Brush Fire Problems

It has been a difficult few days. A raging brush fire is just a couple of canyons from our house and studio. For two days we have been under an evacuation warning, sitting with most of our bags packed, ready to go at a moments notice. Others have been forced to evacuate already.

Eighteen years ago we were caught in another faster moving brush fire and had to evacuate with less than five minutes notice. At that time we lost the house and everything in it.

This time we have plenty of notice. But what do you take? I have probably two hundred paintings stored or hanging in the house and studio.

From the last fire we learnt that the most difficult things to replace are personal photographs. Images of the children growing up. Of our parents. Markers of our history. Almost everything else is replaceable. Today we live in a beautiful new and much more fireproof modern home - all paid for from the insurance money. We found that a large number of things we lost really we never did use, and we did not replace. And, those we needed were only things!

This time the first into my car were our personal photographs. Followed by our medications, a change of clothes, just a few simple things. We put the cars in the driveway, ready to go. We have lost power several times over the last few days, making opening the garage doors an issue.

Over the last twenty or so years our computers have become more and more important as a depository of our life's records. A few weeks ago I was solicited for an off site computer backup service (Mozy.com). I use an external hard drive to back up my computer, but with the prior fire in the back of my mind, I have always been nervous of having bothe the original and the backup in the house. The outside service is a division of one of the largest backup organizations in the business. The service cost me $200 for two years. I have about 125GB of data to back up. It took about three weeks to upload all the data the first time. Now changes and new data upload in about half an hour at night. With the new fire, that is peace of mind.

This morning, things look a lot better. Many people have been able to return to their homes. The fire crews are working wonders, helped by diminishing winds and higher humidity. We are not out of it yet, but are moving in the right direction.

Sketching On The Subway - interesting article

There was an interesting article in Friday's (July 4) Los Angles Times. It is about people who commute into Manhattan on the subway, and who sketch their fellow commuters across the aisle. Wish I was a bettter sketcher (I would tend to take digital photos and paint from the images). Also I tend to be too impatient.

A Few Days in Palm Springs

This time of year, Palm Springs, California, is very hot and usually dry. Each June my wife and I take a week off to dry out. Any one who has lived a few years in Santa Barbara soon knows that June is famous for its "June Gloom" - a time of daily cool overcast weather.

As I type the temperature is approaching 110 degrees (F) and surprisingly humid. The newspaper indicates that the Santa Barbara weather is in the high 60's, and overcast - the usual June Gloom.

Most of the time I spend the week catching up on my magazines, while my wife alternates between soaking in the pool, reading, and shopping in the few local shops still open this time of year.

One "must" visit for me is to the Palm Springs Art Museum, a couple of blocks from where we always stay. This year they have a great exhibit of sculptures by Henry Moore and similar works from the early 20th century. But the must see exhibit is "D. J. Hall: Thirty-Five Year Retrospective ."

I have to admit I was not familiar with this artist Debra Jane Hall (she always signs herself with her initials: D. J.) before visiting the exhibit. But one quick glance and I realised I was in love!

To quote from the curator, Katherine Hough "Her subjects are women of privilege - those with time to lounge by pools or lunch on patios. But the hyper-realism of the work gives it an edge, makes the viewer wonder what is amiss in paradise."

The exhibit features about 50 paintings, along with examples of photographs, drawings, studies and notes that Hall has used to prepare large paintings.

"One of things she captures," continues Hough, "she presents an illusion of reality. It's not really reality and she captures that magical moment when memory reminds us of happy time we had with friends in the sunshine. It's a memory or an illusion. It's happy and bright and cheerful but when you start really looking at the subjects, there are deeper meanings."

I love her work because it is almost photo realistic, but obviously composed - the players, all women, have these wide open toothy smiles and often big opaque sunglasses. The smiles and glasses keep the viewer from really observing what was going on. There is an appealing artificiality about the paintings that captured me as I examined each.

Also, there were examples of her notes and sketches used to compose particular paintings. Often they were detailed in the style of a story board - similar to planning out a movie. A really good draftsman/artist, her sketches are very detailed and accurate. The notes said that she hired models, who often became her friends, and often provided props from her own household. I noticed how the same models and props, such as pitchers, and other items, appear in several paintings.

Though working mostly in oil, also shown were smaller artworks in colored pencils, crayon, watercolor, gouache, and pastel. I learned a lot about how she planed her "shoots" and how she set up "stories" that play with the viewer's emotions and capture one's thoughts.

If you are in Palm Springs this summer, try to visit this inspiring exhibit. Then let me know what you think about the paintngs.

More on my earlier blog "An Alternative to Digitally Photographing Your Painting."

My recent blog "An Alternative to Digitally Photographing Your Painting" has been reproduced as an article in a recent "Empty Easel" blog (this blog is well worth following for any serious artist). In addition my blog has generated some comments with questions that may be of general interest.

Elandria of ELANDRIA Oil Paintings, and Heather Assaf, both asked similar questions:

"What scanner are you using?"

I have a Microtek ScanMaker i900. I purchased this scanner to scan 35 mm slides and 4x5 transparencies. It has the ability to scan at 4800 dpi.

For scanning my paintings only use 400 dpi, so a lower quality (and lower price scanner would be OK.

I use Vuscan software to control the actual scanning. There are plenty of other scanning software available, including software that came with the scanner.

I have used Vuscan for years and I find their latest version is very good and easy to use.



