"The most important element in a picture cannot be defined."
- Renoir
I call myself an artist, have no problem with it sounding pretentious. I have no specific style or medium I like to use, although the messier the better! I get most of my inspiration from other artists so I decided to create this blog to engage others to share their ideas, techniques and designs to increase creativity. My objective is to energize the medium and assist in the creative block we often experience as artists.
Collage
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
3D Prints For the Artist: Real-Life Models — Quickly, Easily, Affordably
By Cyn Rene' Whitfield
Physical models directly from digital data created in hours instead of days makes 3D models extremely beneficial for reproduction. 3D prints can turn a conceptual idea into a reality and have been used for awards, prototypes, and art. 3D prints allow engineers, architects and artists to produce a range of concept models and functional test parts quickly and inexpensively. As a tool for creating models early in the design process, 3D Printing is a both a faster and more affordable alternative to hand modeling. Dimension printers cut days and weeks off the design cycle. Dimension’s ability to produce quick, inexpensive models made of ABS plastic allows designers to efficiently model multiple concepts right from their desktop. This process is also referred a “Fused Deposition Modeling” used for detailed models that are tough enough for functional testing and ABS plastic can be sanded, milled, even painted.
My experience in creating 3D prints was with in 2006, a company I worked for, 3DS2, Inc. was commissioned to create a 3D contoured print of an official emblem for the National Parks Service. This piece was a series of is individually numbered awards to be presented exclusively to retirees from the Service.
The process involved five separate program applications for the original prototype. An original 2D image was provided by the National Parks Services scanned with a flatbed scanner and then converted into Autocad. The design from the model were then contoured. This process was performed by one of the CAD technicians in the office. I loaded the file into 3D StudioMAX and extruded the lettering. I matched the CMYK values from the original image in Photoshop and assigned them to the computer working model . Once the 3D print was created in 3D StudioMAX, individual text was added and the print was numbered to make it authentic. The triangles that make up the model was then examined for water -tightness. Water tightness is term used to make sure there are no holes in the model because it must be a contiguous surface without voids.Although the geometry of the piece is exact from print to print the art in the artistry finish makes the NPS Arrowhead one of a kind. Each print bears with it a certificate of authenticity to ensure its uniqueness. This is an exciting new digital media for artists.
Physical models directly from digital data created in hours instead of days makes 3D models extremely beneficial for reproduction. 3D prints can turn a conceptual idea into a reality and have been used for awards, prototypes, and art. 3D prints allow engineers, architects and artists to produce a range of concept models and functional test parts quickly and inexpensively. As a tool for creating models early in the design process, 3D Printing is a both a faster and more affordable alternative to hand modeling. Dimension printers cut days and weeks off the design cycle. Dimension’s ability to produce quick, inexpensive models made of ABS plastic allows designers to efficiently model multiple concepts right from their desktop. This process is also referred a “Fused Deposition Modeling” used for detailed models that are tough enough for functional testing and ABS plastic can be sanded, milled, even painted.
My experience in creating 3D prints was with in 2006, a company I worked for, 3DS2, Inc. was commissioned to create a 3D contoured print of an official emblem for the National Parks Service. This piece was a series of is individually numbered awards to be presented exclusively to retirees from the Service.
The process involved five separate program applications for the original prototype. An original 2D image was provided by the National Parks Services scanned with a flatbed scanner and then converted into Autocad. The design from the model were then contoured. This process was performed by one of the CAD technicians in the office. I loaded the file into 3D StudioMAX and extruded the lettering. I matched the CMYK values from the original image in Photoshop and assigned them to the computer working model . Once the 3D print was created in 3D StudioMAX, individual text was added and the print was numbered to make it authentic. The triangles that make up the model was then examined for water -tightness. Water tightness is term used to make sure there are no holes in the model because it must be a contiguous surface without voids.Although the geometry of the piece is exact from print to print the art in the artistry finish makes the NPS Arrowhead one of a kind. Each print bears with it a certificate of authenticity to ensure its uniqueness. This is an exciting new digital media for artists.
