The Benefits of Zentangle

Over the past couple of days, I’ve been working on a different form of art.  It’s primarily used to focus, and free the mind to create.  As I understand it there are only two rules.  One, it’s supposed to have some kind of border (it’s your choice what border)  and the second rule is there will be no erasing.

I understand the meditative qualities, but I also discovered a great feature for artists.  Zentangle contains all the patterns that beginning artists (myself) are supposed to learn, and advanced artist are always practicing.  The  book I’ve been learning from talks about drawing circles, lines, and dots constantly to learn how to draw with control, zentangle just gives me a chance to have fun doing it.

Here are a few zentangle I worked on in two days.

I hope you all enjoy them.

allen

Still Practicing!

My wife, the other day was talking to my mom, and she had me cracking up.  What she said was, “did you know your son is drawing naked women?”  Keep in mind, my mom has been an artist her whole life, and of course my wife’s announcement came as no surprise.  We both had to tell my wife that in order to learn the human form, you have to practice drawing people, both clothed and nude.

On that note, my goal of being able to draw anything with confidence by July 3rd is well on it’s way.  This will make way for my goal of doing a beautiful painting by December 31st.  Most of the drawings I’m doing right now are from photos I’ve taken, but there are other photos I get from books, and the internet.  According to my plans, I will be able to draw a person sitting in front of me by May; of course that is just an estimate, and not set in stone.

Here is a drawing today, in an hour and a half.

I did this for one of the guys at work, who works with horses.

I hope you enjoy it.

Allen

More power!!!

Thanks to my tax refund, I was finally able to get the lens I wanted, which was an Opteka 650 to 1300 millimeter lens.  This lens will enable me to get shots of animals too skittish to be approached, and up until now, I haven’t been able to get any shots of.

As a quick test, I took three shots of a boat from my living room.  The first one is a normal view with a normal lens (about 35 mm).  The second shot is 5 times the normal lens.  The third shot is at the full 1300 millimeters.  The last shot is somewhat blurry, but I didn’t have time to take the shot properly.  I am going to give it a better test tomorrow.

One thing to keep in mind, I did not crop any of these images.  You are seeing these pictures exactly as I saw them.

I hope you enjoy.

allen

Drawing from Photographs

As I am just getting back into painting, and drawing, I have to work on it all the time.  The book I’m relearning from is “The Fundamentals of Drawing” by Barrington Barber.  I’m a firm believer in learning the basics, and building up from there.  I’m going with a book; and learning on Youtube, because I don’t have the money for classes.

In most classes, they place an object in front of the class, and tell you to draw it; at least that’s what I’ve been told.  In the book, she shows drawings of objects to draw, so you can learn shapes, and shading, but they are objects that don’t do much for my desire to draw.  What I like about the book is she gives you the basics of drawing, and uses the shapes as examples, but she says to find things you care about to practice with.  Two days ago, I found some sea shells, and had a ball doing it, and the other thing I use is photographs I took myself.  Some artists like to use a pencil in the field to make quick sketches in the field, to work on later, but being a photographer, the camera is my way of getting a quick sketch.

Someone had asked me if that was cheating, and if you’re wondering the same thing, my simple answer is “no”.  Just because I use a photograph, I’m still doing the work of drawing it by hand.  I’m not tracing it, or converting it to a drawing on Photoshop.  I am just choosing a subject that has some meaning for me, and making it easier for me to recall at home.

Here are two pictures from today’s practice.  The first image is the photograph I went from, and the second image is what I drew from the photograph.

Picture of my cat

 

When you draw something that you’re interested in, it becomes fun, which is what drawing is supposed to be.

Accidental Awakening.

Before I tell you the main story, with my point, let me start with a background story.

When I was twelve, I was told I have a talent with paints, and having a mom who is a painter, I decided to ask her to teach me.  She happily agreed, and set me up, as well as my 10 year old brother (he wanted to learn too).  My mom started teaching us, and we worked hard for an hour.  One thing to keep in mind here, I was a horrible perfectionist, when I was twelve; I am still working on that today.  My mom’s came out fantastic; my brother’s was really good for a ten year old.  Mine looked like a three year old had got into oil paints, and ran all over the canvas.  Right then, I declared myself a talentless hack, and I haven’t picked up a paint brush since then.

