Last time I showed the making of one of a painting I made, it was terrible. I had to redo the damn thing like three times. Here, I present you all two other digital works that I made quite a while ago now, of outdoor scenes in summer and fall respectively:
And here's a little GIF file showing the step-by-step (unfortunately though I forgot a few times to save and take a snapshot, so it begins when I already laid down a bunch of stuff):
This one took a lot longer, and if you look closely comparing the two, at least I already had bought myself a Wacom tablet when I began painting this one. However, it still took much longer since the amount of detail was much much larger.
Recently I posted an entry on an upcoming Chilean artist Nicolás Radic who is awesome because his hyperrealistic paintings are at the same time, abstractions of the things portrayed in real life. This time, I found Alexa Meade, who challenges the definition of what a canvass is. I'd say her approach is maybe the inverse to Nicolás'; she paints on her subjects and turns the real thing into wonderful paintings:
Mediation 2
alexameade.com 24x15 Chromira Print. Limited Edition of 7. For pricing information, please contact lauren@irvinecontemporary.com
Amazing, eh? From afar you could actually believe it's an oil-on-canvass, only the hair seems to give away the true reality of the piece of art.
Blake
24x18" Chromira print. Limited Edition of 7. For pricing information, please contact lauren@irvinecontemporary.com.
Seems like tons of fun, and probably a lot easier than it really is. Now, I wonder how would it feel to be there in person and walk around the 'painting' (as a photograph we no longer perceive depth, hence our illusion of it being flat), and if it would be equally convincing.
Probably not but that's maybe not the point. If only, then we'd be able to one day achieve amazing effects... remember that Robin Williams movie 'What dreams may come'? Alexa Meade's official Page
Artist Nicolás Radic (who I met on one occasion, pleasant dude) broke my brain with several of his crazy hyperrealist paintings. Particularly that series of paintings I saw printed in a booklet my dad gave me called ''La Trampa De Luz'' (The Light Trap). I'm still impressed at the level of observation and precision required to replicate on oil and canvass the things he does, for example, the reflections a crumpled sheet of tinfoil creates. And that's why they're like abstract art but coming from realistic styles of painting, because what is reflected on his subjects is far removed from what it originally was. Wowee.
Óleo Sobre Tela
Then again, thinking about the process that went into making each of his works is really interesting. It seems that in this one, funnily enough, he's painting another painter, and his painting! And the reflections on a camera and every little detail. Really interesting, art within art:
''Space art?'', you say. ''Yes, of course! Art about planets n' stars n' black holes and loads of crazy stuff we don't actually know much about!'' I answer, my eyes as bright as fictitious constellations. ''Pfft, you don't need talent to draw stars, just paint white dots on a canvas and you'll get there!'' I suddenly darken up, and in a distant and redshifting manner I utter: ''It takes a lot more than that, even for simple stuff like star fields, mofo.''
Although I gotta say that realistic planets are even harder to create, but it's not that hard. This really nice tutorial by the awesome Greg Martin(what a kickass website he has!) leads us into the basics of making realistic and beautiful star fields in Photoshop. Although it's true to some extent that it's all about ''painting stars at random'', this guy shows an excellent way of creating stars without painting them individually, and without the use of crappy starfield generators. Intuition at the helm!
So, did it work? I haven't had time to fully flesh out something, but my first attempt was okay. This is it: ...Yeah, it's alright. Not posting this in DeviantArt.
However, I want to understand eventually how these beauties are made:
Radiate by ~skinsvideos21 on deviantART I've been trying around different painting programs and so far my two favourite are Paint Tool SAI and Corel Painter X. Paint Tool is simple yet versatile and fast, while Painter X is quite realistic and if used properly can be quite powerful. Here's a progress animation on how I painted this thing: (you'll notice I started three times, I tried in Corel twice and gave up, then went to SAI and I felt it was better to start there. However, I changed my approach and started with a black and white thing first.)
Beware: it begins okay and gets ugly from there. Making art can sometimes be like making sausages, it's ugly, specially when you are just learning how to.
