Let out the ARTIST in you!!!!

[sprinks]

thanks Niamh!

[stlukesguild]

Since the social group for artists has seemingly died "not with a bang, but a whimper" (no postings since April) I thought I might get a few more looks here. I recently completed the latest in my series of "nude icons". The painting is mixed media (acrylic, oil, pastel, gold leaf on paper) and measures 43 x 80". The tentative title is Speak No Evil... although my wife also suggested Lilith. My work, at present, is very much inspired by my love of art history... and in this body of work it is Japanese, Byzantine, Indian, early Renaissance, and Persian painting, sculpture, mosaics, etc... art styles that favored flat patterns and design and were unabashedly "decorative"... that are of the greatest influence. I'm also enamored of the simplified figurative work of such Modern/Contemporary artists as Balthus, Matisse, Bonnard, and George Tooker. The forms of the figure and the surrounding architectural space are intentionally simplified in order to stress the flat, decorative, 2-dimensional design. The space itself follows ideas of earlier Renaissance and medieval... as well as Japanese... concepts of perspective. The surface is quite textured... "weathered" or "distressed" through layers of paint and pastel as well as through sanding. I posted a number of detail shots to give some idea of this surface. I also included a studio installation shot with a couple other paintings and my studio mates in order to give some idea of the scale of the work.
Thanks for looking.

[weltanschauung]

very nice, pastels always strike my curiosity because it is practically IMPOSSIBLE to work with them properly, but you did it.

this is a logo i did a while ago:


its nothing extraordinary but its one of the favorites ive done so far.

[stlukesguild]

Personally, I never found pastels all that difficult. Of course I spent years drawing with charcoal and you learn how to hold it and manipulate it so that you don't drag you hand over what you've just drawn and make a huge smeary mess.

What is the graphic design for?

[weltanschauung]

all the experiences ive had with pastel were quite embarrassing.. i have a hard time with coloring and pastels are like the rocket science of drawing.

i did it for an ex-friend of mine's site, he used it as a banner for a while because he thought it was cool... but i just did it because i wanted to please him




i generally stick to the easy stuff cause im not by any means talented in this field..

[stlukesguild]

all the experiences ive had with pastel were quite embarrassing.. i have a hard time with coloring and pastels are like the rocket science of drawing.

I never found pastel to be all that difficult... although you are not the only one to speak of it as more than challenging. I find that it offers a great merger of drawing and painting which is undoubtedly why Degas loved it so much... not to mention myself. I do agree, however, that color is hard. In drawing one must deal with line and shape and form and value and contrast etc... When you add color the difficulty increases exponentially. There are warm and cool reds. There is the question of chroma or intensity. There is the challenge of getting colors to harmonize as well as to sit where you wish them to sit in spatial terms and not appear to jump froward or recede more than they should. Then there is the surprise that happens when one color is placed next to another... or under another. Such effects can be guessed at with experience... but their are still surprises when something that "should" have looked good looks like crap when placed along side the other colors. My art school training stressed color a great deal. The head of the painting department was a master colorist and he and many others had studied under Josef Albers, the great German color theorist from the Bauhaus.

[weltanschauung]

well, im an engineer and never had any training in arts, so it makes it even harder for me to play with it. it also adds injury the fact that im somewhat lazy to draw. ive read some color theory books like goethe's but theory is so very far from practice...

[blazeofglory]

The artist in us needs to be manifested into words or painted into something

[stlukesguild]

I don't have an artist in me that needs to be let out. I am an artist. How good or bad is something we always leave up to the opinions of others.

[weltanschauung]

The artist in us needs to be manifested into words or painted into something

i manifest it through living. writing is not my thing, too obvious.
thinking is a form of art, physics is artistic.

[weltanschauung]

bleh.

[Gilliatt Gurgle]

Stumbled onto this thread and couldn’t resist the temptation. While studying architecture I developed a fondness for watercolor and graphite technique for rendering. I have included a few examples of pieces I had completed “back in the day”.

This is my first attempt at attaching images using the attachment manager, so I hopefully this works.

The first picture is a watercolor and graphite piece showing elements of Andrea Palladio’s Villa Capra (la Rotunda) in Italy. The composition juxtaposes various elements of the building such as floor plan, elevation and details loosely based on the Ecole des Beaux Arts tradition. Size is approximately 6” x 6” square.

“Cubist Clutter” A random watercolor and graphite sketch. The original was given away as a birthday card.

An architect’s version of a Christmas card (holiday card for those so inclined). Kind of odd I know. It served as the office holiday card for mass mailing to clients, etc.

One of a series of “Sketches on the Fly” while travelling in Europe back in the late 1980’s. This particular drawing shows St. Nicolas Church in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. The Church was built in the 13th century.

Gilliatt

[Niamh]

Think this was my second attempt at oils... painted on cardboard. only medium i had at the time. Its actually a lot darker than this.. just the sun shining on it.

[Gilliatt Gurgle]

Niamh,
Nice work.
Could you or anyone explain how to post images directly in the reply window as you and many others have done?
I figured out how to attach as a link.

Thanks for th help.
Gilliatt

[Niamh]

Most of us use image hosting sites like photopucket. If you set up an account with them you can up load your photos to them directly. them all you have to do is copy the [IMG] tags from your page and paste them here and the image appears.