Inner Kintsugi

A few months ago at the beginning of lockdown, my aunt gave me a book that she thought would help me cope with the circumstances we have all found ourselves in. That book was called Ichigo Ichie by Héctor García and Francesc Miralles and is about making the most of the present the Japanese way.

In one chapter it discussed 'Kintsugi' also known as golden repair. It is a Japanese pottery fixing technique in which the broken parts are reattached with gold, as a way of creating beauty from imperfection and damage. In another part of the book, it talked about the Buddhist perspective of compassion, and it doesn't mean feeling pity for someone but rather a profound empathy that allows us to put ourselves in the situation of the other to understand their motivations and, if necessary, their mistakes.

"Just like delicate porcelain, the human heart can be damaged but concealing the damage out of shame isn’t the solution, damage is part of our history and has brought us to where we are. Just for this, it deserves the brilliance of gold, reflecting a light that is our own. Having problems is part of being alive. Our difficulties and how we face them more than our periods of contentment, are what shapes us throughout the course of our lives." - Ichigo Ichie, 2019

These two ideas got me thinking about my Mum and our relationship. Everyone has good and bad moments in their lives. Every obstacle she has faced, in her moments when she should have been weak, she always showed strength and resilience. All her wounds have shaped her into the woman she is today, and that is someone I couldn't be more proud of. She deserves the brilliance of gold, reflecting a light that is completely her own.

I've always felt like my Mum has been fiercely protective of me and stricter with me than my sister. As I've reached adulthood that grip has loosened, but growing up I often resisted it. I created this painting as a reflection, and as a reminder, of the understanding I have towards her motivations, and of the compassion I should have when I feel that urge to resist. Everything she's done has been to prevent me and my sister developing our own cracks, but when we inevitably do, she's been the one to show us how to turn those cracks into radiant gold.

Below are some WIP images: It took me a while to get my Mum's face right, also, the screen I was working on was a lot warmer than my mac's screen so some colour correction was done.

Premise: Fred's Host House Concept Art

After yesterday's trip to Piccadilly to meet my favourite artist Loish, I was lucky to see her do a live demo of her work process and since I have felt very inspired, motivated and eager to get back to painting so here's the first bit of environmental concept art for Premise. Set in Yorkshire this is the concept for where my Grandad stays in my animation, isolated and bit scary place on a hill. I also put a sepia filter on the second one to give it that oldish authentic feel. I am contemplating having a sepia filter/look on the overall animation.

Blog Redesign!

It's been a long time coming but I've finally got round to redesigning my blog! 

When people look at my blog I want them to get a sense of who I am, so I did a stylised painting of me holding my cat. I also have a new blog address now too.

 

Digital Painting Practice (Personal Work)

Digital painting is something I want to get better at and do faster, so I used the Art Of Loish book as inspiration and used her tips. Putting it into practice, I've done this painting for my Mum, of her when she was younger. I'm trying to develop my own style so this is a semi-realistic painting, it's not supposed to be 100% accurate. 

Merveille Travelogue 2 - UPDATED

Updated Final Render of Merveille

Changes made: Lighthouse is more visible and crown isn't so tall, lighting increased and air brushing redone.

Merveille Art Of Document

Merveille Crit Presentation

Merveille Final Render

Animated GIFs

Testing Renders with Matte Paitnings

Just done a test render, I won't be putting the sky painting together in maya because shadows appear on the sky and doesn't look realistic.

Next Steps

Today I've shown Jordan my block model of how I'm going to layout my composition, he aprroved of it and has shown me techniques on how to make everything more realistic: soft selection for making a more realistic terrain, alpha maps as a simpler way to make the fogginess of this dream, also how to merge the path and field using grass.

Example of alpha maps being used for grass,
found at: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/vwbA6

It's important to always be looking at references and professionals, when it comes to the grass merging bit I found this example showing progression helped.

Found at: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/8ZeBQ

Found at: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/8ZeBQ

Another example: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/Ra84X

Then I was shown different ways to use lighting, ie area, point and directional - I will be rendering in mental ray. Below are some test shots of lighting.

Now I'm going to work on my matte painting by working into Monet's painting even more using mixer brush tool to make it look more painted as Cornell collages art work rather than painting his own to collage. New techniques: Mixer brush, clone tool, hue jitter and taking an oil painting texture and using a blending mode to add a layer of effect. Braid Game is an example of the sky.

