Featured Artist: Dianne Poinski

Dianne Poinski at work in her studio

Today I have the pleasure of introducing you to Dianne Poinski, an artist who hand colors her own black and white photography. Her work is beautiful, and I hope you enjoy learning more both about her and her unique craft.

Dianne is a photographer living in Sacramento, California. She and her husband have two children. Their daughter just graduated from college, and their son is still attending school to get his photography degree. Dianne has a studio with amazing light in downtown Sacramento where she does her hand-coloring and teaches workshops. Her studio is her “no tech zone,” so all other facets of her work are done out of her home office.

Photo provided courtesy of the artist, Dianne Poinski

Did you always know that you wanted to be an artist?
While attending college to pursue an accounting degree, I took a black and white photography course to help satisfy the art requirement. Passion for photography developed almost immediately, and my goal of becoming a CPA quickly disappeared.

How were you introduced to hand-coloring photographs?
After shooting and printing straight black and white photographs for a few years, I was introduced to hand-coloring and I fell in love with everything about it. I loved the look of hand-colored images as well as the meditative moments I experienced while doing it. The idea of hand-coloring dates back to the early days before color film was developed. Photo artists used it to add realism to their images. I have been greatly inspired by the work of Jill Enfield, Thea Schrack, and the images from the early 1900’s by Wallace Nutting.

Once I started hand-coloring, I began to shoot differently. I could visualize the possibilities hand-coloring could add to the scene before me. Hand-coloring seemed to add emotion to my photographs, something that I wasn’t able to communicate with my black and white images. Master black and white photographers have that skill, but it wasn’t anything I possessed.

When you decided to pursue hand-coloring photographs as a profession, what did you do to get started?
In 1997 I got up the courage to try my hand at my first art festival. Beginning in 1998 I started participating regularly in local festivals and then took the leap and started applying for shows in the San Francisco area. Soon I was attending festivals as far south as Southern California and north to Bellevue, Washington.

Photo provided courtesy of the artist, Dianne Poinski

You recently stopped doing the festival circuit and have begun to teach more. Can you share about that transition in your journey?
There are many things about the festival circuit that I love. The friends I have made, the relationships I have formed with people who connected with my work, and I would be lying if I didn’t mention the thrill of having someone purchase art that I created!

It is hard work, though. There is the physical work required in setting up your booth and then tearing it down 2 or 3 days later. Most shows I did by myself so at the end of the weekend I was exhausted. There is also the emotional toll it can take. Worries about the weather, the stress of being away from home so much, and then after the recession started, barely making enough money to cover the expense of doing a show. The shows were also becoming more and more expensive to do and then in the middle of last year, my show van broke down and was not worth fixing. I had a choice, buy another van and make payments, or rent for the rest of the season and do some serious soul searching about what exactly I wanted to do. I chose to rent and at the end of last year I made the decision to take a break from shows in 2009. It was not an easy decision to make but I believe it was the right one. I also decided that since I would not be participating in shows, that I would look into teaching workshops out of my studio. This idea scared me to death!

Photo provided courtesy of the artist, Dianne Poinski

What are your favorite tools or artistic mediums? How do you stay inspired?
For many years I hand-colored traditional fiber darkroom black and white prints with photo oil paints. After transitioning from film to digital (which I fought for many years) I spent over a year experimenting with different papers, tools and media until I found a way to continue hand-coloring on what are now inkjet prints. I have a few favorite papers and have discovered that by making pastel sticks into a powder, I could still maintain the translucently I had when I hand-coloring with the oils. In addition to using powder pastels, I am also experimenting PanPastels. I use many traditional pastel tools to apply the color.

Of course I get asked all the time “why not just hand-color in Photoshop?” I have played around with it, but it’s not for me. I feel that hand-coloring on digital prints is the perfect blend of tradition and technology.

Photo provided courtesy of the artist, Dianne Poinski

Photo provided courtesy of the artist, Dianne Poinski

In 2008 I began offering workshops to introduce this technique. After the initial terror of teaching my first workshop, I have since discovered that I love sharing what I do with other people. What really excites me about teaching hand-coloring on digital prints is that it opens up the art form to more people. With the traditional method of hand-coloring photographs, the ideal print was made on a fiber based photo paper which meant you either had to have access to a darkroom or pay someone else to make these fairly expensive prints. Most people have inkjet printers and are taking many more photographs now that they have digital cameras.

I have not made any decisions about returning to the art festival circuit next year. If I do go back, it will only be to do a few of the better shows. I really want to concentrate on teaching and sharing with other people as well as developing an eBook or some other method of teaching this technique of hand-coloring to as many people as possible.

