lame lemec's drawings!

[lemec]

i'm wondering how to judge this kind of work.

The only part of this painting that shows a bit of you(the artist), is in the strokes but i guess none of you is in the colors, because you sample them directly from the source image (i think?).

HAHAHA AWESOME! That's the best compliment about colour you can give, because I ain't sampling colours from the source image at all! It's all because of the pop-up colour palette/sampler tool (I used to call it the Relative Colour Picker, but I'm gonna call it the Dartboard from now on) that I added to PPalette recently. If there's any colour sampling going on, it's only from the paints I lay down. The Dartboard acts like a colour picker when I activate it, but it pops up a circular colour palette showing colours in the "neighbourhood" of the sampled colour. By glancing at the source image, and then looking at the Dartboard, I can see with a fair degree of accuracy what colour I need to choose. I also use it to make very subtle adjustments to the colours I lay down because again, the Dartboard can be used to show colours in the neighbourhood of the colours that need tweaking. I just sample the areas on my own painting with "incorrect" colours, call up the Dartboard, and then pick the right colour from whatever the Dartboard presents to me. It's kind of hard to describe since there are no other programs that I know of that have an equivalent to the Dartboard.

if i squint my eyes, theis paintings looks very much like the original put through a photoshop filter.

Again, that's a huge compliment. I'm trying as hard as I can to replicate what I see, but without tracing. I only have the source imagery side-by-side with my own image. No other tricks!

[Peter Wassink]

I only have the source imagery side-by-side with my own image. No other tricks!

Wow Marc, that's really impressive!

[Paul Fierlinger]

I only have the source imagery side-by-side with my own image. No other tricks!

Wow Marc, that's really impressive!

But why? What is the reason behind painting this way if it's so obvious that the result stems from a photograph sitting right next to your drawing? And how is it such a compliment to be told "aw, you just traced that", when you didn't just trace it, you just copied it?

[lemec]

But why? What is the reason behind painting this way if it's so obvious that the result stems from a photograph sitting right next to your drawing?

It's an exercise. It's not art. But then again, it's a huge challenge to be able to paint exactly what you see, especially in the case of a photograph, to be able to analyse the situation that the photograph presents and to recreate it takes a lot of raw, technical skill. I had to train myself to see the photograph as a series of brush strokes, to see the photograph as a finished painting, and to determine the steps that I would have to take to reproduce it within an hour.

Painting photorealistically takes two things - it takes imagination and planning to determine what the final image should look like, and it requires the technical facility with both brush and palette and the discipline to paint in an ordered fashion. First, I have to train the technical facility, which is made easier by not having to determine the final image's appearance. I have a definite goal to work towards. Then I am free to worry about how to get various colour transitions to work properly, to be able to select colours by eye, to figure out how to place everything in the right place, to train myself to paint the largest shapes, and then to cut into them.

And how is it such a compliment to be told "aw, you just traced that", when you didn't just trace it, you just copied it?

Well, it'd be worse if I got insulted, wouldn't it? And this isn't just some sort of mindless copying, because copies by amateurs suffer a lot of distortion of form, the colours aren't quite right, and it's doubtful that they can get it done in an hour. In addition, you have a definite yard-stick to measure against. The more powerful your skills of observation and the more control you have over your skills, the closer you can make the image look like the photograph. It's not something that was readily apparent to me until I actually tried it, and it's taken many, many attempts to get this far. So to be told that it looks just like the original photo under a Photoshop filter is telling me that I got pretty darn close. Now I just have to work on my understanding of facial structures, and develop a better way to break down the shapes of the face. I feel like I'm 98% there, but now we're in the realm of diminishing returns, so I think my next exercise from photo reference will be caricature. To get that likeness and exaggerate it.

[Paul Fierlinger]

Painting photorealistically takes two things - it takes imagination and planning to determine what the final image should look like

In my book imagination has a loftier goal.

[lemec]

I'd like to be able to draw exactly what I want, and whatever I want. To be able to draw something to exacting specifications. I admit that it's a common want for many an amateur, but not one that many people will see through to its completion. Most artists just convince themselves that they don't really need it or want it, but you can't have a skill that you don't REALLY want! Unlike hot chicks that are out of my league, seemingly unattainable skills ARE attainable with enough effort and craftiness. There isn't a single drawing skill that I would talk myself out of wanting. Somehow they always come in handy.

[Jesoped]

I follow you completely in the strive for always improving one's skills. I have gone back to studying the old masters (Michelangelo, Rubens, Pontormo etc.) and found new inspiration and techniques to develop my drawing abilities. Doing so simply by sitting and making a reproduction of one of their drawings really understanding their use of texture, light, line and so on, in my mind really pushes my abilities, not only in studying the techniques, but also in observing and being faithfull to what it is I am seeing.

A photograph or life drawing is also a wonderful and challenging approach to obtaining this (I wish though that seeking life drawing sessions was a little bit easier to find where I live) But then there's always the local park - everybody is wearing clothes ofcourse, but capturing movement and character, being it a bird (I guess they are nude-not counting the feathers) or a dog etc. is great fun. Had some joy in trying to capture a swan "cleaning" itself, man their necks is flexible!

I think your reproduction drawings, is of high quality. I agree with you on the facial features, they become different personalities. But the overall attempt is in my mind very skilled indeed - Especially since they are made the way you describe. I think I absolutely also could learn alot from such an exercise - good job, and thanks for the inspiration.

