Why I've Been AWOL

I haven't posted here recently and I feel I owe an explanation. Unfortunately, it is an explanation I wish I didn't have to use.

My wife, Pam, was diagnosed with leukemia (AML) two years ago. She went through chemotherapy and quickly went into remission. We recently found out that she has relapsed. We are now in the process of preparing for a bone marrow transplant. We will be temporarily relocating from Overland Park, KS to Omaha, NE. Pam will be receiving her transplant at the University of Nebraska Medical Center.

Over the past 2 years, I've necessarily had to learn more about hematology and AML than I ever wanted to know. A bone marrow transplant—actually, a peripheral blood stem cell transplant (PBSCT} these days—is a pretty amazing process. Bone marrow is the "factory" that generates our red and white cells, as well as platelets. Red cells are responsible for supplying oxygen. White cells fight infection, and platelets coagulate blood to prevent bleeding. This triumvirate is our immune system. A PBSCT effectively replaces the donor's malfunctioning immune system with a new replacement.

The most perfectly matched transplant is between siblings. In Pam's case, this is not an option (Her only sister was tested and was not a match—there is only a 25% chance that they would match). The alternative is an matched unrelated donor (MUD) transplant. Through genetic testing, several markers (HLA) can be identified that both the donor and patient share in common. Currently, a "10 out of 10" match is considered optimal. We were fortunate to learn that there are currently two of this level of potential donors for Pam (The donor base is administered by the National Bone Marrow Program).

A bone marrow transplant is not without potential complications. Following the transplant, the patient has no immune system and is at risk for a variety of infections. Post-transplant care has improved over the years and a variety of immuno-suppressive drugs are available to fight and counteract infection. A bone marrow transplant is the only form of transplant procedure in which the donor immune system can potentially view the patient as a foreign entity. As a result, Graft vs. Host Disease (GVHD) is a potential long-term complication. A small amount of GVHD is desirable—any residual leukemic cells are veiwed by the donor immune system as foreign and are eradicated. Severe GVHD can be life-threatening or even fatal. Again, a variety of immuno-suppressive drugs have been developed to counteract GVHD. Chronic GVHD can impact long-term patient quality of life by impacting various organs, skin, etc.



This is a photo I took of Pam and I for our 25th anniversary. I shot it just a few days before we found out Pam had relapsed. We drove up from Overland Park to Omaha today. Pam enters the Med Center tomorrow to begin the process of induction chemotherapy to destroy her leukemic marrow in preparation for the transplant. When we left, we realized that a chapter of our lives was ending and a new one beginning. We don't know what the future holds for us, but we are both positive thinkers and believe that we will come through this to eventually arrive at a "new normal".

Life Happens.

-john

New Work...Finally!

I've finally gotten the time to do some new work. The past few months have been filled with producing the Corel Painter Essentials 4 video tutorials. During this time, I somehow managed to shoehorn in co-teaching a couple of workshops with Darrell Chitty. We did some live model sessions that dressed in Civil War-era costumes.


I used a shot from this series to work on further distancing my work from its photographic source. As more photographers are jumping on the expressive photographic interpretation bandwagon, I feel that it will be essential to employ aggressive techniques that erase the photographic underpinnings of the work. This is what I will be concentrating on as I continue to evolve my techniques.

On the Shoulders of Giants

As a youngster interested in art and illustration, I found inspiration on the covers and pages of magazines like Saturday Evening Post and Ladies Home Journal. This was the ‘50’s and ‘60’s, an era known as the Golden Age of magazine illustration. Personal computers and Corel Painter were the stuff of science fiction. Compelling illustration demanded expert drawing and painting skills. Illustrators like Al Parker, Coby Whitmore, and Albert Dorne were among the superheros of the medium.

When a magazine arrived in the mailbox, I would pour over the illustrations and marvel at the magnificent creativity of the illustrations within. I collected these illustrations and endlessly studied them. Eventually, my collection evaporated with the passage of time. Photography and digital art have since replaced this traditional art form. If only I could once again access these long lost inspiring resources!

Thanks to the very technology that has replaced classic advertising illustration, it is now possible to once again study and draw inspiration from the golden age of illustration. Canadian illustrator and Painter user Leif Peng maintains an excellent blog, Today’s Inspiration, dedicated to the magazine illustration’s glory days. Leif is probably one of the most knowledgeable individuals around with respect to classic illustration and his Today’s Inspiration blog is on my daily reading list.

