I co-teach this class at Art Center which tries to combine digital and plein air. It's an interesting experiment and the students are enjoying it. We go on a field trip and take photos, make drawings, paint paintings, then we meet in the computer lab the week after and try to make something new using the computer and all it's amazing abilities. our first outing was on campus where I took lots of photos from unusual angles and made a photo-collage composition whose sum is greater than it's parts. I got the shots of the mantis when she posed for me after saving her from a spider web. Now she's attacking the entire San Gabriel Valley! Today class met as Descanso Gardens. I sketched and photographed for a couple hours and then did a longer painting after class regrouped at 11. I tried to encourage the class to really go for it when you're painting from life. You can see and "feel" so much more color when you are really there, it's something that the camera never seems to get. So with this painting I wanted to really accentuate and paint how the colors around me felt... even more saturated! When I got home I brought the painting and a photo I took of the same scene into the computer, stretched my painting so it matched the photographic placement, adjusted the opacity so you could see a little of both and voila! The saturated colors and "right but wrong" composition painted from life are blended with the dull colors and "perfect placement" of the photo which makes for an interesting image. two wrongs make a right!
