APPLEGATE, OREGON

Okay, I think I really like this painting-from-video thing. This painting is not based on any one still frame in the video, but is rather a compilation of elements I thought were the most memorable. This painting's for sale if anyone wants to make an offer. It's 9 x 12 inches.

VIDEO PAINTING, CONT.

I'm tempted to scan my current painting right now to upload, because it's so close to being done and I want to post something visual. But of course I can't do that, I just have to wait for this latest glaze to dry and finish it off.

I really like the idea of painting from a small video thumbnail. Normally I make thumbnails on paper if working from a photograph, but with the small size of the videos taken on most digital cameras, the thumbnail is all you get to work with right from the beginning.

Now I want to go back and look over my other videos I've taken; I'm sure there's tons of material just waiting to be exploited.

VIDEO PAINTING

While driving through the Applegate region of southern Oregon, I was inspired by the many possibilities for paintings. The lighting this time of year is always exceptional for painting, as the sun is never too high in the sky, which makes the shadows more pronounced.

At first I wanted to stop at every inspiring place I saw to take a photo, but by the time I saw anyplace good, I'd already passed it. So, I decided to try a new idea for paintings.

Video.

I like the fact that if you stop the video at a still frame, the image is not crisp and exact, but looks more like a painting. Shapes and colors become more obvious, while detail dissolves. When I paint, I try not to do what I do in drawing, which is photorealism. When working from a photo, this gets hard to do, as the camera makes such an exact image, and it's tempting to try and copy it. But I was more interested in the mood of the sky and the weather today, and now with just one video I've got numerous selections for paintings.

To those of you who are wondering why I was driving a car at all, that's a good question. I really have no excuse.

SUNRISE

As I was laying in bed this morning, I noticed that my living room was bathed in a surreal light of pinkish orange. Not knowing what time it was, only that it was before sunrise, I got up to be in this magical light, and was amazed at the sky outside. This is a photo I took at 7:05 this morning, with my little Olympus 7 megapixel camera. I really wished I had a nice medium format camera for this shot, it was (and still is outside right now) incredible.

VECTOR ART

One of my favorite tools in Adobe Illustrator® is the gradient mesh tool. It allows one to create photorealistic images in a vector program (not pixel-based), which is kind of like a CAD program, but much cooler. Obviously this isn't photorealistic, but it's one of my first attempts at using the gradient mesh tool, and I thought it turned out okay. I can't claim to have created the original design, which was painted on silk by my super-talented aunt Laura in Hawaii. I simply used her artwork as a template to try out the gradient mesh tool.