Archive for July, 2012
Paula Guinto is a teacher, writer, and contributor to our affiliate site LitraTula. We’ve always felt that her photos stood out in how they captured the emotions of her subjects. As a writer and a teacher, Paula considers documenting and collecting objects as part of her DNA. She credits the influence of her brother Mon, who has been a photographer hobbyist for over twenty years.
A lot has been written about the beauty and culture of India so I didn’t have to ask her why she chose the country as a subject. What I wanted to know was if she anticipated on her first visit that she would be able to capture such stunning photos of its people, and at what point she discovered the wealth of images waiting to be documented.
Paula visited India for the first time without any assumptions. She had heard people’s stories and had seen photos in travel shows and magazines but never really knew what to expect. While she had her own preconceived notions of the country, she never thought she would fall in love with it. She became smitten by its people, the food, and seeing these through her lens, she realized how misguided her ideas were about a nation that was different each time she returned.
Paula writes: Read More
We found Saskia’s work on Deviant Art. We were initially drawn to her self-portrait because it seemed to speak so much for the artist. As it turns out, our assumptions were correct. After asking Saskia a couple of questions, we realized that she was indeed as introspective and reflective as her self-portrait made us feel.
Saskia made this piece based on her own photographs, beginning with tracing key lines of the face, and experimented with colors before she started painting. She notes the difference between digital art over traditional art in that digital art “allows you to endlessly tweak your colours without making a huge mess of your painting and palette. When I’ve got all the features, shadows and highlights in the right place I put away the reference image and work on the painting some more to prevent it from becoming an exact copy of the photograph. I want my paintings to be personal and unique, not a reproduction of something else.”
A portrait of the folk singer Sam Beam of Iron & Wine
Saskia’s use of colors is unique in that it appears to mimic the effect of light on the subject as a tool to magnify the smallest details.
Portrait of Eirik G. Bøe and Erlend Øye (Kings of Conveniece),
She also enjoys capturing images of her favorite musical icons in her paintings. Read More
Jeremy Baum’s earliest memory as an artist was as a child sitting on his father’s lap as he drew his favorite cartoons for him. Jeremy is a Pittsburgh-based artist we found on DeviantArt. He attended art school but opted not to mention the institution as it is under litigation. Jeremy believes that some college education and exposure to art school was immensely beneficial to his craft. He was exposed to influential ideas and like-minded people but advises young artists that a degree in art is only useful if one aims to be an educator. Otherwise, Jeremy believes that a couple of art classes should be enough exposure for young artists to figure out what excites them and to educate themselves from there.
“Kubrick” 9×12 ballpoint pen and Prismacolor marker on bristol. Copyright 2009.
We were initially impressed by the degree of detail and realism in Jeremy’s portraits. We asked him about his process in creating portraits and he said that he sometimes uses a photo for loose reference but mostly draws from memory or from his own face in the mirror, beginning with loose pencil sketches, outlining in ink, and then laying down the colors and the final hatching. Read More
