I am a retired biologist, an artist, calligrapher, and music producer/engineer. I’ve been drawing and painting since childhood. I paint album covers for Strunz & Farah, a renowned guitar duo comprised of a Costa Rican and a Persian who have been performing and recording together since 1979. Neotropical, Indigenous American and Middle Eastern elements can be found in most of these artworks. I especially enjoy drawing and painting plants, animals, and ornament. I've been crazy about Persian and Mughal miniatures since I first saw them as a child so very long ago. I am sensitive to cultural appropriation and so have tried to be inspired by rather than imitative.
Although primarily an autodidact*, I studied Persian miniature in the early 1980s (Southern California is fortunate to have the largest Persian community outside of Iran), Medieval European illumination at The Getty, botanical art through The Huntington Botanical Gardens and a local botanical artists guild, and egg tempera with Sylvana Barrett at The Getty and with Koo Schadler. I work with ink, watercolor, gouache, egg tempera, calligraphy and illumination. I am a materials and methods freak. I love studying the old ways of doing art.
I am very nearsighted, so I adore miniatures — they are right at my natural range of vision. I also love examining nature at very close range with hand lenses and microscopes. The resolution never breaks down, and the fascination increases.
I am currently working on an intricate botanical on vellum-wrapped panel. It will take me a while! I am very slow.
I am very interested in finding methods to better digitize and reproduce artworks made with gold leaf or shell gold without having to resort to digital simulations to enhance a scan or photo. Getting a decent scan seems to be a major problem for our beloved art forms.
I love nature, art, music, and science. And my husband, garden, birds, and wild pet squirrel.
My goal is to finally do one piece of art that I think is truly beautiful.
* As John Constable once said, “A self-taught painter is one taught by a very ignorant person”.
Thank you for your reply Kathlyn!! I'm so sorry I can't be of more help, regarding scanners my experience is very limited, I've never used them or seen those being used before... I agree with Vaishali, it's such a hard topic and there's much more research and improvement to be achieved on the subject!! The result you got in collaboration with the photographer for your work is very good though!! I'll keep an eye open if I read/hear anything interesting on the topic 🌺 Lovely to meet you and see your work, it's really stunning!!
Here’s an example of the best I could do with a cell phone on a 6”x4” miniature I did many years ago. (The spots are flotsam and jetsam on the skylight, blocking some light.) This piece was to test various methods of gilding on vellum.
Yes, indeed, Vaishali! I feel like we need to conquer this technological problem. It seems doable but perhaps not quite implemented yet. But who knows! Maybe some museum has such a system already without our knowing it. I hope such a scanner exists! It would have to analyze and set exposure pixel by pixel for miniatures, though. Not a lot of room for error.
Warms me up to see you've been given such a warm welcome @Kathlyn Powell! Thanks for sharing your very accomplished work and look forward to seeing more and your botanical works, as I think they could be combined very well with miniature style. And you'd be welcome at any time on one of my classes of course!
Regarding the gold in reproductions: it seems like a perennial problem because gold and colours seem to cancel each other out. This happens in real life too - there is kind of a 'double viewing' of each page because when the gold is shining you're looking at that, and then when the gold is 'dulled' (ie not caught in the light) you're looking at the colours. The same thing happens on camera too, if you have a bird's eye view; you focus on the colours and the gold is dulled to brown. And the standard reproduction is taken with a bird's eye view and doesn't tell the whole story. I'll move this post over to Questions and Answers as it seems like an important thing!
oh, these are beautiful!! welcome @Kathlyn Powell!
Here's another, where the lettering is on the same piece.
All of my covers can be seen on http://www.strunzandfarah.com/albums/
Here is one of my pieces so you can get an idea of the sorts of things
I've done. They are album covers, so I have to leave space for lettering. Size is ~14x14".
Oh Cecilia, thank you so much for your very valuable perspective! That is my experience, too, that photography produces the best results. Did the photographers ever use polarizing filters or split-beam set ups? I've been wanting to experiment a bit more with unconventional lighting set ups and such, but that difference in reflectance between pigment and gold seems an almost insurmountable obstacle.
I wonder if those new museum quality scanners (like these: https://www.metis-group.com/cultural-heritage) can actually modify exposure depending upon reflectance such that the gold doesn't blow out and the colors remain bright? It would have to pre-scan an entire image and calculate from there individual exposures across a piece, quite a feat. The blurb for the scanner seems to indicate something like that. I would think lighting would have to be omnidirectional, like in a soft box. Perhaps something could be done with HDR and exposure bracketing/stacking?
The person who usually scans my work has a rig that holds a high-definition digital camera above the work (it never touches) and moves, inch by inch, across the piece taking high res photos of each square inch and then knits them all together digitally. He has to do a separate pass for gold, lighting it differently, and then drops it in digitally. It sort of works, but not perfectly, and you are constrained to using only sharply defined regions of gold. Delicate passages of shell gold could be very problematic!
I think being a conservator is the loveliest thing! What a dream gig!