[ZigOtto]

these little white-red-black space-steamship navigators are astonishing !!!
keep your imagination wandering in the sky ...

[lemec]

They're moogles, a common critter found in the Final Fantasy RPG series.

I stake no claim on the invention of the moogle. I didn't invent boats. I didn't invent the steam engine. I didn't invent the propeller. I didn't invent the chain drive. I didn't invent the smokestack. I didn't invent the magnifying glass. I didn't even invent string. I didn't invent anything, come to think of it. I simply made the decision to put all these things together in the same picture in the arrangement that you see.

And I'm not really drawing any of these things either! I'm simply rendering forms in space. Forms that share the same dimensions and optical qualities as the subject matter. I "place a light source", and then let my cold, calculating, analytical and scientific understanding of light and form take care of the rest. The only thing I can take credit for is the good common sense to make a few choices, find what works and then get the heck out of the way! Imagination? Now that I think of it, I can't really say if I have one or not!

[ZigOtto]

haha...! forgive my artlessness, I'm a complete stranger to this Fantasy world,
never be (and probably never will be) a gamer, and I've never read anything
from this kind of litterature.
my fault was just not to type "moogle" in a web "search engine" lo learn more about it
(who's the original author btw ...? )
that said, it doesn't matter, Vermeer didn't invent milk and dairymaids,
Van Gogh didn't invent sunflowers, and Picasso didn't invent Minotaurs ...

... I didn't invent anything, come to think of it ...
... I simply made the decision to put all these things together in the same picture in the arrangement that you see.

but doing that, you are inventing this unequalled and funny arrangement, didn't you?
... going up to braving the common gravitation law !
if you're not an inventor, I would say a creator "under influence", but who is not ?

[Sierra Rose]

Well, it's not exactly on topic, but I learned more about foreshortening by rotoscoping video of myself turning and moving than all the books and exercises I did put together. Now I'm far more free from needing reference at all except maybe to remind myself in a mirror how that arm appears or that shoulder, etc. in certain movements. Something got burned into my understanding, for sure.

[lemec]

ZigOtto: Right! And today's orchestral composers rarely invent(or discover) new notes or new scales. They serve to arrange what already exists, and, the men and women of the orchestra play what's written down on the sheet, while following a few subtle cues from the conductor, who is really just a lo-fi audio level mixing engineer. Everything goes down to sound vibrations which are further transformed into neuroelectric signals and it all goes into this mass of meat circuitry we call a brain, and sometimes it can trigger a strong enough reaction to move people to tears and madness.

That's all I am, a composer who controls his instrument. I arrange stuff. If I had a stronger inclination towards animation, I'd arrange stuff over time. I'd become someone who used the rates of changes in position to communicate kinetic forces at work. If there's any "soul" or "spirit" in my work, it's completely interpreted by my audience. It's an automatic reflex reaction, one that I share with my audience. I seize upon any ideas which by their pure associative power alone may interest me, and from there on, I have to find a way to express it in the language that the audience understands. Renderings of solid forms, nothing more.

When instructors ask us to "break down an object into simple volumes", they're asking us to translate our ideas and concepts (which are utterly foreign to our audience and trapped within our heads because we are not telepathic) into the universal language of solid form that everyone understands. Simple volumes are our alphabet. Connected together into compound volumes, they form words, just as a hand may be constructed of a boxlike object for a palm, cylindrical forms chained together to make fingers. The relative placement and size and compositional arrangement of all of these forms into a coherent structure is our grammar. Lighting, rendering and handling of the brush are the tone of our voice.

Sierra: Drawing the same subject repeatedly from many angles can break through your initial idea of what looks "right". Symbols have a terrible grasp on our ability to visualize things because they demand that every hand has four fingers and a thumb, and that the pupil of an eye must be circular, etc. When you rotoscope or you give yourself the exercise of drawing a subject from multiple angles (with a slight incremental change between each interval) sooner or later your mind's eye will begin to accept that your subject doesn't have to always LOOK like its symbol in order for it to be PERCEIVED for what it is. You can get used to the idea that not all drawings of hands must have four visible fingers and a thumb. It's OK that they're not there in the drawing because you can perceive them even though you don't see them.

This is a very important goal of drawing -- to have our audience perceive the things we want them to perceive, and it doesn't necessarily mean that they have to see them. I suppose I do have an "imagination" after all, if my "imagination" were nothing more than the ability to "picture a subject in my head"; the ability to temporarily fool myself into perceiving something that isn't yet there, and to control my own false perceptions of the arrangement of forms, that universal alphabet. Imagination means having the ability to see things in the same universal language of arranged form that you want your audience to see them.

Anyways, back to the painting from photographs. It seems I'm hitting rather diminishing returns with each one -- Perhaps the problem has to do with the limit I place on myself. An hour. This time limit isn't reducing the number of mistakes. It's really just serving to pressure me, and in a somewhat bad way because I'm getting sloppy. Ok, forget time limits. Painting must be done in 100 strokes or less. This failure took 120 strokes.

[masterchief]

Mark,

Where to get your color picker????

regards,
William

[lemec]

I've decided to release PPalette. $10.00 for academic and personal use. $50.00 for commercial licenses.

No instruction manual as of yet. You can Paypal (and/or email) me at:

moc.ddtaom@ckram (reverse the email to get my actual email address. Just trying to confound the spam spiders.

[masterchief]

Mark,

payment sent!


regards,
William