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Friday, August 23, 2013

"Sigil of the Sky People"

"Sigil of the Sky People," acrylic on deer hide, Earl J. Woods, 2013.
As part of a work-related educational experience I had the opportunity to build and paint my own authentic First Nations drum this week. It really works! I attempted to paint the company logo onto the drum, but failed miserably at creating even a single straight line. Since my crude curve vaguely resembled the Starfleet delta made famous by Star Trek, I decided to revert to type and pretend I was creating a prop from the original series. There are several episodes that depict the Enterprise crew interacting with aboriginal peoples of distant planets, so I imagined that one such episode needed an alien drum prop painted with a crude representation of the delta and the red, gold and blue uniform colours of the crew.
Obviously I'm not ready to join the art department quite yet, but I really enjoyed this experience nonetheless. I'll never be a painter, but it's important to explore different creative outlets every so often.

1 comment:

"I, Jefforg" said...

I'm thinking it's time you included painting lessons in your list of things to learn. Painting is usually an adult hobby, and I figure it's something you'd enjoy. I think you'd get more out of painting lessons than photography lessons.

You seemed to relish painting your miniatures, and you aren't grimacing with agony over yor drum. You already have a good foundation in colour theory. Learning to paint will enhance your digital art skill just as Photoshop will give you a leg up in understanding how to put a painting together.

Using paint is not only an application of colour, but also a lesson on chemical interactions and physics: how to achieve certain effects through mixing pigments and mediums, by playing with drying times, and a hundred other creative rules I think you'd enjoy learning. Painting is one of those disciplines that once you pick it up, it will have overlaps and bonuses to other things you do in life. It's not hard to learn, but it is difficult to pick up from scratch without good lessons.

Either you'll consider trying out painting lessons someday in the future, or I'll try to shame you into it with another convincing (I hope) Tutorbot parable...