Population

I was discussing the population explosion fears in the 1970’s with my friend Martha Kennedy here earlier on. She had written a really interesting post about her memories in the 1960’s. I’ll post a link to her post if I can.

But talking about it I remembered doing a collage with ripped up magazine pages. The Earth is at the bottom, a ribbon comes up off the Earth and has a queue or line of people moving up away into space. I can’t remember if they were heading towards the sun or the moon. I think the collage was in landscape mode but my digital canvas is orientated in portrait mode. I’m not sure whether the population had hit 4 or 6 billion… Now it’s over 8 billion. We are like a virus taking over the world….

I tried to post a link to Martha’s blog but it didn’t work sadly.

Eye see

Eye see you looking out at me. What are you? A mishmash? A chimera….

An ape or monkey? Imagined monster, alien symbol.

Is that a volcano or a scientific flask full of acid. How were you created. Are you a figment?

Have you got whiskers or a moustache? Close set eyes stare back. A mythological owl.

Do those eyes hide a soul, will you start to howl? A dark night could hide you, are you foul or fowl?

Four horses

I am feeling a bit uncreative so I decided to collage my horse drawing from a few days ago. If you can create digitally it allows you the freedom to make something new.

Recently a photographer entered a competition with a piece called something like ‘the electrician’? It was a black and white photo of two women, one behind the other, one had hands on the others shoulders. The photo looked old fashioned and a little bit weird. The photographer refused the prize because the image had been created by an AI, the faces were not real people but had been built up from features by the AI a bit like an identikit photo. It’s called machine learning.

On a similar vein an image of ex president Trump appeared recently apparently marching at the head of a massive crowd of people in New York but if you zoom in the people behind are ‘constructed’ by an AI and their faces are very distorted.

What I’m trying to say is that digital art created by humans is not the same as AI. The difference is hard to pin down. But if a person has control of it does that count as art. I’m sure there is much controversy to come? In the meantime I will continue to digitally draw and manipulate with human control.

Unidentified Flying bush?

The way the winds blowing I could see this flying past my window!

It’s actually four collaged photos. If you take a photo with an interesting corner you can create images of things apparently floating in mid air. I didn’t take the picture deliberately to do that, it was more about the pinks and oranges of the sky…

Background

I’m playing with oil colours in Artrage. I wanted to create a geological, rocky sort of image, like a slab of slate. Then I decided to split it into a collage, like five pieces of cake. It was interesting to create an abstract pattern, and I love the blues and reds as they smudged together. If I had oil paints I would try and recreate this as a real painting. I don’t know how I would do it though.

Easter flowers

Flowers with chocolate eggs…

Can’t stop playing with my phone apps. I don’t know where I get all my ideas from. I hope you enjoy them. I like using multiple apps to get different results. Then you can use various filters. I really like the freedom of finger or stylus painting. I have only ever “built” an image with CAD when I did a course in computer aided design several years ago. Yes I could build boxes into a house, or circles and elipses into a face, but it’s not the same as the freedom of drawing. Yes I’ve used flower templates here, but I had to change and add to it. I get bored otherwise!

Jupiter in a spin

I’m getting used to a new collage app. Learning all the new plot twists (I mean the tools in it). The main irritation are the in app ads. Get used to it, I won’t upgrade and I won’t buy anything. I am app resistant!

This was a photo of the South Pole of Jupiter that I painted and decided to turn into a symmetrical collage. Matching up the pattern was difficult because it wasn’t similar along the edges, but I did my best.