August 2003 Archives

BlogTV: Art Stunt 2.0b Session 4

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I put together a short video of my latest painting sessions, just to let everyone know I'm still working and the project is still in progress.

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I'm making a few more radical moves, maybe I changed my mind about where this painting was going. Oh well, at least I've got a record of everything, I always say there's about 5 or 10 good paintings underneath my final paintings.

One Card Short of a Pack

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At one time, Pokemon cards were the most sought-after items in the world. Today I found one lying in a gutter.

Pokemon Card

One of my long-term crazy art projects is collecting lost playing cards. I used to see discarded cards blowing around in the streets in Los Angeles and San Francisco, I thought this was a really strange omen, so I decided to pick them up whenever I found them. I figured that given enough time, I could eventually collect a pack of cards with every single card from a different deck. The task is easy at first, any single card you happen to encounter is likely to be something you haven't collected yet. But as you get towards the end of the deck, the task increases in difficulty expotentially. When you only need to find a few last cards, the chances of any random card you find in a gutter is likely to be something you've already collected increases dramatically. I thought it would be a Sisyphean task, but then one day I was walking along and I found almost a whole deck of cards blowing up the street near my house. I decided I should just take the first card I found, it would destroy the whole integrity of the project to pick a card I needed and alter the randomness of the collection process.
A conservative blogger recently challenged liberals by saying that if they couldn't even think of one positive thing George W. Bush has done, they were completely blinded by ideology. I thought about it and I finally found just one good thing GWB has done. He has revolutionized and reinvigorated the Playing Card Industry. This is an actual image from a real anti-liberal card deck.

5d.jpg

Painting 101

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I took a short break right in the middle my painting project, a series of distractions kept me from the easel right as I was feeling particularly productive. But part of the process of painting involves a lot of waiting, staring at what work you've already done, trying to absorb any lessons you've learned in the process, and decide what you're going to do next. Some artists are particularly involved with the process of creating their artwork, even more than their involvement with the final results. This project is particularly focused on exposing the most intimate part of a painter's work process.
As I began this project, I thought back to a major incident that occurred during my first painting class in art school, almost 30 years ago. I was a photography major, and there was considerable disdain for "modern" art media like photography, the Dean thought the art school should only teach painting, drawing, sculpture, and printmaking. Students from the upstart photography department were sure to face difficulties with the traditionalist painting professors. But now I had to do my painting coursework as part of the BFA degree requirement, so here I was in Painting 101.
Our painting professors had a unique approach to teaching, they decided to not teach anything. It was considered a bad idea for painting teachers to actually teach or demonstrate specific techniques, it was feared that the students would learn to paint exactly like their professors, instead of developing their own imagery and methods. The result was a lot of novice students fumbling around and not knowing what they were doing, producing a lot of bad paintings. And my work was as crappy as anyone's. I mostly applied paint right out of the tube, nobody ever told me that you were supposed to mix colors and add white pigments, or that solvents like turpentine and oil were standard methods, in fact, that's what makes it oil painting. Time in the studio was scarce, we only had 1 hour 3 times a week, and we were expected to come in 3 more hours a week, but the studios were always occupied with other classes, and we were at the bottom of rung of the ladder.
But of course, being the enterprising young technologically-oriented artist that I was, I decided I could study and improve my technique by applying other tools to painting, tools I was already familar with: photography. My idea was simple. I never had enough time in the studio to just look at my painting and see what I'd done. So I would take a instant photo of my painting at the end of each class, using my nifty new Polaroid SX-70 camera. I could carry around the instant photo and study it until I got back into the studio, 2 days later. I had previously done this in sculpture class, photographing my clay models from different angles to study lighting and form.
Of course this was the perfect way to invoke the antagonism between photographers and painters that had been going on for decades. My professor had a fit. He accused me of cheating, he reacted just as if I was copying from a photo, which was considered to be an evil technique used only by the worst, laziest painters. The professor also accused me of flaunting my expensive camera equipment in front of the other starving students, that I had an unfair advantage, the other students without cameras could not compete. I offered to take photos of any other students' works for merely the cost of the film, about 75 cents each, the other students could have prints without having to own a camera. The professor liked that idea even less. I was immediately snubbed and subjected to the harshest sanctions by the professor, he gave me an F for the class. I would have to repeat Painting 101, but it was only taught in the fall semester. Instead of graduating that year, I would have to wait until next year before I could even begin my senior year's work in art school, and I could not afford it. My painting professor had essentially kicked me out of art school. It took me 25 years to come back and finish my BFA degree. I had to take Painting 101 all over again, and I got an A.
This Art Stunt stop-frame experiment is the logical extension of my fiddling around with a Polaroid camera, recording my own works while in the process of creating them. And the ultimate irony is that in the last 20 years, a considerable body of art historical evidence was discovered, indicating that some of the greatest painters, held up as paragons of natural virtuosity in painting and draftsmanship, were cheating with lenses and cameras.

