Bert Monroy: Creative InspirationsIntroduction| 00:00 | (Music playing.)
| | 00:07 | Bert Monroy: Reproducing Times Square is
something that I have wanted to do.
| | 00:10 | Even before the computer, when I was
working traditionally, I always wanted to
| | 00:13 | do Times Square, because it's such an
incredibly colorful place, and I like doing
| | 00:18 | neons. And where do you find
more neons than Times Square?
| | 00:23 | Now, what makes my work unique
is that it's not a photograph.
| | 00:26 | So I am creating these things very sharp,
very large, so I can get all the detail I want.
| | 00:33 | Epson love my stuff because of that.
| | 00:34 | No matter how big they make
it, it's going to look sharp.
| | 00:37 | Nothing is out of focus.
| | 00:39 | Well, here is the actual character I
created, and there it is in the actual size
| | 00:43 | it's going to be in the final painting.
| | 00:45 | I went and createe a lot more details sometimes
than I need, just so that when I bring it down
| | 00:50 | it's going to look really clean and crisp.
| | 00:53 | Something in my head
clicked and said, "This is it.
| | 00:54 | This is the media of the future," because I
used to work large to get detail in my paintings.
| | 01:01 | Digital just changed the whole
landscape of the graphic arts industry.
| | 01:04 | When I write a book and showing all the
stuff that I did, it's not really giving
| | 01:10 | away my secrets; what it is is this is
what I did with that particular tool.
| | 01:14 | Now, here is how it works. You do something.
| | 01:16 | I had eaten here many times before, but
I never was inspired to paint it until
| | 01:21 | that one moment, because the light was
just right, the shadows were just right,
| | 01:25 | and the inspiration hit me,
and I said, "Here is a painting."
| | 01:29 | Art is a personal thing.
| | 01:30 | I don't do my paintings for other people.
| | 01:32 | If I did, I wouldn't be
doing rusty old bar signs.
| | 01:34 | I would be doing nice little floral
arrangements with little fruits baskets and
| | 01:38 | stuff that people want to put over
their couch, not a rusty bar sign.
| | 01:42 | I do things that I feel,
things that I want to do.
| | 01:45 | We should find that little child inside
of us that just does something just for
| | 01:48 | the sake of it, just because it makes
us feel good and because it's fun doing it.
| | 01:52 | (Music playing.)
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| Workspace| 00:00 | (Music playing.)
| | 00:06 | Hi! I want to welcome you to my studio and my home.
| | 00:10 | I work out of my home, so let's go in and see.
| | 00:19 | This is one of my prints
here. This is on paper.
| | 00:24 | The actual truck isn't far from here,
but it's just a truck that sits in
| | 00:29 | a guy's driveway. It's an old Diamond T.
| | 00:34 | This print here is in a nice,
little dark area because it will fade.
| | 00:39 | It's one of the first Iris
prints, which was done back in 1991.
| | 00:45 | This is where my wife works.
| | 00:48 | And she is there at work.
| | 00:49 | That's my wife sitting at her computer.
| | 00:51 | And beyond there - hi Zosha! - and beyond there,
normally, on a clear day you can see San Francisco through her
| | 00:58 | window there, but today is not a very clear day.
| | 01:00 | This is my studio, my command
center, as I like to call it.
| | 01:08 | So you could see how I have it set up here.
| | 01:10 | I work on these two Cintiqs.
| | 01:12 | This is the main Cintiq I work on.
| | 01:13 | This one has all my panels and so on.
| | 01:16 | And then this is my viewing screen up here.
| | 01:19 | That's John Knoll on the screen there,
one of the guys who wrote Photoshop,
| | 01:24 | And right now, I am in the
process of doing his hair.
| | 01:30 | This is an early piece done in MacPaint.
| | 01:33 | It's dated 1986 on here,
but it was somewhere in there.
| | 01:37 | I was drawing in MacPaint in
1984, when the first Mac came out.
| | 01:44 | These are some of my books.
| | 01:45 | In fact, here is a good one.
| | 01:47 | This is the first ever Photoshop book that
was co-written by David Biedny and myself.
| | 01:53 | And it was the first book and
the only book for almost two years.
| | 01:57 | It was in black and white.
| | 01:58 | We had 16 pages in color
that we had to fight for.
| | 02:02 | They didn't want to do any color.
| | 02:06 | A long time ago, I just printed out all
these different art disks that I had.
| | 02:10 | So I had everything that was on
each disk, so I could refer to it.
| | 02:15 | We didn't have things like Bridge in
those days, things that we can refer to, to
| | 02:19 | look at the different art.
| | 02:20 | So what I did was, to print out all
these things, I just let the little image
| | 02:23 | writer print away, day after day,
and I have kept it just for nostalgia.
| | 02:29 | Here in the window are awards and then
these things that the NAPP gives you when
| | 02:35 | you are a speaker at the Photoshop World.
| | 02:38 | Now, I keep them up there because at a
certain time in the day when the sun is
| | 02:42 | low, they send prisms all
through the studio. I like color.
| | 02:47 | I like light, and to see the light playing
in my studio is kind of a lot of fun.
| | 02:52 | It's a little moment of joy
during the course of the day.
| | 02:58 | We have been here for 15 years. It's home.
| | 03:00 | I don't plan on leaving anytime soon.
| | 03:02 | I really enjoy it here. It's peaceful.
| | 03:05 | It has got everything I need.
| | 03:07 | It's quiet, which is really nice.
| | 03:09 | So that's basically my environment.
| | 03:12 | So now, what we have to do is get
down to business and talk about what it
| | 03:16 | is that I actually do.
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| Discovering pixels| 00:00 | (Music playing.)
| | 00:08 | I have here a really early painting
that I had done. It's dated 1981.
| | 00:14 | And it's not framed.
| | 00:15 | It's been sitting in drawers since then.
| | 00:18 | When this was done, this was a bright blue sky.
| | 00:21 | This was a charcoal gray building.
| | 00:23 | Now you can just about make out the
lines, the separations in the bricks, but
| | 00:27 | most of the detail, at this point, is gone.
| | 00:29 | So these things weren't really archival.
| | 00:31 | They weren't meant to last forever.
| | 00:33 | But I didn't expect my artwork to last forever.
| | 00:36 | I was doing it just for fun
and for the experience of it.
| | 00:39 | So I was born in Manhattan.
| | 00:42 | I was born in New York City.
| | 00:44 | We lived in Harlem at the time, Spanish
Harlem, back up on 138th Street and Broadway.
| | 00:50 | All through elementary
school I was always drawing.
| | 00:53 | I was always getting in trouble
because I was constantly drawing.
| | 00:56 | I used to draw the Alamo with
4,000 little Mexicans charging in.
| | 01:00 | I used to love to draw all the time.
| | 01:03 | And when I was applying for high schools,
it was the nun, my teacher in the eighth
| | 01:09 | grade, who suggested that I try out
for the High School of Art and Design.
| | 01:13 | Because she says, "You know, you
have got in trouble for drawing.