That incident took place in 1979.  A couple of weeks ago, I went into an art store, looking for something cheap to make a point in a photography video I’m working on.  Finally deciding on a cheap watercolor set, I brought it home, and thought it would be fun to goof off, and make a fun painting.  I found a photograph I took of a particularly colorful sunset, and started trying to paint it.  After some mistakes, and corrections, it didn’t come out too bad.  I’m not saying it’s going to win any awards, but for a person with no training, and who was just “goofing off”, it wasn’t half bad.

This moment that I like to call an accidental awakening;  a chance moment that awakens a dormant part of your mind; has had me running out to buy art supplies, and books on learning the fundamentals of drawing, and painting.  My mother was ecstatic that I was going to give it another chance.  My goal for this year is to paint a beautiful landscape, like I wanted to when I was twelve.

here is the picture I painted that started my new goal.

There is a saying, “If you don’t use it, you will lose it.”  I don’t believe that anymore.  I believe that if you don’t use your talent, it will become dormant until something happens, by chance, that may awaken your passions for the talent you thought you lost.

Don’t Blame the Camera!

This morning, on Facebook, I read a post that got me thinking.  When you meet an author you admire, you don’t say, “I love your writing, you must have a great word processor.”  When you meet a painter, you don’t ask, “Beautiful painting, what paint brushes do you use?”  Here’s a great example, in a nice restaurant, where you really enjoy the cuisine, you don’t pay compliments to the stove.

With most artists, people are awed by the artist’s creativity, and know how; so why are photographers always complimented on the camera they use.  I can’t count the amount of times someone has looked at my photographs, and said “You must have a great camera.”  They just don’t realize the amount of work that goes into the art of photography, or the creativity it takes to overcome obstacles in order to get that one “perfect” moment.

Before I get carried away (and on this subject I can) let me just say; it doesn’t matter what camera you use, or how much equipment you have.  All that matters is that you learn how to handle your equipment, and that you know what you want to say with your pictures.

With that said, here is a special picture I took on my last street photography session in Portland.  I call this one “The Birdman of Portland”

If you notice, this man is not homeless; he is just retired, and his greatest pleasure is coming out daily to give the birds a loaf of bread.  He told me that he was fined 50 dollars for this activity, but it was worth it.  I even had one of the birds land on my camera case which gave us both a laugh.

I hope you enjoy the picture.

Allen

Raw Force

I have a confession.  I have heard all the arguments for and against switching to raw, but I wanted to stick with Jpeg out of fear.  You can call it fear of change, or fear of botching it up; the truth is, I didn’t know how to convert it to jpeg to work with my computer, and I was too lazy to look at the instructions.  There, I said it!

Now that I have that out of the way, let’s get down to the meat of this article.  A couple of days ago, I watch Jared Polin, on youtube, talk about the benefits of using raw, and yes it might be a little more work, but it’s a hundred times more versatile than using jpeg.  After seeing his proof, I revisited my software instructions and found the conversion button.  So now, I can adjust the raw files to the image I want, (not what the camera wants), and convert it after I’m done with it.

As of yesterday, I made the switch completely to raw, and here’s a couple of images I took with it.

Picture of my cat

A Haunting Self Portrait

The hardest part of taking this picture was the lack of light.  It was taken at 10:30 at night, with the moon covered by clouds.  I started with two minute exposures at ISO 100, but all I got was darkness with a couple of light spots in the distance.  In order to get the shot the brightness I wanted I had to go up to ISO 3200.

The face, and the fence had another problem.  The flash I was using wasn’t enough. In the end, I had to use my flash light to paint myself and the fence with light.

This turned out to be a great experience photographically, and a fun challenge, which was to do a self portrait in an unconventional manner.

Taken at Willard Beach, by SMCC

I’m puzzled!!!

I know this picture is a little busy, but I think this would make a very challenging puzzle.

Fishing dock in Portland, Maine.

 

Continued Sentiment

A woman protests Americans in Afghanistan

I took this photo to show the anti-war sentiment that is always prevalent whenever there is a conflict somewhere in the world.  I felt you could have easily replaced the country names with Germany during the 40′s.

The kid walking out to the street, in the background is there as a reminder that people are too busy with their everyday lives to hear the protests of others.