ArtRage

A couple of years ago, I stumbled across this amazing freeware program called ArtRage. It simulates painting and coloring tools so that you can create and imagine without the mess and cost of using real paints. I started using it to visualize ideas that I had before I physically created them. Here is the first picture that I painted using ArtRage:



I created this painting for a DVD menu that Johnny was building for a short film that he worked on. In the film there is a little boy who brings an orange tree like this to class for show and tell. The orange tree in the film is symbolic of the love in the little boy's life:




This painting is an impression of a sunset over the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia. This is where I grew up, and I always loved the way the colors softly shifted and faded together in the distance. Most of my favorite painters are from the impressionistic era. When I'm painting, I enjoy using an impressionistic style because I feel like I'm able to express my feelings in the paintings without being concerned with technical perfection.


If you are interested in getting ArtRage, you can download a copy here: http://www.ambientdesign.com/artrage.html

The Blue Boy

So, since this is my first blog, I would like to start with what I consider my first “real” picture. I call it that because I would say that after I took this picture was when I started to consider myself a photographer. Every picture has a story, and this one is no exception. I spent the summer I turned sixteen in Venezuela on a relief trip. One day on a long bus ride through the countryside my group stopped for a bathroom break. Piling off the bus we were confronted with the fact that there wasn’t actually a bathroom where we had stopped. However, we had been on the bus for a long time and there were some pressing needs, so a group of girls and I took off into the brush with a roll of toilet paper. I had gotten in the habit of taking my camera with me pretty much everywhere. My reasons were two-fold: it allowed me to capture a lot of cool moments, and it reduced the likelihood of my camera being stolen. So I happened to have my camera with me as we walked back to the bus and I looked up and saw this:

I was using a little 35mm automatic camera, and I just shot one frame, but somehow the image I captured was able to transcend my limitations.