines aren’t too precise and detail is not the prime objective.

In fact, detail can in some cases even remove the magic that we’re accustomed to putting in ourselves. Our eye-brain connection does a lot, that we may not be consciously aware of, which apparently gives us pleasure as we fill in details we don’t necessarily see with our eyes. If that opportunity is taken away by providing excessive detail in a painting it can eliminate some of the charm we experience and make the scene appear more static.

Anyway, I’m not explaining it very well, but my previous awareness of what I thought was important in art has been turned upside down by that great book (which my loving Mum-in-law gave me for Christmas!). I’ve never been so excited with a prezzie since I was a kid.

Digital Painting of Snow On Jura

Here are a couple of sketches I did in the last couple of days – totally different from anything I’ve ever done before and a whole great deal more fun too! The one above is a view of the Jura mountains. And below is a sketch based on a photo of Virgina Woolf I found in a biology book. I had heard of Virginia Woolf’s excellent writing (though I haven’t read any, having had a less than stellar introduction to early 20th century writers in high school), but I had no idea how pretty she was.

Sketch of Virginia Woolf

These are the latest in the beginning of a new adventure. I have some ideas what I might like to do with the art, but it seems best for now to take each day as it comes and see what evolves.

New Beginnings

DweezelJazz — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 22:51:00 +0000

Jura, France

Sometimes it seems necessary to absorb and process events, and these last months have been like that for me. Our new home is surrounded by amazing beauty and tranquility, with nature abounding everywhere in full view of our windows.

'Woofy Mountain'

This is the little mountain (the one in the foreground of the picture above), which we call ‘Mt. Woofy’, where Jazzy and I spent last summer together. Jazzy is our African Grey parrot; to see more about her see Jasmine’s Story. Our loss of Jazzy, in spite of all our efforts, in spite that I promised her I’d protect her – well, it shows just how little we truly are. We can’t promise anyone anything except our love and our very best effort, the rest is the whim of life. It’s a hard, bitter lesson to know that ultimately we’re constrained, either by our own shortcomings, our ignorance, or just simply by circumstances and sometimes silly, unnecessary things, that could in theory be changed so easily but are not.

Jura Foothills, France

No matter how hard we try, how perfect we might strive to become, there will always be the mystery and unknown of the future. This mystery can bring sorrow, but it can also bring surprise and depths of interest and intrigue we probably couldn’t invent.

Jura Mountains, France

Taking advantage of the excitement of the unknown, I’ve been exploring new ways to create art. I’ve been experimenting with new ideas and ways of looking at things, delving into what it is I really want in an image; turning my old values upside down and inside out to discover new ways to express and to draw and paint. It’s exciting, and daunting. I haven’t found my way with the art yet, there’s a lot to learn, but I’m moving closer.

Snow Caps

I love stories, movement and above all a sweetness, that includes beauty, nobility, respect, and the innocence of goodness. These are the things that Jazzy brought into our lives. I’m experimenting with writing stories and I want my art to include elements of stories. I don’t yet know how much. I think I also want them to include a character or personality of some kind to give expression to sheer joy, fun and mischief. In order to have more freedom of expression with my drawing and painting I need to learn a whole lot more, and that’s what I’m working on now.

Jura Peaks, France

I want to communicate through my art the magic and wonder of sharing being alive, with love, vibrant and frivolous with the expectation of fun and joy. That’s what was important to Jazzy (along with apple and banana!) and that’s why everyone who came near her loved being around her.

No matter how much I deliberate on it, I come back to the conclusion that what I think is important in life is living with wonder, joy, and fun, even in the face of fear and the unknown. This is my best conclusion, but I’m always interested in new ideas, new ways of looking at things. Do you have a different take on life and what’s important to you? I’d love to hear your views.