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Articles on travel

Artist’s Changing Perception: The Illusive Portrait

There is a great distortion between what you see creatively and what often is reality. I learned this most profoundly just recently while doing a portrait of a friends’ daughter, the reason I chose the photo to create was first its delicate beauty but even more it begged to be painted because it seemed like a photograph of an Andrew Wyeth painting. I painted it differently than I have in the past, portraits have always been a struggle for me but this time I tried it smaller and with less detail and hoped it would be easier.
I didn’t sketch it like I have in the past; I blocked it out in paint and adjusted the image by eye. It is amazing how the face very slowly grows, as you get closer, farther away than closer again. The first images seemed almost cartoonish and pasty. I watched the ghostly face grow out of a dark backdrop and the closer I felt to succeeding the farther the actual success seemed to be. This feeling of creative blindness seems to run through all of my works but never more dramatic than this portrait.
First I am amazed to see how realistic the image looks and the appearance gets very clear that I have succeeded and so quickly, that is until I send it for feedback or show someone that has not looked at it for the last few hours. The comments were less than encouraging: “scary eyes”, “ghostly”, “If I were the customer I would be insulted”, as much as it hurts to hear, it was true-she looked nothing like the photograph. As much as the image seemed to appear during the painting process the reality of getting away from the painting was a bit intimidating. I went back to the drawing board, I would see her eyes staring from the painting for a moment than I would realize how bad the progress was getting and the time I seemed to be wasting. The good thing about this process is that the artist gets to refine the image and look at it again and again and realize how being too close to any painting brings about a loss of clarity in the creation.
There have been several times and several hours of working where I felt like I was getting somewhere great only to realize afterwards I had made it even worse. The great thing about this process is the honing of the skill of seeing, even if I fail over and over again I continue to refine my vision and break through the loss of clarity, I believe that working on this portrait will help with all of my paintings in the discipline of seeing what you see and not just what the brain thinks or decides it sees. There is a short hand of seeing things much like how the brain can decipher text that is jumbled, we see the image and capture what we think we see, we cut corners on the reality and fill in the blanks.
The brain is overwhelmed with details so we tend to skip the reality of details that would truly capture what we see.
During the teaching process I have helped the student focus by putting a mask over all but a small portion of a picture to copy, this allows the student to concentrate on detail and reality of what they see and the brain has less ability to fill in the blanks and the proportion and scale gives way to the true perception of a scene. I have also heard about people turning an image upside down to copy what they see instead of what the brain wants to capture instinctively.
In the end, I would not say I captured even a portion of the beauty of the original nor the drama of the Andrew Wyeth painting but in the end I believe I have honed my skills for seeing. I will do more portraits and plan on continuing to perfect them, I have already turned down several commissions because portraits are not my specialty although in the future it may not be the case, I believe in leaving everything up to growing and developing as an artist and as the eye perfects what it sees and argues with the brain for what is reality, in the end the artist will create reality out of the skewed perception he or she struggles with.


Articles on travel

How perspective and scale can prolong your life?

On a road trip in Arkansas, my son got his first lesson in scale and perspective and how it relates to photography. The reason people see an amazing scene and the pictures later seems  flat and unattractive is because space must be shown to the viewer or that great expansive scene becomes a flat image on a 2 dimensional plane

This is only a theory I have, that time has many different textures, which allows ones perception to differ from another’s. So how does this relate to scale and perspective? When a painter paints a landscape on a flat plane there is no information for the brain to decipher the space and therefore the artist must show cues of scale and perspective to explain how a two dimensional image has a three-dimensional space. In reality we see a scene and our brains realize by the differences and the fact that we are used to living in a three-dimensional world that there is depth and space ahead of us but on the canvas we don’t have that privilege. In California I visited a cave that distorts this reality, it is the moaning cavern and is California’s largest public cave chamber, you look up from the bottom and would think the space is twenty feet and yet the height of the statue of liberty could be fit in the space, this is because there is no markers to allow the brain to decipher the space and allow the brain to explain its scale.
So how does a cave and painting have to do with time, I think this is the same process. I have always thought the reason a night seems to fly by is because the brain has no way to decipher the distance of time and therefore it seems that it does not exist much like the space that we try to decipher, the space of time must be measured by the feeling of its space. If you do one thing all day it seems that the day passes by, even though through the function of that period, it may seem to drag on. It is because after the fact the brain has no way of scale for the passing of time, in contrast if you do many short periods of activity during a day the brain has the scale of multiple periods of time and therefore it seems the space of time has been stretched longer.
I strongly believe that if the brain is given cues to describe time as many different short streams the brain can fathom hours and days that seem long as opposed to how quickly time seems to fly. The reason I think time goes faster as we get older is because we don’t see and hang on to the details of day-to-day like we do when we are very young. Routine and taking the things we see for granted allows time to pass without the awe and wonder of seeing things for the first time. I am experimenting with filling my life up with as many experiences and bits of time to enjoy the scale of life well lived and as much as I can possibly envision in the shortest amount of time, I will keep you up to date with progress.
So how do you measure time and have you experienced differences in the feeling of short and long periods of time-explain how it feels different by the difference in activities.