Diagram of compositioning layers

Final Composition/Concept Art for Merveille

Next to come... Orthographs

@Phil Merveille Compositions

I'm stuck with what composition I should go with, I'm thinking maybe number 4 and have all the buildings and lose the spaciousness I wanted, or 6 and scrap the bird cage building? 

(These images don't have air brushing to show distance or depth).

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2

3

4

5

6

Thinking Out Loud

This post is just to put out there what I'm thinking and my approach to this project (in case I forget or lose track).

Joseph Cornell is a surrealist, he uses antique, precious objects/victorian styled fragments to fill his shadow boxes to make them look like poetic theatres. This project I am thinking like Cornell would to architect a city, to architect means construct buildings. If Cornell was to architect a city it wouldn't be jam packed with buildings, it would be spacious, surreal, victorian, antique, precious, collaged. Also he had an affinity for culture.

After watching Inception I started thinking of this project as Cornell has to become the architect of this team to architect a dream space and using his quotes I can get into his head to figure out how he would.

"Look at everything as though you are seeing it for the first time, with eyes of a child, fresh with wonder." Dreams aspects you know conscious or not, yet dreams give you the chance to look at what you know or have already seen as if it were for the first time and then you wake up fresh with wonder.

"Shadow boxes become poetic theatre or settings wherein are metamorphosed the elements of a childhood pastime" "Collage = reality" His collaged boxes aren't just works of art, it's his mind, his reality and city where he lives - his mise-en-scène.

So if he was to create a city digitally he could use any object to whatever scale he wanted, his doll in a tree could be giant and the painting cutouts he could walk through and explore. But I need to focus on architecting the actual buildings - what would he do? He would use objects to structure a building - to form a skeleton of it and use objects to add flesh to it. But being old fashioned (Lived: 1903 - 1972) he would probably include victorian houses or grand hotels in the background??? 

Thinking about what he means by "metamorphosed the elements of a childhood pastime" metamorphosed means to become an adult so my city will reflect that metamorphose from child to adult. The front of the scene (the edge of Merveille) will look like a bit like a park to reflect childhood and as you venture further into this maze of wonder you'll grow up and find yourself in the big/centre city of Merveille - the district to reflect adulthood and sophistication (hence chess pieces). Also everything in Merveille will seem gigantic like everything would to a child - even grass.

Dungeness is a good example of how big objects or unlikely materials can be transformed into a lived in building e.g. the train carriage.

 

Pink Dreams in 2.5D

In photoshop we did a digital painting, made it into several layers done by background, foreground, mid grounds etc then in after effects took the layers spaced them out in a 3D space using the Z-axis then put in a camera to pan across the scene. I call it Pink Dreams.

What If? Metropolis OGR Part 2

Concept art ... Take 2

Talking to Simon yesterday about architecture using objects to actually make a building rather than using objects to decorate one, he showed me pictures of architecture in Dungeness like the train cabin converted into a building, also revisiting OGR 1 feedback looking at the examples Phil gave, Simon suggested I rethink the two buildings on the left and that I was almost there with the mirror building maybe just take away some of the circular ones. Also that it needed street furniture like a lamp post - another feature to represent scale. 

Merveille Digital Set: 3D Modeled/Matte Painted

3D Modeled:

• Gazebo
• Mirror Building
• Boat House (Chimneys +Wheel + Side Gate + Lantern)
• Crown Town Clock
• Scuba Helmet
• Path

Matte Painted:

• Background
• Chess Piece Skyline
• Path Texture
• Gazebo Roof Texture
• Boat House Roof and Wall Texture

Merveille Concept Art

Concept Art With People

City Explained: Merveille is a small island city in a dream space filled with giant wonders, although it may not look like a city it has resembling qualities such as: a skyline (chess pieces), buildings, statues (helmet), a town clock (the crown), wind turbines etc. The whole place is a collage of antique objects that form nostalgic memories to the dream holder and wonder for an outsider.

I have tried to create depth/atmosphere using the air brush and opacity to make the further back buildings look further away however I have used some air brushing at the front to reflect the haziness of a dream. I have also tried to show scale by putting in people.

Concept Art Without People