Regarding the Thermostat

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It appears that it is my job to educate the world about how thermostats function. If you are hot, turning down the thermostat will not make you cool. If the air conditioner is already running at 100 percent, turning down the thermostat is not going to make the room any cooler. So stop futzing with the damn thermostat!

Art Stunt 2.0b Update

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Completion of Art Stunt 2 is delayed slightly, due to some house guests that are a bit of a disruption. The project will resume in a few days. That's what I like best about this project, compared to Art Stunt 1. The earlier experiment kept my equipment tied up with video encoding and streaming 24/7 until the project was done. But with the new methods, I can paint whenever I get around to it.

BlogTV: Art Stunt 2.0b Session 3

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I got a lot of work done in my latest painting session, some ideas are starting to form. You can begin to see how I work, I bring the image down and then back up several times in this animation. I'm not sure I like working in a single color at a time, but this is tempera paint and I don't really have any choice, I have to wait for one color to dry before applying another.

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This new animation is getting rather long, so I made it 3 times faster. Due to the increased speed and higher bandwidth requirements, I'm not sure if 56k modem users will be able to see this animation. If any 56k users could give a report, it would be helpful. Feel free to leave any comments about the painting, the animation technique, opinions, etc. Remember this is an experiment and your input could help shape the results.

BlogTV: Art Stunt 2.0b Session 2

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I did another quick painting session, I appended it to the end of yesterday's work since this video is so short. It's still under 1 minute.

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I used a big flat synthetic bristle brush to block out some big strokes with intensely black sumi ink. Remember I told you this painting was barely started. And there's no hesitation now, sumi is indelible. But this painting is still barely started, and most of this new work will disappear soon, underneath a new layer of paint.
I'm rather pleased at how much easier this session was. It took me about 4 hours to work out the system on the first pass. On the second pass, it only took me about 15 minutes. The resolution is good, the oblique lighting from above is highlighting some interesting qualities, you can see the fresh wet ink, then see the paper buckle slightly as it soaks in and dries.
I had to put some more staples around the edge, the tape partly pulled away and it needed more tension to keep the paper flat. Unfortunately, I knocked the easel and the new camera frame was misregistered. I took precautions not to bump the tripod and camera, but I forgot to secure the easel. It's a huge 20lb. board so I thought the weight would be sufficient to keep it stabile. Fortunately, I got everything back into exactly the correct position.

BlogTV: Art Stunt 2.0b Session 1

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A year ago, I produced an experiment in online art, I called it Art Stunt. I streamed live video of a painting in progress for a week, viewers could watch me paint or tune in over time to see how the work progressed. I considered the experiment a failure, the painting developed too slowly, the video resolution was low, and only by a rare coincidence did the small audience manage to actually see me at work.
I considered these problems, and created a new method using stop-frame animation. I'm photographing my painting with my new digital camera. I have my laptop operating the camera by remote control, every few brushstrokes I can tap a key and it captures a high resolution image. I use Final Cut Pro to process the images into a continuous "intervalometer" animation, one frame every 3 seconds. Now you can watch the brushstrokes appear as I paint them. An evening's work is compressed into 30 seconds.