It is fascinating to read about the careers and techniques employed by these artists. For example, Leif documents how the popularity of gouache designer’s colors affected a change in 50’s illustration style. Even more so, it is highly educational to learn how these illustrators approached their art. The content may have changed, but the principles of design remain highly relevant today.

Leif additionally maintains an incredible library of high-resolution scans of illustration from the golden age on the Flickr photo-sharing site. This resource has enabled me to once again enjoy and study the illustrators I grew up admiring. There are hundreds of examples archived. You can check out this collection via Classic Illustrators by Name.

In reacquainting myself with the illustration heroes of my youth, it has become apparent to me that these artists’ work was a big influence on my desire to emulate the techniques that they employed. This desire ultimately found its way into many of Painter’s tools as we originally developed it. Consequentially, it is a real pleasure to see the echoes of these giants of illustration appear in many Painter artists’ work today.

Whether for pleasure or education, Leif’s blog and illustration archive provide a valuable resource to learn from past masters. Thanks to the golden age of illustration, Painter in part strives to embody the tools of this era.

We are truly standing on the shoulders of giants.

Pixels and Pigments

A confluence of technology and tradition is serving to advance digitally created art to a new level of acceptance and appreciation. A traditional art material—pigment, has joined with a relatively new building block of art—pixels, to provide an apt vessel for digital imagery.

Unlike traditional media, digitally created art has been sorely lacking in permanence. Early digital art was largely confined to the monitor. No electricity, no art. Twenty years ago, emerging ink-jet printing technology utilized fugitive dye-based inks—a print exposed to light would begin to fade within months.

Beyond the fading issue, there was the drawback of the non-archival papers supplied with the printers. Attempting to alternatively print on an archival 100% cotton rag paper resulted in a fuzzy image as the applied ink spread into the uncoated surface.

In the intervening years, ink-jet technology has advanced to archival inks and image receivers, including canvas and fine art papers. Art created with Corel Painter can now safely exist in a format that will preserve it with the same permanence as traditional art media. So, the revolution is over? Not by a long shot.

There is a current in the wind these days—the merging of pixels and pigments. Now that pixel-based art can be safely applied to traditional art surfaces like fine art paper and canvas, artists are coming full circle and beginning to embellish these prints with their traditional corresponding mediums. Why?

One of the weak points of digitally created art has been its lack of physicality. Traditional paintings, for example, possess a strong physical component. A painting’s viewer primarily focuses on the pictorial subject matter. However, the presence of the canvas weave, the brush-stroked surface buildup—even the frame—all subtly contribute to the total experience of the painting as object. These tactile qualities imbue an art object with a sense of uniqueness, as well as permanence.

Printing Painter art onto canvas or fine art paper is a big first step towards marrying pixels and traditional media. Embellishing these printed results with mediums like oils or charcoal projects the final work into the realm of a unique object, much like a traditional monoprint. Even if multiples of the image are produced, no two will be exactly alike due to the random variances of the artist’s hand.

We are fortunate to be living during a pivotal point in the evolution of expressive image-making technology. Like the printing press, the computer has enabled an entirely new way of communicating. This new medium melds the old with the new, providing a comfortable—yet revolutionary—form of unique expression embodying the malleability of pixels with the permanence and uniqueness of pigments.

Viva la Revolution!

Smart Strokes and the Drawing-Challenged

A lively debate focusing on Painter X's new Smart Stroke feature has been going on recently within the online Painter community. Smart Strokes are applied to an existing image, usually a photograph, to produce a result that mimics the character of a medium-specific, hand-rendered image. Some artists using Painter view assistive technology like Smart Strokes as a form of "cheating" that de-values learned draghtsmenship.

I am not of this opinion. I believe in anything that enables an individual to experience and utilize an expressive creative tool. In particular, photographers are already artists in their own right. Technology like Smart Strokes simply enables them to take their photography to a new level of expression.

This debate is in parallel to the introduction of photography in the mid-19th century. The traditional salon-based painting establishment was very derisive of "souless" photography in its early years. Over the course of several decades, photographers discovered the unique qualities of the lens and shutter—motion blur, frozen motion, stroboscopic flash, etc.—creating a unique visual vocabulary that established photography as an art form. Today, no one questions photography's artistic validity.

We are now in an era where the expressive paint brush interacts efortlessly with the photograph. Once again, it is the traditional rendering-based artist segment that views the application of photography in expressive media as a form of creative crutch. I'm convinced that history will repeat itself and this will become a non-argument as artists discover the unique qualities of the intermixing of painting and photography.

