Painters and Visual Artists

I was wondering about that. The Auto Contrast must have grabbed those colors and ramped them up. I thought it was too good to be true that it would produce such a nice flesh tone on its own.

You might want to try using the Auto Contrast alone before going through all the time and work of Burning and Curving. What you saw was done afterwards, so I don't know what results you'll get. You may still need to do both.

By the way, if the Auto Contrast comes out too dark you can always lighten it up using Curves. In this case, you just want to brighten the Midtones, so click in the center of the grid to grab the Midtones



and then push up and out diagonally towards the Highlights (going the other way will darken the image)



It will lighten up the area you're adjusting without messing up the contrast.

I used to use Levels a lot but once I got the hang of using the Curves tool I hardly use Levels any more. Curves gives you a lot more control adjusting an image.

 

You're welcome.

Be sure to keep that Auto Contrast feature in mind - it's really quick and handy and it works surprisingly well (as we just saw). It appears to work much along the lines of the Curves tool but it seems that there's more going on with it than that.

I can't say I've ever worked with that....

If there's one thing I can be really picky about it's skin colors (thank you George Nan!) and that came out nice, particularly in the face.

Again, I don't think you suck at getting flesh tones right - I think you just need to put a little more time into getting your flesh tones right, which is an entirely different thing. I've found that when I'm struggling with a piece it helps to step away from it for a while, then come back later with fresh eyes and work on it some more. If I have to walk away and go back into it again (and again and again) that's fine. It's all a process. It's always a process.

To reinforce my point, I'm going to tell you a little story about a test one of my art professors, Richard Carlyon, put us through when I was in college. He had us work on a drawing of some sort that I recall being rather tedious and he let us work on it for about a half hour and then he walked around the room and showed each and every one of us exactly where in our artwork our interest/attention span started breaking down. When he showed me where mine broke down I could see it immediately myself. It was remarkable, and it was a really helpful lesson because it taught me that when you're working on a piece, especially one that is demanding a lot of time, effort and attention, you need to know when to stop and walk away from it and when to come back later with fresh eyes and energy and put more work in it. Most important of all, you keep working on it until you're happy with it. Once you're happy with it, then you're done.

 

Folks, what do you think of this one? When I took on this photo I’d been only colorizing pics for a year or two and back then I didn’t know I could select stuff, so this was done entirely with manual brush strokes. Also, at that time, I didn’t know I could adjust the exposure, had I known that I coulda I woulda.

The little girl in the photo is my sister-in-law.

 

You've come a long way, baby.

Nice job considering the original you had to work with (flash washed out the foreground?). Any idea when the photo was taken?

I'm guessing that's a Christmas shot - the bug-eyed expression on the little girl's face is priceless.

My wife just came back from Mississippi with a picture of her and her sister when they were little girls - it's adorable. She said her mom, who recently passed away, used to like to dress them up in the same outfit for those portrait sessions, and apparently my wife, the older of the two, didn't particularly appreciate that.

 

Talon, thanks. The photo was taken in the early 60s, that's pretty much all I know because the two adults in the pic are no longer with us.

The pic your wife came back with, were you able to fix it up for her?

 

I figured it was taken from around then. I seem to recall we had a similar fridge when I was a wee lad.

Fortunately, it didn't need any fixing on my part - the photography and printing were professional quality and her mom took care of it over the years. Being from a small town in Mississippi I don't know where they got the portrait done, but I wouldn't be surprised if they drove over to Tupelo where Elvis Presley was from.

She also came back with a drawing or painting of her great grandmother which was rather interesting. That thing has got to be real old....

 

You’ve seen my attempts to colorize old photos where success often depends on the quality of those photos. Here’s my experiment in quickly tossing color on a modern black and white photo. Forgive my mistakes, I wasn’t aiming for perfection. Here is the before and after. It was difficult to select the tattoo, but I did it and fuct up on the color. There are more colors in her face than what you’d think.

 

Since the b&w photo is pretty "blah," the color is a nice addition. However, I think it was a mistake for you to also lighten the background-- keeping it dark, would make the woman's form "pop" all the more, into the third dimension. If you don't want me pulling any punches, I would nitpick on your reproduction of the lighting-- in short, I think you slightly overdid the intensity. Lastly, for some reason I can't explain, her eyes feel a bit dead, to me. But I still think the overall, colorized image, is more appealing than the original one.

 

All right, let me get your honest opinions, for an actual discussion, here. These are all contemporary, abstract artists.

 

I actually prefer Hunter Biden's work to this. I really don't see the 'talent' behind this kind of work.

