Book Suggestion of the Week

I’m a tennis fan and in light of Roger Federer's win last Sunday over his rival Rafael Nadal in the Barclays ATP World Tour finals, I am going to divert my subject matter for today's suggested read away from fine art, design, and photography to another form of art; tennis. Or in this case writing about tennis.

Recently I read Jon Wertheim's book Strokes of Genius: Federer, Nadal, and The Greatest Match Ever Played. The book is centered around, and recounts, the 2008 Wimbledon gentleman’s singles final, but it does much more than that. It paints a great and true picture of these two athletes from the point of view of someone who has covered and knows the game well. Jon Wertheim writes for Sports Illustrated and in this book he compares and contrasts the on-court styles as well as the off-court personalities of these two giants of the game.

Even if you're a casual tennis fan you will come away liking both of  these athletes after reading the book. In today's world of sports stars who are immature jerks, both Nadal and Federer are in a rare class. From the way they treat the media and fans to the respect they have for the sport and their places in the history of it, these two are special. It doesn’t take a tennis insider to realize that, but the stories the author relates drive home the points in very entertaining fashion.

Wertheim goes into some detail about the families of Federer and Nadal and how each ones early life influenced their play, which I found interesting. My favorite parts of the book however is where the author describes what each ones personality and ritual is like in the locker room and stories of how each one has respect for the other. Federer has something that Wertheim describes as "soft power" in dealing with the pressures of all the off-court stuff a star of his stature has to deal with. After reading this book I became an even bigger fan of his.

Tennis is a great sport and has been likened to boxing which I think is spot on, and these two are classic heavyweights both on and off the court. I’m in the camp of Federer. Always was. I love it when I get to see, over the course of several years, one guy dominate a sport and break all kind of records. When I see that, I feel like I'm seeing something special.

I feel like this book is something special too because it delves into a rivalry which is not only current and exciting, but a microcosm of what ALL sports rivalries should be.

A tennis-themed still life I did a while back.

Go Roger!!

Graphic Art Stuff

Well kids if you happen to live in the sunny south hills suburbs of Pittsburgh, PA, then you'll soon be receiving a newsletter via pony express that I designed and produced at the ad agency I'm currently with.

I've done these for about the last two years now, and the amount of copy in the latest issues just seems to grow and grow (from 8 pages to 12 to be precise). But, that's what the client wants so who am I to argue?

My design challenge is what it often is; see how much client-provided copy I can fit  into a limited space with images and make it look real good.

I actually enjoy working on this design project more than I do many others these days. Mainly because I get to choose some of the photos and work in Photoshop to clean them up and do any effects to them I think will look good and enhance the copy.

Here's one small example of that. There were many uninteresting photos of the fellow shown below provided to me by the client for a feature article. I chose a few I thought would work. All of them needed tweeking, but on this particular one I did some creative cropping, rotating, turning knobs and flipping switches and came up with an image that is more interesting.

Click here to go to the web page that has my entire newsletter in a nice “flip book” presentation. I had to set the file up a certain way to get this to happen. Then a vendor actually produced it for the web.

Well that's my graphic arts flavored post for today. Next time it'll be back to the fine arts side of the spectrum.

Book Suggestion of the Week

Do you enjoy reading about art history? Me too.

Do you have the time to read a huge volume on the subject? I rarely do either, which is why I love this book and books like it.

The Annotated Mona Lisa by Carol Strickland gives a nice concise overview of every major era in art history, as well as featuring the lives and works of the painters and sculptors who made the greatest contributions to those eras.

One of my favorite features of the book is that it not only gives art history information, but it has sections that give side-by-side comparisons of what was going on elsewhere in the world at the time of each artistic movement. For me anyway, that really helps to give a better context and better level of understanding to specific works and movements in art history.

DK publishing puts out beautiful books similar to this one, but I actually like this one better. Sometimes DK has just so damn much on their pages that I don’t know where to look first. This book is only 182 pages so it's very succinct and it has more copy than pictures.

