Wednesday, September 30, 2020

Using motion blur in an oil painting

Here's an oil painting that uses motion blur effects. 
I had to imagine which parts of the pose were moving in which directions and at what speed. 


The arms are swinging up, and the feet are swinging outward from the knee. The imaginary “camera” is also panning right to track the action, which horizontally blurs the out-of-focus background detail.
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From Dinotopia: First Flight (on Amazon) or (signed at my website)

6 comments:

Kat Moody said...

Hi James- I have a question regarding not so much the image blurr, but the Dinatopia world at large. I have savored all the Dinatopia books, but have always wondered why the humans worshiped the dinosaurs so much if everyone lived as an equal. In this image, the humans are dressed up as their favorite dinosaurs, but never do we see dinosaurs dressed up to celebrate their love of the humans. The world you created is wonderful but I feel I am missing some cultural thing here? I thought everyone was equal-?

Kat Moody said...

Hi James- I have a question regarding not so much the image blurr, but the Dinatopia world at large. I have savored all the Dinatopia books, but have always wondered why the humans worshiped the dinosaurs so much if everyone lived as an equal. In this image, the humans are dressed up as their favorite dinosaurs, but never do we see dinosaurs dressed up to celebrate their love of the humans. The world you created is wonderful but I feel I am missing some cultural thing here? I thought everyone was equal-?

Krystal said...

I really like this effect...
I was wondering : do we have samples of this use to emulate motion in classical masters paintings already ? Or is this something relatively new, due to the fact we are now getting use to this motions, thanks to Cameras ?
I try to gather my souvenir of old master but I don't remember anything alike....

James Gurney said...

Kat, in Dinotopia the way people identify with dinosaurs is not worship, it's just a form of respect, and a recognition that we're all in this lifeboat together. It goes both ways, as you can see with the dinosaur "handshake" and footprint alphabet.

Ryan G said...

This is really cool, I wonder if there are any examples of motion blur in art before cameras were invented?
Anyway, great work, I'll try to follow this blog as I work on my own art journey.

James Gurney said...

Ryan G, I think Boldini was doing it. Also, later Manfred Schatz was a big motion blur guy.