Apotheoun (Tom Livezey at Eleven)

[Molly Sherrick Phifer]

Here are a couple of my photos from the event. First is Garth standing with his fabulous painting! It is difficult to imaging just how awesome this looks in person. It really gathered quite a crowd while I was there, and deservedly so.

The second photo is one that I snapped of Alex while I was demonstrating my handy dandy remote control for the Nikon D50 camera. The odd angle is because I had the camera hanging from a strap around my neck and clicked the remote without looking through the viewfinder.

It was a wonderful opening, and even more wonderful to have met Garth and Alex. I feel very blessed to live so close to two such talented artists!

[Garth Herrick]

I am overwhelmed! Thanks Alex and Molly!

It was such a treat and honor to have wonderful Forum friends at the opening! You all made my day. Piety Choi and her husband were there also (we've never met before either). Thank you Piety! She recognized me first, from accross the gallery room. We exchanged compliments and she is inviting us to visit her at school (Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, I also studied there). They departed just before you two arrived. Imagine that, ... four Forum dwellers in one place! I am sure we will all be seeing each other more regularly as this fall season approaches (This Friday we all will meet again at Alex's show at American College, nearby). Now you are all so much more real to me! I highly recommend Forum members meeting each other!

Alex and Molly, you have described the opening much better than I could. There are many new faces for me in the faculty make up. There are a lot of familiar old friends teaching there too. The Wayne Art Center has huge expansion plans in the works, and it will be exciting to be there on the cusp of this growth. I also admire the talent and integrity in the faculty, and know it will be rewarding to collaborate and network with them. I know I already have at least one student, and possibly several more.

As you can see from the photo below (taken with my Nikon D100 by fellow faculty member Ava Blitz, thank you!), we are really smiling! Actually we held those smiles the whole time, I think. What a great day!

Yours, truly,

Garth

[Garth Herrick]

Today I decided to see how closely Apotheoun conforms to the original 1981 slide image, with a GIF animation.

Well the result is it does not perfectly conform, which is interesting, and human, I suppose. There is some distortion which suggests I at least did not project the reference or paint over a photo. Maybe that's a good thing .

Anywhere there is movement apparent, the painting varies slightly from the photo reference. This technique could be instructive in the future with other portrait projects.

Gosh, is this too revealing?

Garth

[Alexandra Tyng]

Garth,

Now, how did you do that? You are full of tricks. It looks like the boy is breathing and his mother is tapping her feet to the radio. I would be totally scared to do that to one of my paintings!

Seriously, I think it's good that they are not excactly the same.

Alex

[Garth Herrick]

Hi Alex!

Actually I found an animation palette in Photoshop yesterday. It's hard to explain and not user friendly until you "get' it. At least in version CS2 it is in the Window menu heading. One must construct the image in layers in the animation palette and save it as a GIF file. Great care must be taken to keep the file small enough to post here, which means some compromises to the image quality, which is also why I posted the original images along side the animation.

Thanks,

Garth

[Garth Herrick]

I am looking at the painting on the wall in my studio, and it looks like it conforms better than the GIF animation suggests, at least to my naked eye. It is more than possible there is some minor distortion present in the photo of the painting here, though certainly none is intended. It seems the raised bent arm and the blue shoe are more in line with the photo reference, than in the animation.

Garth

[Garth Herrick]

To mark 6k hits, I am adding another GIF detail. Perhaps it's back to the drawing board for me!

Garth