 

How about you, @Talon --
care to offer any opinion?

http://www.politicalforum.com/index...-visual-artists.610164/page-9#post-1074288495

 

What do you guys think of these restorations? The first one was a challenge, the second two I restored for friends. Once again, after not seeing these pics for a few years, I immediately see things I would do differently today.

 

While I am waiting for Talon to hopefully give me his impression of the abstract artwork I'd posted, above, I will take a brief jaunt into something that @FatBack brought up earlier: the role of drugs, in artwork. The point I had tried to make, was that the drugs, while playing a role, there was no reason to credit with entire movements in art, or with the direction of human artwork, in general.

There are, however, certain images which are direct results from drug use. It has been suggested this is true even if some ancient cave and rock art. However, I will focus here on more confirmable examples. My point, will be the way that artwork is like getting a glimpse at someone else's perspective, and so how it is possible to affect one's own perspective, if only temporarily, by taking a deep enough look at reality, through another's eyes.

Most of the following pictures were created while on, or at least inspired by the appearance of things (often, when the tripper's eyes had been shut), while on mescaline. There are perhaps a couple, under the influence of other psychedelic drugs, like LSD and, this first one, associated with psilocybin mushrooms.






This, btw, Rita/Fatback, is more truly fractile in nature (if it had been you, who'd made that comment, about the Picasso work).










This next one, appears to be a textile:

















































Continued, next post

 

If I could only paint the things I had seen in my mushroom days. Many heroic doses, taken did I....but alas.... It's just not something I feel like I need to be doing any longer.

So much fun..... Like a clandestine Easter egg hunt for adults.

Though I have never done DMT, I hear that DMT produces some of the most stunning visual images.

I believe one of your images above is from a painter possibly known as Alex Gray and it is said that much of his work is DMT inspired

 

Mescaline images, post #2.

Just a couple of observations. In the first post, we saw a number, using geometric patterns, sometimes creating a mandala type image. While that is not the effect of these black and white images, many seem to have a web-like structure, or at least show things as tied together, as in some type of network. In the miniature images, impregnating some of the designs, I see a connection to some of the previously posted work of Chagall, which also had these subtle background images, inhabiting the background. These images, however, seem of a much different character, evoking the infernal, or even apocalyptic images, of Hieronymus Bosch, or at least connoting crawly, insect like creatures (maybe akin to the occult vision of Lovecraft?). Make sure to look closely, to not miss them.






























Here is one, reminiscent of Picasso (a lot of his portraits, as of Dora Maar, were built with triangle-based structures):







This seems to me, a nice depiction of the woods (putting me a little in mind of the T.H. Rousseau masterpiece, I'd shown, earlier)








I find this one kind of cool, as well. I am assuming this was inspired by plants, but it reads as having a somewhat anthropomorphic quality, like trees in am enchanted forest. The most interesting part, are all the little silhouettes, like Halloween cut outs, along the upper crest.




















One more (at least), to go.

 

Mescaline post, #3.


What I like about these first three, are the way that they resemble staves of sheet music:
















Below this point, the images are all inspired by PEYOTE (so I am guessing that Native Americans painted many of them):

































This last one, comes with notes (@FatBack ):




A typical yarn artwork by a Mexican Huicol tribe healer, featuring psychoactive Solandra plants, peyote cactus, deer tail, and vivid glowing colours and textures induced by these plants, is among the subjects in the continuing debate of the role of natural and induced trance in culture. Froese e tal (2014) use this image in a psychology paper on trance as the ‘origin’ of culture. But this artwork also subconsciously expresses about 54% of the optional recurrent features from the currently known set of archetypal features and spacing, or mindprint structure (Furter 2014) , as all complex artworks do worldwide (see two similar Huicol artworks below). The structuralist anthropology model resolves disputes about the supposed ‘origin, development, evolution’ diffusion and changes’ in culture. Subconscious archetypal re-expression demonstrates that culture is an extension of nature.

Froese, Woodward & Ikegami (2014) noted that visual hallucinations of abstract shapes during trance, have a ”relatively autonomous self-organisation, as a source of intrinsic value related to their self-maintenance as a pattern of activity, and thus decouple ‘higher level’ stages of neural processing from external stimulation, to facilitate a more abstract mode of cognition” and of culture in general. They see these brain functions as the “very first origins of art”. Many popular anthropology authors see drugs as the ‘origin’ of culture, despite growing recognition that all cultures and ages re-express the same core content.

Natural organisation, what Heidegger labelled ‘dighe’ as a feature of archetype that manifests into ‘physis’, is the basis of structuralist anthropology. Froese agrees that innate organisations “allows complex patterns of activity to emerge from basic cellular level, far beneath personal experience, as physiological universals of human experience (Sacks 2012). Yet there is a limited range of geometric patterns produced by current neural network models of the visual system.”