Hello Kathlyn! So lovely to meet you and I'm looking forward to discover your beautiful paintings!! I worked as a book conservator in the past few years in the UK/Ireland, and regarding gold work reproduction I can share what photographers were doing in the institutions I worked. 🌺 Basically what Vaishali said is what I saw, scanning is rarely used for manuscripts as it would put the painted layers at risk of damage (abrasion mainly) and wouldn't give a satisfying result anyway. Photography is the main way currently used to create reproduction from what I know, in a controlled environement and using specific lighting (consistent and smooth, at different angles) over the object. High quality printing is then used. However I must say the result is never as good as gold is! I think there is more research to be done in the field😊 I hope this will help a bit!! I send all the best and look forward to seeing you work! 🌷
I'm in Woodland Hills -- are you near me?
Sadly, the Getty discontinued all the deep training, including all the wonderful teaching Sylvana offered. I believe it was a serious mistake on The Getty's part, as those classes and workshops were very well attended, and we loved them, didn't we! Sylvana unfortunately takes no private students or apprentices. (She and Dusan live very nearby, in our old house!) She is such an inspired teacher. I am just very grateful that we got the chance we did to study for the years we did. *sigh*
The silver lining to COVID does seem to be the online classes, although these old eyes have a little trouble getting used to all these screens in lieu of reality! But it sure beats nothing at all.
One thing I do with a few friends in the botanical artists' guild is meet weekly via Zoom to draw and paint together. We've kept it up throughout the pandemic and it has been wonderful, keeping our spirits up.
Once I get the piece I'm currently working on done, I hope to take classes from Vaishali. It will motivate me to work a little more expeditiously!
Thanks for introducing yourself, Kathlyn, and so glad you are joining! I live on the west side, in "Little Persia" no less! We will have to compare notes, and you're reminding me my introduction is incomplete/lives only in my EverNotes. I moved with my husband to LA from Boulder, Colorado in 2009. The first several years I was at the Getty every chance could get. I've taken several workshops with Sylvana Barrett, but she keeps a low profile/doesn't teach any more. Every so often I do a search to see if anything pops up. Thanks to COVID, last year STA open courses became available as Zoom. I started with Vaishali's "Persian Miniature Painting: Earth" course this January. As Vaishali said, there are several of us in SoCal.
I have the originals for the album covers but not all of the scans, unfortunately. I'll have to have them drum scanned. I'll try to get a decent photo tomorrow in filtered sunlight.
I did a simple illuminated egg tempera on vellum for the last album cover and the poor photographer took over 3 hours to get a decent photo that we still had to manipulate digitally to get the gold to work. I suspect polarization needs to be employed, as the differential brightness of the gold and the colors is a serious issue, as well as angle of incident light. And the reflection of the camera lens! Egads! (No more Medieval-style raised gold!) The best photography job I've seen for gold was this reproduction of the Borso d'Este Bible: https://www.wdl.org/en/item/9910/
A goodly portion of the gold can be seen glinting even while the colors retain some brilliance. Still could be better, though! It's really tough to mask off all of the gold areas digitally when it's delicate shell gold work, like halkar. The scanning service I use does 1" square photos of a piece and then stitches them all together digitally, and then shoots again separately just for the gold, which is then dropped in. However, I must say it still isn't there -- that overworked photographer I mentioned did a better job. But it still took manipulation in Photoshop. It is very perverse that a simulation is easier to create than capturing the real thing! I fear it may negatively impact the survivability of illumination as an art form in a digitized world.
I've read about a new type of museum scanner that uses a conveyor belt to move the item (it can also do 3-D objects) through a scanner that looks like a laser line going across. It was claimed that it can properly scan metals -- I hope so, but how to find one of those scanners to try it out?
I am delighted that there are local members here, too! Wonderful. Maybe we can set up a little Getty jaunt when this pandemic is well and truly over.
I'd be very happy to show you egg tempera, if you'd like! Just set up a second camera and Zoom! We have liftoff.
Thanks for the wonderful introduction Kathlyn! I think you will do more than one piece of art which you think is truly beautiful, and actually it goes hand in hand with the Constable quotation - may be a change of perspective from your side as you seem quite accomplished already! Love to see some of your work! You can also post work in progress in the Track your Progress section.
I think @Cécilia Duminuco might have some ideas about gold digital reproduction perhaps? We have a few members here who are conservators or who have worked in libraries etc. I know that gold, when scanned, can look quite brown and flat, so sometimes when making prints people prefer to use high quality photos as that captures the shine of gold more.
I'm actually about to work on some vellum again too! It's part of a furniture installation, part of an opium bed, and vellum was traditionally used in furniture too (and a bit more hardwearing than paper). So I'll paint some tazhib (Islamic illumination, arabesque) onto it. One difference is that colour and paints sit on top of the surface of vellum and aren't absorbed into it the way they are on paper, so slightly different paint handling and techniques.
Botanical illustration, ink, watercolor, gouache, calligraphy and illumination all cross over each other and overlap in a way! Recently I've taken more of an interest in egg tempera and also casein (milk) paint as milk and eggs are the 'final frontiers' in a way for painting for me (I work in oils, miniatures and Chinese ink paintings) - I have used eggs as part of oil paintings but not quite the same exactly as egg tempera. I helped a friend with a casein painting once but that's the limit of my experience and I'm looking forward to trying these historical mediums too.
If you have links to any of your websites/art activities etc please feel free to share them here!
There are a few Southern Californians here too! @Susan Dobrian @Mary Yaeger