!@#$%^&

Tony-b

This is cool! This great little music maker at www.tony-b.org . It's great fun and I'm going to do some of my video sound tracks with it.

Untitled

Sometimes you have to follow your muse. I thought it would be neat for an alien to quote Shakespeare, particularly the soliloquy about man. I found the alien in an old Video Blue program. I modified it with Ulead and got the words from http://www.enotes.com/shakespeare-quotes and converted it to voice with http://vozme.com/index.php?lang=en .

Sketchers delight

Some of the things I do in my sketch book may be different from the norm, but I have my reasons.

At the left is a rubbing of the signature of Frank Lloyd Wright. Wright was one of the few architects who signed his work. normally the initials were on a small ceramic tile. It is good to get rubbings of such things, a further use of the visual data collection device. Normally I use a soft pencil, such as a No. 2 or 2B to get the image. Any paper less than 90lb. seems to work okay. I have used the side of a color marker such as a Crayola for rubbing. This allows you to introduce a bit of color. I like color in sketch books. The sketch above is of a Wright design church in Madison, WI.

Wright was a great architect and quite egotistical. When appearing in court once he identified himself as"Frank Lloyd Wright, World's Greatest Architect". When ask why he added"the worlds greatest architect, Wright simply replied,"I am under oath, aren't I?"

marker drawings

I'm contiunally trying to find new media. Most recently I have been using Crayola washable markers for colorizing sketch book drawings. Unfortunately, my newest 7 x 5 sketch book has only 60 lb. paper. For that reason the paper wrinkles a lot with the application of water. If I'm not observing a specific subject, my drawings tend to be a stream of consciousness variety. For example the page at the right started with the top center drawing. I mixed a little color on the paper then scratched the wet paint with my fingernail to create the look of grass and weeds. Next, I painted the somewhat monochrome desert in the center of the page. When traveling in the desert it is always good to know which direction you are traveling so I added the compass to the upper right. I have in the planing stages a short video about my great grandfather's life as a civil war soldier and thought I might present his photo in a flag embellished frame. The green in the upper left was added to give a little contrast in color and to balance the page. That is how this page was created. But it all began by experimenting with markers

MARKER MAP

Ye Olde Christmas Party

We greeatly enjoyed having friends over for food and delightful conversation.

just an image

Old stuff

This is one of my favorite photos. But first a little about the history. It's me and my favorite uncle. But it's more than that. I'm on the left and when I was a wee lad he would play with me and show how the Indians rode bareback and so on. Someone took this photo of us at a family cook-out. I had on a solid black t-shirt. Once I saw the photo, I thought : "What if..." I found an old black and white photo of us some 55 years earlier. I looks pretty good on the shirt, don't you think? Oh, the magic of image processing software! Unfortunately, my uncle is now deceased and never saw this photo.

Images et al

I have been playing with pastels. I love the way the bright colors are blended on the paper. I have been using merely simple Wal-Mart pastels, no great quality here. All is done without the use of a drawing. The paper is from or rather is sketch book 60lb. paper with very little tooth. I've not been able to do much art due to visitors from out-of-town. however, that did precipitate finding a new Mexican restaurant. I like tamales. I'm continuing to edit video when converting from vhs to dvd.

I've rejoined "Wetcanvas" to add some comments and uploaded another video to YouTube. Check these out at www.youtube.com/ty2u

Great Balls o' Fire

The creation of paintings hasn't been going well. I've been wasting trees. But, not really. The failures will be recycled as collages. To create collage materials is not the reason paintings. I've been editing videos. I'm a glutton for punishment. I'm sticking in this bit of video just for fun.
There is a time and place everything or so they say. Did you ever ask who they are?

viDeo

Been working with video. it's a creative endeavor also. This is one of my first experiments with "green screen" I ripped the hottie from the Ulead demo and the paintings are mine. The most difficult part was getting the motion synchronised. But it works. The next project is a tour through a virtual gallery led by the painter. Ulead software was used.

