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I’m Veronica Huacuja, a plastic artist, and an online art teacher. I have some good practical tips for your painting process. Hope you find them interesting.

Have you ever heard of the term Machine Learning?: "Is defined as a discipline of artificial intelligence that provides machines the ability to automatically learn from data and past experiences to identify patterns and make predictions with minimal human intervention." (1)

Machine Learning (ML) is applied to different fields, such as "medicine, email filtering, speech recognition, computer vision" (2), and I add, forensics (for facial reconstruction of the deceased, to identify offenders, among other uses).

A SIDE COMMENT. In this last field, there’s an ethical public discussion about the rights that could be trespassed if a governmental (or other official institution) uses ML to make up the profile of any individual (not an offender) in society, e.g. using the driver license frontal photo.

MAKING UP THE WORK. I achieved this artwork using very interesting initial resources, such as the official frontal mug shot of a young and anonymous offender (3), and the work of the artist Adam Chin, who is experimenting on the ID reconstruction of U.S. offenders with his ML computer program. The title of his project is "Front and Profile". (4)

This is the data sheet of the digital portrait I created using the cited sources, which I'm presenting:

Title: Inmate #12
Artist: Veronica Huacuja
Media: Digital Art
Size: 12,024 x 9,622 px, 300 dpi
Year: 2021
Collection: The Relentless

ARTISTIC PROCESS. The Adam Chin’s LM profile "portrait" presents many mistakes and inconsistencies because Chin's computer program is still in its initial phase. These “mistakes“, from a creator point of view, are the interesting part. In the artwork, I reproduced the computer's mistakes.

LET’S MAKE A MEANINGFUL REFLECTION OF THE ABOVE. As artists, would it be worthwhile to explore other fields and to include them in our artistic process?

Please write your opinions in the comment section. It will generate a very interesting dialogue.

Last, if you find this work interesting and helpful, please FOLLOW my FAA feed (https://veronica-huacuja.pixels.com). Thank you.

Visit any time:

A VIDEO OF THE PAINTING PROCESS (1:52 min): https://www.patreon.com/posts/61001210

My ART SHOP: https://veronica-huacuja.pixels.com

My BODY OF ART: https://veronica.mx

My ONLINE PAINTING COURSE in traditional or digital techniques: https://veronica.mx/online_painting_course

Thank you for reading.

1 https://www.spiceworks.com/tech/artificial-intelligence/articles/what-is-ml/#:~:text=Machine%20learning%20(ML)%20is%20defined,predictions%20with%20minimal%20human%20intervention.

2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_learning

3 I tried to identify the young offender (state governmental public source, name, bio, etc.), but my efforts were unsuccessful.

4 https://sfcamerawork.org/front-and-profile

Hi there! I'm Veronica Huacuja, a painter and an online art teacher. I have some interesting tips for your art process. Hope you enjoy the post.

PREVIOUS COMMENT. I attend to painting workshops with physical models where other artists gather, too. I made up this painting in one of those sessions, and while working on the piece, I wondered and tried to decipher what was the emotional state of the woman that posed to us that day.

That’s one side of the story. The other side is what we, as artists, have in mind at the moment of the creation process. So, the model’s pose, and her attitude, as well as our emotional mindset, are the diverse elements that combine to make up an artwork. Isn’t it?

The data sheet of the artwork is:

Title: Woman 6
Artist: Veronica Huacuja
Medium: Acrylic on paper
Size: 61 x 48.3 x 0.1 cm
Year: 2021
Collection: Women

THE PALETTE. Now, let's attend to the post’s title, “The Palette in a Painting Matters”, and the reasons for this statement.

As we may know, a palette is the set of colours we use in a painting. This selection involves understanding how does color work in a painting to portray light, depth, perspective and mood.

So, that being said, I’d like to emphasize the variety and intensity of the paints I used in the foreground in this piece. Understanding the foreground of the work as the colours used from the mid-waist to the feet of the figure. My intention for this colour treatment was to give a powerful presence to the character. This set of colours also worked to dramatize the scene.

I handled the colour from the waist up to the head in a less saturated way. I made this choice in order to achieve depth, and the different planes in the work or perspective.