Visit Dianne at her website (http://www.diannepoinski.com) or check out her blog (http://diannepoinski.blogspot.com/) for a personal perspective on her journey as an artist and her current projects.

Featured Artist: dCepT at Desimal

Last week I had the pleasure of interviewing Fredrik Dahl Tyskerud (aka dCepT), a concept artist for Desimal in Norway and contributor to the Desimal blog. We had a great chat about traditional art, concept art, and inspiration. Get ready for a long post, though! The original transcript was nearly eight pages long; the following content was cut down to just four. Hope you enjoy!

What kind of work do you do with Desimal? What is your typical client?
Our clients vary a lot, but we do everything from visual profiling to images used for marketing purposes. I work as a concept artist, so I do pre-production work. I visualize the ideas. I do everything from mood boards through to character designs and costume designs, whatever is needed basically.

I’m not a “costume designer,” but I do a lot of variations when I start out – a lot of thumbnailing to get my head straight, to get into the right venue or the right lane for whatever I’m doing. So if I’m doing clothes, I’ve done that as well. I just do a lot of variations. I look up a lot of reference to see what other designers are doing since I haven’t got a clue, really, how clothing works. But I try to make it cool, basically, and then we’ll probably hire some costume designer, or a seamstress or someone who knows how to put it together, to come in and tell me that probably won’t work.

It would be interesting to be the one to come up with the ideas and then test it in the real world.
That’s the big payoff for me, to see what I’ve designed in the world.

What inspires you? Of all the things you do, what do you enjoy the most?
I think I like character design the most, definitely, because it’s like the whole package. We try to tell stories with our images a lot of the time. So, I believe a character has to tell a story all its own, outside of the picture, as well. So I usually design [the character] without a background. Or as you’ve probably seen if you’ve been by my website, you’ve seen a lot of character designs on there that don’t have an environment, and still it just shows out the character. I try to tell that character’s story through how that character rooks, the body language, facial expressions, and what kind of gear they’re wearing, what kind of clothes they’re wearing, to show what kind of function they have.

Your characters do stand very well on their own. They tell a story just by themselves. A lot of artwork today seems to go the opposite route, and to me the sense of story is not as strong.
Yeah, you know, all the old masters – Velasquez, Jean-Léon Gérôme– and all those very naturalistic painters are the guys I look up to. And Rembrandt is like, huge. So I’m not into, but I have every respect for a modern artist or an abstract artist, but that’s not my cup of tea.

What’s your favorite tool or medium? Do you prefer a digital format, or do you prefer working with paint and pencil and a sketchpad, or do you do both?
I do both. I usually carry a backpack, and I have at least two sketchbooks and a big pencil case in there, just in case inspiration hits me. Professionally, I like digital work a lot, because it gives me a lot of options for editing, and it’s very forgiving in that you can just Ctrl-Z back your way in a picture.

Also, of course, all the layers. I’m very much into Photoshop when I do my professional stuff, as well as I’ve recently fallen in love with Art Rage from Ambient Design. Art Rage is more of a traditional simulator. You can paint with oils, and it actually really looks like oils. It looks like juicy brush strokes put on there. And I love that, because I started out doing only doing traditional. I was schooled in oils and pencils and all of that. So it’s nice to get that traditional flare to my digital work because it’s often times very easy to go overboard and make it super-smooth. It looks very digital, and I try to avoid that.

I can see that authenticity in your work. I’ve seen your tutorials on Art Rage, but I haven’t tried it out myself.
I’ve got an easel and some canvas standing around constantly at my apartment, and when I get home, I do oils, and I sketch a lot. The digital medium gives you a really, really fast production rate. I don’t have to wait for a layer to dry out before I move on.

The combination of Art Rage and Photoshop is what I use mostly these days. But I touch on Google Sketchup for some stuff. If do an environment, and I need to get the perspective down really fast, it’s so much easier to block it in with Google Sketchup, seeing as how it’s a really easy program to do a fast mockup. So yeah, I’ll use that, and put in some perspective lines, and paint over it.

So I use that, and I’ve tried an experimental little program called Alchemy. It’s sort of a sketching application. You can have it randomize your strokes in the way you put down a line, so you can’t have that complete control that you usually do.

When I’m into the ID process, I’m fond of sort of letting go of a bit of my control so that I don’t end up with only the presumptions that I have when I walk into it. If I have a brief that says, you know, a character or an environment that is such and such, I get a lot of preconceptions right away.

