Art Feeds Art. Nom Nom.

This week didn’t see a lot of progress on the deepening of my knowledge of  photography, but it did see some increased breadth.  What I really learned was that art feeds art:  photography feeds sketching feeds blogging feeds new learning feeds creativity.  Good thing I’m hungry!

So what type of expansion am I talking about this week?

I continued to learn about ISO for indoor vs. outdoor and camera settings.  That will be a long and winding road.

A.D. also took some time to teach me the basics of plug-ins for Adobe Photoshop with the use of Topaz Impression and how I can use this plug-in to focus, or rather, de-focus, myself for increasing my skills with watercolor and acrylics.   Topaz Impression is a very intuitive program and is available as a plug-in as well as a standalone app for Mac and Windows.  Full disclosure:  A.D. is an affiliate for Topaz Labs, so he gets a part of every sold program when you click the links in this post.

I have loved my little cell phone pic of Cathedral Lake in Yosemite as it not only marks a grand physical accomplishment for me, but is just damn gorgeous.  The day that Erin of Wandering Lens Photography and I hiked up there was so fully windy and freezing cold that I couldn’t think of getting my sketchbook out.

That hasn’t stopped me from wishing I could capture it in another medium though.  What I will say so far is that progress has been rough and I’m really working hard at learning how to use true watercolor.  I feel like I could have done a better job with the Inktense pencils as I am quite accustomed to the way they work at this point, but what is life without growth?  This is my very formative watercolor of this scene using my new Sennelier paints:

Clearly, this rendition is not close to finished as it looks nothing like the impression and I don’t have the control of the watercolors that I would like, but that discussion is for another day.

The main point of sharing my unfinished work at this time is to reiterate the point that art feeds art: stay hungry.