See more about the ‘origin of culture’ debate below. Here is a structuralist analysis of the archetypal features in this Mexican Huicol healer artwork. The analysis is in the standard format, to enable comparison with other artworks worldwide, and to expand the database for the frequency of the known recurrent features.



Mexican Huicol healer yarn textile artwork, with Solandara plant and peyote cactus (image after I.M. Villafuerte. Archetype labels by E Furter). Psychologists continue debating the role of natural and induced trance in culture. The structuralist model of subconscious archetypal re-expression demonstrates that culture is an extension of nature. This post includes three Huicol artworks.
Type; Character (noting archetypal features):

2 Builder; Moth B in flight (twist, ‘bird’, spring).

2c Basket; Peyote cap hair (weave, hat). C-types are between specific axes.

3 Queen; Moth A in flight (‘dragon’, spring).

4 King; Spirit (‘king’), in a corner (cardinal).

5 Priest; Spirit (large). Small artworks often combine two types in one character (Furter 2018: Stoneprint Journal 5; Culture code in seals and ring stamps).

5c Tail; Spirit’s lips (reveal). And solandra fumes (weave, tree/herb, reveal).

6 Exile; Solandra plant (‘horned’, tree), nearer the centre (ingress).

7 Child; Small (juvenile) cactus (formling, eyeless).

7g Gal.Centre; Solandra stem (juncture).

9 Healer; Deer nostril, NO EYE (a compromise typical of small artworks). Eating peyote (bent forward, heal, trance), or vomiting (bent forward, heal).

9c Lid; Peyote top (disc, hat, lid, reveal, ‘pillar’).

10 Teacher; Icon on long staff (staff, hunt-master, guard, metal? disc, school).

11 Womb; Healer’s midriff (womb).

13 Heart; Healer’s midriff (‘heart’). Small artworks often combine two types in one character (Furter 2018: Stoneprint Journal 5; Culture code in seals and ring stamps).

13c Head; Healer’s hair (oracle, head, hat, lid, weave, ‘tail’).

14 Mixer; Healer (transform, tree/herb, ‘angel’) as deer (antelope) in ritual (brew, dance).

15 Maker; Snake (reptile) spirit (winged).

15g Gal.Gate; Deer horn B (limb-joint).

Axle; Deer forehead (unmarked, as usual).

4p Gal.S.Pole; Deer horn A (limb-joint).

11p Gal.Pole; Small staff (juncture).

Celestial Pole /Midsummer; Healer’s tongue (limb-joint).

Celestial South Pole /Midwinter; Deer’s eye (a rare feature among polar points).

Age; The solstice markers are on the horizontal plane confirming, midsummer on axis 14 or Cancer, thus spring and the cultural time-frame in Age Aries, confirmed by type 3 being near the top centre.

Main theme of ‘Basket of Mysteries’ v ‘Revelation’

The main subconscious theme in this art work is revealed by extra features of the four transitional c-types:

Types 2c Basket, including weave, arm-link (two staffs), tool (staffs), snake (type 15); 9c Lid, of reveal, weave (fumes, hair, wings); 5c Tail, of tail, tree/herb, reveal; 13c Head, of oracle, hat. C-types are off the axial grid, but between specific axes.

Transitional types involve both of their adjacent main types. The high level of integration in this artwork is confirmed by four secondary themes, all adjacent to the c-types:

Types 2 Builder, including antelope (central face, and healer tail), spring (seasonal features); opposite 9 Healer, including pillar (cacti), heal (drugs), trance, or initiation.

Type 5 Priest, including colours (glowing ‘phosphenes’ seen in trance), hyperactive (ritual), tailcoat (of healer), assembly (ritual), antelope (central face, and healer’s tail), reptile (snake), winged (moths, snake and antelope antlers as ‘wings’).

Type 6 Exile, including horned, reptile, tree; opposite type 14 Mixer, of transform, tree/herb,angel, antelope, reptile, brew, or dance.



For those interested in delving more deeply, here is the website:

https://mindprintart.wordpress.com/2021/06/03/mexican-huicol-peyote-art-also-expresses-revelation/

 

I think it's pretty unusual how certain psychedelic drugs tend to cause their users to all see similar visual patterns.

One of the first things that I learned on mushrooms as far as in my mind.... Was the interconnectedness of all things.

That each one of us is but a tiny speck of this great big whole. Think of it as the internet that for predates the internet.

I never read that book called The book of pi.... But it makes me think that whether we like it or not.... We are all in a boat with a tiger.

