From time to time (no, quite often actually) I feel like I am living under the rock and nine tenths of all the good stuff in the world is passing me by. Like recently, after browsing the Web site of Peggy A. Brennan. Her still life is stunning. She was a demonstrator at Campbell Artists’ Guild in October, and I had an opportunity to see her artworks in person and to watch her creating a new one. There was not enough time for her to complete the demo, but from what was done already it was going to be another great still life.

My second discovery that happened today is a fellow KALEID artist, Victoria Vaz. I was making changes to my own display there, glanced across the room and saw a small sculpture by the window, David Asleep, - not just well done but the one that was living its own life. I imagine the sculptures that I only saw on the Web site have the same kind of presence in real life.

In its June 2008 issue, The Artist’s Magazine published a letter from the digital artist Dani Montoya who asked if to allow digital artists compete with those who create their art with paint and brush. The September issue brought a whole bunch of replies. Not surprisingly, the only ones who supported Dani were digital artists themselves. The rest consisted of more or less purist attitude spiced up with advice on where Dani should take her “so called” art and what she should do instead of making unacceptable suggestions. The “so called” part specifically rubbed me the wrong way. I wonder if anyone who so strongly disagreed with her even took a minute to look up her art on the Web.

I sent a letter to the magazine too, but I am not sure if it will be published since many good points about why digital art is real have been already made. Besides, the magazine has this tidbit about letters they receive: “All letters become property of the Artist’s Magazine, and those chosen for publication may be edited for clarity and length.” While I can see why the editors want to do it if necessary, there is still a possibility that their idea of clarity could be different from mine. So I am putting my 0.02 cents here to, just to make sure they stay as intended somewhere.

I was doing digital art for several years when my kids were small and it was impossible to work with pastels, tempera or gouache and keep the house child-proof at the same time. Back then, I had no idea I could just switch to colored pencils and draw at tiniest intervals as kids’ schedule permitted. So Adobe Photoshop and later Painter became my replacement for pastel sticks, paints and brushes. Naive me hoped that I would be able to speed up the process since I could easily correct my mistakes or parts that don’t work on a digital canvas. Yeah, right! Turned out the only time I was saving was that needed to clean up the creative mess or put it away once the kids were awake and set it up again after they went to sleep. I didn’t start with a photograph as a basis for the artwork. I did a sketch either on the computer or on a sheet of paper that was then scanned and opened in Photoshop or Painter. The rest of the process was very similar to what I would do on real paper or wood.

I don’t do digital art anymore. My kids grew up, I can have charcoal, pastel and colored pencils lying around the house, and these are media that I prefer to work in now. But I will never call art created on a computer “fake” because I had an opportunity to learn first hand how real it is.

Traditional artists seem to believe that the computer does a great deal of work for you or that it is possible to push a few buttons and come up with a masterpiece. I am not sure how they envision this to work. Sure, you can apply a few filters to a photo, get some pseudo-painterly look, but this won’t make you an artist. No one in their right mind would think of entering an art competition with a altered photo, and it would be an insult to imply that this is what all digital artists do. Since Dani was very clear about her process, I hope no one who replied meant that.

So what gives? The program won’t draw for you; it has no concept of composition, contrast, or which colors work best together. If you think that a digital artist takes the photo and simply paints over it with strokes and blotches of colors, than it is no different from tracing a photo and filling the rest with real watercolor or oil. Will that art be acceptable for a competition? Will the judge be able to tell that the artist can’t draw to save her life after seeing a slide or a digital image? It’s not the medium of choice that matters, it’s the person behind the medium who either has skills or relies on shortcuts to compensate for the lack of them.

So what if the fingers of the digital artist don’t get dirty with paint or charcoal? It’s still a manual process; it’s still trial and error at times. It can be very time-consuming, just like rendering details with a fine brush or a sharp pencil. Not that time spent on producing a single piece matters of course, or by that logic plain air paintings should be discarded as the ones done too quickly to have any value. And you still spend years mastering the craft of painting or drawing digitally, just like with oil, watercolor, or pastel.