Smart Strokes is not a press-here-to-make-art tool. To use this technology successfully requires careful selection of source imagery combined with an intelligent application of media. Smart Strokes frees the "drawing-challenged" to focus on the expressive character of an image without the need to come to the party with pre-existing hand-rendering skills.

Of course, it is possible to simply use the default settings to produce a painted result. And the final image will possess a sameness with other images created using the same settings. This is where the expressive power of Smart Strokes comes into play. Individual decisions—the choice of medium, when to halt the process, the application of additional brushes—are what creates an individually unique expression. The selective addition of finalizing "grace notes", either by hand or by auto-painting, will further imbue the image with expressive individuality. In the process, the photographer may come to realize that the learning of hand rendering is a valuable addition to their skill set.

Perhaps, in the future, the expressive photographic interpretation will be viewed in hindsight as a blending of media similar to the hand-tinted photograph. This technique was popular prior to the introduction of color negative and transparency film. In its heyday, hand-tinted photographs were a popular expressive addition to black-and-white portraits, provided the subject with an enhanced reality. Today, these images have the nostalgic charm of a bygone era.

In the years to come (probably not decades—as was the case in the technolgoically-slower-developing era photography came from) artist-photographers will discover the unique characteristics of intermingled expressive painting and photography, creating a new visual vocabulary of which we are not yet conversant. Smart Strokes is one step in this direction.

It will be interesting to watch and see this new vocabulary emerge.

In Search of Personal Style

I recently taught a workshop for portrait photographers. While working with this group, I was struck by the fact that each photographer had a distinct style. For instance, one had a strong sense of color; another made great use of shadow and highlight. I began to think about what style is and how an artist acquires it.

During their formative years, artists focus much attention on these questions of style, and art students often question whether they have their own styles. A good approach to developing style is to look closely at the work of well-known artists whose styles you are drawn to. As a learning aid, try to emulate these artists’ unique styles. In doing so, some of what you emulate will likely rub off on your own work. By emulating existing styles, you will begin to develop a personal stylistic vocabulary that you can use to balance your personal preferences. As your personal art matures, these bits and pieces of other artists’ influences will be absorbed into a look that is unique to you.

Style is an elusive beast. The more you concentrate on it, the harder it is to obtain. Conversely, if you simply keep producing art over an extended period, you’re likely to discover that a style—your own—has crept into your work.

In a basic sense, everyone already has the essence of a personal graphic style. Try writing your name, and take a close look at it. You created this complex expressive gesture effortlessly. No one else can sign your name exactly as you do. This is style in its purest form. It manifests itself only through repetition.

If you use the default settings of the brush variants in Corel Painter, your images are likely to resemble those of other artists who have used the same variants. Play with the brush variants you are interested in, and try making adjustments to them. Corel Painter retains these changes. In fact, the more you use and adjust your customized brush variants, the more effectively you can use them as tools for self-expression.

Although Corel Painter has an abundance of brushes, try not to fall into the trap of thinking that more is better within a single image. As a general rule, I don’t use many different brush variants at the same time. When the early desktop publishing applications became available in the mid-1980s, people unfamiliar with typography suddenly had dozens of fonts available to use within their printed materials. Being somewhat naive, these users quickly established what has been called the “Ransom Note School of Design.” This type of graphic work was quickly identifiable: a single page of type would typically contain every font style available to the so-called designer. The moral of this story is that in good design, less is more. The same axiom applies to the number of brush variants used within a single image. Restricting the variety of mark-making tools helps the image maintain an inner consistency.

This is not to say that you should not experiment with a wide variety of brush variants — you just shouldn’t use them all within the same image. A good alternative is to set up a test image, on which you can try out several brush variants that interest you. Let the various marks intersect and affect each other. This kind of creative play can lead to unique expressive discoveries that you may end up using in your work. In time, these discoveries may become part of your unique personal style.

Is style a big deal and should you be concerned about it? In the long run, probably not. Given enough time, an individual’s sense of style typically develops on its own. It is a good practice to analyze and understand what makes your art unique. Getting into an artistic rut is often the result of relying on an established personal style without working to move beyond it. In the best circumstances, one’s personal style is a continually evolving entity. Some aspects of your style tenaciously remain, despite your artistic evolution. Other facets are discarded when they are no longer crucial to your personal expression.

So, how do you attain and perfect your own personal style? The same way a pianist gets to Carnegie Hall — practice, practice, practice. And practice makes perfect.