| | 01:17 | Why don't you do it professionally?"
| | 01:19 | So I tried out for the High School
of Art and Design, and I made it.
| | 01:22 | I got into Art and Design,
which was in Manhattan.
| | 01:24 | So all of a sudden I was leaving the
neighborhood and going to Manhattan, and
| | 01:27 | then it was a whole awakening for me.
| | 01:30 | I actually started learning how to
compose things, how to properly illustrate
| | 01:37 | things, lighting, all kinds of stuff.
| | 01:40 | When I got out of high school, I
wanted to go to college, and we were poor.
| | 01:43 | So back then, there wasn't all
the opportunities you have now,
| | 01:46 | so I joined the Marine Corps, so I would
get the GI Bill so I could go to college.
| | 01:51 | And then I got a job in an ad agency,
my very first job in an ad agency.
| | 01:58 | I was going to be working in the Bullpen -
| | 02:01 | Bullpen, a term they used to use,
which is where the mechanical artists were.
| | 02:07 | The mechanical artists, which today
would be the guys who are working in
| | 02:10 | InDesign. Back then they were the
guys using rubber cement or waxers and
| | 02:15 | pasting up all the stuff,
which was fun in those days.
| | 02:19 | Once I had become a Creative Director,
then each job I went to I went as a
| | 02:23 | Creative Director, which wasn't as much
fun, because Creative Director didn't -
| | 02:27 | the only actual hands-on that I had was
basically sketches on cocktail napkins
| | 02:32 | during lunch with the client.
| | 02:33 | I didn't actually do work.
| | 02:37 | I would just be directing art directors
on what they are going to do and so on.
| | 02:40 | So it wasn't as much fun, and I
liked getting my hands dirty and
| | 02:46 | management didn't like that.
| | 02:47 | They wanted me to be the manager.
| | 02:48 | They didn't like that I
socialized with my workers.
| | 02:51 | That wasn't my job.
| | 02:52 | My job was to sit in my office and be grumpy.
| | 02:55 | So I did that for a little over a year, and
I left and went into my own business again.
| | 03:01 | I started another small
agency, doing catalogs again.
| | 03:06 | And it was there that I took a partner,
who was going to be my account man, and
| | 03:12 | he told me that we had to
computerize. And I said, "Okay.
| | 03:16 | We will get a computer, but don't expect
me to be sitting in there entering data."
| | 03:19 | He said, "No." He said, "There is a new computer
coming out that you can actually do layouts on."
| | 03:24 | So I went down to the store in
Manhattan and looked at this little Macintosh
| | 03:29 | 128, and I said, "Well, it's cool."
| | 03:33 | I picked up the mouse, and I
did a little box. "That's cool."
| | 03:36 | And I selected the box and moved
it over - "Oh. That is cool."
| | 03:40 | I could move things around.
| | 03:42 | Then I accidentally discovered a thing
called FatBits, which allowed me to zoom
| | 03:45 | in, and all of a sudden I was at
the pixel level, and that clicked.
| | 03:49 | Something in my head
clicked and said, this is it.
| | 03:51 | This is the media of the future.
| | 03:53 | Because I used to work large to get detail
in my paintings, but now I felt I could zoom in.
| | 03:59 | It's only black and white and big giant
pixels, but I felt that this was going to grow.
| | 04:05 | So I just went crazy into that computer.
| | 04:08 | I was in that store every day
until my computer was delivered.
| | 04:11 | I was doing demos of MacPaint in the store.
| | 04:13 | I had mastered it sitting in the
store everyday. They let me play.
| | 04:18 | They just let me there, and they saw it
as a good thing because customers would
| | 04:21 | come in and they would see me doing stuff.
| | 04:23 | So I became kind of almost like a salesman.
| | 04:26 | So I was doing demos in MacPaint,
and then when I got my own machine, I
| | 04:30 | completely got submerged into the
machine, gave up the ad work, stopped the
| | 04:34 | whole ad agency thing and started
a whole business around the Mac.
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| Pioneering digital workflows| 00:00 | (Music playing.)
| | 00:08 | This is a little piece that I did back in
1977, which was actually published in 1978.
| | 00:14 | So I remember the day I went to
present the artwork for this page here, and I
| | 00:19 | had this - I had spent hours and
hours - and actually a couple of days - creating
| | 00:24 | these tubes to look very real, very
photorealistic, and they looked at it and
| | 00:28 | they said, "What's this?"
| | 00:30 | I said, "Well, that's the
artwork for the cover."
| | 00:33 | They said, "Where is the other one?"
| | 00:35 | And I said, "Well, that was the comp."
| | 00:38 | And they said, "No.
| | 00:39 | We want the other one."
| | 00:40 | So I had spent all this time to do this,
and what ended up happening is that they
| | 00:44 | used all of the comps, the
comprehensives, for the finished art, because these
| | 00:49 | were all just rough, little sketches with
press type for the headlines and stuff,
| | 00:55 | but that's what they ended
up using as the final art.
| | 00:57 | So it was kind of fun to be able to do that.
| | 01:00 | So I remember setting up one of the first
ad agencies in New York with the Mac Plus.
| | 01:06 | And we were going to
produce everything digitally.
| | 01:10 | We got the CRTronic 300, which was the
first imagesetter that connected directly
| | 01:15 | to the Mac Plus, and using ImageStudio,
which was the only product at the time,
| | 01:19 | Microsoft Word, and a recently
developed product called PageMaker,
| | 01:28 | those were the main tools that
we were doing to produce the ads.
| | 01:31 | So we were doing everything on the Mac
Plus, on that little 9-inch black-and
| | 01:35 | white-screen, and then spitting
everything out onto the imagesetter. It spit out
| | 01:40 | the whole page with the text in place,
the illustrations, and the photographs,
| | 01:43 | everything in place, black-and-white.
| | 01:46 | After two months, we did some estimating,
and we realized that we had saved the
| | 01:51 | company 82% on all production
costs by doing everything on the Mac.
| | 01:56 | Now, a lot of these agencies had computers.
| | 01:58 | They had these big Quantel Paintboxes, and
Harris, and all these things, in their basements.
| | 02:05 | These things cost a fortune.
| | 02:06 | They were difficult to use.
| | 02:07 | They always had to have a techie running them.
| | 02:11 | But then all of a sudden came this
big revolution which was Photoshop.
| | 02:15 | Photoshop really changed the
landscape for the whole graphic arts industry,
| | 02:22 | because now, all of a sudden, what
happened is that they started buying small
| | 02:25 | computers, little desktop units,
putting them right on the art director's desk,
| | 02:31 | and they would then start
doing everything digitally.
| | 02:33 | Now, the tools were there, everything
you needed was in one place, and what was
| | 02:40 | coming out of it was high-end professional.
| | 02:43 | It wasn't that now you had to rely on
all these other places; everything could
| | 02:46 | be done within one little device, by
one person. And that started changing the
| | 02:52 | whole landscape to where it is today.