Monday, September 20, 2010
Impressions of an Abnormal Artist: Claude Monet
by: Cyn Rene’ Whitfield
Oscar-Claude Monet (1840 – 1871) was the second born child of two sons. When Oscar was about five (he was called Oscar until his early twenties) the family moved from urban Paris to a suburb coastal community on the coast of Normandy which provided must of the natural inspiration for his work later in life. Oscar admits he was an unruly student and his notebooks filled with sketches were his only salvation to sanity. He compared school to a prison that couldn’t contain him. His mother died when he was 16 and he left his controlling father to live with his father’s half sister, Marie-Jeanne Lecarde, a successful talented painter in her own right. While neither rich nor cosmopolitan Oscar’s new family entrenches goals and ambitions compliant with middle-class prosperity and social acceptance. Oscar embraces this thinking, but not at the expense of his budding artistic ambitions. For decades, Oscar will struggle with his challenge of attraction toward material and physical comforts and the desire to be an artist. He created a life-long habit of overspending, shopping sprees, and charitable donations well above his means. Later in life Monet was just one step ahead of his creditors. Monet’s neurotransmitters and spending-inducing epinephrine could be related to the death of mother, escaping a controlling father, the loss of his wife, and the chosen profession that monetarily did not fit in with the economic society imprint.
The disorder of compulsive spending is directly related to a feel better mentality and is similar to other addictive behaviors and has some of the same characteristics as alcoholism, gambling and overeating addictions. Compulsive spending can be a quick fix for depression, anxiety, and loneliness expressed to assure more love, bolster self-esteem, or heal the hurts, regrets, stress, and the problems of daily living. It generally makes these feelings worse because of the increased financial debt it creates. Monet’s Impressionist style was greeted with hostility and ridicule and was considered to be ugly and revolutionary because of its borderline abstractionism. Monet believed that the starving artist avant-garde painters must take risks and push viewers to accept the new and shocking tried and true paintings that attract crowds and money. It was this set of conflicting goals that may have created the challenges that lead to his disorder.
In 1869, while working on The Magpie, Monet was feeling surly and unable to work. In addition to his undermining confidence and rejection his anxiety about the family’s income became insurmountable. Even the birth of his new son in 1867 is not enough paternal sentiment to overpower the wielding, controlling father of his past (Monet’s father died in 1871 during Monet’s exile to London to avoid the Franco-Prussian War). The frustration of getting a real paying job was denounced and Monet continued to beg for money and art supplies while still living above his means with the help of mentor Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Although his fame as an artist grows in between 1872 and 1878 (Monet sold 29 pieces to a single buyer) he was rejected as an artist by the prestigious Salon. His personal life begins to decline as his wife, Camille is bedridden and dies in 1879 from cancer of the womb. Monet continues to live beyond his means. By 1890, Monet has become a national treasure and settles into a home life that is the solid, middle-class consistency of his father’s dreams. He buys a house in Giverny and remarries. It is at this time that he creates his greatest works The WaterLillies.
What makes it all amazing is that Monet was able to link his emotional state into his paintings and make the psychological disorder of the cultural and social influences in his life work as expression through his art. What we see in Monet’ works is his struggle with societal norms expressed through the beauty and the many perspectives that surround it. I have often found that I too will find solace in the shopping spree to overcome feelings of depression and anxiety. What continues to work best is picking up a brush and letting the canvas speak to me. I found this C and R paper a very valuable look at the artist and the mindset. Like Van Gogh and Monet, it appears that the term suffering artist may just be the abnormality needed to excel creative greatness.
References:
Kosslyn, S. M., & Rosenberg, R. S. (2007). Fundamentals of Psychology in Context (3rd ed.). Boston
"Addiction". Magill's Medical Guide, 4th Rev. ed.. 01 Dec 2008.
"Stress Response". World Book Science Year. 01 Aug 2009.
Tuchman, Phyllis. "The Monet who wasn't". Lancet 9314(2002):1355.
Do You Have Money Disorder (2010) Retrieved February 12, 2010 from http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/mind-over-money/201001/
ArtMagick Exhibition Listings (1996) Monet The Impressionist Eye Retrieved February 12, 2010 from http://www.artmagick.com/exhibitions/exhibition.aspx?id=1383&name=monet-impressionist-eye
Morris, Catherine (1999) The Essential Claude Monet NY Wonderland Press
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Sunday, September 12, 2010
My Impressionism on Monet: A Study in Light
by Cyn Rene' Whitfield
One day in the fall of 1890, while walking on the slopes above his house, Monet is attracted by a haystack that glows almost white, like a luminous spot, in the bright sun. But by the time he returns with materials and begins to paint, the effect has already changed. This was the beginning of a series by the French born painter, Claude Monet. The selective attention was to capture an ordinary subject matter, haystacks, so the viewer would focus on the non-subject matter of light, composition and technical mastery. In this paper I would like to examine how Monet, in his multiple studies, captured the range of electromagnetic radiation through oil on canvas in his many variations entitled “The Haystacks”.
