Rendering

As my artistic education has become more specific, I find myself having to explain terms more and more often to people who are not in my field of study. One of the odd ones that has come up a great deal recently is the concept of rendering. For an illustrator, rendering refers to painting something in such a way that it is indecipherable from a photograph.

(From a Photograph)

At least that's the goal.

(From Life)

People in other areas of study seem to get a variety of different mental images that rarely relate to painting. The one that I find most odd is that a number of people have asked whether I was rendering fat.

(From Life)

I would like to think they see me, Tyler Durden style, down in the basement of a condemned house planning the demise of "the system."

(Based on a Photograph)

Rendering from a photo or from life is all well and good, but rendering from imagination is quite a bit more challenging. One of the assignments this semester is to paint two views of a kitchen from a wonderful short story by Gary Soto.

Both of these are imagined environments.


On a completely separate note, I have been learning how to make brushes in Photoshop. It's rather fun. The painting below was done to test a new brush I made.

Well fine folk, that's all I've got time for right now. I hope y'all have a splendid evening!