Painters and Visual Artists

In the first picture below I can appreciate the artist's talent and technical ability to recreate a scene. In the second one, I don't know what to say because I just don't get it.

 

For some reason, I really suck at getting skin tones right, but on my two monitors, this photo of Doris Day came out pretty good. Crap, now that I'm looking at it for the first time in a few years I think I made her pupils too vibrant.

 

So, is that your feeling, that you just "don't get it," when it comes to all abstract art? The difference between those two works is that the first one is meant to appear close to the way it visually would, in reality. The Picasso work, obviously, is not trying to mimic the imagery of life, as we perceive it through our eyes. That said, I should hasten to add that what makes the top image, by Ridgeway Knight, so compelling for me, is not merely the superficial reproduction of the subject, but the idea evoked for me, by the scene. As I had said: to me, "Hailing the Ferry," is really about the idea of crossing over, from life, into death (as per the ancient belief in Charon, the Ferryman over the River Styx).

So Picasso tries to go more directly to the ideas of what his image is representing, without getting overly caught up in literal representation. Therefore, you have to think of it as more of a symbolic image. Still, of course, all images are visual. Really appreciating the artistic element, then, of an abstract work, would be dependent on finding some appeal in its graphic design. Can I assume that you do find some abstract visual patterns-- of any sort: tiling; mandalas; crystalline structures; super enlarged, microscopic images, or telescoping images of the cosmos-- to be pleasing to view? If so, you may just need to think of abstract art more in that way, instead of comparing it to what the objective subject, is "supposed to look like." Instead, try to focus on the actual markings; things like color and form (appearance; the type of "lines" which make up any visual image) do have a psychological effect on us, and convey meaning, far beyond merely the texture of a thing. Compare these images: do they all produce the exact same reaction, from you?







































I am far from done; I'm trying to show how not only the texture, but also the color, and the arrangement, of a design will change the impression one gets from it. I will continue these, in the next post.

 

Continued, next post.

 

"Abstract" images, #3.































































One more to come!

 

Abstract images, #4. @Steve N












































So, do those all "feel" identical, to you? If you're curious, 33 of those images, are of pollen. One is a bacteria. And one is mold.



P.S.-- Just a reminder. While I'd said, in the first post, that all images are still visual-- we could add that all visual images, since they are constructed by our minds, are also symbolic.

 

For the record, I'm a fan of some of Chagall's work, whether it be his paintings or stained glass.

 

And that's okay. Picasso was quite open about the fact that when he took his art in an abstract direction he was taking it in a personal direction. That's quite different than what you see with Alphonse Mucha's murals where the took his art in a public direction.

 

For the record, the first picture Steve cited, was Hailing the Ferry, by the American Naturalist painter, Daniel Ridgway Knight (from page 1).

http://www.politicalforum.com/index.php?threads/painters-and-visual-artists.610164/#post-1074228370

 

@Talon and @Steve N

Since I'd given this artist short shrift, compared to others I've covered (his works' compositions, do tend to lack variety), I decided to include some more of his work. This is the same artist that Steve said he could appreciate his talent.


The Shepherdess of Rolleboise







Note, in this next one, Ridgway Knight did occasionally, at least, vary his effect. Here, it makes me think of a photographic negative image, and I find it striking.


Girl By A Stream







While you had pointed out, Talon, that the Surreal ambiance of some of the Naturalist painters' work came from their combining of superreal figures, within landscapes that were a little more Impressionist, Ridgway Knight seems to reverse that, being generally better at the landscape, than the figures:

By the Water's Edge








A Harvest Lunch






Note to Steve: are you paying attention to the skies?



Gathering Roses







Especially for Talon: the word I had used regarding many of the Chagall works, to set them at a lower level than high art-- "decorative"-- (as well as, in this case, "illustrative") could also be used to describe this next, still appealing, painting, The Gardener's Daughter








The figures in this next one, again, aren't the best, but I like the overall Impressionist effect, the composition, and the chiaroscuro (dark & light).

Jeanne On the Terrace







Here are a couple,in which he focused more on the figure, than on the landscape.