That none of us can advance further, than the farthest one of us that we left behind.

 

It is possible to induce trance states, and to experience altered states of consciousness, not unlike drug-induced states, through drug-free means, as through drumming, dancing, chanting, fasting, and so forth, though these require much more commitment from the journeyman, than the quick consumption of a drug. One person told me it is possible to achieve this, just by drinking massive amounts of distilled water (so as to deplete yourself of electrolytes). It was something like 5 gallons, which seemed a bit insane.

Of course, physical exertion (stressful exercise) can have the same effect. I once had what might be considered a vision, on one of my jogs, in which I used to really push myself. I don't feel like telling that story at the moment, though.

Instead, I will relate the time I best recall, in which strictly a drug gave me an experience, which I had felt was, for me, something like Shamanic journeying. It was only marijuana, which I had used, though it was very good stuff: genuine Hawaiian weed, back when I lived on Oahu. I really believe that one's own mindset, which one brings to the experience, greatly effects the result. After going out for an evening walk by a canal and getting stoned, I came back to my small apartment, and stared at myself in the mirror, seeing my image transform into other things. They were rather bizarre, and could be thought of as frightening, but I stayed calm, and merely curious, as to what I would see.

After that, I sat in the dark, just staring at a candle I'd lit and held, for a long time, at close distance, intently focused upon the flame's seductively undulant dance. When I finally stopped staring at it, and closed my eyes, I continued seeing the flame. But my focus was drawn ever deeper within it, to the inner part of the flame, which looks different from its outer edges. As I moved into the expanding image, there was layer after layer of flame, like Russian nesting dolls, or a long, telescoping hallway of doorway after doorway, with the outer framework of each of the layers, being a different, vivid color. I saw many of these at once, as I moved deeper into the image, which I had no power to stop. The parade of flames seemed to stretch endlessly, with always another tiny central flame inside of the last, slowly growing larger and closer, as if I were inside of an infinitely unfolding accordion, or being swallowed by a teardrop shaped snake, muscled with a multicolored, neon gullet.


Interesting memory. I can still fairly well picture that onion-skinned flame, although this was 25 or so years ago.


But back to the psychedelic images in this thread-- I have one more, interesting category, coming up.

 

Why do I get the feeling this is a trick question?

They look like children's paintings to me. Then again, so does this Picasso (Young Painter, 1971):

 

I'm sure your synapses are grateful....not that I would know anything about that sort of thing.....

I've never done DMT either, although I saw a rather interesting show about it on Hamilton's Pharmacopeia.

Have you ever seen the video Tool did for the song "Vicarious"? It's got some seriously trippy Alex Gray stuff in it towards the end (6:10 forward)

 

It's certainly true that there is no going back and life will be different after use... I think it was overall beneficial in the great scheme of things even though some experiences were absolutely terrifying.

The rainy season is upon us here in Southwest Florida and there are tons of cows around and great hunting areas but I will leave that for the young men.

At least mushrooms don't cost a thing and you know there's no fentanyl in them. Just better be certain you know how to identify the correct ones.

Manna from heaven.

That tool video is an awesome one

 

I didn't think of it so much as a"trick," as just something for "fun." I will now share some of the artist names: The lion's share were by Luuk Khang; a couple were by Pang-Kod; and the first one was by the more famous Jojo.

If that wasn't clue enough, here are a couple of paintings, I'd held back:













Yes, these were all Pachyderm painters (elephants). But this was more about the idea of getting a sense of the artist's perspective. There were several attributes of these works, that struck me. One, was that most did not seem fixed in space, as one normally expects to see, in human paintings. To my mind, they did not seem to be floating, either, but rather, to be falling, as in this painting by Pang-Kod.





Also, many works I saw, had a very interesting element of 3-dimensional transparency, in the lightly sketched lines, alongside the darker ones. Unfortunately, I didn't grab most of those, though there is a slight sense of it in this one, by Luuk Khang, of which I like the style: there is an elegance to the lines, a somewhat Asian character and, again, that sense of something not well grounded in space, but falling (which is a description that I have heard used of our entire planet).





Also, a bit of the sense of seeing through a three dimensional object in this piece, by Jojo, which I nevertheless saw as less like the others, though I did like the very simple color palette.








The really funny part, though, is that just now, in using Google lens, to get the elephant artist names, I found that there are humans, doing similar work! I wonder if they were inspired by the elephant art. For starters, the second of my elephant paintings (for which I couldn't discover the artist's name), was matched by Google lens with these two paintings below it, by Peter Moelsted



















More to come, in the next post.

 

Comparison of Elephant &human paintings, continued.

