Paintings

ACEO – Art Cards, Editions and Originals

Leave a comment

For a part time artist, it is still quite amazing that I miss some new cool things about what is happening in the art world. So when I stumbled upon ACEO (also known as Artist’s Trading Card), it peaked my curiosity. Artist trading card, and yes in literal sense, is a subset of miniature art pieces that ranges from reproduction of original works including photographs to original collage and oil paintings. It is believed to have started in Europe when a group of artists decided to create their own trading cards that can be traded just like your kids’ Pokemon cards and the not-so-kids’ anymore Dungeons and Dragon cards. ACEO comes in 2.5×3.5 (inches) size which is a little over the size of a credit card. With some googling and searching on eBay, you will start to appreciate this small art movement. However, will these miniature art pieces really be traded or swapped, or hoarded by avid collectors still remains a question.

Uncategorized

Recomposing a Dull Photo

Leave a comment
Sometimes we take pictures that don’t turn out quite right or just rather boring. It is possible to rescue such images specially if they have a nice pattern.
Look at the photo on the left. We will use this as the starting picture. At first glance the image has no character; however, zooming in the dried flowers are actually quite expressive (just click on the image to see it higher resolution).
Using free image editor like Paint.NET or Gimp, you can
section this image into several overlapping pieces. I will explain the overlap later.Edit each section and change its hue to the color you like. Set the saturation to get a more vivid color.
Now, going back to the overlap. Microsoft Windows Live Photo Gallery has a very smart feature that allows you to merge images with overlapping contents. It is basically a tool to create panoramic pictures out of several photos that you have taken.
I also suggest that you don’t retouch the section individually other that changing it’s color. You want to apply your finishing touches after all the sections are merged.
Here is the result after the merge and some cropping. Notice the three colors are now nicely blended, and the flower petals are now more noticeable. Click on the image to see the photo in higher resolution.


Copyright 2010 JRQ

Uncategorized

Morbid Art

Leave a comment

What is art? A single most important question that one has to answer when presented with material that goes beyond ones perception of art. In fact, the question is truly not what is art but what is acceptable as art. Acceptability denotes conformity to social mores, traditions, and prevailing consciousness. Mores and traditions are for the most part non-transient even if they do change over time but nevertheless not easily malleable as prevailing consciousness that can change over night. Individual tries to provoke and even circumvent these norms of acceptability. Through ones incessant desire to make a statement or sometimes just as mundane as wanting to be noticed, we are presented with visual that, for the most us, will leave us very much confused and sometimes repulsed. This thought is embodied by morbid art. It is something that deals with death in graphic way not as symbolism. For those who have strong stomach you can follow this link Morbid Art Gallery for reference. The previous sample is just one aspect of morbid art which is a great departure from Salvador Dali’s subtle approach to the subject of death even if it is still way too graphic for casual viewers . This art movement now has expanded to subjects that deal with pain, gore, dark mystic visual, and gruesome fantasy imagery. We can debate all we want on the actual significant of this movement, but one thing is sure; it forced us to face suffering and death to its very core.