| | 02:54 | Whereas there was a time where Madison
Avenue was the place, even though very
| | 02:59 | few agencies were actually on Madison
Avenue, but the companies relied on the
| | 03:06 | big ad agency to produce all their work.
| | 03:08 | Now all of a sudden, you started
finding most companies were starting to form
| | 03:12 | their own in-house departments to
produce the collateral material, the
| | 03:16 | pamphlets, the give-away stuff, that
before they were spending a fortune on.
| | 03:20 | Now we were starting to see that stuff
being produced in-house by companies.
| | 03:23 | And we started seeing the
proliferation of a lot of small graphic design
| | 03:28 | studios, because now you didn't need that
big infrastructure to have all this stuff.
| | 03:32 | Talk about space, back in the old days, you
needed a few rooms just to store the artwork.
| | 03:39 | You would produce that big
mechanical with the rubber cement and stuff, and
| | 03:44 | you had to store it somewhere, because
the client might want to run last year's
| | 03:48 | ad with a couple of changes. So you
had to go to that big room, go through all
| | 03:52 | those bins and pull out that
big board, which was the artwork,
| | 03:55 | and 'Oh my God, somebody
got coffee on it,' or whatever.
| | 03:58 | But you had to store all this stuff.
| | 04:00 | So that, right there, was a real estate expense.
| | 04:03 | Digital just changed the whole
landscape of the graphic arts industry, for
| | 04:08 | the creative process, the production process,
with not that much more additional effort -
| | 04:13 | in fact, in many cases, a lot less
effort to get a really finished-looking
| | 04:17 | piece, good color, good type,
everything the way you want it, to get it
| | 04:23 | exactly the way you want it, because
it's just so much easier to produce
| | 04:27 | things doing it digitally.
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| Working with large prints| 00:00 | (Music playing.)
| | 00:08 | So nowadays, with these color printers,
you can print on a variety of materials,
| | 00:12 | like a glossy paper or a nice matte
paper, various sizes from a little thing
| | 00:17 | like this to a better size, or you can
even get really big, like this guy here.
| | 00:22 | This is printed on the Epson GS6000.
| | 00:24 | It's printed on a semi gloss canvas, 74 inches.
| | 00:31 | 74 inches. The Times Square piece: same
height, except it's 300 inches.
| | 00:38 | Size is a consideration, okay?
| | 00:39 | If you're shooting, say, 35mm size, you
shouldn't expect to print something this big.
| | 00:44 | I remember, pre-computer,
| | 00:47 | I used to do a lot of catalogs and stuff,
and I remember we shot this model. It was
| | 00:52 | Cristina Ferrare, and we shot these
shots of her, and the client says, "I want
| | 00:56 | her face on the cover."
| | 00:57 | Well, everything we had shot was shot in
35mm. Now we had to blow something up to
| | 01:02 | 8 and 3/4 x 11 and 1/4
the size of that catalog.
| | 01:05 | It wasn't holding up.
| | 01:06 | It was very grainy.
| | 01:08 | Because of the fact that you're
shooting such tiny things, you can't expect to
| | 01:11 | blow it up this big and have it look good.
| | 01:13 | Like you say, well billboards, are
they shot really big? A billboard,
| | 01:17 | if you get up close to a billboard,
you'll be astonished at how low the quality is.
| | 01:23 | It's really low quality.
| | 01:24 | I remember the first billboard I ever did.
| | 01:26 | I started getting worried. I said, "Oh, my God!
| | 01:28 | What kind of file am I gonna -"
| | 01:29 | I said, "What do you want?"
| | 01:30 | They said, "Well, we want it
to be 22 inches wide at 72dpi."
| | 01:35 | I said, "22 inches wide at 72dpi. That's it?"
| | 01:38 | "Yeah."
| | 01:39 | You look at a billboard from
a block away, it looks great!
| | 01:43 | If you get up close,
| | 01:43 | you'll see that it is really
heavily pixelated. It's really bad!
| | 01:47 | But you're looking at it from far away.
| | 01:49 | Now, what makes my work unique is that
it's not a photograph, so I am creating
| | 01:53 | these things very sharp, very large,
so I can get all the detail I want.
| | 01:59 | Epson loves my stuff because of that.
| | 02:00 | No matter how big they make
it, it's going to look sharp.
| | 02:03 | Nothing is out of focus because
everything in my painting is in focus.
| | 02:06 | Whether you're far away down here or
real close over here, it's the same focus
| | 02:11 | wherever you're looking.
| | 02:12 | So, for instance, the fact that the
little edges of the paper here are torn and
| | 02:17 | buckled over, the pepper flakes
inside the pepper shaker here have all the
| | 02:21 | little rough edges and all the little
details that pepper would have, the little
| | 02:26 | stains on the edges of the glasses;
| | 02:28 | these are things that are hard
to see on a little tiny print.
| | 02:31 | These are the things that are hard
to see if you're looking at the image
| | 02:33 | full-size on the screen.
| | 02:35 | So, it's important to be able to see
all those details, so when you print
| | 02:38 | something this big, the
overall piece looks real.
| | 02:43 |
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| Hyperrealism| 00:00 | (Music playing.)
| | 00:08 | Now, a lot of this stuff is made
up. It's not based on the photograph
| | 00:12 | because a photograph can't have this detail.
| | 00:16 | So many times I will go in there, and I
will get some actual models, like I got
| | 00:22 | some other salt and pepper shakers.
| | 00:25 | These are the ones that were in the scene,
but I got others just to see, how does
| | 00:28 | that light work? How does it look when
those reflections go through? Because I
| | 00:31 | couldn't see that in my original photograph.
| | 00:33 | So, I'll just take other things.
| | 00:35 | I took other glasses to see, how does
this thing really look against a material?
| | 00:40 | Things like this little reflection here,
I like to do this in my seminars to
| | 00:43 | explain how important it was
to get that reflection proper.
| | 00:48 | I couldn't see that
reflection in the photograph.
| | 00:50 | It was back there, slightly out of
photograph - or out of focus, rather - but I
| | 00:55 | needed, in my paint, to see that
reflection of the table cloth in there.
| | 00:58 | There is the printout, flat, the
tablecloth flat. All I wanted to see is how the
| | 01:04 | reflection is being distorted, and a
little mirror that I just took out. I have
| | 01:08 | little mirrors here that I have in my drawer.
| | 01:09 | I taped them on a side of a Kleenex box,
put it on top of the printout, so I
| | 01:15 | could see how it is that that reflection
would bend inside of the glass, so that then
| | 01:22 | when I created the painting, that was
the edge of the glass reflecting the
| | 01:25 | tablecloth below it.
| | 01:28 | I've seen - and I myself was guilty
many times, years ago, of creating things,
| | 01:33 | and they'd look good.
| | 01:35 | Then I'd print the whole thing out, and
then all of sudden, I'd look at it, and
| | 01:39 | it's like, that looks wrong, and I'd have
to really study and see why, and then I
| | 01:42 | started working up perspective lines.
| | 01:44 | I realized that, oh yeah.
| | 01:44 | Well, there is a certain
perspective here, and now my shadow is not
| | 01:49 | following the perspective.
| | 01:50 | Since the shadow was not following the
perspective, it throws everything else off.
| | 01:55 | So, any imperfections in the painting,
people will be drawn to it, and they'll say,
| | 01:59 | "Oh, that looks wrong."
| | 02:00 | They'll disregard that other 24 feet
are great, but they'll see that thing
| | 02:04 | that's wrong, and that's
what's going to stand out.
| | 02:07 | So it's very important that
everything follows the perspective,
| | 02:10 | the proper lighting, the color;
everything should work together to make the
| | 02:14 | image look like it really is there.
