Desert Chromaticity Through March 7. Daily, 10 a.m.-6 p.m., included with ticket ($5-$10 with Nevada ID; $11-$19 for others). Springs Preserve’s Big Springs Gallery, 822-7700. Other shows worth seeing • The Doberman Motorcycle Club. College of Southern Nevada Fine Art Gallery, 651-4205 • 12+7: Artists + Architects of CityCenter. Bellagio Gallery of Fine Art, 693-7871 • Heritage Translated. Left of Center Gallery, 647-7378
Desert delight
Mayme Kratz’s “The Blue of Distance 2”
Wednesday, Jan. 27, 2010 | 6 p.m.
Spiraling up through the center of the Big Springs Gallery at the Springs Preserve, Stephen Hendee’s “Thermal” defines the heart of Desert Chromaticity. The crystalline column of light extends dramatically from the floor right up to the arc of light fixtures hanging from the ceiling above. Golden yellows emanate from the base of the monolith, softening warmly as they skim the rich hardwood floors. Moving up the column, yellow shifts to orange. Just as the light turns a deep magenta, the form intersects the dark shimmering metal of a suspended architectural plane. Cool tones ricochet across the metallic surface, creating a purpley-pink haze along the ceiling of the gallery. Contained within “Thermal” is the full spectrum of a desert sunset.
A Vegas-based sculptor and installation artist, Hendee knows from Mojave twilights. He’s just one of a handful of artists assembled by Springs Preserve curator Mike Spiewak, for whom the desert Southwest is home. Inspired by its singularity, Spiewak sought artists whose work distills the intense experience of color in the barren Southwest.
Calendar
Desert Chromaticity Through March 7. Daily, 10 a.m.-6 p.m., included with ticket ($5-$10 with Nevada ID; $11-$19 for others). Springs Preserve’s Big Springs Gallery, 822-7700. Other shows worth seeing • The Doberman Motorcycle Club. College of Southern Nevada Fine Art Gallery, 651-4205 • 12+7: Artists + Architects of CityCenter. Bellagio Gallery of Fine Art, 693-7871 • Heritage Translated. Left of Center Gallery, 647-7378
Singular doesn’t even begin to describe the quality of desert chroma. Take a walk into the wilds at high noon, and the whole world is blanched and monochrome. The landscape shifts in subtle brown and gray, and textures heighten as a tool for distinguishing distance and value. A bit of quartz tinted by reflected blue sky or a sprinkling of yellow wildflowers absolutely quench the eyes. Textures recede at sunrise and sunset with the arrival of nature’s complimentary light show.
In this vein, Mayme Kratz’s layered paintings of resin and natural materials galvanize an organic encounter with color. “12 Knots” consists of 12 thick square pieces—ranging from orange to yellow to green—embedded with dried grasses swirling like birds’ nests. Materiality diminishes as lines of grass graphically transform, interchangeable with fine linear drawings hidden deep within the resin. The color is muted and distant. The sensation is that of a suspended moment in a fragile ecosystem.
Desert chromatics of a more man-made variety punctuate the show. A netting of freeways criss-cross the Southwest, and for most, the highway and the desert are inseparable. Mashing up digital and chemical photographic techniques, Sam Davis’ “Queen” and “8” deftly capture the sun-saturated skies of the wide-open road. Vivid anonymous signage shimmers like a mirage at the edge of vision, dwarfed by a sky so blue it makes your heart hurt. The haunting “Spyshot 2” is a memory play in muted tones captured with a German Minox spy camera. Inversely, a kitchen-sink developing process results in dreamy streaks of primary yellow/red/blues desperately trying to re-enter a fleeting sepia thought.
Kindred spirit Shawn Hummel taps a similar strain of desert sublime. Car culture, saturated hues and signage of the neon variety are shuffled effortlessly with fetish finish and formalism a la Clement Greenberg. Think of it as Chromaticity: The Vegas Edition. Hummel’s stacked aluminum diptychs are orchestrated oppositionals: “venusianbacksideVSteallustre” or “moltenhorizonVShotpearlmagenta.” My favorite is “brazilVSpearlblack. The top panel looks to be a blurred c-print of nighttime neon, but the flattened reds stain onto black in a slippery play of painterly finesse. The bottom panel is straight-up pearl onyx automotive paint on aluminum: sleek, scrumptious, and that most hated of art words—sexy. It’s enough to make Marilyn Manson blush.
And that’s just the beginning. Chad Brown’s vibrantly perceptive color-drenched renderings in juicy oil paint dovetail beautifully with Hummel’s electrifying hues. “Track,” in particular, hums with the urban illumination of a nocturnal desert metropolis.
Not to mention Catherine Borg’s parched photographic meditation of a discarded boat, an achromatic study in deep desert textures and human transgression of the natural environment. Or Ayako Ono’s hushed interior studies in blue. Or David Baird’s luminous miniature resin structures, offering a kind of architectural introspection.
Desert Chromaticity rocks. It continues the Big Springs Gallery’s trend toward wicked smart curatorial efforts that thoughtfully complement the mission of the Springs Preserve.
I could ramble about the quality of light in the desert. The pure intensity of wavelengths of light that generate the shocking kick in the pants that color can be. The lack of distinguishable hues in some places and the spectral onslaught in others. The nourishing psychology of a deep azure sky.