Basically if you want to read a more comprehensive book about a certain artist or movement, read this book first to give yourself some background and perspective.

Or read this book to get an idea of what artist or part of art history is your particular favorite, then go from there.

It’s all good!

Cat Scratch Fever Number 2

Remember that cat I mentioned a few posts back? Well here she is again. Little better lighting this time, although I had to get on my stomach at 6:00 AM to sketch this. Took about 3 minutes to do.

Cats must be the theme of the day for artists. Another artist named Stapleton Kearns whose blog I follow talked about cats as well. Here’s the link to that post.

Latest Sketches and The Beatles

Thought I’d share my latest couple sketches from my Sketchbook Project 2011 sketchbook. Shot the reference myself as usual. Quick ones these.

So quick in fact that I got the proportions messed up a bit.

But that’ll happen.

In other news, tomorrow is the big day for Apple (Apple computer not Apple Corp LTD). After years of trying, Apple is going to have all the Beatles songs available on iTunes. Not a big deal for me since I pretty much have everything Beatles that has come out since the CD versions of the albums in early 80s. But I just wanted to post this picture from Apples web site. This image is so cool isn’t it?

 

I've seen this shot before I believe, but I can't help but wonder weather these were individual shots that were put together in photoshop.

Anyway the Beatles are the best band ever. Period.

The End.

Book Suggestion of the Week

Did you ever see the History channel show called “History's Mysteries”? Well that would be a show that this  weeks suggested read could be featured on. It’s the book called The Lost Painting: The Quest for a Caravaggio Masterpiece by Jonathan Harr.

In this book the author takes what would normally be a snippet on the back end of the nightly news (the discovery of Caravaggio’s masterpiece “The Taking of Christ” that had been lost for decades) and tells it in a descriptive way that just holds your attention.

These types of discoveries probably happen more often than most of us hear about in the mainstream media. This one is of particular interest to me because it involves one of my favorite painters of the baroque age, Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio.

Caravaggio was a mysterious and complex character in the history of painting, and possessed many conflicting attributes to say the least. For instance he was a murderer, yet one of the greatest painters Christendom had ever seen. After being almost ignored for a few centuries, his work and his life have become very popular subjects of renewed study in the fine art scene. That’s not going to tail off anytime soon either. I’ve read where his fame has surpassed that of Michelangelo (he of the Sistine).

One of the  great things about this book is that it’s not only engagingly written, but it is all true, right down to each characters name. And you really feel the joys, frustrations, and excitement of every character as the mystery unfolds. This book is a good example of why I don’t read fiction, because truth is so much better.

Reading about the people who researched the painting and made the discovery will really give you an appreciation of what hard work it must be to track the provenance of a painting from Caravaggio’s time. It will also surprise you just how many undiscovered Caravaggio’s there are out there. Finally,the book also gives a great description of the restoration process of old paintings. as well as other books to read on the life and times of one of your favorite painters and mine, Caravaggio.

Read this book!

Thoughts or suggestions -  Joe@JoeWinklerArt.com

Tennis Sketch

A quick posting today of another tennis sketch I did recently for my Sketchbook Project 2011 sketchbook. As with most of my pencils, numbers 2, 4, and 6 grade of graphite used here.

Goal on this one was to put emphasis on the head and indicate motion in the lower part of the figure, but not in a comic book fashion, if you know what I mean.

Let me know if you think I succeeded!

Joe@joeWinklerart.com

Very Important Meetings

Meetings at work can be described as unavoidable, productive, boring, fun, and yes, even useless. One meeting I had to attend recently touched on all of those and OH so much more!

Here is one page of quick sketchs I did while waiting for a recent meeting to get underway. Sketches like this are great practice for drawing heads, but sadly (tongue placed firmly in cheek here) I don’t have to attend many meetings.

