My 100th Landscape...

...is finished! And it only took me 14 years to get to this number! Irony aside, I think it is the untold hours in front an easel that I spend on each painting that make my paintings distinctly my paintings, so I care not that it has taken this long. Mainly because the best part is, I am still learning! And I put almost all of what I have learned into making this one:


-jb.

Sometimes Life Gets In The Way...

...of painting. Sometimes painting gets in the way of blogging. Then sometimes your camera phone dies and all of it becomes just that much harder. And sometimes are these times. But, as I pool through digital piles of various photos and try and remember where I left off, then figure out how to start again, all I can promise is my blogging will be back with a vengeance. Tomorrow...

-jb.

Drink Coffee, Stuff A Ballot Box...

...and overthrow a third world government. Just kidding! You will actually be helping my friend’s non-profit and a very underserved community of very bright kids. First you need a Starbucks card. You can get one for as little as $5.00 at any Starbucks (and then use if for purchases). Or you can "egift" one to yourself online. To do this, go to https://www.starbucks.com/shop/card/ and click on "egift" in the middle of the picture of the card and follow the instructions. Follow the instructions to open an account and register your card. Then, go to www.votegivegrow.com and sign in with your account info. When you log in, it brings you directly to your "local" page. On the map to the right of the page, at the top, it says "Change Region". If you click on that, you can enter a zip code, which will then bring you to your new chosen community, with voting enabled. Use the zip code is 85321. This will take you to the page on which you can vote for the International Sonoran Desert Alliance (ISDA). AND there's a button for getting a reminder about voting next week! So please, take a couple of minutes to help these people, because karma is a good thing...

- jb boyd

Big Things...

...are coming together in the panel making room. The Gray Bay panels are cut and sealed, needing only a coat of black paint on the cut edges, and the saw got it's final coat of oil ground and will be ready to go in a few days.


The oil ground is tinted with burnt sienna, which kills the obnoxious white and replaces it with a warm pink to build the paintings on.

- jb boyd

This Bucket Thinger...

...is coming up aces! And with the return of afternoon thunderstorms to the landscape, it makes for some pretty dramatic photographs.


Now the wisdom of hanging out on a ladder twenty feet above anything else for a good quarter of a mile while storm clouds gather overhead and lightning strikes in the distance could be questioned, so can the wisdom of most anything I do.


But if I get zapped, at least I was doing what I love, and had a great view to boot...

- jb boyd

This Blog Has...

...no picture. Mainly because I am one of those law abiding air travelers who actually waits for the all clear to turn on their electronic devices, and by then we were over the Pine Barrens. But next time you are flying, look at the color temperature of the ground lights. It is changing from the yellow of iridescent to the blue of compact fluorescent. The next generation will never know the yellow. Their offspring will fly through solely reflected light, because by then somebody will realize that circular globes only appease the gods, and waste the energy that should be lighting your footsteps. It all changes, which makes me pause in my defense of only painting under lights. But the main point, which I should return to (to make this an acceptable art blog post), is that art is making the visual of the now. Because it will change, and every moment is fleeting. So I choose paint, and more specifically choose the longevity of oil paint, because in 2020, 3030, or 4040 will anyone know what Betamax was, let alone Blue Ray?

And by the way, find you own art flying out of your hometown airport. The landscape of your childhood might be encompassed by a window frame, the limits of your adolescence may pass by in a trip to the restroom, and your future, well, may that be ever so lightly obscured by the clouds...

- jb boyd

When you walk..

...into a tidal flat, at night, on a flood tide, there is this irrational fear that the first step will submerge you up to your waist. The water, flat and still, is opaque and black as oil, seeming as deep as a barrel. Of course you don't sink, except that little muddy bit that sloshes water around the feet of your boots. Soon though, as you walk out, water begins to trickle in through that cut by your ankle. But you continue on, undaunted. Halfway there, you realize your boots aren't tall enough and you roll up your pants. When the ladder is in sight, you realize no amount of rolling will save your pants from getting thoroughly wet, and cursing the tide app that you now know why only got two stars, check your pockets to move your iPhone to higher ground. Four steps to go, and you know this black seeping darkness might reach the point of really uncomfortable, but you are almost there, and already very wet, so you practically jump to the safety of the ladder. Kicking one foot at a time up and back to dump the water out of your boots, you smile as you ascend the ladder. Mainly because this view greets you, and cold is only temporary.


Unfortunately, even with bucket science (as a devoted reader and very funny friend called it), Photoshop doesn't know what to do with this nighttime sonata (see earlier post), and it needs to be stitched manually. Hence the vertical lines. Oh well, life isn't supposed to be perfect, and that is also why there is a Plan C...

- jb boyd

When you don't know how to...

...do almost anything, there's a good chance someone who spends their life doing it has written a book on it. Love your library, or in this case, Amazon. More specifically, big thanks to Harold Woeste, author of Mastering Digital Panoramic Photography, and it's pretty stellar publisher of stuff I need to know, Rocky Nook publications. While he did not recommend the bucket or ball bearings, Woeste's excellent book gave me the knowledge and understanding to come to my own results. Speaking of, look how seamless this horizon line is.



You can actually see the earth curve, and this is only the first of many! Stay tuned for clouds...

- jb boyd

It's All Ball Bearings Nowadays Boys...

...now bring me a cup of fat and the head of Alfredo Garcia while you're back there.



Sorry for the mashup of Fletch quotes, but I couldn't resist, for it is ball bearings embedded in the lid of this bucket that makes my new favorite photo toy work so well. It is an artist's budget (aka whatever is lying around) virtual reality head that can take perfectly aligned 360 degree panoramic photographs.



The possibilities make me giddy (anyone have a dome they would commission me to paint?) and flat out laugh at how quickly and easily the panoramas come together. Instead of toiling away for hours on each one, I let the computer do the work while I paint.



The black pieces of tape let me repeat the same capture of the landscape day or night, and I don't even have to risk life (or mostly limb) having to lean off the ladder to look through the viewfinder.



With the ladder fastened tight to the earth, I can even take long exposures in the wind. Over the course of a month or two, I will create a photo archive of Gray Bay, at high tide through low tide, bright sunshine to moonlight. Results to follow...

- jb boyd

The Clouds Are Back...

...the clouds are back! Which means summer is right around the corner. Oh well, one out of two ain't bad. But now that the SC skies get their daily companions, the landscapes take on a whole new dimension, like this photo of Colonial Lake.


More on that later, but in the meantime apologies for the long interval in between posts. My thumbs cracked which made using my one stop blog machine (ie my iPhone) very painful. But hopefully in the next week or two I can get caught up. Cheers!