2DAY

2day was a good day. I was unable to paint only a few absent-minded drawings. Most of my day was spent working on transferring old VHS tapes to MPEG in route to DVD. Once upon a time I shot a lot of tape of kids and family and things. After going to the Dr. for annual pulmonary check-up we visited the Halsey gallery at the College of Charleston. There was a showing of John Hull, a CofC faculty members work. To the right is representative of that show: Moonlight 03

Hull is quite a storyteller in paint. This particular show had as it's subject junkyards. Discarded cars and machinery provides a backdrop for the figures which tell the story. The artist invites the viewer to speculate on what is going on in the piece. Although Hull's work is very painterly the figures tell the story in gesture and placement. You ask yourself the questions. Why is the man carrying the gun? Who is the corpse? What is happening after dark illuminated by flashlight? Hull also included working drawings of works in progress the small studies of circus life were loosely rendered but exciting to view. It was a good show. Google the artist for more info.
Later we saw the new George Clooney movie:"Michael Claayton". it was a good movie. I'm no Clooney fan but this film showed traces of acting ability. One can only wonder what Russell Crowe would have done with the title role.

no image 2day

No image today, only words. Will we ever replace words? Or when information bypasses the usual senses and goes directly to the neurons of the brain will words be obsolete? Some people are word people and some are picture people. Is a picture really worth a thousand words. But are their places where pictures are not usable. For example you cannot give unit of measure in images. Or can you. measurements are made in visual units. Think about the height of a telephone pole. how tall is it in feet? Do you visualize a giant ruler measuring it? Perhaps like me you visualize an object of which you know the length is used to compare the telephone pole. Is not measurement a contrived or invented system? Yet it was possible to measure before the methods were invented. And so on......

Just another day

When in Chicago you gotta visit the Art Institute. According to my sketchbooks I was first there in 1966. It is such a good thing to emerse yourself in the art of the ages. Here I stand next to a Jackson Polluck and I didn't realize that I had on matching colors. Seeing a photograph of a Polluck is hardly like seeing the real thing. First there is the scale. Some big paintings lose their grandness when reproduced in a smaller size. It's like seeing the opening scene of "Patton" with George Scott in front of the flag on a small television--you miss the impact. And then there is texture. Since they were painted (?) horizontal there is a tremendous build-up of paint. Indeed it is almost sculptural.I like his paintings and liked the movie. It was tragic the way he lost control of his bicycle and broke the bottles of beer.

A-r-r-r-gh!

It has been difficult. I'm reacquainting myself with Google notebook in hopes of making it a useful tool. Things just haven't been going that technologically. First of all I have been having trouble logging on to this blog. Sometimes the log-in box appears and sometimes it doesn't Go figure. I've been having video problems as well. I have some hardware/software to convert VHS to DVD. But after considerable time in editing ,etc., I burn a disk and it won't play in my DVD player. however, a disk burned with the same software by a friend plays good. I must have the format wrong or something because I can play the disk on the computer.

New monoprint

I cannot refrain from making the monoprint made on the inkjet printer. There is something about the strong almost flat image image of the objects that I like. It does at times become difficult to introduce atmospheric perspective. In other words to have the correct value in distant objects. The titles are "#3" for the one on the left and "The Monument" for the one on the right. Each has different techniques. "The Monument" has both cut and torn paper stencils and "#3" has the addition of painted elements. You will note the use of resist on the stone monolith in "The Monument".

I'm not really sure where these techniques can lead. Except that the effects are easily reproduced in Photoshop.

New work

I've been having difficulty logging in to the blog.

I just searched for my latest art work and could not find it. I loaded an old piece that I did some time ago. The idea had been around in my sketch book for 10 or 15 years. I think that this is my first attempt at designing a poster since my sign shop days. In those days I regularly made posters for geneticists for use at seminars. This poster was done in Photo Deluxe. And I am a great procrastinatorI have been tinkering with my Logitech webcam. Time lapse photography and stop-motion has always been fun. So why not give it a go. Why not a pseudo masochistic rite performed daily?

