“Creative work is not a selfish act or a bid for attention on the part of the actor.* It’s a gift to the world and every being in it. Don’t cheat us of your contribution. Give us what you’ve got.” Steven Pressfield
*actor, artist, photographer, designer, craftsperson, writer, architect, singer, dancer, jeweller, florist, chef, poet, potter, musician, storyteller…
“To me, photography is an art of observation. It’s about finding something interesting in an ordinary place… I’ve found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them.” Elliott Erwitt
“The secrets to life are hidden behind the word cliché.” Shay Butler
Sergei Bongart’s advice to study nature, exaggerate light and be less inhibited (the quote I posted here on Friday) is more than a little to blame for this painting which I started on Friday morning and finished off on Saturday afternoon. It is based on one of the photographs I took during our DC-3 flight over Christchurch last year.
Because I wanted to exaggerate the landscape, I decided to go with a fairly adventurous palette (inspired by, among others, the late, great Friedensreich Hundertwasser’s ‘Blobs grow in beloved gardens’ 1975 and ‘Green town’ 1978.
But where did the red hills come from? Well, the bright red is my complementary exaggeration of the dark green trees. And the sheep? That was my way of introducing a calm focal point ― something to suggest that perhaps the hills were not on fire : )
“Study nature. Exaggerate light; overstate — the less inhibited you are, the better.” Sergei Bongart
Here’s another old project… This goes back to when I was learning about vector graphics in Illustrator. It was inspired by this Tuts+ tutorial. Revisiting the image for today’s post, I thought it looked much too ‘clean’ and so I added a little extra texture in Photoshop.
“Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.” Scott Adams
The first image was created by following a tutorial on Tuts+ (the design is based on street artist Shepard Fairey’s Obama campaign posters). The second image was a mistake* I made when messing around with layers in Illustrator.
*Visit this post if you would like to know what I really think about mistakes.
Anna Cull ~ Art & Music 