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| Times Square project: overview| 00:00 | (Music playing.)
| | 00:09 | So now, this is a project
that's taken quite some time.
| | 00:11 | In fact, when it's done, it will be a
little over three years in creating this.
| | 00:16 | Now, I'm at the stage now where I
am completing the people down at the
| | 00:20 | bottom and the street.
| | 00:22 | That's what's left at this point, and there
are three buildings that have to go back here.
| | 00:27 | I've created the basic
buildings up Seventh Avenue there.
| | 00:29 | I just don't have any details on them yet.
| | 00:31 | I didn't complete one whole part I
would do. I did this Cindy poster.
| | 00:36 | Then I went over and did Novotel hotel.
| | 00:39 | Then I came over and did that Cindy
poster, and then I did this little
| | 00:43 | storefront over here.
| | 00:44 | I did different sections.
| | 00:45 | If it was taking too long, I would
stop, leave it, go to something else.
| | 00:50 | If I leave it and then come
back to it, I'll say, "Wow!
| | 00:52 | "Why did I do it like that?
| | 00:54 | I could have done this."
| | 00:55 | So I look at it with a fresh eye.
| | 00:57 | So I start to fix it.
| | 00:59 | I fix things that I did before, and
then you start to become to better.
| | 01:04 | There is no time, ever, where this was
exactly what Times Square look like,
| | 01:08 | because this is a compilation of many
different photo studies and things that
| | 01:12 | I have added myself.
| | 01:13 | There is billboards here that don't
exist and never existed, like this Wacom
| | 01:18 | billboard doesn't exist.
| | 01:19 | I just decided to put one there.
| | 01:21 | These guys playing Three
Card Monte, that's gone.
| | 01:24 | You can't play Three Card
Monte in Times Square anymore.
| | 01:26 | There was a time when you would
find one on every other corner.
| | 01:29 | Here is some of the people
over here. Here is Thomas.
| | 01:33 | There he is in the actual size.
| | 01:35 | Here is my nephew Mark
and his girlfriend Soo Jin.
| | 01:39 | There is that little bunch playing
the Three Card Monte. Dan-o from
| | 01:44 | Epson is the guy who was playing the
card, and this is Dan and Wes from Wacom.
| | 01:49 | Wes just blew that $20 that you see
there. He just lost $20 and Dan is
| | 01:55 | giving him hell for it.
| | 01:56 | Well, see there, the
taxicab is in here somewhere.
| | 02:00 | Yeah, here is the taxicab, and
there is the guy driving the cab.
| | 02:05 | Who is that guy driving the cab?
| | 02:08 | This guy. This is my hack license
when I drove a cab in New York City.
| | 02:12 | So that's me, in 1981, driving a cab.
| | 02:16 | In this particular painting, I'm
driving the cab down there in the street, so
| | 02:20 | that's me down there.
| | 02:23 | So, a lot of this, a good, I would say, a
good 70% of this is all made up.
| | 02:30 | It's just stuff that I wanted to stick
in there, ads that I decided to stick in
| | 02:33 | there, the little dirt and the little
grime and the little stuff that I feel
| | 02:37 | will make this come to life.
| | 02:39 | A lot of things that no longer exist
are in this poster, in this painting,
| | 02:45 | whatever you want to call this gigantic thing.
| | 02:47 | So it's just a lot of fun -
three years of having a good time.
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| Times Square project: planning| 00:00 | (Music playing.)
| | 00:08 | When I did that first print, Damen, it
took 11 months, and it was very frustrating.
| | 00:13 | I was so tired of it.
| | 00:15 | I was so bored with it.
| | 00:16 | I wanted to go to the next painting.
| | 00:17 | It's taking too long.
| | 00:18 | But if you look at that, it's kind of
monotonous. There is a girder and then
| | 00:22 | another girder and then another girder,
girder, girder, a whole bunch, and the
| | 00:25 | track goes on all the way back.
| | 00:27 | So it was very tiring, and I was
afraid I was going to get that with this, for
| | 00:32 | such a long project to take so long.
| | 00:34 | I thought, "I am going to get bored with
this, but if I tell the public about it,
| | 00:37 | I am forcing myself to finish it."
| | 00:39 | But surprisingly, as I have been doing
it, there has been absolutely no boredom.
| | 00:44 | Here, every inch, like Times
Square, is completely different.
| | 00:49 | Reproducing Times Square is something
I have wanted to do. Even before the
| | 00:54 | computer when I was working
traditionally, I always wanted to do Times Square
| | 00:56 | because it's such an incredibly colorful
place, and I like doing neons. And where
| | 01:02 | do you find more neons than Times Square?
All 24 hours, 24/7, that place is alive
| | 01:08 | with people and lights and things going on.
| | 01:11 | So it was a - the photo study that I
based the whole thing was way back in 2004,
| | 01:18 | that I took a bunch of shots that I
later then decided to put together. I took
| | 01:22 | some shots which basically formed the painting.
| | 01:26 | In Photoshop, using Photomerge, I
combined all four images to form my basic
| | 01:32 | reference for the panorama.
| | 01:35 | Now it's hard to see anything in these shots.
| | 01:37 | There is not much detail.
| | 01:39 | So I did a bunch of subsequent trips
to Times Square and took other shots.
| | 01:46 | There is the first study right here.
| | 01:50 | So these were the original
studies for the painting.
| | 01:53 | Here is study two, another set
of shots, which were daytime.
| | 01:58 | At this point, I had
already started the painting.
| | 02:01 | Study three was a nighttime shot, and
this I started getting into more tighter
| | 02:07 | detail of certain things with signs look
like the inside of what the interior of
| | 02:11 | the thing looked like.
| | 02:13 | Now the Web is extremely useful in the
creation of this because it's giving me a
| | 02:18 | whole other way of
getting my reference material.
| | 02:21 | So here we see that we have the
reference material for the Mister Softee truck,
| | 02:26 | the shots that I took and then
these shots here came right off the Web.
| | 02:29 | I just did a search for Mister Softee,
and I had all these pictures that
| | 02:33 | showed me what the Mister Softee trucks look
like, so I could see exactly what was on there.
| | 02:38 | So I could then recreate that
whole thing, the right words and so on.
| | 02:43 | Now there have been many times when I am
looking at some street corner or something, and
| | 02:48 | I am not sure what exactly is there.
| | 02:50 | So I have gone to the street views
available in Google Maps and Google Earth,
| | 02:55 | and I could see street views. And I am
not sure exactly what that marquee is, so
| | 02:59 | what I will do is I will just travel up
Broadway a little bit here, get right in
| | 03:03 | front of the marquee area, and then I
will just turn around and say, "Well, what
| | 03:07 | exactly does that look like?" And I
will see, all right. There I see.
| | 03:10 | There is my little area there. If I need to,
I can always zoom in so I can get some detail.
| | 03:17 | So since I haven't been able to go back
and make that many trips to New York to
| | 03:21 | shoot this, I had Google Maps so that I
can just take a little virtual walk up
| | 03:26 | and down Broadway, and I have all the
material that I needed. So it made it real
| | 03:30 | easy to go in there and research what I needed.