4 2 day

While traveling along the Green River in northeastern Utah we came upon this interesting dwelling. It is a dugout house built into the side of a small hill. The timbers were scavenged from the river. The house is interesting in that it has an anteroom before the main room which consists of a bedroom and kitchen combination. There is also a chimney which vents through the roof. In winter the snow covers the entire structure. I thought it made an interesting painting with the variety of textures and earth toned colors. The painting is 8 X 10 acrylic on masonite. This is one of the images from fifty-four days on the road through twenty-three states and forty-five nights in a tent. Did I mension visiting one foreign country?

plein air painting

Recently I had the opportunity to attend a plein air workshop with a nationally know instructor. It was great fun. I had recently gone on a trip across the USA and done some plein air painting. I was taking the workshop to improve my skills. I wanted to recreate some of the scenes i had seen on the road in the plein air style. The workshop I was great in doing this. A plein air painting is nothing more than an oil painting sketch. The above paintings are from that workshop. I can't wait to work from some of the vacation photos.

when to paint?

I have overdone my volunteer activities. When painting and creating was my passion a volunteered for too much other stuff. Now I don't seem to have time to create. I am overcome by projects. I became VP of the Guild without really knowing what all it entailed. The church seems to take up more and more time. I must scale back. blah! blah! blah! blah!

red letter day

another drawing

falling man

working with Ulead

I have been working with Ulead software to make a slide show of our vacation photos to save to DVD. It has some very interesting features. I am incorporating some of my watercolor and other sketches that I did along the trip. The program comes with some animation features which are incorporated as overlays over the images. At the right is a watercolor sketch done on the "Enchanted Mile" in Montana. in order to give some sence of scale to the huge metal sculpture pheasants, I show a truck in the background. To emphasize the truck, which is mentioned in the narration , The orange arrow is animated and enters the picture plane from the right. You can see this on the timeline on the lower part of the screen. The action of the animations is prescribed on the left. In producing slideshows it is very important to introduce movement to achieve interest in the work.

Just anather day in paradise

Look Ma, no pictures!

I feel that I am overextended or as we southern folk say:"I got more bubble gum than I can chew!"

along the way I did something constructive

Recently, I was given the opportunity to work on logo design. It had been quite some time since a logo design. I did some of this when I had a commercial sign shop. There are many factors that go into a good design. First and foremost it has to promote the proper image for the product or organisation they are representing. Then the image as reproduced. How is it to be reproduced effects the design as well. This logo is for a church fund raising campaign. It is to be kind of loose. the font or typeface has to fit the image. I tried about 7 or 8 typefaces before settling on this one and it may change.

another video

Just another video. This one is of my monoprints. These monoprints are made using an inkjet printer. Since there is only one print it is a monoprint. These are not the usual monoprints which are usually created by painting on one surface then transferring the image to paper vea pressure. This process is moreakin to screen printing because of the use of stencils. The printer prints a color field and stencils and resist are used to create the image. I've used certain video effects to add interest. A music sound track also adds entertainment value.

*&^%$#@@!!~

As promised, the video of how the collage was made. Actually, making the art work was easier than making the video. A couple of notes about the video. The equipment and software used:

• Olympus Camedia for the video clips and stills
• Lexmark 2400 for scans
• Epson Stylus PHOTO R1800 printer
• Dell computer
• Windows MovieMaker to put it all together
• Audasity to edit the sound
• Adobe Photo DeLux for image processing
• Replay Converter to convert video formats
• Musicmatch Jukebox to rip tracks

I could have cleaned the sound up much better and better light would have given me better images. Next time I will write may script before doing my voice over. The music is from Double Bass Portraits Musical Exhibition

Collage face

At the left is the combination of picture making techniques. The image was initially sketched on the cardstock. I knew that I wanted to do a face of a pretty girl. I also wanted it to be a combination of manual and mechanical methods. The sales supplements of the newspaper provide the color for the piece and these small pieces of paper are glued to the sketch. Special attention is paid to color and value. More emphasis is on value than color. A magazine illustration is scanned in and cropped, converted to black and white, and cleaned up. It is then printed with an inkjet printer over the collaged paper. I'll post the video of the process next.