Articles on travel

A Road Trip Mimics Life


In our lives we experience cycles from the excitement of youth seeking happiness to the wisdom of age searching for purpose, so how does this relate to a road trip? I feel like a vacation is a small snapshot of our lives and the emotions and feelings we get mimic, on a small scale, how life changes and develops over time.
When we are planning for the trip, there is the feeling of hope and excitement. As in youth, we tend to dream big and create this amazing fantasy where even a short period of time will make up for all the time we worked hard to afford the costs of the trip. We make plans, we add places to the vacation and activities that don’t necessarily coincide with the actual reality of time or the lack there of.
I feel like half the fun of traveling is the planning, learning about new places and making reservations is all part of the experience. I like the anticipation almost as much as the actual experience. As time passes in the planning process we start to realize the costs and the reality that we have probably allotted enough money for half the experiences and have arranged two weeks of adventures into a weeks worth of time.
So goes youth, we grow into our lives, the realities we redefine and the truth that we learn as we get closer to the actual life we have planned. This is why the teen years are so turbulent, it’s like planning to dive off a ten-foot diving board only to realize it is a cliff that is one hundred foot above treacherous rocks. This is the point in the vacation where you get out on the road and all the questions start to occur; did I forget anything? Did I bring enough cash? Have I planned too much? There is an excitement at this point but there is still that feeling of stress as the miles pass by and we get further and further away from our safe and stable lives.
When we arrive at our destination there is a mix of panic, the flat tire, running out of gas, the credit card that gets declined or the hotel that has misplaced our reservation, it always seems that in the midst of the road trip something goes wrong. We are at the mercy of the road, we feel our lack of planning and the truth of the vacation we have planned, we start to adjust the time we spend, what we are able to do and what we need to plan for another trip. This is life and the reality of the path we chose, both the peaks and the valleys. This time I would equate with our post graduation and the experience we have with building our careers and raising our families, it is as frightening and stressful as it is filled with passion and fulfillment.
With age, we realize the actual truth of the road trip; it’s reliving the points of time, the restaurants you’ve been to and the things you’ve seen. Suddenly the fears and insecurities of being out on the road turn into the confidence of miles driven. I experience a clarity of mind, routine loses its weight on what seems possible, even as the vacation ends you are planning the next place to go, to experience life, the great highs and the insecurities of the lows. The ride home is the wisdom of looking back on our lives and realizing what we have accomplished and perhaps what we might have changed if given the chance.
In the final miles, we long for the routine we worked so hard to get away from and miss the pets we left or the comfortable beds we’ve abandoned. It is a feeling of full circle and yet at the same time whether it be sadness and regret or fulfillment and passion we have made our trip what it was but unlike our lives we can go and do it all over again the next time we have a chance to road trip.