The challenge on this was of course that people are always in motion so I had to just capture the overall shape and look of the subjects. That is what’s  sometimes called “gesture drawing”. Although these are a little more sloppier than a true gesture drawing. Gesture drawing is something that I think of as referring to sketching the entire figure from life, in as few lines as possible, but I suppose it can be used in describing any subject done in that way.

The other challenge which is not apparent here is the fact that light was flooding in from behind everybody. From where I always end up sitting in these things everybody is always backlit. Great for seeing outline form, not so great for seeing detail.

Here is a little more detailed sketch done a bit later in that very same meeting. Most of the effort was put into the mug, but then I added the girl. She was sitting immediately in front of the mug and to the left of it. I decided it was a little better composition to place her further away and off to the right.

By the way, these were all done in my Sketchbook Project 2011 sketchbook. The tour has added a few more museum venues too. Check it out here, and plan your vacations next year accordingly.

Meeting adjourned!

Suggested Book of the Week

Do you use Photoshop? Well here’s a timeless classic that falls into the digital imaging and photo-retouching category, Photoshop LAB Color, The Canyon Conundrum and Other Adventures in the Most Powerful Color Space written by one of the oldest and most hard-core Photoshop gurus around, Dan Margulis.

This is the best of the few books around on channels and Photoshop’s LAB color space (that’s still in print anyway). Though it was written in 2005, the workflow it introduces is still useful today. Adobe might release new versions of Photoshop every two years, but guess what boys and girls, channel structure and colorspaces haven’t changed almost since the dawn of the program, and they’re not going to.

Among other things, this book shows you how to use and understand curves and channels in the LAB and RGB colorspaces to do various tasks like no other book can. It was from this book I learned the concept of actually separating color information in an image, from contrast (and sharpness) and how to correct for each the proper way to get a better image. The author also uses the info palette more then any other book I’ve seen. His background is in printing as opposed to photography or design, so he does everything by the numbers.

I’ll make one concession to Adobe, the latest versions of Photoshop did introduce some features that get the same or better results quicker, than if you follow the step-by-steps in this book.

Which leads me to a word of caution, it’s not an easy read. This is a hard-core Photoshop textbook. You have to be really into Photoshop and use it everyday to get the most out of this book. You also have to enjoy the authors sometime acerbic tone (which I for one do very much).

Photoshop is a big part of my daily graphic design work. But unfortunately it’s not a big enough part. As a result, after reading the whole thing, I’ve tapped only a small percentage of the books power. I do however have selected zeroxed pages of the book pinned up next to my desk that have helped me put into practice some of the concepts it introduces.

Thoughts or suggestions -  Joe@JoeWinklerArt.com

Cat Scratch Fever

Did I ever mention that the girl I married has a cat? As a result, we now have a cat. Lilly is her name. I thought for a while that sketching a cat would be fun and useful to my artistic skills. Turns out that It may prove to be useful, but it ain’t much fun!

For one, she moves too fast when she’s awake to do a decent sketch of. Also, when she’s not awake (which is most of the time) she is curled up in the shape of an apostrophe which isn’t real interesting to draw.

So as a result these three sketches are all I’ve done of her so far. What can I say, the light was low, she is mostly black, the couch is deep red... you get the idea.

 

Last night I fired up the battery in my good old Canon Rebel SLR which is the oldest camera I own, but which has the ability to shoot in continuous burst mode the best of any of my cameras. So I’m going to try taking some photos and do her up really right from there.

And quit complaining.

More Fruit

Here’s another oil sketch I did a few days ago, in one session. I'll be putting this into my sketchbook for the Sketchbook Project 2011. I enjoyed this composition so much that I’ll probably do a full blown painting of it at some point.

I love having the light diffuse off the right side after coming to a zenith on the point of the cantaloupe. On a finished painting I’ll have to really make the shadows sing which is a matter of playing with more colors and getting the values correct.

By the way, more dates have been added to the Sketchbook Project 2011 tour! For a full listing of museums click here.