New stuff

The latest off the easel or rather the table or floor. It is acrylic on paper, rather a lot of acrylic! I like to rub it into the paper and exercise my tactile senses. I was recently in the western desert, the land of the nomad tribes and cliff dwellers. Initially I built up layers of paint to give it the color (kicked up a notch!) and texture of the desert. In the center is a mesa as seen from above. The green of the trees at the base of the mesa. The geometric shapes were added to give some structure and order to the somewhat chaotic work. The profile at the bottom relieves some of the topographic nature of the painting. To add a human(?) element I added the drawing of the dancers/spirits/hunters. The drawing was actually a thumbnail drawing done in church. I scanned it in to the computer then manipulated it and cloned it before applying it to the painting as a heat transfer. Nuff said!

@#$%(no title)

When everything you try to do turns to crap, grab a sketchbook. The salvation of one's sanity. Open to a blank page. Put some color on it. Use something different to apply color. And pile it on. does an image appear within the mass of color? Maybe a high-res satellite photo of perhaps an infra-red nature? Maybe not. I can work on my brush skills while the mass of color dries.

is this visual BABBLE?

Pages

I think i am about to decide that my greatest joy (a.k.a. thrill) from art comes from my sketch books. There is something about the challenge of the blank page. no matter what I do to it I have changed it. it is no longer blank, or without. Null. Void. Empty. Whatever I put there is a creation of mine own hand. Is it a power trip? nine It is a place for ideas to appear as visual manifestations of some cerebral activity. My books are not drawn images only although that is the bulk there off. I also have rubbings such as the rubbing of a Frank Lloyd Wright signature tile. or perhaps a sticker fro a piece of fruit I had for lunch. Sometimes there is verse. or recipes or lyrics. There are the sketches of places and people and things I have seen. And things not seen by any eyes except my mind's eye. Sketches are sometimes developed into well thought out designs or studies for paintings. Sometimes they may illustrate the workings of a grist mill. indeed, my sketchbooks are an extension of me and a chronicle of my life.

pix&...

Sometimes I don't know what to put on this blog. Sometimes I feel like crap and sometimes I don't! Sometimes i feel like everything i create is a failure and sometimes I feel as though I have a spark of genius. The chaos above is where most of it comes from. Or does it. I'm not sure. I'm not sure if the inkjet monoprints are a viable medium or not. i have won small prizes with them, but i don't know if it is worth pursuing. The for mat is so small. And things don't always work out. The has about a 50% success rate or half of the attempts are failures. Recently I saw an advertisement in print that looked like this technique although I believe that it was a computer generated image.

I think I will ride this horse for awhile and do my next painting for a show in this medium. I can't seem to get the brilliant colors I like except this way. I need to find out how to use various resists in this technique to make it more versatile.


I continue to enjoy working with my photographs and videos. I will be converting some vhs tapes to dvd in the near future.
Attendum: I added the the combination of graphite drawing and computer generated image to depict the southwest folk life.

2day's work

Here is the day's art. it is a small watercolor based on a photo I took in the Rocky Mountains national Park.

flashbacks

There is a rare beauty that wildflowers have. We were fortunate in our travels to see such a proliferation of wild flowers blooming. From the shores of Lake Superior to the shores of the Pacific ocean they bloomed. It amazes me the way that in the most hostile areas if there is a small amount of soil the beautiful fragile flower blooms forth. As a painter I attempt to capture but in vain the beauty of natures most delicate visions. The painting on the left was done neat International Falls Minnesota. I'm not a great plein aire painter but I gave it my best shot. I don't remember exactly where the photo was taken.

