Art & Perception

Bruce Marsh Commented on Josef Albers in reference a recent post on Giorgio Morandi. He presented the challenge of finding three colors that would create the sense of two colors overlapping – if I understand correctly. It made me wonder if this daunting task could be automatically solved by the computer.

I heid to my Adobe Illustrator and drew two identical rectangles.  One I colored green and the other a lavendar. I rendered both 50% transparent and slid one rectangle partially over the other.  This created an intermediate hue; the rectangles acting like translucent panes. I then rearranged the panes by sending one back, and where the intermediate hue had been a green over lavendar, the new effect was lavendar over green. Overdoing it, I then introduced a offset shadow effect, which created the appearance of actual translucent objects. Not done, I tried red and yellow at a greater opacity.

Would Albers – having been kept ignorant of the means employed – approved?

This has to have come up among the copious writings surrounding Cubism, but the facet – a unit of composition often used by Picasso and Braque – can resemble a sheet of paper hung on a wall.

Signature elements include a generally rectilinear shape, a highlight and a shadow side. One can imagine a wall full of notes and sketches begging to be arranged. Makes me think of Da Vinci and his cracks.

Some of you may be shaking your heads at my ignorance of the literature. If so, please bring me up to speed.

This time of the year is special. Last spring I was taken by dappled light as it fell upon the house and the old fence. But that didn’t last as trees were felled and the fence was replaced by something smooth, implacable and untouched by time. But the setting sun remains to cast a languid glow over the kitchen table.

What is your favorite time of the year?

I had painted the yellow canoe a few weeks ago when the tasks ahead of me looked challenging. I felt that picture gave me energy and courage to face a challenging time in Germany.

In Germany, I was fortunate to get Karl Zipser’s critique on my painting, not the real one but its reproduction on A&P. Karl liked its bottom aspect shown below.

(the sky is not quite as aggressively blue as shown here).

The boat in the top aspect of the painting, seen below, Karl said, expresses the problem of painting realistically from a photograph. The boat is too real compared to the sketchy background that is supposed to represent reeds with a dune. Karl also disliked the smiley impression on ‘my’ face.

A final lesson was not to make the picture too tall. A picture has to be viewable on a small laptop. Looking at the canoe painting, as I scrolled it up and down on a tiny monitor of an Acer laptop at an internet café, Karl did not immediately grasped about the cloud images. Namely, that on the top, a cloud throws a dark shadow on the dune which then is reflected as lighter dark shadow into the water and finally, the white cloud and blue sky directly reflecting into the bottom aspect of the picture.

Karl and I then decided that I could improve the picture by filling in the background in the top aspect thereby removing the boat and then painting the boat again, less photographically accurate.

What sounded like a good idea in Germany, no longer felt right when I came home and looked at the actual painting. Looking at the yellow boat makes me feel good, gives me strength! As an aside, what had seemed a challenging time ahead on April 24th turned out to be significantly more challenging both in Germany and here in Michigan. To accomplish all the tasks that have accumulated requires that I clone myself, three copies and the original should be enough.

My emotions tell me to keep the current yellow canoe for feeling good. For the moment, I will also keep the silly smiley face.

Currently, I plan to fix the background – the reeds and dune – rather than the canoe so that all three will begin to harmonize in the top aspect of the picture.

I already followed one piece of advice that Karl gave me. I painted the 3/4 inch cradle of the Ampersand board dark green, not in oil but with viridian acrylic. Karl said that a dark frame will help me to paint the entire spectrum from white to black.

Having documented Karl’s critique that I am interpreting creatively, I now will return to my day job.

Whiskey Island, during Prohibition, was a dropping-off point for bootleg from Canada. Those glory days well in the past, the Island, in its backwaters, now tends to collect floating debris. I took this shot over the weekend.

Some time ago, as part of a dialogue with Steve concerning waterfalls, I had reworked an image of a shallow  stream stepping over a flat and rocky bed. In touching up the visual I had entered a mild state of flow in which I was aware of my surroundings, but so deeply engrossed in an emerging pattern of alterations that it seemed I was mapping my own mental landscape. Here again I encountered something similar. Time seemed to go away and I lifted my eyes from the screen to find it well past my bedtime. It was a lovely floating experience.

Do you lose track of time when engrossed in your work?

Until I can get it through my head how to place images in comments I’ll have to post.

I found a jar and it says: Utrecht Linens Iridescent Silver. Otherwise Iridescent Gold. The ingredients label mentions coated mica, which I understand involves an application of titanium.

For Birgit here’s a closeup of that house:

I dug around, looking for ways that the gold had been applied.

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Karl recently asked if gold still has a place in art. Frank Lloyd Wright thought it did in architecture and tried to persuade the Kaufmann’s to gild Fallingwater. It would have been something to see, but a headache all around.

Out of curiosity I introduced some gold effects into a stock image of Fallingwater.

The gold is straight out of a jar. Utrecht Linens sells a water based gold luster that goes on like paint. In this case I mixed it with clear medium, allowing a bit of under painting to come through. the theme of the image dictated that forms and colors be simplified, although I can imagine something more complicated working as well.

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