There also was a word “mechanical” used in regard to the digital art. What’s mechanical about putting your hand-eye coordination to work? What’s mechanical about building up layers of color with a digital pen? No, it does not look like a brush, but it can produce the effect that is indistinguishable from real washes of watercolor or impasto effect. Corel Painter is really good at that, yet it won’t paint a landscape or portrait for you. You yourself have to know what you are doing and where you are going, just like with any traditional medium.

Getting back to the annual competition, it already has various media in each category. If a still life done in colored pencil can compete with one painted with oil, how terrible it actually is to add digital art to the mix?

In conclusion, I invite you to look at the work of these artists who chose to create on a computer: Kevin Mack, Shannon Hilson, Mark Henninger, Russ Mills. With all honesty, what’s not real about their art?

At the same meeting of the Fine Arts League of Cupertino where Natasha Foucault demonstrated silk painting, I was introduced to pastels by Teresa Ruzzo. She brought several of her artworks to be juried in FALC, and they got my attention the moment I glanced at them - living, breathing relatively small pieces with a plain air feel to them. Naturally, I forgot to ask Teresa if they indeed were done in plain air.

Today’s demonstrator at the Fine Arts League of Cupertino was Joyce Faulknor. The demo was about painting glass, and Joyce worked on several pieces at various stages of the progress that saved her time necessary for the paint to dry. She paints with a great confidence yet allows watercolor to do its own magic on the paper. And from the very beginning of the demo you can feel how passionate she is about teaching. Joyce is a pure joy to watch.

Art from the Heart by Cara Bevan is a blog by a very talented artist who is only 20. Her stories that accompany pet portraits, wildlife paintings, and Zodiac series show that she’s a gifted writer too, but more importantly, they convey the passion that Cara has for her subjects. There is a great question at the bottom of the blog: “If art isn’t from the heart, then is it art at all?”

We had just one more day to see the rest of open studios, so we started it by planning the route. That took some time because less sites were still open on the third weekend, and they were scattered all over the valley. We did make it to many more sites than yesterday, so I will be brief.

Margaret Prendergast Washington was the first artist we visited. Her watercolors are like fine China - light, elegant, and very pleasing to the eye.

A lot of interesting artists were showing in the Alameda Galleries - a labyrinth of studios behind the Recycle Book Store with a very unassuming entrance.

The artwork that caught my attention first was four pieces of burl with colorful pictures on them done with some dry media that I could not identify. It had no information next to it, but I was assured that the artist herself is about to arrive soon and I could ask her. We did not get to talk to the artist, but her husband was kind enough to explain that it was pastel on burl and that it’s a lot of work to complete such a large piece. I would imagine it was, but the result looked fabulous. The name of the artist was Patti Linder-Dodd, and her business card said she specializes a murals.

Nancy Walters shoots and paints wild animals. The portrait we saw go beyond capturing likeliness, they convey personality. Nancy must feel strong connection with her animals.

I am not sure how David Lippenberger’s art should be classified or if it even needs to be put into any specific category. He had many unusual pieces in his studio of which on with black wooden shapes for a city and rope-clad skies was the best. There was something about earthy tones of the rope playing against ominous black mass beneath that captivates the eye.

On the wall of the passage next to David’s studio were several abstract painting of Simone Raoux, a wonderful sequence of gorgeous pieces rich with texture and radiantly warm colors. In her studio, there was more wonders to see, all very different, each of them with its own emotion. Somehow they did not argue with each other; despite their differences, they formed an intricate harmony on the walls. I don’t remember myself being that immersed in abstract art since I first saw paintings by Karen Hale years ago.

There were more artists in the Alameda Galleries, but we wanted to see other sites too so had to leave.

Douglas Vincent’s Ilfochrome photos of nature seemed to glow from the inside and have almost a three-dimensional feel to them. He’s obviously a very talented photographer who does not need to rely on an unusual technique or materials, but they certainly add a special touch to his art.

We barely entered Amy Brown’s yard when I was stopped by beautiful ceramic fish on the fence. The whole yard was full of birds, fish, shark head vases and so much more that I was not sure where to look first. Amy had to invite us into the house more than once, and I finally followed with a small pelican in my hands. I am partial to ceramics, what can I say. She paints her tropical scenery, flowers, and frogs in acrylic, but the result looks like oil. There was a triptych of Red Eyed Tree Frogs above the fireplace that to me was the best thing in the whole room, although I am not a frog person.