I think some classes in outdoor painting are in order. I have been seriously looking at creation of art lately. I get the biggest kick out of sketching and recently I have begun to design my sketchbook pages. Perhaps that's because I have always loved books. Pages of word and images can take you away. Sometimes into your own world.

reflections on the recent past

It was a grand view, a picture of the battle of the elements. Water versus soil and rock and wind and so on. The shoreline of Lake Superior near the mouth of the Temperence River. We had pitched our tent in the Great north woods with easy access to the lake shore and the river. We were surprised with the lack of flying vermin. Minnesota is famous for its mosquitoes. There was lots of stuff to paint. I couldn't do it justice.

dissa and data

This is just one of the sketches from the vocation sketchbook. We covered 23 states in 54 days and spent most of it camping with a tent. I was able to persue some artistec endeavours along the way. I made quite a few sketches as you see and example of to the left. i was also able to some small paintings: mostly small watercolors but with some acrylic pieces as well. I managed to take over 500 photographs. I think about 50 qualify as good photos based on my criteria. Many I took just for reference photos for paintings.

I'll post more work later.

Whew!

I have just finished camping across the USA. 54 days and 23 states. Most of the nights were spent in a tent.

sunday afternoon and then some...

I'm still trying different things. this time i used acrylic and charcoal on paper and was just playing with materials. i started with a little pencil sketch them charcoal and them smearing or blending to tell it proper. I didn't have an art education so I just call it the way I see it. So...I smeared the charcoal. I fixed it with hair spray (White Rain) love that smell. I added color. and it was valueless or rather monovalued. But adding white helped.

I am going on a "plein aire" adventure. I taking my paints on vacation. Previously I have only carried a small watercolor block and a sketchbook but his time I'm carrying my acrylic paints and easel and canvases. We're going to the west coast and back.

en plein air

This is my first attempt at pleine air painting. it is acrylic on illustration board and is a view from my backyard. i first painted the background with yellow. actually I scrubbed it on with a paper towel and water with the pigment. Then I did most of the foliage work with a palette knife. the details were added with a brush. this was a practice session for vacation we are planning. i hope to paint across America.

up and running

Finally, I've gotten around to a website redo. I used Yahoo's Sitebuilder. Once i learned the software it was easy. My new site is much smaller than my original site. It is just the beginning and is not aimed at sales but to generate interest in my work.

!@#$%^&

Just another day playing with paint. And it's fun! I've been painting for fun. Not painting with the idea that someone would buy it. life is too short. if it's bought then that's good, if not.....well, there is always need for collage paper. Since I've been painting acrylic on paper, I just paint over the stuff I don't like unlike when I painted with watercolor those mistakes could not be painted over. I really like painting with the acrylic though. I seal the paper first with a coat of gesso then i pour and splatter all over it. I've not been painting much lately due to the other demands of life. I've been rebuilding the tyoungartist.com site and that's taken a little time. I using Yahoo Sitebuilder instead of scratch building the site. The software has some features I don't know how to do from scratch yet.

I keep finding new and interesting stuff on the Internet. ZeFrnak.com has become one of my favorites. There is all kinds of stuff there.

I've started using Picasa for my online photo arrays or collections. I like it works great. It makes it possible to upload directly from the camera to the Blog. That

is unless I want to stop by an image processor to make some changes.

Nottin' special

Today was busy. i finshed two videos and uploaded them to YouTube. They weren' great, but did get the messsage across. I got the major points done. You can tweak forever. I also downloaded Picassa from Google and am giving it a go. It maybe useful. i found a greaat website with a lot of stuff. i finished the family website yesteday. tomorrow i need to start reworking tyoungartist.com 'nuff 4now!