So I try to both include those and break out of them at the same time by adding more random stuff. I’ll use Alchemy that randomizes my strokes. It even has this function that uses sound input to randomize your strokes. So if you do a clicking sound, it will throw your line off every time it clicks. It’s weird because you can’t erase, or Ctrl-Z or anything with that thing. But it’s fun to, you know, get out of the box, right?

Also, I have a cursory knowledge of Alias Wavefront’s Maya. That’s also a 3-D program. I’m not a 3-D modeler by far. Photoshop feels less technical, once you get over that point where it functions more as a tool and not as an obstacle between your thought and what is down on canvas. Maya is much more technical – you’re pushing and pulling points.

Where did you receive your training?
A lot of it is self-taught or just talking to and sketching with peers. But I started out at an art school where I was trained in traditional media, life drawing, charcoal, oils, acrylics, all that. But, that being said, though, the teachers there were probably more into modern art, like abstract stuff. So, I sort of fought a different battle on the side to become a good draftsperson and to just become good at realistic painting at first.

And then I found a forum called ConceptArt.org. I’ve been there since 2004, I think. So after I found that place, I discovered this awesome thing called concept art, right, and what that encompasses. And I sort of had an epiphany where you go, Wow, that’s what I’m supposed to do.

In Sweden, our neighboring country, there are a lot of concept artists that meet up regularly, so I started gong over there and hanging out with those people, and just paint and sketch and talk art. And learn, from the people that are in the field, that are actually doing what I wanted to do.

That, and I’ve attending workshops with the guys that own CoceptArt.org, Massive Black, they’re an outsourcing company based in San Francisco, I think. So I’ve attended workshops with them. I’m attending a new one in August in either Germany or Italy.

So I’ve learned a lot from those guys. And the online forums are great, once you find the ones that are into giving people construction criticisims, instead of just going, “Dude, that’s awesome!” or you know, flaming people.

But ConceptArt.org is very, very good in that respect because it’s built on constructive critiques in order to help people get better.

It’s interesting that you went to art school and found the emphasis to be less on traditional art. Modern art is still a main emphasis, and I can see how it would be difficult to find training that doesn’t emphasize modern art.
Yeah, I know. I wanted to attend art school in Italy, you know, go to Florence Academy of Art, because that’s like purely traditional. You get everything from board drawings through to life drawings and long poses where you paint for several days. I wanted that, but I guess I didn’t have the financial means back then. But it worked out, though.

So do you travel much, then?
The last couple years I’ve traveled a bit. I love traveling, and I want to do more of it.

So, my last question is, how do you stay inspired? You mentioned workshops, and those seem to help.
Yeah, they do definitely. After the last workshop I attended in Europe, I was like, floating on a cloud of inspiration for you know, half a year after.

But I try to expose myself to art all the time, everything from bothering my girlfriend with what I do, to just surfing the forums looking at art, trying to go to shows to see traditional art. It’s definitely a big help working with other visual, creative people.

Constantly, I do side-projects to keep fresh, because if there’s a project that lasts a long time at work, you tend to get, really, you know, you stare yourself blind.

When I get home, I try to sketch and paint a lot, and I try to do other stuff. Do just stuff I enjoy, and you know, keep my mind fresh about painting. I love discovering new stuff, like about how to process, or color theory. I don’t know, like I said, big art nerd.

I work with a 3-D modeler. We’re doing a short little 3-D film where we’re imagining a whole world from the bottom up, everything from characters and props that go into the film and environments and storyboarding and all that. I touch on all those different things, and I don’t know, I think it’s a big help to be involved a lot, I guess. I try to not feel like it’s work, ever.

Yeah, it can be, literally, anything. I try to walk around with my eyes wide open to anything that might inspire anything. It can be something as mundane as a leaf with a nice color lying on the ground; it pops, or something. It can be a shape I see or something I see in a window, I don’t know. Everything, anything.

I try to keep all that. I take a lot of pictures with my phone. It’s a good reference as well. I try to collect everything I find interesting. If I feel uninspired some day, I’ll rummage through my folders and see if I find something. Or I’ll start doing random shapes to see what comes out of it, and the combination, I think, if I keep a big mental library of stuff I’ve seen, and if I start doing random shapes, I’ll start to see something in it. And then I’ll be able to do a speed paint or a sketch or something to exercise the brain.

*All images in this post with the exception of the bio graphic are copyright Fredrik Dahl Tyskerud.

Featured Artist: Kristin at MeanBean

This week’s Featured Artist is Kristin from Mean Bean. Unfortunately, I was too technologically adventurous and decided to use iChat Video for our interview… without realizing that I needed to hit the “record” button. Because the official “transcript” of our conversation was lost, this week’s interview is a bit more of a feature. I hope you enjoy “getting to know” Kristin as much as I did.