Instead, I’ll simply recommend making your way to the Springs Preserve. Desert Chromaticity provides gentle lessons on how to quench thirsty desert eyes.
How To Create a Colorful Vector Landscape Illustration
In today’s Adobe Illustrator tutorial I’ll show you how to create a colorful landscape scene, similar to the style of those trendy illustrated travel posters I recently featured in a showcase. We’ll make the entire illustration out of simple vector shapes, then bring it to life with vibrant gradients to give the scene a tranquil sunset vibe. My example features an old wild west desert with mountains that extend to the horizon, but these same techniques could be used to create a landscape scene for any fictional or non-fictional place.
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A large setting sun provides a red, orange and yellow colour scheme in my artwork, which is applied to all the elements to help determine the depth of the scene. The colour of the mountains darkens as they approach the silhouettes in the foreground, while the sky spans from warm to cool as it turns from day to night. 
Begin by creating a new document in Adobe Illustrator. I’m creating a long, thin portrait artboard of 1000x1500px. Change the Color Mode to RGB to give us a full spectrum of vibrant colours to play with, then change the Raster Effects to High (300ppi). 
Select the Rectangle tool and draw a shape that covers the artboard. Use Smart Guides (CMD+U) to easily snap to the artboard edges. Remove the stroke, then add a linear gradient fill from under the Gradient panel. Add a series of handles to the gradient bar and carefully tweak the RGB sliders to produce a vibrant range of colours that seamlessly transition. I’m using the colours #fdb983, #ff6655, #7b0f3b and #310045. 
Select the Pen tool and randomly click and drag points across the width of the artboard to create the outline of a series of mountains. Start and end the path beyond the edge of the artboard and close the path back at the starting point. 
Give the shape a gradient fill and adjust the angle to 90°. Use the Eyedropper tool to shift-click two colours from the background gradient, I’m using #e05f4d and #bc0e40. Move the gradient slider towards the darker end of the spectrum to allow the darker colour to appear just at the tip of the mountains. 
Use the Pen tool to draw another mountainscape outline. Copy the gradient fill from the previous shape with the Eyedropper tool, then double click each colour and move the RGB sliders to darken it. I ended up with #d9263d and #7d053d. 
Repeat the process of drawing a random mountain shape and adding a darker gradient each time. I used #ad0536 to #5f001e in my third shape, and #5f001e to #430018 in my fourth shape. 
Draw one more shape near the bottom of the artboard. This time create a smoother outline and give it a solid fill using a darker shade of red, such as #320115. 
The transition between the colour gradients can be eased by reducing the transparency. Select the 2nd, 3rd & 4th shapes and reduce the opacity to 70%. 
Grab the Ellipse tool and hold Shift to draw a perfect circle to represent the sun. Give the shape a gradient fill with warm orangey reds like #ff814d and #d92940. Change the gradient type to Radial and move the gradient slider towards the darker end of the spectrum. 
Move the sun into place over the mountains, then repeatedly press the shortcut CMD+[ until the sun sits behind the mountain shapes. 
Go to Effect > Stylize > Outer Glow and set the options to #ff9100, Color Dodge, 100% Opacity and 100px Blur. This will add a vibrant yellow glow to the setting sun. 
Draw a smaller white circle near the top of the artboard, then hold the ALT key and drag a duplicate towards the upper right, overlapping the two. With both shapes selected, click the Minus Front option from the Pathfinder panel to trim the circles into a crescent shape. 
Go to the Effect menu and select Outer Glow from the top of the list to bring up the previously used settings. Reduce the Blur to 20px then click OK. 
Draw a much smaller circle elsewhere in the sky area, then go to Effect > Distort & Transform > Pucker & Bloat. Move the slider to -60% to make a simple star shape. 
Dramatically reduce the star in size then click the ‘New’ icon from the Symbols panel to convert this shape into a Symbol, then delete the original shape. 
Select the Symbol Sprayer tool then click and drag the spray can across the sky to fill it with loads of stars. 
Switch the tool to the Symbol Sizer from under the same menu, then randomly paint over the stars to alter their size. Clicking and dragging normally will enlarge the shapes, whereas holding ALT will decrease the size of the shapes. 
Next, select the Symbol Screener tool and randomly click across the sky to reduce the opacity of some of the star shapes. Alter the size of the tool if necessary using the [ key, so large groups of stars aren’t all targeted at the same time. 
Reduce the opacity of the entire group of symbols to around 40% to reduce their impact to leave a subtle starry night sky effect. 
Click the foreground shape to loads its fill colour, then select the Blob Brush. Enlarge the brush size with the ] key, then draw a simple cactus shape somewhere beyond the edge of the artboard. 
Move the cactus shape into place within the foreground area. The solid colour used for all these shapes produces a cool silhouette effect. 
Currently some elements extend beyond the edge of the artboard. Draw a temporary rectangle that matches exactly with the artboard dimensions, then with everything selected, choose Make Clipping Mask from the right click menu. The result is an illustrated landscape scene that is brought to life with vibrant gradients and colours. Being vector elements means the shapes could be moved around to tweak the composition or the colours easily changed. The same scene could even be duplicated to create a series of artworks depicting different times of day from dawn ’til dusk! Download with membership
