Blitherings – Page 136 – Ink, Yarn & Beer

New Year, New Focus

I’ve done watercolor off and on since I was a teenager, back before the dinosaurs disappeared, but I have never made it a resolution to spend time – a lot of time – mastering it. Rather, the approach I have had has been sporadic and amateurish. Now, I want to be the “serious student” I never was . . . and while I think I am off to a good start, the real question which lies ahead is how well will I integrate painting into my work life? I’ve managed to integrate both sumi-e and photography into my life, but I began both of those long before I ended up working 10-hour days.

There are a lot of good books about “how to” watercolor, and I have looked through and purchased a number of them. As well, there are a number of good YouTube channels with talented artists, with whom you get to cruise along with as they produce a painting. For me, this visual is what gets me all the time. While books show you step-by-step photos, some in color, some in black and white, there is absolutely nothing like the video of beginning-to-end, with commentary as the painting develops.

I still plan on pursuing photography – in fact, I have a 365 project planned, with different subjects on a monthly basis. While I am shifting my focus away from photography as my primary creative outlet, I really want to master watercolor and drawing, and to do so, I need to spend more time doing it rather than thinking about doing it.

So, Happy New Year to everyone! I hope you have new intentions to keep you happy and creative in your life!

Perspective in Retrospect

I have no head for heights, and just watching this video has made me jump a number of times! Despite that, I have always loved this picture because of the simple fact I could never even think of something as working up so high. There is something so awesome about these men . . . and the photographers as well.

Home Improvement

Home improvement . . . for me, a clean and tidy home is wonderful. I like to see clear surfaces, free of dust. Floors free of dog fur are also nice. I don’t like lots of clutter. My small shelf of framed photos makes me nuts – much as I love those people – I hate dusting them. Nature abhors a vacuum, and I abhor a vacuum cleaner. Housework is great, when it’s finished. Not when doing it, but when it is done. I really hate cleaning, but I hate a cluttered mind more. And a messy house means a messy mind.

Okay, that said, I would say that 80% of the studio has been cleaned up. Lots and lots has been thrown away. My paints are accessible, as are my books. Paper has been reorganized, from watercolor tablets to sketch books to lined and grid paper tablets. Brushes are sorted out and been acquainted with again. Like meeting an old friend, one you really, really like, and one you appreciate, too. I spent about 8 hours doing it all, and finally ran out of space in the trash bins. (Luckily our neighbors let us use theirs when we need to!)

This afternoon, I shall do some reading and some color studies or sketching. I just hope that I will be able to continue this once I return to work as that will be the real challenge.

Looking Ahead to 2017

As I write, I am sitting down to lunch, looking at the total destruction and reconstruction of my studio. Unlike those more fortunate, my studio is really a bedroom in the house that doesn’t even have a closet. As a result, all storage is on shelves with plastic bins, all in the hope of keeping the dust to a minimum. In addition to having shelves of cameras and lenses and other photography equipment in the studio, I also have my sewing supplies, a desk, a drafting table, two filing cabinets, two chairs, a computer, a printer, a scanner, and a couple of monitors. The destruction of the studio is the cleaning out and throwing out of things, as well as reorganizing it to accommodate painting more readily. Things are being moved around to make access to certain items more comfortable.

When I think about my focus on photography over the past several years, I am so glad I feel that I have mastered it to a degree that makes it comfortable, and gives a certain level of satisfaction. Both digital and analog are areas where I feel a level of proficiency – I can take good pictures. I know my cameras, I know my film, and can determine an exposure for a manual technique by looking at the light. This is something that once learned is never lost – the knowledge may get a bit rusty without doing it, but it always comes back once being used again.

Photography, though, is not my first love in the visual arts. Painting is always where I want to come home to roost. The feel of a brush or pencil, the colors of paint or gradations of ink, the physical experience of painting and drawing: all these combine for an experience that photography has never had. I am not interested in painting realistic images – that’s what photography is for – but in the emotional expression or abstraction of whatever that painting provides. Besides painting, I love woodblock printing, and sumi-e. There is a sensual quality to working in these areas that, if I had a darkroom, I might find as satisfying.

With this focus on painting – mostly in watercolor, possibly in acrylic – I will need to revisit the skills I’ve lost over the past several years. Because I tend to be rather fixated on painting in certain ways, I also hope that my sense of exploration and adventure will get piqued. It’s easy to become formulaic in art, I think, but that doesn’t necessarily indicate a lack of focus. Rather, being formulaic means a level of success in given techniques, but it may not open the door to that magical realm of creativity that leads to new insights and processes. This is where I want to go. I want to study botanical illustration because I am too splashy and undisciplined, but I also want to explore different ways of using colors, papers, paints, and pencils. The process, ultimately, is the most important experience to me. Whether or not I become an artistic celebrity is immaterial; it is the doing and being the art itself.

Some thoughts on “On1 Photo Raw”

Today is the very, very first day that On1 Photo Raw is available for usage. I think the original idea was to have a product ready to roll in October 2016, but rather than have a “finished” product full of bugs, they realized they had more on their plate, and held off until today, November 23. I’m glad they did – and I am glad, too, that they realize that this really is a “work in progress” as it stands.

Personally, I love On1, and have been using them since version 8, which was a while back. I use it with Lightroom. What makes On1 great as a company is their support, ongoing consistent development, tutorials, and so on. On1 products are sophisticated, and while they do not rival Adobe Photoshop for complexity, On1 products are far easier to use. I prefer their brushes, spot and blemish removal tools, as well as the fact I can create presets which I can store. At this point, the presets from On1 Photo Suite 10 cannot be used in On1 Photo Raw, but I expect they will have the ability to port them later on. The one-up that Photoshop has is its “content-aware” fill.

The image above, Waiting for Lovers, was edited using On1 Photo Raw. It is a film image using Kodak Ektar 100 in a 1930s Welta Weltur rangefinder. The lens is an uncoated Xenar – probably about 75mm – which has an ethereal quality to it that I really love. Scanning the image with my rather dirty Epson V600 (I have since cleaned it), I ended up with a blue streak across the entire image. On1 took it out quite nicely. Spots and threads were also easy to remove. I think On1 did something to their processing algorithm (or whatever), as the spot removal works very quickly.

This image is a pano stitched together in LR, and consists of two images taken with the Olympus XA4 and Lomography 100 film. The only thing I did was perk it up a bit with some detail, in LR and in Photo Raw. It is nearly identical to the SOOC image.

Finally, the above image was really pushed in On1 Photo Raw. Spot removal, brush usage, presets, whatever. This was an overall high-key, pale image, but I set it up to be contrasty and bright – possibly too much so – but wanted see what I could do. This was also taken with the XA4 and Lomo 100 film. Both of these two images were scanned using a Pakon 135 scanner.

There is so much software out there for photographers, that competitors to Photoshop seem to come and go. My favorite and most consistent programs are Lightroom and On1. I also use DxO v. 11, and while it is good for some things, it lacks the diversity of On1. Capture One is good, too, but it makes me crazy as it does not make sense to me at times . . . but I admit, I have not put in time to using it as it has a higher learning curve, and is not, for me, very intuitive. So, two thumbs up to On1 for its Photo Raw software – I think it will prove to be a real winner as they continue to develop it.