This was the fourth of my original images, by the elephant Luuk Khang:







Compare this piece, by Julia Toledo:







Or this one, by Uwe Kowski:







Another Luuk Khang (I guess he is a favorite, for a lot of artists, beside myself). This one, btw, has a little bit of the falling in space attribute. I wonder if the hint of the multidimensional quality I see here, could reflect the idea of movement, of something shown in more than one position.






Now, compare this work, by Isabel Romero:









Luuk Khang, once more, alongside an artist who I think that you might appreciate, @Talon : Simon De Groot.












Here are a few more De Groot works, to finish this post. They combine a bit of the Cubist element you had liked (as in the August Macke piece), with the whimsicality of some of Chagall's work:


















I've got a couple of more, for the next post, if anyone's interested.

 

Post #3, comparing elephant & human paintings.

Lastly, I wanted to look once more at this, Pang-Kod painting:







And compare it to this work by Christel Haag:






And to this one, by Alfredo Garcia:







Here are a couple more, I'm actually not sure by who, that have really nice color, but that are more than just Turneresque blurs. Look at this first one. It is at once clear, and yet ambiguous. That is, I can see, at the bottom, a trail to a pond, ahead of the viewer and, at top, reflected in that pond, among some greenery poking out of the water, a small opening between the treetops, admitting a sliver of white light. This combining of two different perspectives, I find very cool. Or, I can also imagine that short path to a pond, as a much longer trail into the woods; the light shining through the treetops, I could even envision as just being reflected off the ground of ground in front of a walker, with his gaze fixed downward.






This one is OK, though I'm not nearly as fond of it as if the previous one, but I thought it possible that you might enjoy the color, Talon.

 

Well that detour has lead me to now want to go straight into modern art paintings, many of them abstract, which I did not realize I was as much a fan of, as suggested by all the interesting pieces I just came across. None of these artists, I don't think, are really big names; but if you can make a living, from your art, I consider you a successful artist.

@Steve N . Let me take one more stab, at trying to explain what makes a painting appealing, IMO. It is the creation of a psychological atmosphere. It represents the painter's reality, in a way that somehow resonates with the viewer's own life experience, so as to evoke feelings, memories, and emotions.

There is a good bit of variety, in the overall set (which will take several posts, to lay out). I'll try to arrange them, in some sensible order. I think you, and Talon, and maybe even Rita (@FatBack ), will find at least one piece here, that you like. I do not feel the same way about them all-- while I think they're all decent, there are some in the lot, I like much more than the others-- so it would be interesting to me, if we could actually have a group discussion, comparing our personal reactions (assuming anyone but me has a reaction: whether it be good, bad, or ugly).



I'll start with a more abstract piece, with somewhat of an Expressionist vibe, by Elena Christofides, called "Burst of Energy." Try looking, until you can see depth, in the scene or image, not just color on a flat surface. I see the areas in red, as two figures, walking away from us, with the cerulean blue areas as either a reflective/mirrored wall, though the central one could also be an opening, receding into a crystal blue tunnel.








Now, in a nod to one of @Talon 's favorite styles, here is a 1960s Abstract Expressionist work, showing a cabin in the woods.







Another woods scene, by Ian Varney, that I like. It is best to hold this one a little bit further away, to appreciate it's three dimensionality. This strikes me as a blurred/abstracted Impressionist scene.






Somewhat similar, this is Bernard De Wolff's "In the Jungle," which has a lot more going on, than one notices at a casual glance. Once again, you may want to adjust your viewing distance. Interesting.






This is interesting, as they are two different artists, and using different mediums. Yet the color palettes are very similar, with the noticable difference being that the bright white area in the first, by Peter McCandles, is at the bottom front of the scene, while it is at the top of the acrylic painting by Susan Kennedy, which follows it.

The color in the first painting is very lush, vibrant, rich, and fluid. I am wondering if it is mixed media, and what was McCandles' technique, as seems a fairly unique effect. Could it be a combination of pastels with watercolor? Or possibly oils, combined with Tempera? Nevertheless, I find Kennedy's "Making it to the Edge of the Woods," a more interesting composition; and even she makes the acrylics scintillate, in a remarkable way. I think hers is my favorite of the bunch, in this post.










This looks like water lilies, at the edge of a pond; a common Impressionist subject (famously, for Monet), but done here in a lovely way, by Sue Ray.







What I found odd about this next one, is that when I visited the site, the image was a not at all "blurry," like this image appears, and it didn't look good, at all.






The pastel colored painting below, I find appealing, but at first thought of it, a bit more as decorative art. Nonetheless, if one holds it away from their face, the flat image suddenly acquires depth, which is pretty cool.








Much brighter color, in this painting.