Here we go: a Simplicity advertising video from 1948! It’s even older than me, which is saying something. Definitely it shows its time, but in some ways it is rather fine vintage. The acting is corny, but despite that, there are some really good little sewing tidbits on using a pattern and constructing a garment.
The sewing machine is, I think, a Featherweight 221 in a card table. The telephone is an oldy, too; I have one very similar to it, adapted for the plug-ins, now useless in the age of VOIP. I miss having it around! It always worked, especially when the electricity went out.
If you look, there is a wealth of knowledge here, as well as some pretty cool vintage things for us 72 years later. Funny to think they were very modern then! Anyway, the importance and value of hand stitching and basting, how to sew darts (top to bottom) using tailor tack markings, and if you look closely, using a thimble when sewing by hand, give you an idea of the value of such knowledge. It reminded me of some sewing tricks I’ve forgotten from good ole Home Ec.
I have never learned to use a thimble comfortably – most of us these days are probably in the same position. I do have a metal clamp-on thimble (not painful, just adjusts to your finger size) and a leather one. I prefer these thimbles to the traditionally-shaped ones.
Edward Wesson was a master English watercolorist. He is renown for the simplicity of his work – clear color masses, defined work. It is his economy of color and shape that are attractive to many painters as he says a lot with very little.
I, on the other hand, am prone to overdo and use rather bright colors. My perspective is often wonky. To counter this, I look for painters, such as Wesson or Seago or Hannema or Kautzky whose work I admire for its elegant use of colors or lines or both. Copying another artist is good intellectually, as it requires thinking about what the artist did, and how. Great practice! Today, I chose Wesson. Below is my interpretation.
My mountain in the distance is more detailed than Wesson’s. I chose to make the trees on the shore in the midground lighter than in his painting as I think he meant to do it, but had laid in the dark of the hill on the left already. My beach comes nowhere as beautiful as his – too much detail.
My husband remarked that this is definitely something he would define as NOT “my” style. I agree. I was looking to create something a bit spare, and to a degree I did, but I had to blot the sky (too dark) and re-wet the mountain. I like the middle ground green hills, and the reflections on the water. My beach sucks! All in an afternoon’s work.
I love color. Lots of color. The fact is, it is extremely difficult for me to buy things that, to me, do not have color. That means beige, white, and black. A Japanese kimono full of vibrant colors is far more interesting than the serenity of monochrome; Hawaiian shirts hold endless attraction. Prints intrigue me far more than a brilliant, single color.
Child's Kimono
Because color is so attractive, the absence of color in a painting – such as in sumi-e – and in photography – become endlessly fascinating in the variations of black-grey-white. Color reduction, meaning decolorization, can be done in various photo editing software programs. This pushes the photograph to near monochrome, but with an essence of color. The same may be done in an ink painting. Both become intriguing as the color draws the eye, but because of the lack of color elsewhere, it also becomes a messenger, speaking to the viewer on a symbolic level. Or, it can simply become an attractive element essential to a composition.
Electric Snowflakes
In sumi-e, there is a challenge in gradation and contrast. This is managed by both how the brush is loaded as well as forethought and knowledge as to how dark something will dry – or, more challenging – how light. Understanding the paper being used, the qualities of the ink stick, the subtleties of the brush become an art in themselves, all of which lead to the success or failure of the final painting.
Wheat in Sumi
In photography I am finding much the same challenge. In playing with software, such as Corel Paintshop Photo Pro X3 and Photoscape, I can take a colored photograph and either decolor it, separate it into multiple pre-press layers, or simply change it to a grey-scale image. Red flowers which look awful in color can become quite fascinating when rendered into black and white.
Red Rhododendrons - BW Rhododendrons
Composition also plays into photography, as much as it does in painting. Because one is physically doing a painting, I think that the elements of composition have time to unfold, and the unconscious works toward the final result long before the concept is visible to the artist. It is a slower process altogether.
The very nature of photography lends itself – especially with digital – to taking picture after picture after picture. Only now am I considering more carefully my compositions. Knowing I can crop and edit in software, as well as the fact I don’t have to pay for printing, lets me shoot all over, all and everything. This lets me play. Play is creative, fun, and educational. Happenstance leads to analysis in looking at photographs, which leads to thought about all the elements which come together, as they do in painting, to create the final image: light, subject, color, direction, contrast. As a result, I am developing the skills which permit me to think ahead a bit; these are the same skills, conscious or not, which I apply to a painting.
Fallen
I am finding that my preferences in photography echo those I have for paintings. Simplicity and contrast. Less is more. Whether or not I succeed is up for question.
Ink, Yarn & Beer 