Category: Light

Geeking out on Arthur Rackham

Posted on by evebarbeau in #inspiration, Confidence, creativity, Learning, Light, Painting, Studio, Uncategorized

The thing that made me want to be an artist were the illustrations in books. No one I knew had paintings on their walls when I was a kid, but the pictures in the Sunday school books were amazing. I wanted to make drawings just like that.

Fast forward to university, where “illustrations” were not a part of my fine art studies. I learned to disregard this kind of work as not serious.

I’m past wanting to be considered a serious artist, and I can finally look again at the story illustrations that enthralled me as a kid. I still love them, especially the older, complicated, many-mark kind. Arthur Rackham (1867-1939) pushes all my delight buttons. Above is a drawing I did based on one of his (mine has a rat with a crow, rather than a baby) and then I painted it in gouache, a wonderful medium that sometimes rewards you by creating a glow in your work.

Here’s another gouache painting, with more than a few problems, but some of that glow is there.

Krita 4.2.1 is here.

Posted on by evebarbeau in creativity, Digital, Graphics Tool, Learning, Light, Uncategorized

My son taught me how to use computers. I think the first oneI tried was an an IBM XT. It had two floppy drives. One held the WordPerfect software I was hoping to use, and the other held your documents. It was a terrible exercise in frustration for me–all those arcane keystrokes, I could never remember–but I was hooked.

My education in computers took a long time. As a single mom, of two, just finishing my degree in fine art, I didn’t have money to buy computers and operating systems, but there were enough of them around to find old computers whose hardware you could scavenge to build something for yourself. By the mid-nineties, my son taught me about open-source operating systems and software. He taught me about Linux. (I use Ubuntu)

I fell in love with the co-operative way Linux was built, and how it offered opportunity to people who couldn’t pop out and buy computers at a whim. My son ended up becoming a software engineer. And I’m still a fan of computers and the ideals behind open-source software.

Krita is one such software. It’s an amazing drawing program that rivals and exceeds the ability of expensive digital editing software like Adobe Photoshop. It’s both robust enough for production artwork and cost friendly enough for beginners who don’t have the money to buy visual artmaking software.

According to Wikipedia, Krita is the Swedish word for crayon and rita is Swedish word for ‘to draw’.

The newest version of Krita just came out, and I spent the tail end of last week and all weekend, trying new brush sets (offered for free by many) and the colourize mask that allows you to colour your work quickly and easily.

Above is a composition of my own that is a little Handmaid’s Tale and a little Mother of Dragon’s, and mostly neither. My very quick granddaughter noted that the expression on the woman’s face is all wrong given the miracle of a dragon hatching in your hands. She’s so right.

The other drawing is a portrait of Dominique Tipper who plays Naomi Nagata in the TV series The Expanse.

Happy Holiday!

Posted on by evebarbeau in Holiday, Light, Painting, Uncategorized

2018-12-22 20.33.26The year is all but done, and it’s time to slow down and take a break. If you don’t celebrate a holiday in December take a break anyway. The winter is long and festivities help to chase away the grey. If you live in a hot sunshiney place, a break can be rejuvenating for you too. Thank you all, for hanging out with me this year. I’ll be back in January.

Above you see the last painting I will have time for this year. It’s egg tempera on mat board: An upside-down Mulberry tree and Cone Flowers. (9″ x 12″)

More Process

Posted on by evebarbeau in creativity, Light, Painting, Process, Space, Uncategorized

Iterations #6_20132
Iterations #6, 2018, egg tempera on panel, 24 x 24″

Iterations #6_0134
Iterations #16 this is the same picture as the one above, but in the dark.

Last week I showed you an image of a painting in process–I say process rather than progress because to me the meanings of those words are different. You can have process without progress, though it would be difficult to have progress without process. Either way, I showed you an image last week and today I’m showing the image farther down the process line. You could even say that there is  process progress happening here. Yes, yes, I know! I’ll stop.

While working on this I remembered that I had a tiny bit of phosphorescent powder.