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| Times Square project: painting| 00:00 | (Music playing.)
| | 00:09 | A lot of things I won't see
until I get to the once-over file, which
| | 00:11 | is whole point of the once-over file, because
that's where everything has been put into place.
| | 00:16 | Now, what's not working? Like, for
instance, there is a lamppost right here.
| | 00:20 | We are not seeing the
reflection of it anywhere in here.
| | 00:23 | Until I put it together and put the
lamppost in place, I didn't know that there
| | 00:27 | would be a reflection there.
| | 00:28 | My photograph didn't show it. It just showed a couple
of white dots that told me that was a lamppost.
| | 00:34 | So when I recreate it, I create a
realistic-looking lamppost, and now I have to
| | 00:38 | go in there and put the
reflection of that lamppost in the glass.
| | 00:42 | The actual painting starts in Illustrator.
| | 00:46 | I created that composite of the four
photographs to make one long panorama.
| | 00:53 | Now Photomerge does a beautiful job
of combining these pictures into one,
| | 00:57 | but what it does is it does bend
things and twist them around so that they
| | 01:01 | seamlessly line up.
| | 01:04 | In the process of doing that, it does
distort certain things, and it just makes
| | 01:08 | them look good, but it doesn't
really adhere to true perspective.
| | 01:12 | So perspective is crucial for me.
| | 01:14 | So we can see all the different
vectors showing up, which are my
| | 01:19 | basic guides as to correct
perspective of where these things are, with the
| | 01:26 | vanishing points going up 7th Avenue and up
Broadway, down 44th Street on two different sides.
| | 01:32 | So I've got this area here, like, for
instance, let's just say I have to got work on
| | 01:36 | this just a side of that facade of the building.
| | 01:39 | So here we see that file where I am
working on this side here, and this side is
| | 01:44 | in place, and I have a layer here called Guide.
| | 01:46 | When I turn that on, and we see that
we have these little red lines that just
| | 01:50 | appeared, that our true perspective
because they are converging on the vanishing
| | 01:54 | point. So these vanishing
lines are a real perspective,
| | 01:57 | not the distortion you are going to
get both in the camera and in Photomerge
| | 02:01 | compositing of multiple camera views,
which are going to distort that and bend it.
| | 02:06 | So if I was to recreate that exactly, it
looks cool as a little photograph, but
| | 02:12 | if we are talking about a 25-foot
print, it's going to look distorted.
| | 02:16 | So my perspective is exact, so it
follows the horizon, and so on. The very nature
| | 02:23 | of Times Square and its lights
make dark areas difficult to photograph.
| | 02:28 | So like, for instance, that Novotel Hotel
way down there, at night all you see is
| | 02:34 | little dots of light which are windows.
| | 02:36 | Now if you are standing there, you can
just about make that building up, which
| | 02:40 | you will be able to do in the painting.
| | 02:42 | You will see the building.
| | 02:43 | You will be able to see the bricks.
| | 02:44 | You will be able to see what's
going on. You will see the window sill.
| | 02:46 | So this is a low-res version of the
current status of wherever the thing is in
| | 02:53 | place, so that I can see how
everything is fitting. I don't do it in high-res
| | 02:56 | because the file is just
so huge. It takes forever.
| | 03:00 | Just to show you the difference between
this and the actual file, I am going to
| | 03:05 | go zoom into this area right in here.
| | 03:07 | There is the Iron Man, and we could
see how rough he is, how pixelated, and
| | 03:12 | there is a stuff in the window there.
| | 03:13 | It looks like a light or something,
some weird little things there. Pull back a
| | 03:18 | little bit, and we could see what
these things look like. Very rough!
| | 03:23 | Very low-res.
| | 03:24 | Now I am going to open up that file, that
section right there in the actual composite.
| | 03:30 | Now we could see, much clearer, what's going on.
| | 03:33 | I can zoom in a little closer here, and
now you see what that light was, and
| | 03:36 | it's these people.
| | 03:37 | There is a little party going on there.
| | 03:38 | There is a guy just looking out the
window, and now we could see that the Iron
| | 03:41 | Man is much clearer, sharper.
| | 03:43 | We could see all the stuff going on.
| | 03:45 | Now it looks a little clear right now,
a little bland, and that's because this is
| | 03:50 | the composite of the elements. When I do
what's called the once-over file, that's
| | 03:54 | when other little details, like there
will be a little dirt, grime dripping down
| | 03:59 | through here. In the once-
over file, those things get added.
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| Times Square project: printing| 00:00 | (Music playing.)
| | 00:08 | Since Times Square is being designed
primarily for the print, that's going to be how
| | 00:12 | people are going to see this.
| | 00:13 | This is not something to be seen onscreen.
| | 00:14 | A 25-foot print doesn't look good on the Web.
| | 00:17 | So printing along the way
has been very important for me.
| | 00:20 | For one thing, it's very
important to see the overall piece.
| | 00:23 | I could see it on the screen,
but I don't see the whole thing.
| | 00:25 | So I have been doing these
small, little prints along the way.
| | 00:29 | The final is 60 inches, so
this is like one-sixth of it.
| | 00:33 | So this gives me - it starts to give
me an idea of how it looks, and I have
| | 00:36 | printed many along the way.
| | 00:38 | They are all stacked up here at
different stages, so I can see how things are
| | 00:41 | working. Everything has to be printed and
every little part has to be printed
| | 00:45 | because I have to know, am I going to
waste a lot of time putting in details
| | 00:49 | that the printer isn't going to hold up?
| | 00:50 | So in this top drawer here,
I have all these sections set up.
| | 00:53 | I have the Building on the Left and
the Central Area and up 7th Avenue, Up
| | 00:57 | Broadway, the Street Level, the
Buildings, the Toys 'R' Us, the People, and
| | 01:02 | I'll look at any one of these guys and in
there, there will be a whole series of parts,
| | 01:09 | like, for instance, the Iron Man.
| | 01:11 | This is an early stage, and I want
to see how much detail I was getting.
| | 01:16 | So in the final piece over here, here's an
interim where I started making notes, and
| | 01:21 | there is the final one where here is
the actual character I created, and there
| | 01:25 | it is in the actual size this it's
going to be in the final painting.
| | 01:28 | I went and created a lot more detail,
sometimes when I need just so that when I
| | 01:34 | bring it down, it's going to
look really clean and crisp.
