Once upon a time

I don't have much to blog about today. Yesterday we visited the Hunterdon Museum of Art and saw some interesting stuff. The work by Marion Held was very interesting. A lot of her pieces were organic in nature whether two of three dimensional.The upstairs gallery was of student print work. Quite a bit of originality here. One piece was a video. It was composed of photos as well as line art. Since I have been investigating this media I found this most interesting. I have video effects that I think would have improved it. The art used in the piece were on display nearby. I'm not sure this contributed to the piece except in "this is how I did it" note.
Museums to me are always learning experiences. I don't use the word educational because it doesn't mean the same to me.

Look Ma, no camera!

Sometimes I just can't help myself. I burn a lot of DVDs just as experiments. You don't know exactly how something is going to look on the big screen TV until you play the DVD. Anyway, I don't like to trash anything, I mean, we make collages from scraps of paper. Right? So, what do you do with discarded DVDs? I've painted on some of them. Painted on them. Cut them up and reassembled them. Tried to thermoform them. And nuked them.

This photo comes form the last. I placed the DVD in the microwave oven and hit the start button. There was a flash of light and some smoke was generated as well as sparks like miniature lightning bolts. All of this happened in the length of tome it takes to move your finger from the start button to the stop button.

I scanned the DVD into Photoshop and then, with a minor stroke of genius, I scanned my hand.
Then I combined the images,clicked auto adjustments to the image, cropped and fine!

Scanning my hand introduced me to a whole new method of image creation!

AND no camera was used!!!!!!

Whew!

I'm happy this slideshow is finished. Life is so much simpler without cammentary. It is enough of a problem to get the narration synchronised with the images but there is more. The volume must be at the proper level and equalised, plus all pops, cracks, and misspeaks must be removed. The volume levels of the commentary vs. the background music must be adjusted. I never seem to get it (the final product) just right.

But, of course, now I will be starting a new project. I want to animate one of my sketchbook pages. Animate may be the wrong word. Perhaps, explore a page via the medium of video would be more descriptive .

I enjoy mixing mediums.

Ain't this some kinda creative stuff?

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Mixing it up

I often draw things from my imagination. There is no such structure such as the one in this drawing. Although I was watching a movie in which some men with hang gliders attacked a temple in the Himalayas. The fortress is simply from my imagination, but based on medieval fortresses.

Once I had drawn it, I visualised a stormy night. Enter video. I scanned the drawing into Photoshop and cropped it and increased the contrast. Then I imported it into Ulead Videostudio 9. First I duplicated the frame and with the color control I darkened it. By using the cross-fade transition and adjusting the length of each frame on the screen I created the effect of oncoming and subsequent darkness.

I used three different "lightning" video filters randomly. I also added two "rain" filters. I searched the Internet for the thunder and rain sound effects and used three "thunders" and two "rains". I mixed these effects on Audacity before adding them to the sound track in Ulead.

Lastly I added the music which was some royalty-free stuff I had laying around.

I think it came out OK. What about you?

Concerns

Most of the time I don't mention politics or the current state of affairs in our beloved country but now I feel helpless! What has happened to us? A once proud nation is now experiencing an economic decline. A number of years ago economists forecast the change to a service economy. Well we are certainly getting there. Instead in leading the world in manufacturing goods, we can look forward to leading the world to providing services. Or to say it another way: experts at operating the drive-through windows. Look around you today. How many people do you know who are involved in making a tangible product? I would venture to say that most of your friends are in some form of service industry. Whether it is banking or health care or lawn service they are not creating products. Why is this a bad thing? Real wealth is in the tangible. Would you rather have a new sports car or a promissory note for one? The note is easily destroyed and has no utility. But the car is real and has utility. Why is this happening? I think it is because we have become a society of the "entitled". People seem to think they are entitled to a certain life-style whether they have worked to obtain it or not. Success, if measured by a certain life-style, is not achieved by hard work but simply by "being". If you feel entitled there is no reason to learn a skill to obtain a better job. Therefore, we have become less educated and less capable of difficult tasks. The majority of candidates for advanced degrees in our institutions of higher education are now foreigners. If this trend is not reversed we will continue our slide to the bottom of the industrial nations list. And we, the European immigrants of the past seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, who made this country great will be operating the drive-through windows at McDonalds serving the customers of Asian ancestry.

Vacation Flix

Sometime good things happen.

I have carried and used a sketchbook for many years and our trip to the British Isles was no different. I have never, NEVER, in over forty years of carrying a sketchbook lost one. But ,alas, with the advancing of age things happen. While visiting the Ironbridge in England I lost, a.k.a. misplaced, my sketchbook. It was not a new book bought for the trip but a book with drawings and notes from trips to Alaska and the Dominican Republic and other assorted and sundry drawings. I first noticed the 6 x 9 inch spiral bound book missing about half-way across the Irish Sea. I needed entertainment and did not like the movie on the ferry. Sketchbooks are more than just a place for drawings. they are repositories of visual data and words of thoughts. Indeed a visual record of my life. Needless to say that the search for a new book was of top priority upon docking in Dublin. We enjoyed watching the street musicians and found a local ATM for we needed Euros. And then a pub for some food before shopping for a new sketchbook. I bought a Moleskine book, my first, but it's more for drawing and writing the painting, I think.

Lest I forget, an unknown friend found my book and mailed it home to me!