Impressionism

From our trip from the MFA, I enjoyed looking at the impressionist paintings the most. It's definitely my favorite style (Monet's Impression of a sunrise has been my desktop background on both monitors for a few months, a little obsessed) and if I ever sat down and learned to paint, it would most closely resemble my own work.

The way an impressionist painting works, the use of color and contrast and intuitively luscious shapes and gradients create an impression of a distinct landscape in the mind. It's an optical illusion. Very little information is provided, and the automatic sense-making mechanisms in the brain fill in all the blanks and information. In Sunrise, the carefully slashed brush strokes are undoubtibly tall ships. Monet didn't paint a boat. He painted the shapes, the impression of boat-ness (with remarkable skill).

http://langabi.name/blog/wp-content/images/blog/optical%20illusion.jpg

In this illusion, the two labeled blocks are the exact same shade of gray. The brain automatically (and mistakenly, as good illusions can do) uses the context to change the way something very concrete is perceived. Impressionism uses these same built in interpolaters [not a word] to do heavy lifting with very little concrete information in the actual painting. But when this mental toolkit is hijacked skillfully, a painting will just look "right." Success!

http://www.webexhibits.org/colorart/monet.html

Here's another neat link to the Sunrise painting (again, obsessed). Play with the sliders and read about it. The saturation filter is really awesome: the sun disappears in greyscale!

This style also has a lot in common with the renders I do for studio. It's more important with a good render to provide an impression of something than to be perfectly exact with every detail. Getting the colors, perspective, shading and lighting all balanced can make something digital look inexplicably real. I still have a long way to go stylisitically, but it's fruitful to think about it in these terms.

First entry

This week has been a ridiculous gear shift. Jumping right from commuting to work from home to starting school with an intense project and moving into an apartment with my friends. It's my first time living on my own (dorms don't count in my mind) so it's been a little weird. I feel like a grown up now.

Boring first entry, but I want to see how this works.