The Water Carrier








Peasant Girl

 

Now these paintings I can fully appreciate. Regarding the skies, I color what’s already there and don’t typically add one. I’ll show you one in my next post.

 

I added a sky to this pic because there wasn’t anything there originally except gray. So I found a pic of a sky, converted it to black and white, darkened it and then added a two or three color gradient which gives it that light and dark blue look. The street reflections gave me fits and I was beginning to think I wouldn’t be able to complete the pic after spending tons of hours on it. So what I did was copy the stuff I already put color, flipped it upside down, warped it to shape and changed the blending mode.

@Talon this was mostly done using channels for the selections and you know how slow that goes.

Anyway, Times Square 1942

 

What’s frustrating is after not seeing this picture for a long time, as soon as I saw it again today I see all of my mistakes and things I’d now do differently.

 

Pardon me for interjecting here, but to the point I made to Steve, another difference might be the audiences Knight and Picasso were painting for. I'm the furthest thing from a Knight expert, but from what I've read Knight's paintings were very popular and I presume that is because, unlike Picasso, he painted for a popular audience. While I can appreciate a lot of abstract art, I also recognize that it is not a style that is going to appeal to a broad audience, and when artists start creating art for art's sake they are really venturing into the esoteric and narrowing down their audience. As you know, these are decision the artist makes.

To reinforce the point/difference, you mentioned the idea that the artist evoked for you, and while I might be wrong, I infer from your comments that this was deliberate on Knight's part, as it was similarly deliberate on Mucha's part when he painted The Slav Epic. That's quite different from the scenario where an artist is painting what a subject evokes in his or her self, as Picasso often did (there were a few exceptions of course, such as Guernica).

Thus the artist plays a role in and assumes responsibility for who and what he/she is painting for, and consequently who and what their art appeals to. It's not entirely on the audience to "get" what an artist is getting for themselves.

On the other hand, there's something to be said for art that can be interpreted in many different ways, and often artists deliberately create art with that intent in mind....

 

Or are they figurative?

Beautiful color photography in some of those images....

 

It's funny - lately I've been reading a lot about the French Revolution, the revolts in the provinces (the so-called Federalist Revolts) and the Reign of Terror, and Knight's paintings reminded me of a painter who depicted scenes from the guerrilla war - the Chouannerie - that took place in northwestern France:



Défense de Rochefort-en-terre, 1885

His name is Alexandre Bloche, and lo and behold:

Alexandre Bloch
(29 May 1857–11 November 1919) was a French academic painter, specialising in military subjects.

Biography[edit]
Bloch was born in the Boulevard de la Chapelle, 18th arrondissement of Paris.[1] He was a pupil of Jean-Léon Gérôme and Jules Bastien-Lepage. He first exhibited at the Salon in 1880. He was a painter of genre scenes but also of historical patriotic subjects, exhibiting pictures at the Salon of episodes from the Chouannerie and the Franco-Prussian War...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandre_Bloch

No doubt, you'll find Bastien-Lepage's name familiar, and some of his work has been posted in this thread.

Here's another one of Bloche's pieces, La Mort de Henri de La Rochejaquelein, which depicts the death and burial of the young Vendéan general Henri de La Rochejaquelein, who was shot by two Republican soldiers pretending to surrender:



As it turns out, there are many fine paintings of the scenes from the Chouannerie and the war in the Vendée, and not surprisingly the artists who depicted the ferocious civil war in the French countryside (primarily from 1793 to 1796) were Naturalists and Realists.

I'll post a few more examples of these paintings below.

(cont.)

 

(cont. from above)



Henri de La Rochejaquelein at the Battle of Cholet in 1793, by Paul-Émile Boutigny

Detail:



...and this is Le massacre de Machecoul by François Flameng:



...finally, the very painterly Episode de la guerre des Chouans by Jules Girardet:

 

Nice.

How hella huge is your working file?

 

If you're referring to that display on the bottom left of the screen that gives you the layer count and other info, the more complex pictures can go over 1 gig, but when I save them the PSD file is usually between 15 and 40 megs.

If you want to see a pic that took two and a half months to complete and went way over a gig in file size, check this one out. Again, that was mostly done in channels. The newspaper on the bottom right indicates this pic was taken on June 2, 1942. As you can see, I suck at getting skin tones right. The PSD size is 45 megs.