Articles on travel

A Road Trip Mimics Life

In our lives we experience cycles from the excitement of youth seeking happiness to the wisdom of age searching for purpose, so how does this relate to a road trip? I feel like a vacation is a small snapshot of our lives and the emotions and feelings we get mimic, on a small scale, how life changes and develops over time.
When we are planning for the trip, there is the feeling of hope and excitement. As in youth, we tend to dream big and create this amazing fantasy where even a short period of time will make up for all the time we worked hard to afford the costs of the trip. We make plans, we add places to the vacation and activities that don’t necessarily coincide with the actual reality of time or the lack there of.
I feel like half the fun of traveling is the planning, learning about new places and making reservations is all part of the experience. I like the anticipation almost as much as the actual experience. As time passes in the planning process we start to realize the costs and the reality that we have probably allotted enough money for half the experiences and have arranged two weeks of adventures into a weeks worth of time.
So goes youth, we grow into our lives, the realities we redefine and the truth that we learn as we get closer to the actual life we have planned. This is why the teen years are so turbulent, it’s like planning to dive off a ten-foot diving board only to realize it is a cliff that is one hundred foot above treacherous rocks. This is the point in the vacation where you get out on the road and all the questions start to occur; did I forget anything? Did I bring enough cash? Have I planned too much? There is an excitement at this point but there is still that feeling of stress as the miles pass by and we get further and further away from our safe and stable lives.
When we arrive at our destination there is a mix of panic, the flat tire, running out of gas, the credit card that gets declined or the hotel that has misplaced our reservation, it always seems that in the midst of the road trip something goes wrong. We are at the mercy of the road, we feel our lack of planning and the truth of the vacation we have planned, we start to adjust the time we spend, what we are able to do and what we need to plan for another trip. This is life and the reality of the path we chose, both the peaks and the valleys. This time I would equate with our post graduation and the experience we have with building our careers and raising our families, it is as frightening and stressful as it is filled with passion and fulfillment.
With age, we realize the actual truth of the road trip; it’s reliving the points of time, the restaurants you’ve been to and the things you’ve seen. Suddenly the fears and insecurities of being out on the road turn into the confidence of miles driven. I experience a clarity of mind, routine loses its weight on what seems possible, even as the vacation ends you are planning the next place to go, to experience life, the great highs and the insecurities of the lows. The ride home is the wisdom of looking back on our lives and realizing what we have accomplished and perhaps what we might have changed if given the chance.
In the final miles, we long for the routine we worked so hard to get away from and miss the pets we left or the comfortable beds we’ve abandoned. It is a feeling of full circle and yet at the same time whether it be sadness and regret or fulfillment and passion we have made our trip what it was but unlike our lives we can go and do it all over again the next time we have a chance to road trip.

Articles on travel

Recent Paintings-blog post

A New Series

All I can say is the intention has been there to write more on this blog but the soul has just been lacking as of late. This series of paintings is a transitional series. My recent series and it was fast and furious and seemed to finish off the existing ideas that have been sitting around in states of incompleteness for many years. I was excited to start the next series and the momentum seemed to be continuing from previous and suddenly it happened-the dreaded block, not only the painting block but a recent writing block as well. The first painting, the balcony was from a restaurant in Cape San Blas Florida-it under painted very quickly and suddenly nothing-I feel like someone else started painting it and I’m just coming in after the fact afraid of ruining any progress the previous painter began.

During this series there has been what I would consider creative blindness, it is not being able to see what you are painting because you are too deep into the details, this allows for only short amounts of time to paint before you get too intense in the details and lose sight of the overall painting. I have had several afternoons struggling and I end up getting frustrated one moment only to have a breakthrough in the next sitting.

One exciting thing about this new series is that I’m not happy with just getting by with minimal details, I crave the accuracy and detail and at the same time allow the other less important elements to remain less detailed, I would call it a full circle between the lighter more relaxed progression of recent mixed with a more detailed and disciplined approach I think I have adapted from teaching a painting course.

Florida and upcoming series

This latest series is inspired by Florida, the next series quickly coming up afterwards will be night scenes, portraits and rich colors of spring. Here are the rest of the images that I am in the process of completing.

 

Articles on travel

When does the intangible become the masterpiece?