Noreen Christopher and Jeanette Turkus were showing at the site that had a funny contrast between very good lighting and wooden floors generously spattered with paint of all colors imaginable. I liked Noreen’s abstract acrylics and Jeanette’s figurative art most of all, but the whole exhibit by those two artists was very strong.

Judging by the imagery outside, I expected to see a cat or two in Joe Decker’s house, but we saw none. His breathtaking photos were hanging, laying, and standing everywhere, and Joe could tell a story about each and every one of them down to the exact name of the place and a year when the shot was taken - what I would give to have that kind of memory!

Janet Trenchard works in many different media, and her display reflected that. She creates unusual mixed media assemblages, paints in acrylics, and does some sort of printmaking that I never saw before. Unfortunately, the name of the technique escaped my mind as soon as we left the site, but it had a delicately weathered look to it. Janet said that because it is not an easy technique, very few artists are engaged into it.

By that time studios started to close down, and we decided to call it a day. And it was a very good day, I might add.

Until this year, I was rather skeptical about the event. Slava and me were to a few open studios here and there before, and were not impressed. But this time it was different, we now knew some of the participating artists through the Campbell Artists’ Guild and the Fine Arts League of Cupertino, really liked their work, and wanted to see more of it. So of we went, without any planning. The goal was to visit our friends first and then see how much time we had left to explore the rest.

For some reason I was sure that it’s the second weekend, and at first the information in the SVOS directory seemed to agree. We stopped by Nina Uppaluru’s house to say “hi” to her and other members of the Fine Arts League of Cupertino who were also showing there: Belinda Lima, Raja Guha Thakurta, Iona Ezaki, Jane Ferguson, and William Galarneau. It was a pleasure to see so many artworks in different styles and mediums. I had no idea Iona was also making jewelry. She had some nice items, one pair of earrings was so beautiful that I could not help myself and bought it.

Our next stop was at the studio of Joy Kuo, also a member of Fine Arts League of Cupertino. Our arrival was marked by some shrill cries, and at first we couldn’t figure out who was making them. Then we saw a couple of peacocks - a male lying on the ground under the tree and a female on the branch above our heads. Joy said that in India people prefer peacocks over dogs to guard their houses, and we could see why. They would not let anyone pass by the house unnoticed. Yao-Pi Hsu and Lucy Marcoux were also showing there, both in the nice gallery upstairs and in the yard. There were not many other visitors which was a pity - they were mission on a great mix of photography, oriental and traditional paintings.

From there we went to to see Jill Johnson from the Campbell Artists’ Guild only to find no signs of an open studios anywhere. That’s when finally looked at the dates closely and found out we’re on the third weekend and not on the second one. Sadly, we missed Jill.

We also made some wonderful discoveries today.

Jake Snyder. He paints incredible landscapes and cosmoscapes (I just love this word!) being color blind, and he is also a talented sculptor. There were also a few drawings done with a very fine Rapidograph on a watercolor paper and a wood carving of the horse head with carnivorous teeth that I liked the most. Can’t remember what it was called - “When horses were predators” or something like that - it reminded me of Kelpie, Each Uisge, and the likes. I could not move away from him, he was such a character!

Suzan Siltaniemi. Wonderful portraits, scenery, and a wide range of other subjects. Her photos of historical San Jose neighborhood are especially charming.

There was a very unusual demonstration at the Fine Arts League of Cupertino meeting yesterday - silk art. Natasha Foucault was painting a long scarf with calla lilies. It’s a miraculous process: colors start very dark, then as the paint dries (Natasha had to speed it up with a hair dryer) they become light and vibrant.

Natasha also brought beautiful hand painted silk capes and scarves with her. The capes with eyes on them were the best. There is something bewitching about those wide open eyes floating on a colorful background.

I discovered a wonderful new blog by Floy Zittin - Floy’s Watercolors. The lessons that she posts there are so well written and illustrated that I almost feel like dusting off what is left of my supplies from the times I was interested in watercolors myself. Well, maybe not today. I still need to finish that horse head in colored pencil. But I will be back to Joy’s blog, that’s for sure.