Monet understood color hue, saturation and amplitude of light long before the field of psychophysics. In each painting, the color of the haystack is different because the light shining on the haystack is different. The color of the haystack is determined by the colors the haystack absorbs. The color we see is simply the colorized light that is not absorbed and that is reflected into our eyes. But Monet had no scientific explanation for what he saw to capture. His paintings were not about the haystacks, but rather an investigation of how the light during different times of the day, or different seasons of the year, changed the way those haystacks looked. Thus, Monet’s series of haystacks are painted under different light conditions at different times of the day. He would rise before dawn, paint the first canvas for half an hour, by which time the light would have changed. Then he would switch to the second canvas, and so on. The next day he would repeat the process.
Monet is considered to be one of the most representative Impressionists in history. Did he have a higher awareness of absolute threshold? Did he get his awareness from more sensitivity to stimulus and just-noticeable difference (JND)? Was the anatomy of his eyes superior to other artists or was he just gifted in observation? One could argue the validity of Monet possessing superior rods and cones in his eyes to create thirty different representations of light on haystacks but I personally think he is the original founder of the trichromatic theory of color vision. He just didn’t have the attention within him to do so.
References
Kosslyn, S. M., & Rosenberg, R. S. (2007). Fundamentals of Psychology in Context (3rd ed.). Boston: Pearson.
Morris, Catherine (1999) The Essential Claude Monet New York: Wonderland Press
Stuckey, Charles F. (1986) Monet A Retrospective New York: Parklane
Sproocati, Sandro (1992) Monet Milan: Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, S.p.A.
Livingstone, Margaret S. Vision and Art: The Biology of Seeing Monet’s Colors (2002) Retrieved December 16, 2009 from http://www.webexhibits.org/colorart/dh.html
One day in the fall of 1890, while walking on the slopes above his house, Monet is attracted by a haystack that glows almost white, like a luminous spot, in the bright sun. But by the time he returns with materials and begins to paint, the effect has already changed. This was the beginning of a series by the French born painter, Claude Monet. The selective attention was to capture an ordinary subject matter, haystacks, so the viewer would focus on the non-subject matter of light, composition and technical mastery. In this paper I would like to examine how Monet, in his multiple studies, captured the range of electromagnetic radiation through oil on canvas in his many variations entitled “The Haystacks”.
Monet understood color hue, saturation and amplitude of light long before the field of psychophysics. In each painting, the color of the haystack is different because the light shining on the haystack is different. The color of the haystack is determined by the colors the haystack absorbs. The color we see is simply the colorized light that is not absorbed and that is reflected into our eyes. But Monet had no scientific explanation for what he saw to capture. His paintings were not about the haystacks, but rather an investigation of how the light during different times of the day, or different seasons of the year, changed the way those haystacks looked. Thus, Monet’s series of haystacks are painted under different light conditions at different times of the day. He would rise before dawn, paint the first canvas for half an hour, by which time the light would have changed. Then he would switch to the second canvas, and so on. The next day he would repeat the process.
Monet is considered to be one of the most representative Impressionists in history. Did he have a higher awareness of absolute threshold? Did he get his awareness from more sensitivity to stimulus and just-noticeable difference (JND)? Was the anatomy of his eyes superior to other artists or was he just gifted in observation? One could argue the validity of Monet possessing superior rods and cones in his eyes to create thirty different representations of light on haystacks but I personally think he is the original founder of the trichromatic theory of color vision. He just didn’t have the attention within him to do so.
References
Kosslyn, S. M., & Rosenberg, R. S. (2007). Fundamentals of Psychology in Context (3rd ed.). Boston: Pearson.
Morris, Catherine (1999) The Essential Claude Monet New York: Wonderland Press
Stuckey, Charles F. (1986) Monet A Retrospective New York: Parklane
Sproocati, Sandro (1992) Monet Milan: Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, S.p.A.
