TalesOfBraveUlysses In reply to Renum63 [2014-01-10 08:40:00 +0000 UTC]

A reason ? Well yes ... but no I am not preparing a musical I am certainly lacking the genius here ...

Instead I am simply part of a small Role Playing Group. I need that to compensate for my enervating IT consulting job.

The campaign is rather epic and we are already playing for 20 Years. "Vermächtnis der Bernsteinadpten" or "Legacy of the princess of amber" is the name of the game system I designed for this very purpose and many years ago.

Now I always liked the idea of visualizing scenes to support my fellow players imagination too but had no way to create those illustrations.

Consequently I asked a well known guy named Komarck to do some character studies for me. Advance pay etc. included. But probably he is too important and I never heard of him.

That disappointed me so that I decided its time to embark on my own journey and bought a small wacom. That was two years ago and since then I am scrambling my way through this adventure ... its really a private project exclusively but I like it.

The reason I created the account is that I liked to get some critique and probably give something back to this vast and generous community I learned so many things from. Maybe a few How-Tos and such ...

Well, thats the short of the long story

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Renum63 In reply to TalesOfBraveUlysses [2014-01-12 11:43:13 +0000 UTC]

OK, not a musical but I wasn´t that much wrong anyway  

I think your work is perfect for this purpose and I don´t believe that anyone else could make such intimate images as you do for this specific use.

And I like your style which differs from most Photoshop (or whatever software you use) paintings around.

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TalesOfBraveUlysses In reply to Renum63 [2014-01-12 14:59:57 +0000 UTC]

Thanks for your comments.

You are right ... honestly the musical is near a full hit. And truth to tell I did already compose music for this if only once.

It was a poem my wife had created for an imaginary contest in this world so that she could win a fabled map. She is the lute player by the way. And when the contest "took place" she recited and I accompanied her on the classic guitar. It was really nice but we still failed to win the map

I use only Photoshop to do the illustrations though its baleful and way to expensive.
And well ... yes I tried to not to copy the style of others. Though its tempting with so many great artists out there. On the other hand many of those really look quite simmilar and I wanted something of my own. After all its my adventure, not theirs ...

But of course its easier if you can dwell on a rich pool of imagination. And thats were 20 years of playing this game come in handy.

Still I am really struggling with so many things that I sometimes throw up
My contrasts are alwyays too weak and sometimes you simply cant get the geometry right and whatever ... but the struggling is part of the deal I assume ...

Whish you a great sunday ...

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Renum63 In reply to TalesOfBraveUlysses [2014-01-15 17:46:58 +0000 UTC]

Sounds great, even if have a little difficulties in keeping track on what is reality and what imaginary...  

I don´t think it´s a bad thing to look at other artists work and even try to imitate them, but I would prefer "old masters" before the contemporary (especially digital artists). Even if you were trying to copy a certain style, you would soon develop it to your own unique way of painting.

The struggling will always be there, if not, you won´t get any better ever. Isn´t that comforting to know?  

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TalesOfBraveUlysses In reply to Renum63 [2014-01-16 11:15:08 +0000 UTC]

Well its all imagination of course, no ? :-]

I learned a lot from others and my preferred resource is as series of Andrew Loomis books. He only works with traditional media but he is really good at pointing out some basics like composition etc. Leonardo Da' Vinci is another good master to study. His pencil drawings are incredible.

And yes the struggle is part of it but on the other hand it would not be an exiting adventure without it. Sometimes I wonder if guys who can do the most brilliant things easily feel extremely bored after a while ...and in fact the boundless digital world today is astoundingly dull and uniform ... all of those obscure robots, spaceships ... whatever. But of course much of what I do is a cliche too

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Renum63 In reply to TalesOfBraveUlysses [2014-01-16 14:48:32 +0000 UTC]

I thought so...I almost did believe that you have a wife and that she is a lute player - just too nice to be true  

Actually Loomis style is quite close to what you can achieve by digital painting.

It really might sound like a cliche also but I think that the art made in the end of 19th century is worth studying. Art, especially painting, somehow peaks during that (golden) era, for many reasons. Not only the technique but even more the motifs and compositions; the very touching depictions of everyday life, the ordinary. Something I would like to see more of here on dA too.

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TalesOfBraveUlysses In reply to Renum63 [2014-01-16 16:08:25 +0000 UTC]

Indeed that would be romantic ...

We were active in Middle Ages re-enactment a few years ago and that's were she played on a lute once. Perhaps that was something I had in mind when I did the illustration :-]

I agree with you regarding the 19th century. Probably one reason is that photography was not yet invented (leaving out the camera obscura )or at least not very sophisticated (depending on which decade you are looking at) and artists depicted everyday life in their paintings.

Modern technology has its benefits but it makes many things more or less arbitrary and decrease their original value. The magic is gone ... at least very often. And that's why many people do no longer value craftsmanship. They do not even if you try to explain it. A pity that ...

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Renum63 In reply to TalesOfBraveUlysses [2014-01-16 17:38:42 +0000 UTC]

Now I´m really confused...the lute...never mind...

But about the 19th century art and photography, and this is quite interesting; in fact photography was becoming popular already in the mid of the century and many artists did use cameras quite frequently for getting reference images, and even stock image books for artists (you know the galloping horse etc.) were published in the 1880´s. There were relatively high-speed cameras for taking snapshots and that changed the artists (and everybody else´s) way of seeing the the world. So it´s obvious that the development of photography and the standard of painting did go hand in hand. After all, the camera (camera obscura) was invented as an aid for artists, or at least it became that quite quickly.

