Pierre (Paris Travel Series Art Album)

Pierre (Paris Travel Series Art Album)

The sculpture featured in this design is located at the Rodin Museum in Paris, France. Location: 79 rue de Varenne, 75007

I’m back… Feels great to be making art and music videos again! I truly missed the process even though it’s been very frustrating at times. It’s never easy to make a music video and I thought I would have a difficult time jumping back into the process but it wasn’t too bad. For this upcoming album, I’m working with newer versions of Paintshop and Vegas and I definitely notice a big difference. I’ve been very stubborn throughout the years and I thought since I wanted to go big with this album, I should step it up in the software department. I’ve come to realize that newer isn’t always better especially when it comes towards software! But… no regrets. I must say that I do love the dark interface of Sony Vegas.

I wanted to start this travel series with a design that wasn’t in my main top five. Every design is important but since it’s been a while working with Paintshop and Vegas if I messed up too much it wouldn’t be a huge deal. I am also up against a big challenge because of the issues I mentioned in last blog post. I need to use scripts because all the size dimensions for the photos I took are completely off. For this design, I did a test run with a script and it didn’t work. I noticed with the newer version of Paintshop, I can’t edit scripts directly from the program anymore. I can only edit them on notepad. Well.. I don’t really understand the script code and I honestly didn’t want to take the time to figure that out. I’m already behind schedule making this album. I tried using the script again and noticed that I saved the script with the wrong settings the first time. I think the issue is somewhat fixed but since I was already liking where I was going with the color blends, I didn’t want to start making the design all over again with a new script. I am hoping the script will be fine for next design. I did two more tests with my Paris selfie for the about page and the first one failed so I really don’t know what’s going to happen. The sad part is that I can’t use this design for the kindle book without the design being cut off or distorted. The positive is that I have 14 other designs to consider for books so it’s all good! 😀

Another reason to use scripts is to create kindle books for the album. Anyone can use these notebooks to chronicle their journey traveling to any destination. I know while I was Paris, it would have definitely been nice to have something like that to have a physical copy of my thoughts throughout the trip. I did make several vlogs but books to me have more sentimental value. I want to make sure these scripts are flawless before I make Eiffel and Louvre. Thinking about it… Those two designs will definitely be at the bottom on the design list! There’s a lot of pressure for me to make certain designs beautiful and I hope every design looks as beautiful as Pierre.

Speaking about Pierre… I have two stories to tell! First let’s talk about my trip to Rodin and the sculpture named Pierre de Wissant. Like Camille Claudel, I knew nothing about Pierre de Wissant. The main reason why I took the original photo was that the sculpture immediately caught my attention as I was walking into a room at Rodin. I just love the expression on his face. It was one of the most captivating sculptures I ever seen. The whole museum itself had me awestruck, truly! I never seen such expressive sculptures before in my life before visiting Rodin! As I soon I seen it, I knew I had to make something. I just love that about art. To think… there was a 75 percent chance of me not visiting Rodin because of my travel itinerary. The only way it would have worked is if I immediately went to Rodin after arriving at the hotel. Turns out… there are several different sculptures of Pierre with different expressions throughout the museum. The one to your left is in the gardens. It features The Burghers of Calais. From what I read, there were six leaders of the city (French Port) of Calais that surrendered themselves to the English to save the city from being taken under siege during the Hundred Year’s War. Pierre de Wissant was one of the leaders (Burghers). Rodin made sculptures of all six leaders and centered the look and expressions of these sculptures around them being taken and heading towards their impending “deaths”. They didn’t die but at the time the leaders thought they would be dying to save their city.

There’s a longer story behind the history of these sculptures and I think it’s amazing what you can learn about world history through art. I do know some French history but not much and I really appreciate trips like this because I want to learn more and I really love that art can teach you so many things about the world and life beyond just the color blends.

The second story: Creating Pierre… I know I said for past albums that I wanted to stick with a color theme. However, while I was making this Pierre, I was loving the color blends I playing with and wanted to travel down that rabbit hole. I guess sticking with certain blends puts me in a box at times and I was loving the reds and blues and just wanted to keep working with those blends. At some point, the main design was getting darker and black was making an appearance more frequently and I thought why not? Sometimes I hate using that color because it looks like the design itself has an empty space that should be filled in with another color. White and black to me have that effect. Towards the end, I started looking at some Voka paintings and it’s been a while since I looked at any of his work. Instantly, it reminded me how much I love his work and use of color. I’m always getting inspired and tried to really be bold with blends. I love the uniformed chaos of color. I don’t know if that’s the right description. I’m horrible when it comes to writing descriptions but there’s a brilliance in color with his work. There’s a certain boldness that commands your undivided attention and I love that red is ever present in most of his pieces. Color looks splattered and might appear to be very chaotic but it reaches out and yells at you to stare at it and marvel at its beauty. I can’t say how much I love his work.

I made five variations of this design. I was only going to feature the my favorite version online. However, the other day, I was thinking about the Marilyn painting that Warhol made. I thought maybe I can make something similar to feature the other designs, like a collage. While I was playing around with the designs, I started mirroring one and flipped another and I really like the look. Now if I have variations on future designs, I’m going to make small collages of them for the portfolio. I want to showcase everything related to this album! Or as much as possible… I took over 1100 photos throughout my trip, lol.

The music video… I had a difficult time making it because this is the first time I’m using Vegas 19. I normally work with Vegas 12. I love the interface so much but that’s where the love ends. It was easier to edit motion tracking for each clip in 12. Now I have to access tracking through the menu. I guess I’m nitpicking but I love when software is uncomplicated and less convoluted to use. There literally was no need to change that function. I love having ease of access through the timeline instead of using menus. Then again… I could be missing something since I’m still new to using this version of Sony Vegas. I just remember having an easier time working with 12. I’m also using different video capture software. It seems like the video jumps. I know it’s fast but something doesn’t seem 100 percent fluid and I think it’s the capture software. I don’t know. Surprisingly, after the initial hiccups, it didn’t take me much longer to make the video.

I really love the song I used. It’s called Bad Nostalgia by Anthem of Rain. I’ve been having a tough time finding music for the album. I want to use synthpop exclusively but it’s hard to find music that I can actually use. I found a good 5 songs to use within 2 days and that’s after sampling over 200 songs. What I love most about using synthpop or electronic are the beats. I get to play around with animating the live speed art video by syncing the beats and it’s the fun part of making music videos. It can be challenging to think of what type of effects that blend well with the song but I do love how it all comes together and I am really happy with this video! I think it looks great for the first video of my Paris travel series art album and I hope every video and design comes out just as beautiful. If anyone is reading this blog… I hope you like the journey thus far! The album is more than just the art and music videos, it’s the journey and it’s been amazing despite all the issues and everything in between! Credits for this video are below. Thanks for reading!

Credits

 

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