Virtual Paintout in Istanbul

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Firuz Ağa Mosque

Watercolour and crayon

Charlene Brown

The Virtual Paintout is in Istanbul, Turkey this month. 

After finding that good shots at the Blue Mosque and the Hagia Sophia are kind of hard to come by on Streetview (I even considered a `streetview` of the Blue Mosque from a ferry)  I had a look at the imposing Galata Tower on the Asian side of town, and almost tried this problematical streetview of it.   Then I just wandered until I happened upon this nicely composed view of the FiruzAğa Mosque as seen from the Mehmet Akif Ersoy Park. 

Elegant Clean Energy Haiku VIII: Quantum Leap Haiku Illustration

Himeji Castle

t-shirt serigraph

This t-shirt I bought in Japan has a silk-screened design that is either the Japanese characters spelling out the words ‘Himeji Castle’ or a 17-shape haiga painting of the castle. Or both. I haven’t yet finished any of the paintings I started while I was in Japan, so I’ve added this design and the following quotations about haiku and haiga to the series of blog posts on Elegant Clean Energy Haiku I started on July 29 

“Both haiku and haiga translate nature through an artistic language with spiritual immediacy and selfless skill. This is achieved through Zen-like training in contemplation and technique. When the artist has reached the state of wu hsin (no-mind), a plane of mental relaxation and manual dexterity, Tao* can then take control and work through the artist’s hand and eye. This superconscious state is not to be confused with the subconscious swamp in which the surrealists find themselves.”  – On Haiku and Haiga: an essay, by Harold Stewart

 * Tao is a ‘path’ or process rather than a theory – a term used as a convention to refer to something that otherwise cannot be discussed in words.

“Haiku poet and haiga artist alike endeavored to eliminate every superfluous element and to attain an austere beauty, akin to that of abstract art...”  – Haiku Painting, by Leon Zolbrod

When the haiku writer and illustrator is a computer app, these essentially heuristic processes are going to have to be more algorithmic – well, totally algorithmic actually.  It should be possible to get around this apparent contradiction in terms through the provision for some manual input by the user.

Clean Energy Haiku V: Quantum Leap Haiku Illustration – Plan B

South American Terraces I & II

Photoshop™

©2015 Charlene Brown

Remember the South American terrace paintings I mentioned in my September 2 blog post? 

In the pictures above they have been ‘abstracted’ by reducing the number and complexity of shapes in their composition. Reducing the complexity beyond the level of recognizability produces a non-representational design.

I hope to show that this design can evoke a quite different reality, especially when considered as a haiga, accompanied by a poem such as this enigmatic little computer-generated haiku:

Less is more for all

Superconductivity

Now accelerate

This is where the ‘quantum leap’ I defined at the end of my September 23 post comes in… How far do you need to go beyond ‘recognizable’ to make that leap?  Further than South American Terraces II, I suspect. 

Plan B will continue... 

Another road test

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Panorama from Dallas Road

Watercolour

©2015 Charlene Brown

This is the view looking south from Dallas Rd. as it passes Beacon Hill Park here in Victoria.  The photo I used was taken in April when Beacon Hill, and every other Garry Oak meadow on southern Vancouver Island, is bright blue with camus flowers… and the grass is still green. We are in the ‘rain shadow’ of those mountains you can see across the Strait on the Olympic peninsula of Washington State.  Our summers are pretty dry, and grass is only green from October to May.

The panorama format of my new watercolour book is working okay here in Canada… we’ll see how it goes in Japan. (I’m taking some small square sheets as well.)

I have scheduled a series of posts about my Haiku project to be published on this blog while I’m away, and will be back toward the end of November with paintings of Japan.

Road-testing art supplies

Panorama from Moraine Lake Road

Watercolour and crayon

©2015 Charlene Brown

In preparation for my up-coming trip to Japan, I was going through my travel painting supplies, and realized I needed a new Carnet de Voyage (Arches Aquarelle® travel book, containing 15 coil-bound 6 x 10 inch sheets of watercolour paper). I went to the shop where I purchased my last three Carnets and the Millennials in charge had never heard of them, so I settled for a Strathmore® travel book (12 coil-bound 6 x 12 inch sheets). I’ve used Strathmore small sheet paper before, and have no problem with the brand, but found their book to be alarmingly less expensive than Arches, for only slightly less paper... I wondered if the paper might buckle under a splashy wash, or if the surface might not take masking fluid (neither of which I use much while traveling, but you never know)... I also had my doubts about the panorama format.

What better place to road-test my new panorama-format book than on a road? As it happens there is a more panoramic view of the peaks along the continental divide from this point on the road to Moraine Lake than from the lake itself, in the world-famous Valley of the Ten Peaks.  

The book holds up just fine to lots of water and masking fluid too.

A memorable group shape

Boarders and Skiers at Lake Louise

Watercolour, ink and crayons

Charlene Brown (based on a photograph in the Globe & Mail)

The guidelines for adding figures to landscapes that I mentioned in my blog post about boarders and skiers at Park City, Utah  included the suggestion to look for connections between people in terms of relationships and body language and identify the big shape that is the group of people, rather than the shapes of individuals.

That’s the first thing I thought of when I saw this photo - the shape of the group.

The second thing I thought of was that when I was a kid learning to ski the then-new (and still regarded with awe) Banff Chairlift, if any of us had flopped into a chair like that, totally ignoring the safety bar and footplate, we’d have been sent packing back to the rope-tow.

Virtual Paintout in the Philippines

The Jones Bridge, Manilla

Watercolour and crayon

Charlene Brown

The Virtual Paintout is in the Philippines this month.  I looked for a ‘populated’ streetview again, and it was a lot easier to find groups of people out and about here than it was in Utah last month! Here is a link to this Streetview of the Jones Bridge in Manilla. 

And here is some interesting information I found on Wikipedia:

After floods damaged the original Puente de Espana on the Pasig River, construction of a replacement bridge was started in 1916 by the American Colonial government. It was named Jones Bridge after the principal author of the Philippine Autonomy Act of 1916. This ornate Neoclassical concrete arch bridge was bordered by pillars topped with a series of statues called La Madre Filipina. Unfortunately, it was destroyed by bombs during World War II.

After the war, the bridge was reconstructed by the American and Philippine governments under the Philippine Rehabilitation Act. The replacement span is relatively bare in design, but the three La Madre Filipina statues that had survived the bobing were preserved and moved to other locations in Manila. 

Virtual Paintout still in Utah

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Boarders and Skiers at the Park City Mountain Resort

watercolour and crayon

©2015 Charlene Brown

Here’s another entry in the September Virtual Paintout. For a change, I decided to use a view with lots of people… and I soon discovered there was hardly anyone out standing around on the days the Google camera Streetviewed Utah! I finally found a little crowd at the base of one of the lifts at the Park City Mountain Resort just outside Salt Lake City. Here is the link to it

I’ve used some of the tips on a 2008 post on the highly-regarded art blog Making a Mark

• look for connections between people in terms of relationships and body language
• identify the big shape that is the group of people. If you can't see an edge then don't draw it.
• make the connections between different zones more obvious. Overlap figures and objects to demonstrate who is in the foreground, the middle ground and background.
• Avoid drawing faces and feet. (If you draw a likeness, then you should really obtain a model release.) Squint when you look at faces and then only draw what you can see - which will be values. You'll be surprised at how little detail there is. (I should mention that with Google Streetview, likenesses are not a concern – all faces are pretty consistently blurred out.) Feet are often drawn bigger than they actually are. Try to make them smaller then you want to (again not a concern here, as everyone has boots on.)