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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
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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Sketching in the Winter
During the past couple of months I have been taking my sketch bag whenever I leave the house, so I have materials at hand when I stop to sketch something on the way back home, however as of late… with the time change by the time I get a chance to sketch something (typically after work on weekdays) It is already too dark.
Solution? I decided to place the following in my car’s glove compartment:
Stratmore small sketch notebook 3.5″ x 5″ and a Pigma Micron Pen (Sepia), small set to carry around and also keep in the car, for any opportunity.
The sketch below was done while sitting in a waiting room.
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de Young Museum
Back in October of this year, my wife and I visited the de Young Museum in San Francisco during one of my vacation days, it was our first time since the remodeling took place. We truly enjoyed the day and appreciated the visit, although we didn’t stay there for long due to other obligations. I took my sketch bag but didn’t sketch anything, I was simply amazed at the amount of art on display and spend my time just looking.
We must definitely go back and view the exhibits at a more slower pace, specially the New Guinea Art section. We took some photos of some amazing pieces of that section as well as of the Art of Americas section, below is one of them.
When I was a kid I had the opportunity to also visit Museo Nacional de Antropologia located in Mexico City, I never got the chance to fully view everything, I am sure after so many years their collection has grown.
We also want to visit in the near future the Asian Art Museum as well as the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art both located in San Francisco, CA.
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Asifa SF and APE 2008 Events
This past Sunday was a busy day for me, I got the opportunity to attend two events both in San Francisco, California.
The first event was held at the Balboa Theater in San Francisco, it was a benefit for ASIFA SF, the Bay Area’s Animation Association. I attended the noon presentation of Richard Williams, author of The Animator’s Survival Kit
He showed various clips from his new DVD set The Animator’s Survival Kit – Animated and answered a couple of questions. It was an informative and entertaining presentation. There were some animation techniques that had not occurred to me that made sense, specially after watching the clip.
The second event was the Alternative Press Expo, an event that I have always wanted to attend, simply because I keep hearing about it and it is always after the event. I figured since I was already in San Francisco, why not, so off I went.
It was pretty interesting, a lot of comics and books of all different types, a bit overwhelming… I am not familiar with most of the artists that were present that day (except a few), simply because this is all new to me. It was entertaining to say the least, but i didn’t spend a lot of time, just walked around the whole place checking stuff out here and there. I also saw Enrico Casarosa, Dice Tsutsumi, Ronnie del Carmen and Scott Morse.
Enrico was kind enough to give me a copy of his new book The Venice Chronicles, very nice book, I like it very much. I had read the story online however it is always better to have the book at hand. Even now when I read it I laugh at one thing or another.
Below is a picture of the promotional DVD copy they gave away at that Richard Williams presentation, he was also kind enough to sign his book, the promo DVD leaflet or sketchbooks to those that asked.. yeah I too got a signature, the picture also includes Enrico’s book (psst… buy it!), and the APE pass.
All in all it was a very positive and different day, it was very empowering to be exposed to the work of various different artists. My respect goes to all of you for taking the time to express yourselves.
