I'd like to introduce myself, if I may...

[Artist's Helper]

Hello everyone,

my name is Bob Burrage. I'm an Englishman living in the Santa Monica Mountains in California - near Malibu - hence not far from L.A. I'm a retired programmer. I don't count himself as an artist (yet) but I think I can be an artist's helper.

I tried to start painting a few years ago. I could draw, kinda, but I was very confused about colour mixing. So I researched colour theory, colour mixing and colour spaces and I wrote some utility applications to help me understand it all.

This let me figure out why yellow plus blue can give green.

My plan was to learn to paint by copying from reference photos. My tool allows me to pick a colour from my reference photo, feed in a photo of my available paints, work out a recipe for the target colour and then check how close my mix is from a photo of it on my palette.

I've added other functionality such as

• the ability to make a sketch from my subject photo and print it scaled to the size of my canvas for tracing,
• breaking the subject into areas of similar colours, not unlike paint by numbers,
• algorithms for comparing photos of my work in progress to the original subject reference photo.

There's a lot of cheating involved but the application has allowed me to paint some "ok" stuff and I'm learning from the process.
Judge for yourself at my website's gallery.

No talent involved, I'm just cheating.

I wrote the application for myself so it's a bit clunky but if you'd like to check it out I've made it somewhat more usable and it's available as a free program (MacOS or Windows) at https://www.artistshelper.com. I'm sure it'll get better once I get some feedback (please).

(It's called the "artist's helper" because that was the only cheap domain name i could get. If anyone's got a better name I'd love to hear it).

I've recently joined my local arts guild and am attending weekly life drawing sessions to help free myself from the tech. My sketching is getting better as I relax into it. My painting now needs to become looser and freer but I'm getting there. I'd like to try plein air landscape painting but I need to build more confidence in the privacy of my own home first. I'm also trying to become a better photographer - for the obvious reason.

thanks
Bob

(Apologies if my post sounds a bit self promoting but this post is supposed to be about me after all - and the app is free. My main motive for joining up is so I could "like" this post by @snoball. Very funny).

 

[snoball]

Welcome to the forum Bob. That video was hilarious, wasn't it? I enjoyed reading your introduction and may get a chance to check out your program. Your "cheating" painting is gorgeous. I wouldn't call it cheating, results are what counts. In any case welcome to the forum and do enjoy yourself here.

 

[OliveOyl]

Hi Bob. I applaud your dedication to learn, and it seems, based on the comments on your website, you’re making a lot of people very happy with your work. Good going!

As far as the cheating thing goes…I’m a cheater, too. Hi! If you mean using reference photos to learn, I’ve done that. If you mean projecting lines onto a canvas as guidelines, I’ve done that, too. Maybe you can just say you “appropriate.” Maybe you can describe it as “practicing observation,” “figuring out composition,” or “understanding color,” which are important parts of being a VISUAL artist, right? Not everyone needs to emote all over the canvas, or wants to do gestural abstraction, or likes painting memory or dreams. Nobody pops out of the womb as little Picasso juniors…

I took a color course in art school once and the only thing I remember learning was white is the absence of color because it deflects all the colors in the spectrum outward. And black is the absorption of color because it contains all the colors of the spectrum inside of it. I think of that mostly when I’m painting skin tones, although I’m not above outlining somebody’s skin with blue or painting it all gray. As far as how to use proper color in a proper painting, after almost 40 years, I’m sure I still do it all “wrong.” And oh boo hoo.

Anyway, welcome.

 

[P. Barrie]

I think you will learn much more about drawing and developing eye to hand ability from life drawing than you will by tracing. Same for color mixing. Your eyes see and interpret differently than most camera lens translate to 2D.

 

[Hermes2020]

Welcome, Bob. I am downloading your Artist's Helper and am looking forward to trying it. I am so happy to have you here. I use a few programs (Rhino 3D, ACDSee Ultimate, Krita, GIMP) as tools when I work on my sculptures and paintings; I don't think it is cheating and agree with snoball that the end result is all that counts. All's fair in love and art.

 

[Queen Bee]

Welcome. Glad to have you join us.

 

[laika]

Hey there, Bob! Your program certainly sounds interesting, but as a Linux user, I may never know Anyway, glad you've chosen to join here!

 

[E.J.H.]

Hi Bob. For what it's worth, in my book you are an artist, no doubt, and one with impressive tech skills too boot. Quite a dangerous combination....

I mean methods artists use vary wildly, and you don't have to have for instance superior free hand drawing skills to make great work.

Welcome to the forum.

 

[Enyaw]

Welcome to the forum. Interesting, but I flunked sandbox so doodling seems to pacify me.

 

[Artist's Helper]

Hey there, Bob! Your program certainly sounds interesting, but as a Linux user, I may never know Anyway, glad you've chosen to join here!

Hi @laika,

actually it's also available as a java .jar file so you can run probably it on Linux. You'd have to install java but I haven't tried it myself. You'd run it from a terminal with something like:

java -jar ArtistsHelper-2022.02.19.jar

It was compiled with jdk-15 but it'll probably run on older versions. Possibly. Try it. I expect Linux users to be able to cope

​

One of my earliest paintings was of a "Laika".

 

[Artist's Helper]

Thank you everyone for your kind welcomes. This site and the people in it have a very nice vibe.

 

[Terri]

Welcome to Creative Spark, Bob! We all use various helpers and tricks & tips to get wherever we're trying to go - all is fair in love & art! Isn't that the old saying? The point is to make art, and plenty of it, however best it suits you.

Enjoy your journey - and enjoy the forum!

 

[KreativeK]

Welcome Bob! So glad you’re here.

 

[Artyczar]

A late welcome to you Bob. Looking forward to seeing more amazing work from you!

 

[ams]

Welcome Bob. Your application looks very interesting (and was probably fun to write too!). I agree with the others that it isn't cheating. Art is all about self-expression and what makes you happy.

 

[E.J.H.]

By the way, reading the topictitle I thought, hm, must be British.
I was not disappointed.

 

[fedetony]

Hi there, I've checked out your program. It is very nice and it looks you have put a lot of work into it. It reminds me of color2drop. Here a link. I believe you could already use those databases for the color pallets in your program. It was available some years ago but required matlab, yet the dbs are just text files.

I think is difficult to grasp all the details an capabilities of the software, maybe tutorial or application examples, video on youtube could become handy.
Welcome to CS.

 

[Jo Castillo]

Hi, Bob. Welcome. Lots to learn here with fun included.