 

I was just trying to show Steve that elements of line, shape, color, texture, grouping, arrangement, composition, of an image, can affect a person's impressions, even if they don't recognize what it's supposed to be.

 

@Steve N

15MB is nothing. 40MB ain't bad either.

I think you showed me that some time back. Nice work - you've got WAY more patience than I do.

I wouldn't say you suck at getting skin tones right. You did a great job with the Ansel Adams pic and the Black dudes in the general store photo, and the ones you're not happy with just need a little tweaking.

If you're open to some constructive criticism I've noticed a couple of similarities in the skin tones you haven't been happy with:





The first similarity I'm seeing is that the skin tones are a bit pale (more so in the woman in the top pic than the man in the bottom pic). I know you're trying to be judicious with the amount of color you're using, and that's what makes your pieces work, but I think you could have pushed a little more color into the flesh tones in the man's face (arms look pretty good to me) and the woman's face and arms, and personally I would try to keep that color on the warm side. When skin tones get too light they tend to get too cool, and I don't know about you, but cool skin tones never look right to me. Better to be a tad warm than a tad cool, imo.

Second thing, and I think this is a bigger issue, is the lack of contrast in the White people's facial features. The rest of both of these images have very strong contrast, which is nice, and that includes the contrast in the Black men's facial features, but the facial features in the White people look a bit washed out and flat. I think if you had better contrast in their facial features you'd be happier with their skin tones. From a technical standpoint, there are a couple of ways you could fix that, either by using the Burn Tool or if you've got those areas isolated in a mask selection, you could use the Curves or Brightness/Contrast tools (I would not use Levels). You could also Burn and Curve, which is what I did when I played around with it, but do whatever works for you. My first inclination is to use the Burn Tool and I would use a very small soft-edged brush (down to 2 pixels) and pull the exposure way back (20-25%) so I am very gradually burning the density into the details. I just experimented with the woman's face real quick and a little bit of Curving and just a touch of Burning really helped, but it doesn't need much. As I said earlier, it just needs a little tweaking.

FWIW, when I used the Curves tool to get more density in the details without darkening the skin tone in the face I did this:



I created a Mask and then just dragged the Black level straight across the bottom (bottom arrow) while anchoring the Midtone in place (top arrow), which also served to keep the Highlight level where it was. That's the main thing I love about Curves - you can make adjustments within a narrow range of light and color.

Like I said, it doesn't need much. As you can see I didn't push any more color into the face and I don't think the Curves tool alone is going to get you where you want to be.

In parting, I'll say this, too, and I presume you are already aware of this - when you're working in RGB video color/light, there's nothing more difficult than taking that color and light and trying to make earth and skin tones with it. Its like printing in CMYK color where you're trying to make mud out of a bunch of bright colors. It's not as easy as one might think.

 

Steve

Here's a little comparison - keep in mind the adjustments I made were done very quickly, so I wasn't being as precise as I could be. No adjustment in the color, either, just the details in the face:

Original:



Quick Curve and Burn:



A little goes a long way here, and perhaps it could use a little more, but you can see what I'm getting at. A little airbrushing might be required, too (?).

 

Another one in a million ways to skin a Photoshop cat -

Original:



Quick Burn, Curve, Auto Contrast and Curve again:



It might need a little more work, but the Auto Contrast not only created more contrast, it pushed a nice flesh tone in there on its own.

Airbrushing a little White in the eyes might be a good idea, too....

 

@Talon i like your ideas and will use them in the future, thanks. There’s a guy on Facebook who does killer skin tones and all he said was to try the Blend-If feature. I briefly tried that but it will take a lot of experimentation to get a grasp on it.

Here is a pic I’m sort of happy with. It’s Yvonne DeCarlo, you know her as Lily Munster. The skin on her face probably has less than ten colors in all. Women can be easier than men because with all their makeup no one knows what they should look like.

 

By adding more contrast you brought out the pink highlights I put on her cheeks, nose and eyes that I made real subtle. Had I gone too far with those highlights it would not have looked right. But what you did was great. Gonna need to keep your ideas in my head.