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder they say and one person’s masterpiece is another’s pointless mess. In the past, I had lost my eye for what was art or of interest by second-guessing my initial reaction to a scene and questioning how I can sell instead of simply capturing what naturally appeals to the artist’s eye. No, I have not permanently sold out, just have learned how subtle and transient the artist eye can be and how quickly we can lose sight of why we started the process of seeing like an artist in the first place.
I have narrowed down how I shoot to four basic reasons. First and most simple is the snapshot-to capture the scene for posterity, no need for perfection even though perfection always tends to be the artists intention. Capture what you see and save a moment, no filters, no adjusting, just for fun and nothing more. The next reason is to document for the sake of a future painting, this image is just to capture objects and fragments of an overall scene for the sake of future rendering-I shoot many water and sky scenes for this purpose. The third reason is just for the pure beauty. This option is somewhat more of a challenge than it would seem and it’s harder to shoot for me when the beauty is overwhelming. In this case you are photographing something that so many weekend enthusiasts, cell phone snapping, selfie indulging novices as well as professionals will shoot in varying degrees of quality and perfection. Photo manipulation, color correction and post processing can make a good photo a great photo but the work has already been done for you by mother nature and all you can do is show the depth and beauty of the colors on a flat plane as well as your range of skills can afford you.
The fourth reason for shooting a photograph is the reason for this post, it’s the intangible shapes and textures that the artist would see but the skilled photographer might just pass by for the sake of shooting at the highest skill level the beauty of nature or whatever their particular interest would have them shoot. From an artist standpoint you would think this would be easy because it comes natural but the artist eye is often fleeting which brings us back to one mans’ art is another’s pointless mess. There was a time when I would shoot images of trees, or minimalist shapes and patterns in an effort to capture that artistic image that would amaze my viewer. I failed on so many levels, it’s your passion that drives the image, if you have no passion for a bunch of rocks or trees that create an interesting pattern you will capture that image perfectly and has to explain to your viewer why what you shot was so interesting and should be admired.
Here is the difference and the dilemma of shooting for the sense of art and shooting with passion. I don’t believe the photographer or artist should have to explain to the layman why the image they captured is a work of art, it should be understood even if the viewer isn’t quite sure why the image captures their attention or begs for a second look there is an intangible curiosity that keeps the viewer engaged. The interest and engagement depends first by the varying degrees of interest and passion shared by the viewer and the artist so many photos that might be amazing to the artist may lack the interest for the viewer that has no interest in the subject matter, this is where art is so subjective.
There is a level of art that I believe transcends that subjective notion of art and creativity
And goes beyond the interest. The viewer regardless of their interests or intention cannot help to be moved by the work, many masters have achieved this level of success. To me, there is this haunted feeling or a moment where you feel like you have interrupted something and you are an audience to something that draws emotion from somewhere you didn’t even realize you possessed. This is the artist at work and this is where I seek to achieve, it is the artists job to explain and show the reason why something moved them without ever having to explain why, this is the greatness that I strive for and it is a great achievement when a viewer is engaged when they don’t even realize why. To speak to a viewer an emotion or an intangible aspect with only an image is an incredible accomplishment and that which makes the pointless mess, the masterpiece.

Articles on travel

Future paintings of Daingerfield, Sunset and the beauty and solitude of nature.

This is a series of photographs from Lake Daingerfield. I like the low quality of the images from my phone, as they are more like painting sketches rather than actual photographs. All images were brought into Photoshop where I increased the contrast and saturation. The colors are not that far off reality actually because my phone was a bit washed out and with the saturation of colors I’ve almost achieved colors that are closer to the way it really was.
This is the beginning of a new series of paintings, I’m planning on creating ten very small paintings that I can create and finish in a short time, what I am trying to accomplish is the spontaneity of a fast painting but also that feeling of the dark evening, the silent moments as the sun descends and throws
shadows across the water.
I am amazed with the difference a short amount of time can make in relation to color and contrast. In the early hours just before sunset you have this pale light that keeps a bright sheen on the water, the blues of the sky are reflected but most of the color is burned out by the intensity of the last bit of afternoon sun. The contrast of the light and dark in the water makes the appearance of glittering diamonds in the edge of the water. High contrasting colors and values appear almost more like shapes and elements in an abstract painting.

As the angle of the sun changes the colors warm and the sky is infused with an intense blue, the blue in the water and the greens and golds of the depths of crystal clear water dance and reflect in multiple mirrors that throw light like halos on each movement of the water surface. To me, this is where the lake is its most peaceful, it’s the final breath of the day and the movements in the sounds in the forest start to stir as the evening shift take over, you can hear the sounds of owls from distant hollows and coyotes start gathering for the evening run.

