I have a bit of a problem with my magazines. I have too many. I love them. I want to keep them all, but I'm running out of space.
There are a lot of mags that have so much inspiration on every page that I really don't want to cut them up. (I do cut and recycle the ones that aren't full of great stuff) I find that I am always referring to them for different reasons. What if I cut out all the things I want to keep today and recycle the rest... then next week/next year I want to find reference for bathroom renovations (I wish!), or a particular colour scheme or motif? I know things go out of style, but there's always inspiration to be found.
I am not a hoarder of anything - generally I'm a great 'chucker' - but magazines are an issue for me. These photos only show about half of my current collection. What do you do with your magazines? Katie blogged about her solution this week here.
Below is a stylish and simple magazine rack designed by Shigeichiro Takeuchi. It looks like the ingenious design allows you to easily remove a mag from the bottom of the stack. Unfortunately I'd need quite a few of these to house my current collection.
Magazines, Magazines Everywhere
Getting Ahead of Myself
Even though it's the height of Summer here and just the thought of wearing wool felt hat makes me break out in a sweat, I am smitten by these beautiful pieces by Claudia Schultz.
Mum, Can I Stay Up Late Tonight... Pleeeease?!
I really want to stay up tonight to watch history in the making. To be as much a part of the historic inauguration of the inspirational President Obama as I can when I'm thousands of miles away. The live coverage commences here in Australia at 11pm and the actual inauguration occurs after 3am. I so want to watch it live, but I just don't think I'll make it. I'll probably have to settle for watching it replayed tomorrow. A great day in history. A great job America! Read more...
pssst... listen to this...
I'm currently listening to and loving Sia's album Some People Have Real Problems. I read about Sia in frankie last year and then I was totally sold when I saw her on the Late Show with David Letterman. Have a look at her fabulous performance here. Luckily for me my husband was taking notice of how enraptured I was and he bought me the CD for Christmas.
Check out this beautiful song, and her fabulous make up!
Let's Talk About Digital Art
Well, it might turn into a bit of a rant rather than a talk! In addition to collages and Heart Boxes I also create commissioned children's portraits. I create them in Adobe Illustrator on my computer. I find it frustrating that often people's perception of digital art is that it's just a 'point and click' process that requires no skill or artistic talent and as a consequence it doesn't have the same intrinsic or monetary value as traditional art.
A digital artist must have all the 'traditional' creative skills, together with software competence. Becoming competent in a computer program may take years of practice - it's not a matter of pressing a button and 'presto' the art is made for you. Digital techniques need to be learnt - they are much less intuitive than say picking up a pencil and sketching.
To create digital art you must have the same knowledge of composition, colour, light, shape and form, and the same conceptual creative process, passion and ability as a traditional artist. The computer is just another medium for an artist to use, the same as pencil and paint are.
This is a commissioned portrait I completed last year. Just as a painter would have taken a long time to paint this portrait, it took me weeks to complete. I still have to 'mix' all the colours I want to use and save them on my digital palette. I blend colours and I create tones, highlights and shadows. I still have to manually draw each element of the face and colour each one individually... my creative output doesn't happen at the press of a button. (Except 'undo' which is one fantastic advantage my process has!)
When starting a portrait I scrutinise the child's face and features and decide which are the prominent features. I then slightly exaggerate those features to create a portrait which captures the essence of the child. The result is that my portraits are contemporary and graphic. I create them over a number of weeks, continually adding detail and refining shapes, colour and shading until I am happy with it. It's a very labour intensive process, just as it is for a traditional portrait painter.
I have separated out some of the elements of Oliver's face so you can see the level of detail that goes into creating a portrait. Remember each of these elements - including every eyebrow hair and strand of hair on his head - is hand drawn using my mouse.
(Unfortunately in resaving the above files and posting them here they have lost some skin tone and detail, put you get the idea.)
Lou from Art and Ghosts is a very talented digital artist. She creates her digital collages and illustrations in Adobe Photoshop (I would guess). This is an example of her beautiful work:
Like me, Karena of Magic Jelly works in Adobe Illustrator. She wrote a piece on her blog last year about the discussion on esty forums on digital art, you can read it here. The image below show's Karina's original sketch and a screen shot of how she worked on it in Illustrator. She described the process as "painstaking", which it is.
I have no shortage of enthusiastic enquiries about my portraits, and I often wonder if I would have a whole lot more commissions if I created the same images with paint and a brush. People seem to 'get' the value of that. Maybe I just have to wait for perceptions to catch up. In saying that, the commissions I get do keep me busy! I hope in writing this post I may have shed some more light on the digital process.
Update: Lesley has sent me the link to a time lapse recording of an amazing digital portrait of Thom Yorke being created in Photoshop. (A different program and technique to the one I use. Photoshop utilises 'brushes', like a traditional artist does, as opposed to the vector shapes that I draw.) The artist is Nicco Di Mattia. Check it out, it's fantastic. Thanks Lesley!