"Does this mean you put the painting on the glass-plate?"

Yes.

As a result I often get highlights that occasionally occur where the paint bumps touch the glass.

I usually clean up the resulting image (after the merge step) to get rid of the highlights, using Photoshop Elements. To do the cleanup I work at very high magnification – so that I almost see the individual pixels. For most of the cleanup I use the Photoshop Stamping tool. Very occasionally I have to use the blur tool as well.



"I understand that overlapping part and that you need more than 1 scan for bigger paintings."

Adobe suggests more than 25% overlap.



Hope that answers some of the outstanding issues, and that you all have great success.

This is a great new painting.

New photographic prints have just been picked up after processing. Two friends, young Latino women, are anxious to see how they turned out. They sit on a low wall near a park and on the way home.

After quickly opening the envelope they scan each print and compare their feelings. Maybe they are photos of the new baby, or a boy friend, or last weekend's party. All are important memories to be shared and relived.

This painting was based upon photographs I took while painting near the central square of the colonial town of Patzcuaro, Mexico.

I think there is a lot of feeling in this painting "Sharing Memories." It is a situation that many of us have experianced, either as a participant, or by watching someone we know. I am very happy with how it turned out.

An Alternative to Digitally Photographing Your Painting

As I have mentioned several times before, for years I have been photographing my paintings as they are completed. The goal is to have good documentation, particularly of sold paintings. Also, I need to have something to submit to shows, or maybe, reproduce as a print for sale.

At first I tried to photograph the paintings myself. Sometimes it went well. Other times the results were marginal. So soon I started to send them to a local photographer who specializes in photographing paintings.

Typically I asked him to produce half a dozen 35 mm slides from each painting. If I thought a specific painting was particularly good, in addition I would order a 3 x 5 inch transparency. The downside was a week or more delay in being able to show my newest paintings.

A few years ago, many shows began accepting digital images as well as slides. Even before then I needed digital images for submitting to online galleries, as well as for my own website.

At first, I started shooting the paintings myself with my digital camera, with the usual spotty results. But in most cases I was able to post process in my computer to improve the digital image. This was in addition to having the usual slides made.

Then my photographer began to offer shooting digital images with his 10 megapixel camera. My camera was only 5 megapixels. Plus I was still having my image quality troubles. Very soon I decided to give up having the 35 mm slides all together.

Over the years, I have accumulated a large library of 35 mm slides, and quite a few 3 x 5 transparancies. A year or so ago I invested in a quality scanner with high scan resolution to turn my slides and transparencies into great digital images. But scanning slides is a lot of work. So far I have scanned only a few slides of my older paintings.

With the recent rapid development and ready availability of inexpensive high qality online print making services, such as Imagekind.com, the need for me to have available very high resolution digital images of my paintings has increased. My photographer is able to scan my paintings with a very high resolution scanning camera, but only at a high price, as well as an extended waiting time while he doctors the scanning process and the finished image.

For paintings smaller than 8-1/2 x 14 inch I can scan them directly on my own scanner. I have done this successfully for several 8 x 10 portraits.

But there is a simple way to do the same thing for larger paintings.

For several years I have been using Adobe's Photoshop Elements computer program to adjust my digital images. This software has a Panorama feature which allows several digital images to be stitched together to creat a larger image. I have used this several times to join photographs taken with my digital camera. But until recently, the process was a little clumsy and the results were often not perfect.

The larger, much more expensive Adobe Photoshop program has the same feature, works in a different way, and produces much better results. Fortunately, recently Adobe upgraded Photoshop Elements to version 6 and includes what appears to be the same software for the Panorama process as in their more expensive Photoshop.

Having recently upgraded my Photoshop Elements, I have used this improved software to process on several of my larger paintings with great success. Here are two examples:

The first painting "Sharing Memories" 20 x 16 inches, required six scans. The second painting "Mariachi" 12 x 24 inches, required four scans. It is necessary to overlap each scan by at least 30 percent to get a good knit.

I set the scans at 400 dpi – quite enough for good print reproduction at more than full size. The resulting files are large 400 Kb. or larger. But on my 1.6 Ghz iMac with 2 Gbt of RAM the knitting together step only takes about five minuets. After the Panorama process has knitted the individual scan files into a composite image, it has to be cropped to get rid of the edges. This slightly reduces the archive file.

The resulting file forms the starting point for a "Collection" folder for each painting. As I generate smaller specialized files (for website images, or publicity purposes, etc.) they end up in this folder. The folder of all my collections (about 350 folders, each for an individual painting) is backed up automatically each night.

If you want to try it yourself and do not have the newest Photoshop Elements, you may download for 30 days free the full Photoshop CS3, and tryout the same Panorama feature. I did this myself before buying the latest Photoshop Elements upgrade. Enjoy!

Another Musician Painting

We were painting in an area near an old church, when suddenly a funeral procession came by. I was attending a painting workshop near the mountain colonial town of Patzcuaro in western Mexico.

The coffin, born by six burly men, apparently contained someone of some local stature. For the procession was large and accompanied by a band of some fourteen Mariachi musicians.

As the crowd started into the church, the musicians arranged themselves along the path beside the entrance, and played to the gathering morners.

Each player was probably a local shopkeeper or worker in the small town. Each had probably taken time off to honor the dead person.

I have always enjoyed developing paintings with a musical theme. This painting, named Mariachi, is loosely based upon several photographs I took years ago while at that workshop.