Livingstone, Margaret S. Vision and Art: The Biology of Seeing Monet’s Colors (2002) Retrieved December 16, 2009 from http://www.webexhibits.org/colorart/dh.html
Thursday, September 9, 2010
The Whole Is Different than the Sum of It’s Parts Gestalt Theory in Art
by Cyn Rene' Whitfield
Gestalt psychology is the overall patterns of thoughts or experience of the human mind and behavior as a whole. It is a German word that roughly translates as "whole" or "form." In art, Gestalt is a general description for the visual perception and the psychology that make unity and variety possible in design and the relationship between the parts and the whole of a composition.
“The visual world is so complex that the mind has developed strategies for coping with the confusion. The mind tries to find the simplest solution to a problem. One of the ways it does this is to form groups of items that have certain characteristics in common,” according to 2D Design Notes.
Gestalt psychologists developed five laws that govern human perception and are considered by artists:
1. Law of Proximity -Elements that are closer together will be perceived as a coherent object. This is commonly seen in web design where the visual hierarchy of elements on the screen provides the grouping of related objects.
2. Law of Similarity - Elements that look similar will be perceived as part of the same form. We tend to group similar shapes together as a coherent object and then attach some kind of meaning to the result.
3. Law of Good Continuation - Humans tend to continue contours whenever the elements of the pattern establish an implied direction.
4. Law of Closure -Humans tend to enclose a space by completing a contour and ignoring gaps in the figure. Gestalt theory seeks completeness. With shapes that aren't closed, our mind will "fill in the gaps".
5. Law of Figure/Ground - A stimulus will be perceived as separate from it's ground. This effect is often seen in logo design where negative space is used to convey meaning.
In graphic design, as I studied it attaining my Electronic Imaging Degree from Metropolitan Community College, it is very important to know gestalt theory because it allows us to predict how viewers respond to design. It not only assures that our intention will be understood correctly by the audience, but it also helps us to create a dynamic design.
References
Kosslyn, S. M., & Rosenberg, R. S. (2007). Fundamentals of Psychology in Context (3rd ed.). Boston: Pearson.
2D Design Notes Art 104 Design and Composition Retrieved December 1, 2009 from http://daphne.palomar.edu/design/gestalt.html
Gestalt Design Laws Retrieved December 1, 2009 from http://www.squidoo.com/gestaltlaws
Gestalt psychology is the overall patterns of thoughts or experience of the human mind and behavior as a whole. It is a German word that roughly translates as "whole" or "form." In art, Gestalt is a general description for the visual perception and the psychology that make unity and variety possible in design and the relationship between the parts and the whole of a composition.
“The visual world is so complex that the mind has developed strategies for coping with the confusion. The mind tries to find the simplest solution to a problem. One of the ways it does this is to form groups of items that have certain characteristics in common,” according to 2D Design Notes.
Gestalt psychologists developed five laws that govern human perception and are considered by artists:
1. Law of Proximity -Elements that are closer together will be perceived as a coherent object. This is commonly seen in web design where the visual hierarchy of elements on the screen provides the grouping of related objects.
2. Law of Similarity - Elements that look similar will be perceived as part of the same form. We tend to group similar shapes together as a coherent object and then attach some kind of meaning to the result.
3. Law of Good Continuation - Humans tend to continue contours whenever the elements of the pattern establish an implied direction.
4. Law of Closure -Humans tend to enclose a space by completing a contour and ignoring gaps in the figure. Gestalt theory seeks completeness. With shapes that aren't closed, our mind will "fill in the gaps".
5. Law of Figure/Ground - A stimulus will be perceived as separate from it's ground. This effect is often seen in logo design where negative space is used to convey meaning.
In graphic design, as I studied it attaining my Electronic Imaging Degree from Metropolitan Community College, it is very important to know gestalt theory because it allows us to predict how viewers respond to design. It not only assures that our intention will be understood correctly by the audience, but it also helps us to create a dynamic design.
References
Kosslyn, S. M., & Rosenberg, R. S. (2007). Fundamentals of Psychology in Context (3rd ed.). Boston: Pearson.
2D Design Notes Art 104 Design and Composition Retrieved December 1, 2009 from http://daphne.palomar.edu/design/gestalt.html
Gestalt Design Laws Retrieved December 1, 2009 from http://www.squidoo.com/gestaltlaws
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