JAZZSCHOOL (2022)

JAZZSCHOOL is different from any of my other paintings.
For me personally, it is a milestone in my work. 

I have been an artist my entire life. Before computers, my preferred medium was Dr. Ph. Martin's Radiant Watercolors.
I created fine details over these colors using colored pencils.
I worked on 15x20 inch Bainbridge boards. Occasionally, if I wanted more details, I would work on a 30x40 inch board. 

The introduction of the Apple Macintosh in 1984 set me on a new path using digital media. At that time, MacPaint was one of only two programs available. It was only black and white and limited to 72 pixels to an inch but was able to zoom into an image to get fine details. I realized this was the future. I latched onto it and became obsessed, spending countless hours in front of that tiny 9-inch screen. 

There were very few of us that believed this was not a toy.
My work was appearing in every publication that dealt with computers. My reputation made me a beta-tester for every software developer that was creating graphics applications. And there were many! These programs were getting more and more powerful as time went by. Then came color! I thought I had died and gone to heaven! PixelPaint became my preferred app. Screen sizes had increased to 24 inches but although there was still the limitation of 72 pixels to an inch--I had 256 color!

There were many other applications that came along. In 1988,
I saw an application that I knew was about to change the world. It was this incredible piece of software that was finally released in 1990 and called Photoshop. Not only was it able to work at higher resolutions, but it also originally had 16.8 million colors! 

Having mastered Photoshop long before it was released allowed me to co-author the first book on it called The Official Adobe Photoshop Handbook. As time progressed the machines got more powerful, so the resolution became greater. The screens became touch sensitive, making it possible to use a stylus rather than a mouse and allowing me to paint with the movements and pressure that I was traditionally trained to apply. 

My images became more detailed, but they were becoming massive in storage size forcing me to limit the files to my old working size of 15x20 inches. My working resolution, however, was now 480 pixels to an inch. I was longing to work at 30x40 inches to get more detail but sadly the computers couldn't handle it. Early in 2022 Apple finally introduced one that could--the Mac Studio. 

I immediately embarked on a piece that I had been wanting to create for years--JAZZSCHOOL. 

Being local, I was able to visit the site several times to study the scene. I also used Google Street View in Google Earth to virtually walk down the street to do quick studies. A technique
I usually employ when painting scenes of faraway places. 

My original inspiration was on a rainy night. As we all know, we haven't seen many of those nights lately in Berkeley, CA. There was ONE night that it rained. My wife and I drove down to shoot the study. She held the umbrella as I shot away. The two of us are walking down the street in the scene. 

It took six months to complete the piece. I can now truly say that the medium has finally grown up! The details I was able to achieve far surpass any of my previous work. 

Details from top to bottom: the buildings far down the street are completely visible; four paintings I created are hanging on the walls in the apartments; tiny drops of water dripping down the walls and falling on the puddles are clearly visible; and finally a close up of us walking.  

When I printed out my first test print, I realized I was now really in heaven!