| | 01:37 | In some cases, I've
actually had to do an actual size.
| | 01:42 | Now again, I am limited to 44 inches
here, so I can't go to full 60 inches.
| | 01:46 | So what I have done is I have broken it
up into sections, but these were printed
| | 01:49 | actual size, and these are just done on
a regular paper, just so I could see how
| | 01:53 | things are working and making sure
that all the parts are going into place.
| | 01:59 | The building that's just to the left
of this, I went ahead and printed an
| | 02:03 | actual size of that, just to make sure
that things were working out right. And
| | 02:08 | when I had this giant print, I'll see these
little things that I won't see on the screen.
| | 02:12 | On the screen, I am not
seeing everything together.
| | 02:15 | If I pull back, I am not seeing detail.
| | 02:17 | So these are the little things that I'll miss.
| | 02:18 | So I need to make these giant prints as
tests, so that I can see how things are
| | 02:22 | working, go back to the original
art, and start making those fixes.
| | 02:26 | So I keep these pretty well-
organized, so I just want to make sure that
| | 02:30 | everything is working together. And like the
street level, here's this little Nuts for Nuts
| | 02:37 | sign. All these things, they all get
printed so I have a little actual size kind
| | 02:41 | of a print showing me how things are
working until eventually everything is
| | 02:46 | done. The entire street and all the
elements are in place. Then I will print one
| | 02:49 | huge piece, which I will hang somewhere,
and then I will sit there for hours and
| | 02:54 | look at it inch-by-inch, study what's
going on, and that's where the final
| | 02:59 | touches come into place that will
make the whole thing hold together.
| | 03:03 | As far as prints are concerned, I actually
sold three already, even though it's not finished.
| | 03:07 | So I am not expecting a lot of sales
because how many people have a 25-foot wall?
| | 03:13 | But I have sold two that are small and
one that a guy's not sure yet, but he wants
| | 03:19 | a pretty large print.
| | 03:20 | So I didn't do it because I want to sell prints.
| | 03:23 | I did it because this is a hell
of a challenge, and it's been fun.
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| Reaching people through media| 00:00 | (Music playing.)
| | 00:08 | I remember when I wrote my first
solo book, this one here, back in 2000.
| | 00:15 | A good friend of mine, she said
to me, she says, "You are crazy.
| | 00:19 | You have given away all your secrets."
| | 00:21 | I said, "They are not really secrets.
| | 00:23 | "They are just little things I have
developed, and the way I see it, it's not
| | 00:27 | "like I am giving things away.
| | 00:28 | "It's not like I am expecting everybody to
go out there and become a photo realist.
| | 00:31 | "What I am doing is inspiring, to
stimulate people to get creative, and that, to
| | 00:37 | me, is a tremendous joy."
| | 00:39 | The reward for a lot of this stuff,
writing books, like for instance my latest
| | 00:44 | book, and I write for a lot of foreign
magazines, like this one here that comes
| | 00:48 | out of Poland, here's a little article on
how I did the little Corona bottles in
| | 00:52 | Times Square. In Photoshop User, I have a
column in every issue. That's right here.
| | 00:58 | It's called From Bert's Studio, where I am
talking about the Iron Man from Times Square.
| | 01:04 | I have a column in Layers Magazine for
every issue, which is called Artistic
| | 01:09 | Expressions, where it says I am talking
about the creation of 3D letters in the
| | 01:13 | Toys 'R' Us sign in Times Square.
| | 01:15 | The painting isn't tremendous, but the
rewards are tremendous. And the rewards
| | 01:20 | are that I get all these e-mails from
people who write and say, 'Look what I did
| | 01:24 | from what I learned from you,' and
that was the reward: to know that I am
| | 01:28 | reaching all these people. And for me,
it's kind of like a payback because I came
| | 01:32 | from a poor background, and very little
stimulation, and there were some people
| | 01:37 | who saw my talent and said
"We are going to help you.
| | 01:41 | We are going to show you," like that
nun in my Eighth Grade who told me to go
| | 01:45 | High School of Art and Design.
| | 01:47 | That was an inspiration. Without
her, who knows where I would be today?
| | 01:50 | So these people inspired me.
| | 01:51 | So that's my motivation for doing all
this stuff is to inspire other people.
| | 01:55 | When I write a book and showing all
the stuff that I did, it's not really a
| | 02:00 | giving-away-my-secrets.
| | 02:02 | What it is is this is what I
did with that particular tool.
| | 02:05 | Now here is how it works.
| | 02:07 | You do something. And that, to me, is a
tremendous reward of reaching to the
| | 02:12 | public, whether it's through DVDs, or TV
shows, or books, magazines, whatever it is.
| | 02:19 | It's reaching that whole public and
making them feel like they can do something,
| | 02:25 | giving them that power to go
over there and get creative.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creative philosophy| 00:00 | (Music playing.)
| | 00:10 | So we are here at one of the
sites of one of my paintings.
| | 00:13 | It's Spenger's Fish Grotto, which is a
landmark here in Berkeley, and when I got
| | 00:19 | the inspiration I was basically
driving down the street right here.
| | 00:22 | It was one of those autumn days when
the sun is a bright orange, and the white of
| | 00:28 | the building was being
bathed in this orange light.
| | 00:32 | So it actually looked like it was an
orange-colored building. I was in my car.
| | 00:35 | I couldn't actually take the shot at the time.
| | 00:38 | I came back later to do my photo
studies. But it was just this color, and the
| | 00:43 | intensity of the shadows that just
caught my eye, and it was just so beautiful
| | 00:46 | And I had eaten here many times before,
but I never was inspired to painting it
| | 00:49 | until that one moment, because the
light was just right, the shadows were just
| | 00:53 | right, and the inspiration hit me,
and I said, "Here is a painting."
| | 00:56 | A lot of people will say
to me, 'Well, I can't draw.
| | 01:00 | I can't draw a straight line.' Well,
the beauty of the computer is that by
| | 01:04 | holding down the Shift key and the Line
tool, you automatically get a straight line.
| | 01:07 | You don't have to worry to
being able to draw a straight line.
| | 01:10 | I tell people that because they look at
my work, and they say, 'Oh, I can never
| | 01:14 | do that kind of stuff.' They
don't have to do my kind of stuff.
| | 01:18 | You don't have to be
able to draw to be creative.
| | 01:21 | You don't have to go in there and suddenly
create something that looks like a photograph.
| | 01:26 | I said, "Art is not something
that's structured in a certain way.
| | 01:31 | It's a feeling that you feel inside."
| | 01:33 | You have the Richard Estes who does
the photorealism, and you have a Jackson
| | 01:37 | Pollock who just throws a lot of
paint and stirs emotions by doing that.
| | 01:41 | Art is a personal thing.
| | 01:42 | I don't do my paintings for other people.
| | 01:44 | If I did, I won't be doing rusty, old bar signs.
| | 01:47 | I would be doing nice, little floral
arrangements with little fruit baskets and stuff.
| | 01:51 | I do things that I feel,
things that I want to do.