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Don't judge this painting too harshly yet, I'm just throwing down some light gray underpainting, I'm barely started. I haven't really discovered what this painting is about yet, it will take a few days of bad painting to get it working. This is nonobjective, nonreferential painting, I work without a plan, more involved with the process than the result, hoping something develops as I work. I throw out a lot of these paintings, or use them as sketches for more fully developed work, so it's a little disconcerting to have the world watching over my shoulder when I might end up trashing it when I'm done. But that is the nature of this experiment. That is also why I'm calling this Art Stunt 2.0beta, this is mostly for proof-of-concept.
I can already see a few problems here, but they're minor. The tungsten lighting is a little yellowish and uneven, I could use flash only, but I need a bit of extra light to see what I'm painting. It's good enough for a beta test, I could do better if I had serious lighting, but I'm doing this on the cheap. Still, the effect is rather dramatic. I can see how I first laid down some broad brushstrokes in light gray, then a few thinner ones, then switched to a darker color, then used a smaller, floppier brush for some finer work. I'm not sure I want to know this much detail about how I paint, I never really thought about this before. I'm not sure how this will affect what I will paint, or if this information is even useful. But it will surely be entertaining, so stay tuned and watch what happens.

5 Gallons of Gas

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My nephew just got his first junky old car, and he's notorious lately for bumming gas money in really small amounts, like one dollar. That reminded me of my old '65 Plymouth Barracuda. My Cuda is a car of legend, I could write a book about it.
One of the quirks of my Cuda was the gas tank would only hold 5 gallons. It was towed once and the tow truck dented the gas tank and poked a pinhole. I looked and looked but I couldn't find the hole, just a greasy smear of wet gas. The pinhole was up high on the tank, if I put more than 5 gal in the tank, it would just leak out overnight.
Of course this was a huge inconvenience in a driving town like Los Angeles. I had to drive by the odometer. I planned my route to work so it went past several gas stations, in case I ran out. I was always keeping track of my gas milage and how much I'd put in the tank, calculating how many miles I had left on the tank. Any trip might be interrupted by a short hike, carrying a gas can to and from the nearest gas station. I was frequently late for work, and my boss was constantly infuriated. I told him if he paid me a decent wage I could afford to fix my car properly. That usually shut him up.
Sometimes I ran out of gas in really dangerous places, like the Santa Monica Freeway, and then I had no choice but to phone for a tow. I even got kicked out of AAA for excessive calls for a tow truck to bring gas. I don't think 3 calls in one month was excessive, since I still paid for each tow. With all these additional expenses, it took me a while to scrape up enough money for a proper repair.
I took the Cuda to a AAA-approved Unocal 76 service station, I paid them $200 to patch and repair the tank. Unfortunately, they destroyed the gas gauge sensor while pulling the tank. Now I could fill er up, but my gas gauge always read E, which was almost worse than my previous problem with the leak. At least I ran out of gas less frequently, if I always kept the tank filled. Eventually, I had to have the entire tank and sensor replaced, at a cost of $300.

Rain On Your Shadow

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I just observed an uncommon weather phenomenon that is described in an old wives' tale. I've never known it to be wrong, and I've observed for years and never seen it fail. The saying goes something like "if it rains on your shadow, it will rain again tomorrow." And it's absolutely true. Sorry it's not poetic or anything, it's just a random piece of folk wisdom, even if it isn't a catchy couplet.
There may be a reasonable explanation for the prediction. The only time rain can fall on your shadow is when it is raining when the sun is shining. I've only seen this happen in the hottest days of the summer when the weather is extremely unstable, and small, scattered thunderstorms break out in a mostly sunny sky. Usually this weather pattern lasts for a couple of days, so there is more rain on the way. I'm not sure if this pattern works anywhere but here in the plains of the US, but I suspect it is universal.