link: Lines and Colors

He may look worried. Though these days it’s hard to tell by phone. I know that I am worried.

artist: Jeremy Taylor
media: digital

Click for detail.

I hastily painted this portrait today in response to Illustration Friday’s topic of the week: Homage. I have been wanting to depict Nelson Mandela for some time and he is as deserving of homage as any of us for his self sacrifice and humanitarian deeds. Respect.

Unfortunately, many owners are not so well trained in civic responsibility. Despite the abundance of courtesy bags pictured below, the cobblestone sidewalks are a minefield of fragrant hazards.

My father went to a book signing event in North Carolina to meet President Jimmy Carter shortly after he released “Our Endangered Values”. He related the brief meeting with the former President, who asked my kid brother, “What’s your name?”

“Jack.”

“Hi Jack, my name’s Jimmy!” He said his name with the enthusiasm and cheer of schoolboy.

Like many people, my father did not like Jimmy Carter as President, but could not help but become wooed by Jimmy’s affable nature.

I became a Jimmy Carter fan after reading his courageous book “Palestine: Peace not Apartheid”.

Detail of Jimmy Carter’s face. Click to enlarge.

Detail of coat. Click to enlarge.

please click image for larger view

On the other hand, I believe such a rigid approach to fine art can limit the artist from exploring an approach that serves to benefit their painting techniques. Using digital mediums to create a portrait, for example, is significantly quicker than a portrait rendered using traditional methods. Applying color digitally is a simple matter of selecting the hue from the spectrum without the time intensive process of mixing pigments. There is no delay spent waiting for paint to dry before applying a fresh layer. As a result, a portrait that may take twenty hours to render in oil can be rendered in around two or three hours using a program such as Painter or Illustrator. The digital product becomes a worthwhile undertaking in the context of fine art when one considers its virtue as a prototyping tool in the process of creating a traditional painted portrait.

For example, if I were to paint a portrait using oil and brush, I would certainly create a number of pencil or charcoal studies of my subject before even selecting a canvas. In doing so I am both planning my layout and training my hand and eye to recognize the regions of my subject. The use of pencil allows the same flexibility for revision as the digital method, though generally it provides a monochromatic tonal study without provision for exploring color. By incorporating digital tools into the planning process of a painting, an artist can render a full color study with attention to brush strokes and size in the amount of time it would take to generate a series of monochromatic studies using pencil. The advantage of exploring a suitable color palette in the planning stage of a painting is tremendous. The final palette can be evaluated and revised again and again without the temporal costs associated with such trial and error in a wet medium.

To proceed by replicating the digital study in paint would be a tedious undertaking, and the spirit of this approach is not to create a rigid plan for the oil painting, but a prototype that is open to revision and interpretation. While it may be counterintuitive to consider the process of art in terms of time efficiency, time management is as much of a reality for professional artists as in many other professional pursuits.

Anyway, here is my second portrait that is created with a Wacom tablet and an airbrush in Photoshop.