| | 01:54 | And that's what I want to encourage
other people to do is to do what they feel,
| | 01:59 | what makes them feel good and not feel
that they have to make it look perfect. No.
| | 02:04 | It doesn't have to do anything.
| | 02:07 | So you don't really have to be able to draw.
| | 02:09 | You just have to be able to express
yourself, and however you do it is fine.
| | 02:14 | I mean, a child finds a
tremendous joy in drawing a stick figure.
| | 02:17 | He knows what it is. 'Look, there's mommy.' He knows.
| | 02:22 | The adult will say, 'Well, that doesn't look
like me,' but the child will say, 'That's you.
| | 02:26 | Look, that's you.' He felt it.
| | 02:27 | That child felt that thing, and he just
had fun drawing that little stick figure.
| | 02:32 | It's not important that they couldn't draw.
| | 02:33 | That child doesn't get
frustrated because they can't draw.
| | 02:35 | They are just very freely
going in there and doing something.
| | 02:40 | We should find that little child inside
of us that just does something just for
| | 02:43 | the sake of it, just because it makes us
feel good and because it's fun doing it, and
| | 02:47 | not get ready to criticize and say,
'Oh, nobody else is going to like that.'
| | 02:51 | I used to do that a lot when
I used to work traditionally.
| | 02:54 | I used to do a lot of things that
never saw the light of day. People never saw
| | 02:57 | them because they didn't look good to me,
and that was very frustrating to me.
| | 03:03 | It wasn't until a long time later that I realized
that it doesn't have to look good to anybody.
| | 03:08 | It doesn't even have to look good to me.
| | 03:10 | I just had fun doing it,
and that's what's important.
| | 03:13 | The fact that I was being creative,
letting go, and just going in there and
| | 03:16 | drawing something. If it
wasn't perfect, it didn't matter.
| | 03:19 | I wasn't looking for perfection.
| | 03:21 | There was no such thing as perfection.
| | 03:22 | I wasn't looking for it.
| | 03:23 | I was just looking to spend a little
time being creative, and letting loose, and
| | 03:28 | doing something that I like to do.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Interview with Lynda| 00:00 | (Music playing.)
| | 00:06 | Lynda Weinman: Hello! I am Lynda Weinman, and I
am here today with my dear friend, Bert Monroy.
| | 00:13 | Bert is one of the consummate photo
illustrators, digital photo illustrators,
| | 00:19 | and I believe, Bert, that we must have
met over 20 years ago at Macworld.
| | 00:24 | Bert Monroy: Yeah, at
least 24 or 25 years ago, yeah.
| | 00:27 | Lynda: So I think we are
the elders at this point, we can say.
| | 00:30 | Bert: Yes.
| | 00:31 | That's what Jeff Schewe calls us,
the elders, yes, the graybeards.
| | 00:34 | Well, you don't have a beard.
| | 00:37 | Lynda: It's just what a good dye job does.
| | 00:39 | So I know that Photoshop just turned
20, and you have been using Photoshop
| | 00:46 | exclusively in your work, and we
also have just seen the release of CS5.
| | 00:52 | What are some of the new changes to
Photoshop that are influencing your work?
| | 00:57 | Bert: The reason I was able to co-author
that first book on Photoshop is because I was
| | 01:01 | already using Photoshop for two
years before Adobe knew it existed.
| | 01:05 | I was using it as part of my PixelPaint
work back then because it had a really
| | 01:10 | cool air brush, way back in the beginning.
| | 01:14 | One of the strange things
about the new CS5 is the brush.
| | 01:18 | There is a whole new brush, the
Bristle Brush, which pretty much, to my mind,
| | 01:24 | has taken the digital and brought it
all completely to the world of the
| | 01:28 | traditional, where you now have a
Bristle Brush that you can twirl and twist
| | 01:33 | and press and have the bristles spread,
just like you would with a traditional brush,
| | 01:37 | the kind of techniques that people
who were traditionally trained with a real
| | 01:40 | brush can now take advantage of
digitally, without the mess, and the smell, and
| | 01:45 | all the other stuff.
| | 01:46 | So it really has taken the digital
world and brought it all the way around so
| | 01:50 | that there is nothing to differentiate
it from the traditional media anymore.
| | 01:55 | Lynda: In your work, you labor very
intensively to get things to look real, and I am
| | 02:02 | curious why you would do that
rather than taking a photo, like what your
| | 02:07 | obsession is with that level of realism,
because it's clearly something that
| | 02:11 | takes an incredible amount
of work and skill to do.
| | 02:14 | Bert: Well, first, let me start by
saying that I am not a photorealist, because
| | 02:19 | photorealism is a movement and
photorealists adhere to the photograph.
| | 02:23 | So it deals with things like depth of field.
| | 02:26 | So if something is far away, it's
going to be out of focus, whereas in my
| | 02:29 | paintings everything is in focus.
| | 02:31 | So it's more like hyperrealism.
| | 02:32 | It's like you are actually there.
| | 02:34 | Wherever your eye looks,
it's going to come into focus.
| | 02:36 | So everything is very sharp.
| | 02:39 | Now, for me, it's not the picture.
| | 02:41 | It's recreating that picture,
recreating that experience for the viewer,
| | 02:44 | that's important for me.
| | 02:46 | How did that light enter that window
and hit that vase in a certain way and
| | 02:50 | create that little glimmer?
| | 02:52 | The photograph might be able to
capture it, but no, my eye caught it in a
| | 02:56 | certain way, so I painted the way the
eye captures it, and then try to recreate
| | 02:59 | it, because to me, it's that challenge
of duplicating those effects of lights,
| | 03:03 | reflections, shadows, and how
they interact with each other.
| | 03:07 | How to create that effect is what drives me.
| | 03:10 | So it's not the picture.
| | 03:11 | It's the journey to that picture.
| | 03:13 | Lynda: And what inspires the
subject matters of your paintings?
| | 03:18 | How do you decide which subject you are
going to bring to hyperrealism?
| | 03:21 | Bert: I would say they do.
| | 03:23 | They are the inspiration.
| | 03:24 | I can walk down the street, just
thinking, "Oh, I have got to do this
| | 03:28 | tomorrow," and then all of a
sudden, something will pop out.
| | 03:30 | It's like, I see it.
| | 03:31 | I see there is a painting. Okay.
| | 03:33 | Like one of my last pieces is just after
lunch. It's called Lunch in Tiburon.
| | 03:38 | It has half-drunk glasses and dirty glasses
with lip stains and torn up napkins and stuff.
| | 03:43 | And I was just sitting there waiting for the
check, and I looked at it, and I said,
| | 03:47 | "There is a painting here.
| | 03:48 | I see the painting."
| | 03:49 | So I get inspired by that sudden moment where
everything comes together, and I see the light.
| | 03:54 | I see the shadows.
| | 03:54 | I see the filtration of
light through substances.
| | 03:59 | And that's my inspiration.
| | 04:01 | So I get inspired by the subject.
| | 04:02 | I don't look for it.
| | 04:04 | If I look for it, I don't really find it.
