The Grand Canyon and its Tourists – Maswik Lodge Cafeteria (digital painting)

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6 responses to “The Grand Canyon and its Tourists – Maswik Lodge Cafeteria (digital painting)”

1. 

   snowqueen

   January 8, 2007

   I love the digital painting effect – quite subtle – very 60s

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2. 

   Idyllopus

   January 9, 2007

   The cafeteria reminded me of a book my grandparents had back in the 60s-70s that I liked to look at when visiting them. The book was all illustrations of several star restaurants around the US, each one accompanied by one specialty recipe and a brief history of the restaurant. It sat next to the breakfast table and I remember several times going through it, fascinated.

   I sat on this a year because I wasn’t looking forward to painting all the wood.

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3. 

   MelGX

   January 13, 2007

   I’m intrigued with this process also. How are you doing it? Are you working in PhotoShop? If so, are there filters involved or is this something you’re doing completely “by hand”?

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4. 

   Idyllopus

   January 13, 2007

   I work in Photoshop and used a mouse up until last year when I got a medium size Wacom tablet/pen. I call it a digital painting/photo collage because I do start with the photo at base. With digital painting some like it instead if an artist proves technical skill by not painting directly over a photo, but I’m not out to prove anything that way…I painted on large plywood canvases and did inks for several decades (and was doing painting on photos in the 70s, which is quite different) and am very settled in the attitude that art is what one makes of something rather than how. But because of the preference of some for doing it without a base I call it aq digital painting/photo collage, and sometimes I will leave in a transparent bit of grain here and there.

   I don’t use filters, do all the painting by hand with the pen, working in multiple layers. Filters for this just wouldn’t work–filters look like filters andI want complete control. Not only is there too much detail but the painting isn’t a copy of the photo. It can appear to be a copy sometimes but everything is different. Colors are different. I leave out and I put in. (I’d say the colors are as different as the Hanford ones where I start with a black and white photo and paint over it in color.) And a lot of it boils down to choices of brush strokes and how you layer your colors. You don’t have the physicial medium of paint but there’s a lot in brush stroke going on. A lot of layering of different strokes in the multiple layers to give a sense of depth.

   So what one does with every stroke is a choice and makes a difference and though I’m obviously working with a photo I like and want something of the feel of it, there’s a lot of change so that certain things stand out. I left out above a lot of things that I considered to be distracting details. Such as in the food court area there was extraneous stuff to be removed that distracted the eye and parts of the food court to be thus reconstructed. Sometimes after painting I’ll add some line contouring to bring out certain aspects too, such as the couple in the foreground and the lamps here. With the El Azteca painting I completely removed any people. In the Fellini’s painting I added a bicyclist and clouds. There’s always rearranging of elements.

   Most of the art I work with at about 30 to 36 inches width at 300 dpi though it can be printed out larger or smaller–and at 30 to 36 inches at 300 dpi they usually total out about 230 mb in information in the multiple layers (which is minimized when I flatten the layers at the end)…which is why I work at the size I do because it keeps it somewhat manageable without my computer tending to freeze up (actual size on the computer is then quite often about 9000 pixels and I work at that actual size). So high definition. With the Girl With Toy at the Fair painting it ended up taking around 45 hours. It all depends. Sometimes it takes much less but 30 to 45 hours for the more detailed paintings is fairly consistent, sometimes concentrated and sometimes over a space of several weeks or months. The Maswik Lodge painting only ended up taking around 13 hours when I thought it would take much longer.

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5. 

   MelGX

   January 15, 2007

   Well, the end result is stunning. I’m about to try something similar to the painting on photo process you described. Imagers Printing (and other digital printers), will print digital images to large format canvas sheets. I have several favorite photos to print on canvas that I will then stretch and paint directly over. I love the process of painting in oils, but never enjoyed the chore of rendering the image from scratch. I can’t wait to try it and hope it will be pure fun.

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6. 

   Idyllopus

   January 15, 2007

   Now that would be fun. Don’t imagine you’ll be putting what you’re doing on the Democracy blog, so if you start a personal blog where you’ll be chronicling all this let me know so I can follow it.

   One thing I do miss is texture. I worked with oils a long time ago then switched to acrylic because I layered on texture so thick that even in acrylic it would take a while to dry. I really enjoy working in Photoshop–a completely different process–but part of the reason I started doing it is economy financially and space wise. We live in a small apartment and I don’t have a studio…and also financially I don’t have the resources to paint mutliple large canvases.

   Plus, with having had my own dark room once and having painted on photos in the past, in a sense I was phasing back into that, but this time digitally.

   Glad you like the art. Thanks for commenting.

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