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Local Color – Great Movie

Yesterday I had the opportunity to watch a great movie called “Local Color” – A very uplifting story of a younger person wanting to learn how to paint and an alcoholic painter who has giving up on art and life.

This movie was rented via Netflix, if you have the ability to watch it, I highly recommend it… this movie will definitely be an addition to our collection in the future.

“Don’t you let anyone ever talk you out of what you want to do, what you want to be” – Quote from the movie.

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Dreams – Crows directed by Akira Kurosawa

Just came across this video, the following caught my attention:

“A scene that looks like a painting does not make a painting, if you take time and look closely all of nature has its own beauty …”

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Dutch Light

A couple of weeks ago I noticed that Lou Romano made available the color script of  Pixar’s UP movie in his blog.

It was interesting to look at the movie like this. Most of the time we are so caught up on the story that we seldom notice the variations of color, presented to us during the various stages of the story,  after all we may go to the movies to unwind, be entertained, be distracted and even be informed as the case might be.

While having lunch with Dice Tsutsumi, and asking him about his role in Pixar, he mentioned that he was an Art Director and dealt with Light, like Lou Romano.

The color script and Dice’s conversation got me thinking about light, up until recently I was preoccupied  only with getting it right when sketching, in terms of form, then realized I was striving to make it too perfect (I know, I know – its a sketch  not a drawing). I read somewhere If you want it perfect, take a picture…  in summary I have come to understand that a sketch is about capturing quickly the feeling of the view before oneself.

While reviewing the art from artists unknown to me as well as those that I admire, I came to realize that in an odd way I may have been on a path to the inclusion of light into my watercolors except that I thought it was a mistake. The watercolor below was one of my first, and strangely enough every time I share my small moleskine watercolor booklet with people they seem to stop at this one (while I explain that the water was never intended to be purple).

While I have been paying attention to everything around me a lot more since I started sketching (and also participating in SketchCrawl), I have now started to pay attention to the contrast of the various tones of light. It’s not that I didn’t pay attention before It is just that I had not conscientiously identified what I was looking at.

This brings me to Dutch Light, while researching lighting I came across a great DVD called Dutch Light. It is a film that investigates the existence of Dutch Light, did it ever exist? Does it exist now, or have environment changes affected the light. It was fascinating to watch.

If I recall correctly at one point in the DVD it is mentioned that artists would travel to Holland seeking the Dutch Light that some other artist may have painted… the comment being made was that an artist may seek a location used by another in order to achieve a specific feeling, not realizing that the first may have copied it from yet another artist and/or from somewhere else.

Enjoy!

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Sherlock Hound – Hayao Miyazaki – Kyosuke Mikuriya

wow look at this, youtube has full episodes of the Sherlock Hound animation.

I have yet to see this, it has been on my “to watch” list, it sure is nice to know they are available online.

There have 26 episodes from season 1

http://www.youtube.com/show?p=K162qI1LPF8

Wiki Page

Enjoy!

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Veterans Memorial Hall

Yesterday my sketch attempt turned into a drawing and I didn’t mind it one bit, as a matter of fact time went by so fast.  I spent about 30mins doing this drawing, the eraser was not used (didn’t have it with me) just tried to figure the angles and then darken the lines and add some more detail.

Materials: Strathmore sketchbook and Tombow Mono 100 HB

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Water Tower Sketch

Here is a water tower sketch I did during my lunch hour a week ago. I have seen this water tower for the past couple of years on the way to work, figured it was time to sketch it.

I saw the brick building and felt I should also add the bricks but then decided not to, I think there are times when we just want to do a quick sketch to capture the location and next thing we know it has become a drawing, with all the extra detail… and that is the challenge (at least in the beginning… what not to include).

For this sketch I used the Tombow Mono 100 HB pencil and I liked it.

Tools are tools right?  It is practice, practice, practice what allow us to improve!  Some say that it is not necessary to have better tools, other say that you might as well use them to get better results. I guess in the end it is a personal journey and perhaps one has to try both and see what works best.

Personally I think that if you can, you should use the nicer tools. I am still using student grade watercolors simply because I refuse to let them go to waste, once I am done with those I’ll move on to the artist grade. It just occurred to me that maybe I should try the nicer grade as well so I can see the difference, and I think I will try that next.

By the way I am looking for a nice pencil sharpener, if you have a favorite please share.

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