notes from underground

Summer is still trying to pretend it’s not over, but here in Chicago it has begun to feel like fall already. It’s impossibly weird to realize that it’s autumn, and I’m not going back to Brown like I still feel I should… I miss it.

The days that I remember the most fondly are always the ones where I did the least. I remember sitting on the statue outside the gate, doing my reading for Chinese history in early fall of Freshman year, and I remember a pick-up game of Frisbee from Halloween afternoon that same semester, way better than I remember the more hectic, interesting days. Even in more recent semesters, I remember walking up to Pembroke and back down Thayer with a friend, killing time while putting off something I didn’t want to do, much more than I remember most of my lectures.

I miss the way it feels to look out the window and realize that dawn has come while I worked on my paper. I really miss the way the cold air hit my face when I walked to Louie’s at 6 AM.

I’m looking forward to visiting Brown next month, but it’s going to be very bittersweet to not be able to stay.

I woke up at 4pm on Sunday, and turned in the beast at 9AM this morning– I think that means that of the past sixty-five hours, only six of them were spent sleeping. I can’t pretend I’ve been working 100% constantly, but I’ll be damned if it hasn’t been close. We’ve been through Hell and high water, but my “Typebot” animation project is now complete! There are tons of niggling little problems I want to go in and fix, but the project is more than presentable and I think it looks pretty awesome. A Youtube link will go up once the clip “premiers” at Thursday’s wrap party and class reel screening.

So that’s it, huh? That project was my final undergraduate work. I’ve got a critique with the professor and teaching assistants this afternoon, and then I’m done with college. Weird feeling.

But in the meantime, TO BED!

I’m going to keep notes and musings here regarding my Digital Painting independent study, with the hopes of condensing them into a longer piece at the end of the course. First up: Definition of Painting.

Courtesy of the OED:

1. a. Painted matter; that which is painted. … a representation on a surface executed in paint or colours; a painted picture or likeness.
b. The representing of a subject on a surface by the application of paint or colours; the art of making such representations; (in extended use) the practice of applying paint to a canvas, etc., for any artistic purpose.
c. Computing. The creation of graphics or images in electronic form in a manner analogous to painting (sense 1b), as by the use of a paint program.
2. a. The action of applying a coat of paint to a surface; the action of colouring or staining something; (occas.) an instance of this. Also fig.
c. Computing. The filling of (part of) a display screen with a particular colour.
3. The result of applying paint; the fact or quality of being painted; colouring; pictorial decoration. Also: the relative condition of something as regards paint (freq. with modifying adjective).

Obviously the usage cited in definition 1.b does not discount painting on wood or other surfaces, but both of the computing definitions are disappointingly complicated. At first we have digital painting defined as a process analogous to (and by extension not the same as) “real” painting. This is acceptable inasmuch as there exist many painters who were not regarded as doing “real” paintings by their contemporaries, for example the initial disdain for impressionism. To be viewed as parallel to but separate from the mainstream, important part of the art world is a natural side effect of being a nascent medium. Of course it was generally accepted that the impressionists were at least [mis]using paint, which is less widely acknowledged in regard to digital work.

This issue is represented in the worrisome divide between the concept of Digital Painting represented in 2.c, which uses painting in its most basic programming context, juxtaposed against the tactile application of physical paint cited by 2.a and 3. Paint is something invoked by a computer, versus something applied by a painter. It is a subtle difference in agency, but it’s a problem for anybody who wants to argue digital painting as comparable in its own way to oil on canvas. No matter how complex the drawing instrument you use, many galleries view digital work as nothing more than a side effect of software rather than a human creation.

All of these definitions of the noun painting are naturally targeted at defining a physical end result. In my mind it is the process of painting that defines the work, not any particular end product, and I believe art history will corroborate. I have often heard painters and sculptors talk as if their target image or form was already present in the canvas or marble and their job was to find it, using forms of color to bring out the painting from the canvas. This artistic process translates perfectly to a digital context: computer monitors already “contain” every color they are capable of producing, and the job of the digital painter is to pull out the right ones.

In closing:
A pastel teacher of mine, irritated at the dual view of pastel work as both drawing and painting depending on the caprice of gallery owners, once defined painting as the definition of form with mass and drawing as the definition of form with line. Images may incorprate both techniques, of course, and drawings with mass or paintings with line exist in droves, but at its most basic level the definition struck a chord with me. Digital painters rejoice! None of the difficulties of the OED definition are present here. Nothing is to say that form cannot be articulated on a screen.

…And some mathematical formula I forget for determining the maximum number of distinct possibilities were you to flip them all.
To explain, I have six courses I wish to take this semester, and it is almost uncanny how precisely they represent the dual sides of my main areas of interest. On the one hand I have a course on Japanese Cinema, emphasizing cultural and film theory, and on the other I have Advanced Animation, emphasizing production. Another set: History of the English Language, with its stress on linguistics and the evolution of language, and Russian Science Fiction and Fantasy, with its focus on the evolution of a literary genre. Finally there is a great course on Dada and Surrealism, taught by a man best described as a whitebeard sage, juxtaposed against an independent project in Digital Art with my energetic art professor from last semester.