| | 04:06 | It has to present itself to me,
and that's how I get inspired.
| | 04:09 | Lynda: That's fantastic!
| | 04:10 | Your work is so magnetic.
| | 04:13 | I mean, I think people are so drawn to it.
| | 04:14 | One of the things that I really love
about you is your interest in sharing your
| | 04:19 | knowledge, and not only do you share it
in programs like what we are doing right
| | 04:24 | now, and on lynda.com, and other places,
but I know you also do a lot of work with
| | 04:28 | high school students.
| | 04:29 | I was wondering if you could talk a little
bit about why you like share what you do.
| | 04:34 | Bert: I think that's kind of like a payback.
| | 04:35 | I came from a pretty poor background,
and I was inspired by people who came
| | 04:41 | and said, 'Hey, look. Look what's outside of
the world you live in. Look what's out there.'
| | 04:45 | And I kind of like to do the same thing.
| | 04:46 | I go to inner city high schools.
| | 04:48 | I don't go to well-to-do schools.
| | 04:51 | I mean, they have their own little thing.
| | 04:53 | I go to schools where the kids don't
have much hope for the future, and those
| | 04:56 | are the ones that I want to inspire.
| | 04:58 | I want to say, 'Look at what's available
to you, and these ways in which you can
| | 05:03 | take your creativity and your
energy and focus it to something.'
| | 05:06 | And then I see what they produce,
that's the real reward, and I just love that.
| | 05:10 | I love to get these e-mails from people,
'Look what I did from what I learned
| | 05:14 | from your podcast,' or whatever, and
that's a real reward to me, that I know that
| | 05:17 | I have inspired other
people the way I was inspired.
| | 05:20 | I have inspired them to take
their creativity and create stuff.
| | 05:24 | Lynda: Fantastic!
| | 05:26 | Your most recent piece is perhaps your
most ambitious, the Times Square piece.
| | 05:30 | Bert: Ambitious is a good way to put it, yeah.
| | 05:33 | Most of my paintings take, on
the average, about 250 hours to do.
| | 05:37 | My first panorama was this
painting, Damen, of a train station.
| | 05:41 | That took 11 months.
| | 05:42 | It was pretty involved. It was the
first painting that I did with the print in
| | 05:45 | mind, so it was pretty large.
| | 05:47 | It was 10 feet wide by 40 inches high.
| | 05:50 | When I did that, that's when I realized that
the one painting I wanted to do all my life
| | 05:54 | I realized now there was a way to do it.
| | 05:57 | And I always wanted to do it,
but I could never feel it.
| | 05:59 | I would look at it, and I never felt
the painting, until I realized that the
| | 06:02 | only way to do it is the way
Times Square is, is to do it big.
| | 06:06 | And then when the printers came out
that have 64 inches on them, that's when
| | 06:09 | I said, "This is it.
| | 06:10 | I have to do it with that size print involved."
| | 06:13 | So the print is 60
inches by 25 feet. It's huge.
| | 06:17 | Everything is different.
| | 06:18 | So everything has been just one
constant challenge, how to recreate this and
| | 06:22 | that - and I am having a ball with it -
| | 06:24 | and people, because I never did people
digitally. I did people traditionally,
| | 06:29 | but I never did people digitally, and
the people will always say, 'Well, why
| | 06:33 | aren't there people in your paintings?'
| | 06:35 | There was a reason for that, but
Times Square, you can't have Times
| | 06:38 | Square without people.
| | 06:39 | Lynda: You are putting some
interesting people in this.
| | 06:41 | Bert: You are in there.
| | 06:41 | Lynda: I know.
Bert: You are walking across the street.
| | 06:43 | Lynda: A photo of myself, and my husband Bruce,
was requested by Bert, but I know you are
| | 06:48 | putting a lot of other
people that you know in there.
| | 06:49 | Bert: Yeah. I am putting pretty much a lot of the
people that I have known through the years
| | 06:53 | - friends and people from the industry.
| | 06:56 | I had to populate the streets, and
instead of having all these kind of soulless-
| | 07:00 | looking people, I decided
to put everybody I know.
| | 07:02 | And they are all doing something.
| | 07:03 | Everybody is involved in some kind of
an event, a little story that I kind of
| | 07:07 | based on their personalities,
the way I know them, and so on.
| | 07:10 | So everybody is just all over the
street, and there is people everywhere.
| | 07:14 | There are a few hundred people I have to do.
| | 07:16 | So I am having a ball with that.
| | 07:18 | The new Photoshop has made that a lot
easier, which is another reason I hadn't
| | 07:22 | done people, because I used to do people.
| | 07:23 | I do a lot of smearing, with chalk
and stuff, whereas I never had that full
| | 07:28 | capability digitally.
| | 07:29 | But now with the Bristle Brush and the
Mixer Brush, I am able to go in there
| | 07:33 | and blend colors much nicer and get feelings
and hair a lot nicer than I could have before.
| | 07:39 | So it has made it real easy to do these
few hundred people that are in the painting.
| | 07:43 | Lynda: Now, did I hear correctly that you
actually worked with Adobe on those brushes?
| | 07:47 | Bert: Yes, I have been an alpha
tester for Photoshop for a long time.
| | 07:52 | And it's funny because when Photoshop
7 came out, which introduced the Brush
| | 07:57 | Engine, I remember when I went down to
see it, they said - the first thing I
| | 08:02 | said is, "I haven't seen anything
this cool since PixelPaint," and they all
| | 08:05 | laughed, because it turns out Jerry
Harris, one of the two guys who wrote
| | 08:08 | PixelPaint is the guy
who wrote the Brush Engine.
| | 08:11 | The new Bristle Brush, I was brought
down to San Jose to look at it when they
| | 08:16 | were thinking about buying it, because
they did buy that technology third-party,
| | 08:21 | and it was pretty cool. And I saw it,
and the movement of the bristles and the
| | 08:26 | twisting and the turning.
| | 08:27 | So I gave a lot of input on how
it should be implemented and so on.
| | 08:31 | Then they started putting it into the product.
| | 08:33 | And so I worked with them,
and I used it really early.
| | 08:38 | In fact, I used it in the painting
before it was put into the product, so it
| | 08:43 | worked a little differently then than the end result.
| | 08:46 | But I did have a lot of input.
| | 08:48 | Being one of the few painters that
are alpha testers, I got called in on
| | 08:53 | anything that has to do
with painting and brushes.
| | 08:55 | Lynda: Smart on their part.
| | 08:55 | Bert: Yeah. You've got to have somebody who tells
them what to do with a paintbrush, so I
| | 09:02 | got called in early on that one.
| | 09:03 | Lynda: I am sure that it will.
| | 09:04 | I want to thank you on behalf of
all the people that you have inspired.
| | 09:07 | Your generosity with your techniques
and how you work is so brilliant, and we
| | 09:12 | are just all very grateful to have
you in our universe. Thank you, Bert.
| | 09:15 | Bert: Well, thanks for the
opportunity! It was a lot of fun doing it.
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