Weekend of Mobile Photography/Art with Talented Mobile Artist, Clint Cline
Recently, you may recall that we posted our third in a new series of articles entitled ‘Weekend of Mobile Photography/Art‘. That one was with Alexis Rotella our first was with Jerry Jobe and our second with Fiona Christian, our third with Amanda Parker and this weekend Clint Cline tells all! Take a look…
“My weekend with Sando Botticelli
Assiduus usus uni rei deditus et ingenium et artem saepe vincit. Cicero said that. It means (roughly), “Constant practice committed to a subject often outdoes both intelligence and skill.”
Because I work daily in the communication arts as a writer and designer of print, digital, and video works, my weekends are often eclipsed with projects spilling in from an overstuffed week of To-Do’s. But on the occasional weekend where I find myself without an armload of project briefs or honey-do lists, I heed Cicero and burrow in the practice of new things and unexplored ideas.
When Joanne asked me to consider sharing my weekend, I was coincidentally researching inspiration from the early Renaissance masters for an Easter series I was doing on the Resurrection of Christ. Her invite arrived as I was studying the classic, almost sculptural, forms of Sando Botticelli’s early Renaissance works. So I decided, in the spirit of Jerry Jobe, to pick an image and take you through my steps of transforming it into a contemporary piece”.
Botticelli’s “Portrait of a Young Woman” was painted somewhere in the early 1480’s. I was struck by the almost porcelain stoicism in her face. As much as I appreciate his attention to the details of her wardrobe and hair, I chose to isolate her facial features, which would require some serious cropping. And a background on which to build the new piece.
Earlier in the week I’d snapped a shot of fresh paint on the wall of my son and daughter-in-law’s new apartment.
I liked the texture and contrast so I applied a Mextures formula to deepen the contrast. The color wouldn’t matter since I was about to apply a color overlay to make the background simpler and more dramatic.
I found this gorgeous red on the FB page of friend Michael Carmantrand and sampled it for use in Superimpose where I would build the new image.
I applied the red as an overlay filter but it was a bit strong for what I was envisioning. I then ran this through Stackables to add some center light and knock back the harsher contrast of the original.
It was now time to introduce Botticelli’s young woman.
I removed the background around her face in Superimpose and brought her in with a bit of transparency to allow the background to inject some shading around her eye. Her positioning in the frame over this background also produced an “eyebrow” for her other eye. The green overlay was originally a test to see how I could use color within the image. I dulled it to an olive reminiscent of Botticelli’s palette and a bit of transparency to let the underlying hair become a textural element in the final piece.
Next, I lifted a fragment from an early painterly piece. I keep a handful of these as masks in my Superimpose library.
I then went through a series of colouring tests, working variously in Mextures, Stackables, PhotoCopier, Glaze, and Impresso to experiment with shading, texture, and color.
I was struck with one of the darker studies and paired it with one of the lighter studies to find the light and color balance I was hoping to achieve from the outset.
And that was my weekend! Joanne, thank you for letting me share this glimpse into what was more of an edit track than a shooting journey.
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Joanne Carter
Joanne Carter, creator of the world’s most popular mobile photography and art website— TheAppWhisperer.com— TheAppWhisperer platform has been a pivotal cyberspace for mobile artists of all abilities to learn about, to explore, to celebrate and to share mobile artworks. Joanne’s compassion, inclusivity, and humility are hallmarks in all that she does, and is particularly evident in the platform she has built. In her words, “We all have the potential to remove ourselves from the centre of any circle and to expand a sphere of compassion outward; to include everyone interested in mobile art, ensuring every artist is within reach”, she has said. Promotion of mobile artists and the art form as a primary medium in today’s art world, has become her life’s focus. She has presented lectures bolstering mobile artists and their art from as far away as the Museum of Art in Seoul, South Korea to closer to her home in the UK at Focus on Imaging. Her experience as a jurist for mobile art competitions includes: Portugal, Canada, US, S Korea, UK and Italy. And her travels pioneering the breadth of mobile art includes key events in: Frankfurt, Naples, Amalfi Coast, Paris, Brazil, London. Pioneering the world’s first mobile art online gallery - TheAppWhispererPrintSales.com has extended her reach even further, shipping from London, UK to clients in the US, Europe and The Far East to a global group of collectors looking for exclusive art to hang in their homes and offices. The online gallery specialises in prints for discerning collectors of unique, previously unseen signed limited edition art. Her journey towards becoming The App Whisperer, includes (but is not limited to) working for a paparazzi photo agency for several years and as a deputy editor for a photo print magazine. Her own freelance photographic journalistic work is also widely acclaimed. She has been published extensively both within the UK and the US in national and international titles. These include The Times, The Sunday Times, The Guardian, Popular Photography & Imaging, dpreview, NikonPro, Which? and more recently with the BBC as a Contributor, Columnist at Vogue Italia and Contributing Editor at LensCulture. Her professional photography has also been widely exhibited throughout Europe, including Italy, Portugal and the UK. She is currently writing several books, all related to mobile art and is always open to requests for new commissions for either writing or photography projects or a combination of both. Please contact her at: [email protected]