Each of these pairs represents a distinct interest from two different angles, and none of them are easy pairs to give up. Animation & Film is what I hope to do with my life, so I’m somewhat committed to it; Art is the impetus for that decision, always the most important of my passions even when it was undernourished by my coursework; finally, Language and Literature are what I came to Brown assuming I was going to do, and to forsake them now would be to deny some of my notions of what college is for. Add to this that I am more or less committed to one course of each pair–Russom’s “History of the English Language,” Barb’s Advanced Animation course, and my ISP with Jay on Digital Art–and I find myself forced to choose which of these directions I should go in my last regular course credit at Brown.

There is so little time left, and it is intensely frustrating.

A chance look at an animation project somebody in the List MML was working on simultaneously reminded me how much I like Chinese painting and also lead me to discover more about 20th century Chinese painting. The guy who was working on that project was animating on top of an ink sketch by Wu Guanzhong, and I poked around online until I found a biography with some of his work. I like a lot of it– there is more at the following sites:

• Wu Guanzhong at Fernando Botero Art, including some more abstract works
• A painting of Wu’s at Kwai Fung Hin Art Gallery
• Another webpage devoted to Wu — the bottom ink painting is the one the guy in the MML was working with.
• More Wu paintings

On a broader Chinese painting note, here is a site focused on contemporary Chinese art, and how the painting tradition has changed (I particularly like the top image, by Zao Wou-ki): Transformation of Tradition: Chinese Painting. I am beginning to seriously consider trying to track somebody down in the EAS department who would work with me on a brush painting independent study next year, both Sumi-e style and traditional Chinese. I wish I could pronounce these names, though… maybe I’ll vagabond the first few weeks of Chinese 10. Great idea, eh? ^_^

Not because it has anything directly to do with Wu Guanzhong, but because I discovered this site through searching for Wu’s painting: Song Li’s website: “Anyway, this is a personal website about what I paint, what I think and what I XXX. It’s just from an ordinary Chinese person.” He’s got some nice stuff, and I’m putting the link in this post so I can remember it.

So I’ve done a few more paintings, including some I’m reasonably satisfied with. Success! A major plus was switching to working primarily with a painting knife for doing anything more complicated than washes, I feel like I’ve got a lot more control than with a brush, especially with lines.

First off, here’s my “studio”, or “cubicle” on a bad day:

Here’s the painting I did in response to the prompt “Patriotism” (I’ll go through my thought process on this one in another post, it’s the first painting I really planned so far this term):

Then one done in response to “Camouflage” (Don’t you love these vague assignments?)… How many faces can you find?

Then, finally, some plein-air studies we did down by the river. I think I like these even more than the camouflage one, they were a lot of fun to paint.

Those last two will be some of the building-blocks for a later project, I’ll rant about that soon too. For now, goodnight!

Our first assigment for VA131 (Painting 1) was to complete 40 paintings over the past seven days. I technically have three left, but I will have more than enough time before class today to finish those up. I thought I’d post one or two of them, they’re all very small format, only 5 by 7 inches, but I actually ended up liking a few of them more than I’d expected.

The 40 paintings were broken down into eight required categories of 5 paintings each, including copies of [sections of] 20th century portraits, pre-20th century portraits, landscapes from the art building terraces, clouds, shadows, photographs from newspapers, and more. Now, without further ado:

This first one is from a portrait of Sir Winston Churchill by Graham Vivian Sutherland. I think this is my favorite of the whole lot, I really like how it came out!

This next one is a copy of a Giacometti painting of David Sylvester… I “painted’ this one entirely with palette knives, just smearing the paint around. VERY fun technique, although I lost a lot of detail on the figure… I love the background, though!

I don’t like the next one as much, I overworked it… her neck and mouth looked a LOT better about ten minutes before I finally put down my paintbrush. I wish I didn’t overwork stuff so much, so often I’m just sitting there and think, “oh, ok, one last change…”, then I look again and decide I ruined it. Oh well. The source is a detail of Delacroix’ “Massacre at Chios”.

My teacher, Wendy Edwards, told me at one point I should use more paint… this detail of Van Gogh’s “Self-Portrait for Gauguin” is what happened next.

Last one up I don’t like as much as the others, but it turned out fairly well and it was the last detail I got before my camera ran out of power. The source material is Sylvia Gosse’s portrait of Walter Richard Sickert.

There are only maybe seven or eight of the forty I’d actually admit to liking, but as painful as the process has been, it’s kind of nice to have done that much work in a week. Kind of affirming to be doing so much art, since art’s the primary reason I’m in Providence this summer! (On that note, later this week I’ll post an update about a side project I’m doing). G’night, world.

Despite all evidence to the contrary, I am still alive, and slowly in the process of restoring order to my life. The room is clean, I know where [most] of my money disappeared to, and this paper is not due for another 3 hours… that’s plenty of time, right? …..

Big things this week:

-Japanese paper due in far less time than it will take to write

-Research like crazy for History 42 final… what the heck is my topic, anyway?

-Panic LR21 Project with Dan Byers…

I’d like to do a lot more work with this, add a preloaded, create some digital paintings to overlay, that kind of thing, but for now I think it’s pretty damn cool. Here’s a link to the final project, 700 x 350 pixels, macromedia .swf: (I’ll post it on its own webpage later today, but for now it’s just the raw file)

Fireworks over Fuji, Rough

OK, THERE we go, now we’re making progress! Check these babies out! (now ideally I need to add variation and make my own movie clips, but oh well ^_^)

Fireworks!! (Click on the image!)