Do you see how the two most delineated sphere’s in my painting almost touch? It’s a bit like Michelangelo’s painting, The Creation of Adam, where God reaches out to touch Adam. There is a tiny space between between God’s finger and Adam’s hand. Something amazing is going to happens in that tiny space. You can feel it. The potential for everything is in that tiny space.

What if I used the phosphorescent powder with my egg tempera medium? Would it work?

Oh my! When you turn off the lights you get a glimpse of the power in that breathless moment of creation.

Okay, okay, I know I’m getting carried away, but you see what happened above and it was such fun to make.

The next painting will no doubt continue the process.

On Inspiration

Posted on by evebarbeau in Confidence, creativity, Learning, Light, Mind, Painting, Process, Studio, Uncategorized, Working Hard

2018-09-21 15.55.58
Blue Moon Rising, 2018, acrylic on panel

I read books on creativity all the time. I’m not sure if it’s because I, somehow, want to be assured that I’m creative, or whether I want to understand what goes on in that process. Either way, one thing that comes up time and again, is the admonition not to rely on inspiration. In fact talent and inspiration are two terms that almost everyone disses.

I understand it to an extent. Talents aren’t share equally among everyone, and we don’t want to make anyone feel bad because they were born with a little less of a particular talent than someone else. And there is in the creative community this idea that the talented rely only on their talent and don’t work hard. That’s wrong I think, but I’m going to leave that for another time.

Another thing that books on creativity disparage is inspiration. I’m not saying you should sit on your duff and wait for inspiration before you attempt your creative project, but for heaven sakes if it comes along grab it with both hands and enjoy the blessing.

In my last post I noted that I’d finally painted something I didn’t hate. I made a tiny beginning. Then a day later I had the opportunity to visit Lorenzo Dupuis’s studio. What a wonder! I still feel all melty inside when I think about his luminous work, and I was/am inspired. For months and months I’ve been feeling as though I’m repeating myself or taken what wasn’t mine from others. Now, there is a path, a way to learn, a voice to find and I’m going to follow that inspiration. And surprise, surprise there are hints that I’ve been moving in this direction for some time. Yes, I’m worried that my work will look too much like Lorenzo’s, and guess what, he worries that his work looks too much like someone else’s. Creativity is a funny circular thing. Accept your talent, your inspirations and make something of it!

And Just Like That It’s Autumn

Posted on by evebarbeau in Autumn, creativity, Goal setting., Light, Uncategorized

Crayola
Crayola, multi-medium construction

Yes, it was only a week ago that I moaned a little about the heat and the smoke and the lethargy of the dog days of summer. There were hints even then that things would change. The light was different, even on days when there was no smoke. The past few days have been overcast and cold. Yesterday didn’t warm up much over eleven degrees Celsius (about 52 Fahrenheit).

The end of summer always comes as a big shock to me. It’s not like I haven’t lived in this province for nearing seventy years, and yet, each time when the potato plants die, the ferns go yellow and the weather goes cold, it’s a big surprise to me. And it never fails that it’s cold and rainy when school starts.

For all that I love September. I get excited about buckling down and finishing projects that I’ve been working on in a lackadaisical manner during the summer. So today, right after my walk I got to work on the revision of The Chronos Project. And this afternoon I’m going to finish a drawing and start another.

But first I’m going to put on some socks!

Walking with a Camera

Posted on by evebarbeau in creativity, Digital, Learning, Light, Mind, Self Care, Uncategorized

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

For a while now I’ve been taking a walk early every morning. I do it because it’s beautiful outside and because I think it’s good for my mental health. And who knows, it might just keep my hippocampus strong for longer.

I’ve been writing and drawing, but nothing exciting is happening on that front. I’m in the learning stage of things. I realized I needed to get a better handle on light and value and it occurred to me that taking my camera walking might help with that. You look with a whole other attention if you carry a camera. It was wonderful to find that all those boring things, I walk by in alleys, are quite beautiful with the right kind of attention.

Hope you enjoy them too.