by David R. Darrow
5-7/8" x 12-7/8" (14.92cm x 32.7cm)Oil on Canvas Panel SOLD Collection of Jolie Elman
Glendora, CA – USA
About This Painting
"The calla lilies are in bloom again..." –Katherine Hepburn, Stage Door, 1937
I can't even see a calla lily, much less hear the name without thinking of that line uttered by Katherine Hepburn in that 1937 film. I can't tell you why that line stands out in my mind, but it does.The shape and form of calla lilies is remarkable to me. They are a flower with essentially one petal! I have wanted to paint one of them since my wife started growing them this year. She decided to grow these gorgeous, golden yellow beauties rather than the white ones that are so well-known. It was a delight to finally paint one.
The other night my wife and I watched a movie which was set in the period of Picasso, Modigliani and others, and in the movie there was a montage of all the artists who were contemporaries painting with a contest deadline in mind. The painting scenes were fast and furious, brushes loaded with rich, gooey paint. The mood created by the brilliant cinematography made me want to hit the remote and go paint... but my wife was watching, too, and that would have been rude. :-)
The loose, expressive style of this painting came from the impression left by that scene.
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5 comments:
David, beautiful, simple and direct. I love it.
Hi David,
Thanks for visiting my blog. This is really, really beautiful work... I look forward to seeing more!
Best wishes,
Jeff
Beuatiful!!!
Love your site and your blog. I do have a question...
or two
1. what is the best way to make a video of an artist painting a small painting?
I watched yours and really thought they were well done.
I have several ideas but since you seem to do it so well Maybe you can give me some pointers.
I have a blog on blogger.com and I would like to make it better.
Shanti Marie
A painting a day painter..
The quick answer to your question: I can only tell you what I do...
I use a Sony TRV-38 DV camera on a tripod shooting over my left shoulder and about a foot or two behind me, zoomed in.
I chose the Sony because of its low-light capabilities. (In the specs they have a rating called "lux" and the lower the number the better).
You computer will need ample speed, hard drive space (one chunk of "contiguous free space," and knowing raw video takes up about 13 - 15 GB per hour, plus you'll need room for editing and finalizing) and a Firewire input/output port to be able to export the video from the camera to your computer. When working on the computer side of all this, it's referred to as "capturing" the video from the camera onto the computer.
From there you'll need to import the captured video (i.e. capture.dv) files into your video editing software, where you edit, clip, trim, cut, do dissolves and fades, add titles, a soundtrack and voiceovers to taste. I have a Mac and a PC and I do everything creative on my Mac. New macs for the last four or five years have come bundled with amazingly powerful and simple-to-use video editing software. If I were buying a new computer today, I would buy a Mac JUST because it has the ability to run the software that I really want to use. No question about it.
Just about everything I do can easily be done in the free bundled iMovie, however, I need to add that when I started using iMovie fur years ago, I became so enthusiastic about making videos that I bought the higher end Apple software Final Cut Pro. I used about 3% of its capabilities, but it has tools that make the process so much quicker, once you learn the software.
I also added a mac only program to my arsenal called "StillLife" from Granted Software -- which is superior at making stills come to life (a la Ken Burns) in the easiest way imaginable. It was an additional $25.
Apple's Quicktime Pro is needed for exporting/converting final video to web-friendly files which can be uploaded to YouTube easily--but YouTube accepts most PC formats, too.
The rest, like painting, requires time and enthusiasm.
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