You´re right about the loss of the magical (perhaps there is a little of that left though), in the early days pictures were rare and seeing paintings, for example on the walls in a church, must have made a huge impact on people. And you are right about the attitude towards craftsmanship, that can be seen in the education system too, even (or especially) in art schools. Expressivity and spectacular ideas are put beyond everything else - nothing wrong with those by all means, but one would expect that real professionalism should include all parts.

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TalesOfBraveUlysses In reply to Renum63 [2014-01-20 08:18:13 +0000 UTC]

Oh sorry. Maybe I should explain better. My wife plays this Kharima Al Nazir character in the game. And this one is a traveling musician. One of the instruments she knows to play is the lute. And Tanja asked me to do an illustration like that as a Christmas present for her. I think she was a little jealous because I spent so much time doing the painting of the girl in the library for one of the other players

Now a few years ago when we were still doing this Middle Ages re-enactment stuff we visited a friend of ours and there was a real lute player doing songs from Walther von der Voggelweyde. Thats a well known poet and musician from that time.

And she then was allowed to play on his lute for a while. I had given her some classic guitar lessons but the lute is something quite different and she was not very successful :-]

When I created the painting, part of the image was probably derived from this moment ...

>

I visited an exhibition only recently where photos from the »Archives de la Planète« that was initialized by Albert Kahn were presented. While the concept of this Collection is fantastic already the quality of those cameras' images is even more stunning. Of course they used the finest technology available at that time but its still a marvel.

Especially if you consider that they did not have all of those computerized assistance and image correction etc. Every image was a real challenge then. And how did they master it ...

>

I absolutely agree with you regarding the churches. The impression must have been immense but peoples imagination was probably stronger then. You can glimpse part of that in some countries like Belgium where some churches do still retain part of the original interior. Including the paintings.

While the mood is of course rather gloomy it is nonetheless impressing.

From my point of view you can not really define what art is anyway. Probably its more or less the act of creating something that counts most. Like with Beus. Awful stuff but still he was considered a great artist. Finally the result speaks for itself I would say.

Now looking at so called art today, especially modern art is often like an endless Deja Vue. But certainly many artists lack inspiration, originality and craftmanship or even all of that. In fact they do often overturn by trying to make something new and more fantastic or drastic only to outgun the state of the art and raise more attention than others.

And that's where art starts to kill itself ... Advertising and money is all that is left somewhere, some when. Only my humble opinion though.

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Renum63 In reply to TalesOfBraveUlysses [2014-01-22 11:43:03 +0000 UTC]

OK, now I´m back on track again. Thanks for the entertaining explanations  

There was a series on tv about Kahn´s photos some time ago, it really was impressive.

And yes, to define what is art is demanding and the word "art" is probably needed mostly to explain what we are talking about (and the definitions vary depending on who's talking). In the end art reflects the time during which it is created, so it´s not only a question of art and artists but the whole society. Meaning there is not much that can be done - a relief in a way.

About the money part: One shouldn´t wan´t to become an artist to earn a lot of money, but it´s really hard to make good art without any. There you have it  

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TalesOfBraveUlysses In reply to Renum63 [2014-01-22 12:44:13 +0000 UTC]

Oh really ... I would have liked to see that. Since I am living without TV for 25 years I missed it :-| ... pity that

This project was extremely impressive. During the exhibition unfortunately they only gave a very inconvenient overview of what it did and what happened to it after Kahn died.

The art thing ... well I don't like thinking about that while out there so many definitions are no longer working and nobody cares. Best seen in politics where you simply define your own truth ...

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Renum63 In reply to TalesOfBraveUlysses [2014-01-23 06:13:10 +0000 UTC]

I just checked, the whole BBC-series about Albert Kahn´s work is on Youtube!

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TalesOfBraveUlysses In reply to Dissonius [2014-01-07 10:56:57 +0000 UTC]

Well I only do that for fun and to beef up my Pen and Paper role playing group. Consequently I do not advertise

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Dissonius In reply to TalesOfBraveUlysses [2014-01-07 10:57:48 +0000 UTC]

Do you mind if I do for you? I mean, it's only word of mouth and your art truly is amazing!

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TalesOfBraveUlysses In reply to Dissonius [2014-01-07 11:20:43 +0000 UTC]

Hm ... my original intention to upload some of my concepts was to return a small portion of the many things I learned from others and harvest critiques to improve on my abilities.
So ... why not.

Please keep it quite neutral. I do not like fanfares

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Dissonius In reply to TalesOfBraveUlysses [2014-01-07 11:23:32 +0000 UTC]

Ah yes, of course. Please do check my profile as I had mentioned you in it. If you find it too flashy, do notify me. I shall alter it right away ^^

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TalesOfBraveUlysses In reply to Dissonius [2014-01-07 11:29:34 +0000 UTC]

no I think that is OK ... thanks again.

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Dissonius In reply to TalesOfBraveUlysses [2014-01-07 11:30:22 +0000 UTC]

Ah yes, you're welcome.

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TalesOfBraveUlysses In reply to Renum63 [2013-12-17 08:02:18 +0000 UTC]

I still have a long way to go ... but its getting better

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