The colors continue to darken, there is a flame that grows in the silhouette of the forest and its reflection in the lake is like the final burning embers of a campfire at the end of a night of a campfire, minus the burning eyes and aromatic smell of burnt wood. Contrasts are heightened as the final bit of light fades from the deep forest, and a star filled sky starts from a deep cerulean blue to an intense Prussian blue with stars that shimmer and appear and disappear as you stare into the depths of infinity.
Kayaking in a place like this makes one feel like you are the only one for miles. You turn to the forest and enjoy that stillness that cannot be duplicated unless you get out away from the city and stop for a moment to listen to nature at its best.
This is why I especially love kayaking on Lake Daingerfield and those final hours are my favorite hours, even though the cold wind and the icy extremities bring on discomfort, the peace you feel and the deep solitude is something that can only be experienced and barely described. These photos I hope capture that feeling, please let me know if you got any memories of camping with family or enjoying those last few hours of a sunset, would love to read your stories. Thanks for reading and get out and explore.

Articles on travel

Lake Daingerfield Fishing for Chain Pickerel


Yesterday I enjoyed another beautiful day on one of my favorite lakes. Lake Dangerfield is a small intimate lake in East Texas, this was my second time to visit. It feels like being in the middle of the north woods, including the sound of owls in the evening and the cries of wolves at night-okay coyotes but still.
I photographed with my camera phone, which guarantees a less than high quality product but I’m very impressed with the fact that the lack of quality almost made it more artistic than photographic. I have a new series of small paintings and these are like photographic sketches for those upcoming studies.

I want the paintings to convey the dark, cool blues and greens that make you feel so isolated and alone but the feeling isn’t lonely, its small and intimate, there are lily pads everywhere hiding chain pickerel and bass. The colors of the lily pads are warm reds and golds and they reach up from the crystal clear water like ghosts. As the sun descends the colors and light change and the drama of the scene heightens, we shared the lake with just a few other people that were crazy enough to go out into the 46 degree water and a twelve mile an hour wind but this is half the fun of kayaking in the winter, no really it is, having sensation in your extremities is overrated anyway.

On a lake like Texoma in North Texas, you feel like you are lost in the middle of a large body of water that could be an ocean if it weren’t for the tall trees and rocky cliffs but the size of the waves and the activity is so different than being on a lake like Dangerfield. The stillness of the forest that surrounds you and the deep blue color of the water as the shadows twist and bend at sunset are just a few of the reasons why I love kayaking Daingerfield.
Something that separated this particular day from other days spent kayaking is the fact that we actually caught fish this time. I caught a very large chain pickerel, my son and nephew each caught a few of their own, it was one of the more successful fishing trips I have had in recent months.

I even go the chance to see a pileated woodpecker, an osprey and other various songbirds. Being on a kayak in a place like this is like for a moment not existing and allowing nature to act as it would if you weren’t there. Recently, I have taken advantage of the silence and stopped fishing long enough to take in the beauty and calm of a pristine lake and one of my favorite places to kayak in Texas. I think this stopping and taking in the scenery has improved recent kayaking ventures as it is very hard to feel clumsy and awkward trying to fish while the wind is moving the kayak in a different direction and a tree is trying to pull you and your rods out of the boat-I’m not the most agile fisherman but this time was more calm and peaceful than many other trips I have taken.

Next destination, Broken Bow Lake Oklahoma, still cold but hopefully not too windy. Until the next time, get out there and explore.

Articles on travel

Happy New Year and Things to Come

This is the first image of 2014, my cat and a bit of rendering in Photoshop-I enjoyed the process of isolating what I liked about the cat and allowed the personality of the cat to come out. I am going to try to photograph every day-something and hopefully in 365 days I’ll have lots of images to go through and maybe a few that are noteworthy. 
I am in the middle of a painting series and have just sketched out eleven new paintings. The view is of water and darkness in varying degrees mixed in with some Florida scenery from my recent trip to Cape San Blas and Mexico beach. I have also did an underpainting of a koi pond-there are rich colors of reds and yellows that blend into the dark water that goes back into a waterfall in the background. I am excited about the change of scope and multiple vantage points I am perfecting. I want the viewer to look down into the depths of water and be able to stare out into the distance as well so there are various vanishing points in the same scene and several different planes where the viewer can focus their attention.
Besides igniting the passion for photography I am also planning on continuing my multiple stories I have in the works. I also have several self-help books about finding happiness in ones’ life. I am excited about possibilities for 2014 and hope we can have more contact and communication from readers.