New paintings and regular art updates.
My photoshop program is over ten years old. I keep using it but it no longer communicates with Adobe so I think it’s on the way out. I have the opportunity to get the new version, but I’m dithering. Is it worth it? Will I understand it? Has anyone got experience of it? Answers on a postcard please…. I guess I will have to bite the bullet because I do like my old version and I would like to keep using some form of it.
I’ve upgraded my Instagram account to try and understand the traffic there. I have been putting off doing it for a few years but as I’m trying to do more art and illustration I guess it’s necessary. I think having more insights will help me choose what to post and when. But like here I’m a bit of a scattergun. Anything I’m interested in gets written down and as I have eclectic tasted I have I like sharing those ideas here. What do you think?
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When I took this photo it was dark and underexposed. I decided to change it with a black and white filter but was going to delete it from my phone. Then I decided to put it through a texture filter, still not satisfied I added a lens flare to the handle. I’ve decided not to do any more to it.
The question is if you had to do something with the original what would you do? Here’s the plain black and white version.
Which do you prefer?
Time flies so fast, and yet it takes forever. When I think of time, I think of Miss Haversham in Great Expectations, still waiting for love years after she was meant to be married, covered in cobwebs, locked into one moment of time. Time is seasons, the change from warm to cold to warm again, some years hotter or colder than others. But the world does not just move on its own. The Sun moves too. Circulating over billions of years around the Galaxy. And then the Galaxy is moving away from other Galaxies. The Universe is expanding. But time is a constant. Einsteins well known equation is E=MC2. E is energy, M is Mass, C2 is the Speed of light squared. Or 186,000 x186,000 miles per second. Time and Space are tangled up with each other somehow. I don’t know why or how. But its mysterious, it trickles through your fingers like sand. Disappearing and appearing. It makes me think….
Its just an ivy leaf a wok. Not a visual metaphor, just a random photo. The stainless steel is scratched but retains its sheen. The photo is probably under exposed because the leaf is so dark. It’s shadow cast onto the metal. It’s surface looks like it’s been cleaned with wire wool.
Was this photo taken on a grey, overcast day? Is that the shape of a wooden fence reflected in it? Trying to find ways of describing images is hard. Finding the words to grow pictures in your mind. If you closed your eyes and someone read this out would you see this in your minds eye? I wonder…
I use the same glass mug as a water container when I’m painting acrylics or watercolour and I just decided to empty and clean it. Not before time by the look of it! I don’t know when I will be using it again, hope it won’t be too long. I need to shake off my down feelings, try and realise I can do things, get past some of my worries. I don’t have to do everything, just make a start….
The back stamp on the bottom of pottery can identify where it was made, it’s country of origin, and sometimes indicate what it’s worth, although sometimes people fake the marks to try and con people thinking a cheap teacup or vase is worth more, sometimes a lot more, than it actually is.
This happens in pottery manufacture across the globe. A Ming dynasty vase might have been made last week, a Delpht plate might have been made somewhere in Britain..
The thing is an inanimate lump of clay can be transformed into something delicately shaped and beautifully glazed or enamelled. People want to know it they are looking at a Clarice Cliff or a Susie Cooper. That’s part of the reason they look. But also if you live in a pottery manufacturing town you want to tell the difference between them. And the turn over can be enlightening!
I was reading a friends blog and she was explaining that she knows some children that use screens all the time so their handwriting isn’t good.
Thought if you added drawings to the letters you could make them interesting and fun. But it’s hard to think what to do, and I’m sure it’s been done before.
Thought I’d concentrate on capital letters first. Some would be easy, like a D turned into a dogs head, or an S for Snake. I’ve doodled a few ideas, greens for consonants, red for vowels.
I don’t know, it needs work, but it could be fun. For instance I’ve turned F into a piece of pie, and V into clock hands, but V could be pie? If I was doing this for real I’d make the shapes more recognisable and also turn it into a colouring game….
A friend has asked me what simple apps can be used to do digital drawing? I said there are various apps you can add to your phone, there’s sketch, sketcher free, artrage oils which are ones I use. Most have simple tools and you have to play to learn how to use them. I’m on Google so I use Google play to search for them. Other platforms have different apps as they don’t all work on the different platforms….
I know you can also download various corel programmes, plus ones that work on ipads. Choose ones you don’t have to pay for or have to subscribe to. If you are new to digital art you could pay a lot for a package you might not be able to use. You can also download free trials that you don’t have to use and can uninstall.
Hope this makes sense?
I’ve duplicated the Picasso copies I did and put them through a black and white filter.
That way you can concentrate on the mark making I’ve made. I think there are some aspects of the marks I could have looked at better, but I also think I’ve got a bit of my own style in these. Plus you know me and pattern making. I can’t seem to stop embellishing things, so Picasso ‘speaks’ to me….
Is tthere any artist you would like to reproduce yourself….? It’s an interesting challenge to copy other people’s art, especially something you would never usually do. It helps you look and learn.
Mallaband-Brown