And now, let’s talk about the mood, which, as we may know, is the atmosphere or feeling expressed in a work. In this piece, the mood is dark and disturbing. I decided not to paint the features of the model’s face. That gave anonymity to the character. Why? Life makes us have strange associations. Days before I watched the film “You Were Never Really Here”, created by the so talented female film director, Lynne Ramsay (1969, Scotland), where her main character–interpreted by Joaquin Phoenix (1974, U.S.)–, covered his face with a plastic bag (the “exit bag”), in private sessions (inside a closet, on his bed, etc.), this to create suicidal environments. These scenes are very strong, they impressed me very much.

Maybe that’s the same dramatic motivation for this character. Or the way around, somebody grabbed her head with a plastic bag.

LET’S DEDUCE A SIGNIFICANT MEANING FROM THE ABOVE. As artists, would it be worthwhile, besides, managing the technicals aspects of our art, to be attentive to our daily interior experiences that provide us with new and interesting topics for our work? Julio Cortázar (1914-1984, Argentina)–novelist, short story author, essayist, and translator–carried out this daily experience. He called it the “interstice of reality”, where the extraordinary displays.

MATERIAL.

- Acrylic paints.

- Paper. The paper's brand I used in this work is Bristol, 270 g/m2. It's a thick paper that withstands the humidity of the acrylic painting.

Please write your opinions in the comment section. It will generate a very interesting dialogue.

Last, if you find this work interesting and helpful, please FOLLOW my FAA feed (https://veronica-huacuja.pixels.com). Thank you!

Visit any time:

My ART SHOP: https://veronica-huacuja.pixels.com

My BODY OF ART: https://veronica.mx

My ONLINE PAINTING COURSE in traditional or digital techniques: https://veronica.mx/online_painting_course

Thank you for reading.

Hi there! I'm Veronica Huacuja, an artist and an online art teacher. I have some good practical tips for your art process.

WOULD IT BE INTERESTING TO APPROACH DIFFERENT TOPICS IN OUR ART? I carried out this new approach to my work, and what I discovered is intriguing, mysterious, absorbing. The artwork I'm presenting results from one of those cases where art and sickness (a medical condition) gather. This is its data sheet:

Title: The Deaf Man 7
Artist: Veronica Huacuja
Medium: Acrylic on paper and digital painting
Size: 10,000 x 10,000 px, 300 dpi
Year: 2021
Collection: Human Body

SICKNESS IN ART. As I've said in some other posts, I’m an artist interested in abnormality, deformity and its effects on human life. The persons that lose one of their five senses or were born missing one of them call my interest. I explore and investigate their lives. This initial information helps me to develop my work. I created this piece with deep respect and empathy for these people.

So, following these criteria, deafness is a fearsome sickness that isolates the people that suffer it because it affects their spoken language comprehension and communication with others. Hearing loss disables a person to understand speech, reality, which cause on them–in some countries and environments–, social isolation, loneliness and stigma. (1)

"In a medical context, deafness is defined as a degree of hearing difference such that a person is unable to understand speech, even in the presence of amplification.[...] In profound deafness, even the highest intensity sounds produced by an audiometer (an instrument used to measure hearing by producing pure tone sounds through a range of frequencies) may not be detected. In total deafness, no sounds at all, regardless of amplification or method of production, can be heard." (1)

The initial challenge in this work, as a figurative artist, was to express the latter. That is to embody in a character this drama.

LET’S DEDUCE A SIGNIFICANT MEANING FROM THE ABOVE. Definitely, blending information from different fields stimulates our imagination and creativity, which reflects in the original results we might accomplish.

IMAGES OF THE TECHNICAL PROCESS OF THE ARTWORK. I’m adding some images that describe the creative process using traditional and digital techniques. You'll find them at https://www.patreon.com/posts/47080432

Please write your opinions in the comment section. It will generate a very interesting dialogue.

Last, if you find this work interesting and helpful, please FOLLOW my FAA feed (https://veronica-huacuja.pixels.com). Thank you!

Visit any time:

My ART SHOP: https://veronica-huacuja.pixels.com

My BODY OF ART: https://veronica.mx

My ONLINE PAINTING COURSE in traditional or digital techniques: https://veronica.mx/online_painting_course

Thank you for visiting.

1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deafness