Friday, February 06, 2015

My Day in Paintings

Thursday morning I downloaded a free Adobe IOS app called Paintcan.  It allows you to convert digital photos into virtual paintings just by waving your finger over them.

So here are some paintings from my day.  First there are scenes from my walk; I took the Gold Line to Old Pasadena.  There's also a picture of Leslie at the computer, a selfie of me, our cat Spackle sitting at the window and our dog Chowderhead on my office floor.

The app is simple and intuitive and fast and fun.  Click any of the pictures to see them full size.

Digital cameras have turned everyone into annoying photographers.  Maybe programs like this will make us all elitist painters as well.  Once again the power of personal computing lets everyone become a starving artist.





Compare the next "painting" with the original photo from Mixed Messages.  
(I called it Man in the Moon.)






Wanna see my Doodles?

2 comments :

Pasadena Adjacent said...

This is the subject of my next post. In brief, I joined a plein air group. We go out on Saturday mornings (schlepping our tools of the trade) to a predetermined site and paint; mostly watercolors. And yes, I'm fully aware of what an anachronistic practice this is among my contemporaries. But I'm trying to get my painterly groove back; posting the results on my blog.

So here I am, studying the master watercolorists; Turner, Whistler, Singer Sargent. The kind of painters who excel at brevity. Trying to adapt that skill to my own work. When a friend of mine starts sending me photos from an ap called 'Waterlogged' Turns out to be the biggest seller of 2014. And, I kid you not, produces the kind of watercolors I've been knocking myself out to create. Down to the bare essence. It even replicates the texture/tooth of the watercolor paper. Seriously, it was depressing. And were on the horizon of 3-d printers....

Do they have something like that in your world? Say an application that can take a person humming a tune, break it up into printable notes - download it to a 12 piece orchestra, harpsichord, ukulele or whatever? Completely bypass the actual learning of an instrument and the ability to read music? Is it near that point?

David Ocker said...

Thanks Elizabeth. There are lots of algorithmic composition tools - you give it some parameters and it generates more or less endless drivel. I suppose there must be some which modify recorded sound automatically although I don't really know of any specifically.

But I can't quite imagine that there is any musical equivalent to these picture-to-painting apps. Maybe you would input a (say) already composed classical piano piece and it would return a jazz standard or an Indian alap & gat. Or vice versa.

Like PaintCan it would be fun - but only for a while.