From Sea to Shining Sea

Our vacation this year was over 10,000 miles by automobile. It was also a testament for our compatibility as a couple. Contrary to what the pictures show, I did almost all of the cooking. Late in the day we could check into a campsite, set up camp, i.e. tent and all, and have dinner ready within 30 minutes. The navigation system in the Acura was a great. Last year we got lost on the Colorado River near Moab, Utah following Yahoo Maps. I actually took over 800 photographs on the trip and probably did about 100 sketches and finished 12 plein air paintings. This will be our last coast to coast trip for a few years.

Who would believe that once again our highway would be filled with cattle driven by cowboys. Last year I think that it happened to us in Utah and there were only a few cows. But this year there were probably about 100 in the coming toward us in a highway in Wyoming.

As usual I carried my sketchbook with me on the trip. It includes drawings, rubbings, stickers and stamps collected along the trip. Many of the drawings will be used as reference for future paintings. I'm not really sure what a used cable car ticket can be used for.

!@#$%^&

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?"