“Bossa Nova” in Portugese (or Brazilian), “Nouvelle Vague” in French mean “new wave” It waz the “in” word in the sixties I’m told, new types of movies, new images, new art, new everything, falling like waves on a happy (or sometimes puzzled) public.

This week our topic is composition in post-impressionist land, Puvis de Chavannes (worth looking up if you don’t know him) to Bonnard (also worth knowing). In short we are adding 2D considerations and color (just that… and that…. cough cough) to all we have leaned so far.

I’ve been obsessed with Ukiyo-e (Japanese wood engravings) for a long time. To us they are master pieces, to the people of the Edo period they were like big trading cards, you’d collect portraits of your fav kabuki actor, funnies, landscapes, or your fav artist of course.

The one thing we never see when we see reproduction is the 3d aspect caused by the wood printing process: those people, houses, mountains have a way of sticking out of the paper that is magical.

In any case for a long time I’ve been taking pictures of pieces of wood, hoping to one day use one of them in photoshop while doing a ukiyo-e

I dont have to apologies to the masters for making a “fake” ukiyo-e, for it is not really a fake: Hiroshige would do ruffs, get an approval from his publisher, then do the drawing with a brush. The another artist, the carver, then carved a piece of wood to correspond exactly to his brush strokes (destroying the original as planned) and other artists would take care of the color, (one team per color) a bit like in old days animation, it was all for mass printing – I can mass print what I do in photoshop and there is no original on paper per se. Only the wood fibers are fake, but it took some clever tricks of me to get those right and I am have no reason to be ashamed of that! lol

        Here is my “new wave”, the Goddess protector of a fisherman’s village (you can see her temple in the back) saves a fisherman from drawing, all with compo in mind (in my mind not in the drowning fisherman’s mind, obviously)
        Here is the thing

To my ever lasting surprise and joy the first thing Glenn said in the critic of it was “waooo!”. He liked it! He reviewed the compo, commented on everything, gave indications about the placement of the fisherman and other details of importance (see next week) and had the excellent wonderful idea that: if this is happening in the early morning, I should use the warm light of the rising sun to contrast with the coolness of the blue of the water and scene in general.

It totally makes sense and I’m starting work at one!

Meanwhile, in my head class (which unbeknown to you I take alongside compo2) I have more serious work to do: I have to review my head structure, so I have decided that next semester (starting the 10th of november for those who with to join me) I’ll do head again (4th time, still so much to learn from Glenn!), I’ll also take compo1 for the second time (the first time, as shown in this blog I felt like Animal from the Muppets at a dinner party.) now I beginning to “get” it, but I want to “get” it in my bones, not just in the surface of my mind… so back to compo 1 for me (50% on repeated classes, but dont cry if you are new: they do payment plans, they know what young artists are going through).

Oh and I’ll ALSO do a third class, a brand new one: **sketching**, people in the street, buildings etc etc. Wanna be in the first sketching class ever ? it’s gonna be FUN!

See you next week with more wav and some more post impressionist stuff!