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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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Pixar UP

We got the chance to see Pixar’s UP movie around the time it was released. This was our first 3D experience with the new technology, and while initially we were expecting to see the typical depth the technology provides, we were pleasantly surprised it was not overused. What Pixar did was use 3D as part of the story, they used it to aid the storytelling, I thought that was great, also as a result we didn’t experience the typical discomfort that sometimes those movies generate (perhaps the new technology has something to do with it as well).

I still want to see the movie one more time, this time in 2D to see how it looks… you know, there were two parts of the movie where the water just looked real, not 3d at all, the first one where Carl Fredricksen and Russell are crossing the creek and the second one when some of the dogs fall down into the river down below.

If you still have not seen it, don’t wait any longer.

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Longhair Chihuahua Sketch

Here are some more sketches of our little dog, these were done while I was sitting on the floor and he  was laying on top of my crossed legs, so here I am trying to sketch him and he is trying to go to sleep.

I think these chihuhua sketches came out pretty good given the short time I spent on them.

I am really liking that HB tombow mono 100 pencil, I think it has become my favorite pencil.

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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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Quick Sketch – Building

The sketch below was done last Wednesday after work, just a quick sketch of the back of our new office building, once again using the tombow mono 100 HB.

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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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