Bio
Kristin is the artist behind Mean Bean. She creates beautiful purses and bags in a variety of creative fabric and color combinations and donates 10% of sales proceeds to Blood:Water Mission. She also has a fantastic blog.

Like many of us, Kristin’s art is also her side hussle – she is a wife and mom, and also maintains a full-time day job, making time for her art in the spare minutes she can find in the evening and on weekends. Her husband supports her art and even designed the Mean Bean logo and website for her.

The Beginning
Kristin’s line of bags began simply. She found a pattern online, tried it, and discovered it worked for her. Initially, she began creating variations and custom pieces for friends, family, and co-workers. Over time, Kristin decided to focus on a single style in different sizes.

Inspiration
When I asked Kristin where her inspiration comes from, she smiled and confessed it was her stash of fabric. I shouldn’t have been surprised. After all, what fabric artist doesn’t maintain a collection of beautiful fabrics in different textures and colors? Kristin said that often, she simply goes to her stash and plays with different combinations of colors and liners based on what inspires her that day. I have to say, the results are beautiful!

Balance
Kristin can relate to other artists who have multiple roles and responsibilities. When I asked her how she stays inspired and avoids burnout with her many other responsibilities, she was willing to share her secret to balance. First, Kristin breaks down tasks into doable sections based on what she has the time and resources to accomplish. Second, she takes breaks – be it to play with her daughter or go for bike rides with her family. Third, although Kristin’s goal is to one day be able to do her art full-time, she is taking her time building the business so that she doesn’t burn out.

Giving Back
Kristin donates 10% of sales proceeds to Blood:Water Mission, a non-profit organization that builds wells in communities that struggle for water. When I asked Kristen about her involvement with Blood:Water Mission, she became passionate in her description of the informative meeting she attended and how impressed she was with how even small donations can make a big impact. She shared with me that just $1 can supply an African with water for an entire year. Her passion for this project is a driving influencer in the direction and growth of Mean Bean.

I hope you’ll take some time today to check out Kristin’s blog and Etsy store. She does beautiful work, and given that Mother’s Day is this weekend, one of her products would make an excellent gift. I’m sure you’ll be impressed!

Artist Snapshot: Franco Albini, Phaidon 374, 392, 491

Franco Alibini in Italy, Public Domain of Italy

Architect and designer Franco Albini perfected the art of using both traditional and innovative materials to answer modern design dilemmas. Phaidon features the Margherita chair, the Luisa chair, and the LB7 Shelving Unit.

Artist Biography

“Through his creations, the modern furniture design merged the Italian traditional artisanship with the new forms of modernism. In his creations, he used raw, inexpensive materials. He exploited the very skilled Italian craftsmanship. This also meant an elegant design based on minimalist aesthetics, mixed with extraneous ornamentations.” – Wikipedia

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Happy Inauguration, Everyone

Art speaks to culture and community on a level that transcends time. The portrait below of now President Barak Obama by Shepard Fairey is now on display at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, immortalizing this moment in our nation’s history for all to remember.

Whatever your political inclination, let us all join in celebrating the triumph of equality, justice, and hope for all. Happy Inauguration 2009!

Snapshot: Eero Aarnio, Phaidon 599

Few designers’ work successfully penetrates the stratosphere of high design to transcend pop culture and become a permanent fixture in classic modern design like Eero Aarnio’s line of chairs, specifically the Ball Chair and the Bubble Chair.

Photo from SixDifferentWays.com

Eero Aarnio (born 1932) is a Finnish interior designer, well known for his innovative furniture designs in the 1960s, notably his plastic and fiberglass chairs. Aarnio studied at the Institute of Industrial Arts in Helsinki, and started his own office in 1962. The following year he introduced his Ball Chair, a hollow sphere on a stand, open on one side to allow a person to sit within. The similar Bubble Chair was clear and suspended from above. Other innovative designs included his floating Pastil Chair (similar to a solid inner tube), and Tomato Chair (more stable with a seat between three spheres). His Screw Table, as the name suggests, had the appearance of a flat head screw driven into the ground. ~ Wikipedia

The Bubble Chair has been one of Aarnio’s most famous designs.

Aarnio’s Ball Chair can be seen everywhere lately.  It was even featured on the cover of LeeAnn Womack’s latest album release. Both chairs can be seen in the Advair pharmaceutical commercial as well. See more of Aarnio’s great work at www.eeroaarnio.com.