I still don’t post as often as I should, there’s no questioning that. Photography was and still is my primary hobby, but more visual arts are creeping in as well as my time outside is limited this winter. Broadening this site’s scope may help me with that, as I broaden my hobbies elsewhere. (Earlier on I had an R/C hobby, but that’s also weather-dependent and there’s little harmony to be had trying to combine that with the sort of photography I do.) Admittedly there is very little formal training under my belt, largely limited to a high school Draw-Paint Design class taken when I was about half my age. However, my formal photography training is only one rung above that with a 100-level college course on DSLRs.
I do have some pictures to show since my last post here. One at a mountain view I call the “Park Road Lookout” near that road’s turnoff on Washington Highway 9 in Whatcom County…
A bird (presumably a wren) in Bellingham’s Northridge Park…
… and a shot of Mount Rainier from some of the newer construction in Tehaleh (Pierce County).
Back to broadening horizons. With both photography and the other arts I’m getting into, I historically short-changed myself on equipment; only to surge once I put even the slightest bit of investment into it.
Photography started for me with point-and-shoots. The hobby only took off to its current extent when I came back to it with a Canon Rebel T7 in 2020 after using smartphone cameras for a long time. (Disclaimer: My current camera is a Fuji X-T4). I took a 100-level college course all the way back in 2010 with a Canon PowerShot A590, which had the necessary controls but not enough of a sensor to really show what varying aperture can do. Going even further back to childhood, I should credit being allowed to use a Mavica for a couple weeks for really starting my interest. This gave me a taste of what the world would be like without having to place so much emphasis on shutter discipline.
Shutter discipline had a different (but similar) meaning back then: It was about making every shot count.
A similar concern works its way into other arts too, and hindered what would have been my pace entering them. I didn’t want to invest in what felt like unremarkable work. In high school outside the DPD course, I did use scrap paper heavily to doodle, but that was paper that was going to waste anyways. Later on heavy use of a secondhand tablet PC was my outlet. The problems were the resolution was low enough and it could handle only so much of a load, so it was difficult to give work any measure of detail without causing it to overheat. I tried to keep things digital under the perception I wouldn’t have to make every piece count nor leave a trail of bad work. This led me to try to find more capable replacements, but only last summer did I succeed in finding a reliable replacement that worked with the odd workflow I fell into. (This tablet PC was mainly used with GIMP 2.6, which is different enough from other programs to make changing wortkflows difficult.)
Only recently did I get it in my head to try working with materials that are of appreciable quality. I don’t fully know what exactly got me to buy into this, but I can guess. A lot of student-grade acrylic supplies bought impulsively one day in November got it all started. Sketching similarly was a store manager’s special I happened upon on a lunch break a week or two later.
If I could find the patience and maybe sync sound to it, the groundwork on tablets may enable me to go into animation. Problem is; it is very, very tedious if done without certain automations I haven’t touched; not to mention I don’t have ideas that are both good and able to overcome the tedium hurdle. (Layering helps a lot and is the very reason cels exist, but I’ve not toyed with skeletons or automated in-betweens offered by modern programs.) Very notable, however, a couple short GIFs’ worth I made during my last beach vacation got the attention of family I was with.
This exposure may have been the key to getting me to be willing to share and more directly invest in my creative output outside photography. Since that vacation was in mid-October, that may have a lot to do with buying supplies in November.
Many a paragraph was written and deleted trying to describe the fledgling direction I seem to have. It feels like any statement I make over-generalizes any art history that would go into it, due to my lack of knowledge. (It’s too early to tell, but there’s some pull to Munch…)
For the technical side, I’m most comfortable working like a sketch and going fore-to-back; instead of the traditional painters’ method of working back-to-fore. This method makes subject control far easier and permits the primer to stand alone when I need a toothy white, but at the expense of edging issues. Another large problem I have is I have trouble copy-painting, and in a related way feel I may not have the best grip on symmetry. This issue may go away over time with experience. What may be my best paintings so far (neither of which are in my possession anymore) had one stem from changing the angle of the subject I wanted…
…and the other from rolling with what started as a symmetry error on the lower outline
The “Possit” character heading this post (named “Kle”, pronounced “Kull”) is liable to show up a lot more here, since I’m more comfortable using him to reflect myself than my own reflection (real or artistically interpreted). Anxieties and self-image problems are eased a fair amount by using him, at least at this point.
Joe R. Stead 