Here’s a nice little piece of news. My painting Rio en Medio 02 won third prize at the New Mexico Watercolor Society Fall Show!
Through The Woods Presets
I received a note from the people at Sleek Lens asking if I would evaluate their presets for Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop. These are landscape-centric presets to help landscape photographers arrive at beautiful images more quickly and easily.
I shoot my photographs with the intention of grading them in Lightroom, so I almost always underexpose by 2/3 stop: here is the original RAW file from a trip up the mountain. (more coming as I work through them) I’ve placed a few examples of the results from the Through The Woods presets, although this is not remotely the limit of what is possible, especially if one uses the brush presets on top of their settings presets.
Because I spent thirty years as a digital compositor, Lightroom is not an intimidating platform for me, and I think that these are geared to photographers who are not super used to grading their pictures; for them, this would be a very welcome boost I think. As their skills grow, they could begin to adjust the settings in these Through The Woods presets and be making increasingly pretty pictures as they go.
I especially liked the brush presets, and would recommend their tutorial videos as a helpful guide to beginning to use them. If anyone is interested them, here is a link: https://sleeklens.com/product/landscape-lightroom-presets/
https://sleeklens.com/product-category/lightroom-presets
National Watercolor Society Award
My painting ‘Highway 100, Pittsfield Vermont’ has been accepted into the National Watercolor Society International Exhibition, and today I was informed that it has won the Watercolor USA Honor Society Award! Huzzah!
An award and a Colorado trip
My watercolor, The Boarding House, Madrid NM, won third prize (the Dona Abbott Memorial Award) at the Rocky Mountain National Watermedia Showcase in Golden, Colorado, so my wife Melinda and our two dogs made a little trip of it so they (and I) could see Colorado. We went up through the San Juans, ambled past Gunnison Canyon and up through Aspen and Independence Pass and on to Golden. Here are a few images from the trip.
This weekend I am back with the Santa Fe Society of Artists downtown!
Aspens in Clouds
Because of spending so many weekends downtown with the Santa Fe Society of Artists, lately I haven’t spent as much time wandering in the woods as I would like. The other morning I looked up towards the Sangre De Christo mountains and saw that they were covered in clouds, so I packed up and headed up there to take photographs. On the way, it of course cleared up, but I was committed by then. Despite the lack of fog, I was immediately struck with the beauty of the place, and was reminded of the – for me – healing power of being in a forest.
After being up there for a while, a light wind – it was very very quiet – started blowing in, and the clouds filled the forest up with fog again. It felt like a very special present. A mitzvah, as they say.
Tre Cazzatine
When I am sitting in my booth at the Santa Fe Society of Artists, I’ve started working on small watercolors or gouache paintings. Here are three recent ones from the past month or so.
Palette research
I bought a new watercolor palette (John Pike large wells, pictured here, which seals pretty well) and finally dug into the excellent book by Hilary Page, ‘Guide to Watercolor Paints’ in which she analyzes and rates pigments and each manufacturer’s version of them. I realized that several of the paints I was using weren’t pure pigments, but blends of one or more, such as Sap Green, Hookers Green and Olive Green. Since I mix colors anyway, I thought I might as well start with the original pigments. Also some of the colors I had been using – or else a particular manufacturer’s version of them – weren’t rated as permanent as I would like. So this is my new palette, based on that research. Link to larger picture here:
Gregory Crewdson Interview
This is an excellent interview with one of the most intriguing and powerful photographers working today, from the website ‘Lenscratch’:
http://lenscratch.com/2016/08/ken-weingart-interviews-gregory-crewdson/
Interview with Other People’s Pixels
The nice folks at other people’s pixels, where I have my .net website, are kind enough to feature me this week on their blog. Here’s the link to an interview they did with me:
http://blog.otherpeoplespixels.com/otherpeoplespixels-interviews-jonathan-keeton
Colorado delivery
Since I had to deliver a large painting to the Foothills Art Center in Golden last weekend, I took the opportunity to scout a little through Colorado on the way up there and back. This was the longest trip so far in the art monster van, which performed admirably, even though it probably made me look a little scary as I went by.
Somehow I managed to lose the images after I copied them to my computer and deleted them off my camera memory card, so I had a little tricky time recovering them (using Prosoft DataRescue). That was my birthday present…
Jonathan Keeton Artist Blog 