Anatomy and Art

I recently finished another painting.  I’m calling it “Remembrance.”

This one took a long time and was perhaps the messiest picture I’ve gotten myself into yet.  I did some new technique work with a sponge that turned out pretty well in the end.

I’m proud of this one.  And I believe she already has a buyer off in Oregon, so I’ll only be keeping this one for a short while.  That’s how some of them go.  I’m going to make sure that I have a good image to work with for prints before sending her off though.

Oh, this is so lovely!  Daniel Peter has created a great little visual representation of aperture, shutter speed, and ISO for photography beginners.  It’s represented simply enough that it can be printed on little business cards and kept handy for reference.

And he’s made it free for the download at Fotoblog Hamburg.

This is great.  It illustrates the narrowing and widening of depth of field as the aperture is widened and narrowed, along with the F stops associated with that widening and narrowing.  It illustrates the blurred motion that comes from a slow shutter speed, along with examples of those numbers as well.  And it also highlights the increased graininess from using higher ISO film, or digitally a higher ISO setting.

These are your big three settings within a camera.  Externally (assuming you’re using an SLR camera) you have what type of lens you use, and of course, what’s in front of that lens.  But these are the choices that you make about how your camera takes in light.  First you have to get enough light to make an image.  And in a low light setting, you can do that by opening the aperture to allow more light to come through while it is open.  You can also slow down your shutter speed to allow more light to come in by giving it more exposure time.  Or you can shoot with a higher ISO which means using a more light sensitive film or setting.  Back in the film days, the graininess that came with higher ISOs was due to there being larger bits of the light sensitive silver halide crystals to soak up more of the light for the exposure it was given.  I found this SEM image of them online, though there wasn’t a photographer listed to credit.  But traditional film contained these little guys, and the film that had big pieces of them soaked up more light, and also appeared to be more grainy.  But the film with smaller pieces, would require more light for a well exposed image, but would then appear more crisp.

I’m a little behind the curve of how the digital translation of those crystals works.  But the same principles apply today in digital photography.

I posted a while back about wanting to make some yoga art work.  Please allow me to introduce Ustrasana.

I had a favorite yoga teacher out here for a while who once cautioned me to never practice this pose under a full moon.  She said that it was such a powerful pose, a person could go mad under such heightened energy.  Perhaps it is it’s powerful nature that draws me to it.

As of now, I still have the canvas, and I made prints which I have begun to sell.  I believe it was September when I finished her.

It’s been a while since I’ve posted here.  I’ve had a real crash course lately in cancer care, hospital, and hospice care.  Maybe someday I’ll be ready to write about some of what I’ve learned, but I’m not quite there yet.

A couple of weeks ago, I had the pleasure of attending the 2015 Conference for the Association of Medical Illustrators in Cleveland Ohio.  These conferences are always jam packed with information and inspiration.  Lecture topics ranged from groundbreaking science and technology, to illustration and animation technique, to a history lesson in Leonardo DaVinci and all alongside a salon of submissions from students and professionals alike.  I cannot recommend these conferences enough to anyone invested in making a career in medical illustration, animation, or neighboring fields.

Apparently restaurant showings do pay off.  Good to know.  Having my art up at Bunbelly has brought new eyes to my work, and I’ve been contacted by someone who is interested in buying “Woman in the Water.”

I painted her back in 2007, in my little studio apartment back in Los Angeles.  She’s been with me for a long time now, and now she will move on without me.

Been thinking about trying my hand at a small series of little yoga paintings. I’ve been getting more into it lately, taking a hatha class in the neighborhood pretty regularly, and I find myself wanting to paint some of the poses. I’ve got some really cool photos from a friend to study, and this evening I bought a book called Yoga Anatomy to give me a little more insight into some of the inner workings. I picked up a handful of little tiny canvases tonight too. I’ve never done a series. At least I’ve never done one in order anyways. This seems like the kind of thing I’d want to do more than one of though. Maybe if it takes, I’ll move on to more substantial canvases.  In the meantime it may be an opportunity to put out some more affordable work.

I recently had the pleasure of working on an animation to teach students about DNA cloning.  This is one of those exciting ones where I feel like we really added to what’s out there on this topic.  So naturally I wanted to share it here as well.

My house is so scantily clad right now!  I’ve put up most of the paintings I still have in a brand new Vietnamese restaurant called Bun Belly.  It’s my first restaurant showing, and I’m curious to see if anything comes of it.  My walls will be mostly bare for the next three months.  And then I’ll pack my paintings back in again in August.

I finally wrapped this one up.  This one was definitely a challenge, and I’m happy to see it finally get there.  Some images more than others seem to lend themselves to a potentially endless amount of adjusting and layer over layer over layer.  This was one of those.  I’ll be putting the protective gloss on soon, and then it’s ready for either sale or finding a nice place to hang here for a while.