Art 23

Long long ago (such as in this post) I said something about draw-your-own postcards. Here they are, finally uploaded. They were taken with my phone at a cafe in Perth.

Micky is my gorgeous cat. He will rule the world
with kindness and efficiency. And fishy bits.

I wanted to use thumbprints, but realised I wouldn't be able to touch
anything for the rest of the day.

Me and my sister. I'm the one feeding sushi to the seagull.

The colours are somehow a lot more fluorescent now than they were that day... Odd. I don't know if the ink has changed over time or what.

We saw lots of interesting things that day, most of which I didn't think to photograph (or in some cases wasn't allowed to, such as in the gallery). Things such as this:

It reminds me of something out of the movie Labyrinth, in the poisoned peach scene.

Art 18

All those food pictures from... was it June? May? Something like that. Anyway. I've drawn... I drew... what is it the correct way to say that, anyway? I've imaged some stylised versions of the pills that are in most of the photos (26 out of about 33), and arranged them in the configuration in which the pills appear in the photos. Now I'm not entirely sure what to do with 'em...

In other news, I've finally decided what to carve in a piece of driftwood I found a couple years ago. A mermaid. Obvious, right? :) Have drawn on the wood with marker pen, to show which areas I'll need to carve out. Will leave the base of the wood and part of the sides uncarved. Sort of a bas-relief thing. I have very very little experience carving wood, so it should be interesting.

The postcards! At least two have arrived, but I still haven't put photos of them on the computer yet. I'll remember one day, I'm sure. Will have an opportunity to draw up a few more soon. Must remember to photograph them, too.

Still working on the cryptomnesia collage thing. I have a whole bunch of... I guess digital cut-outs, that I'm using (without referencing any of the original owners. Eeep! But that's sort of the point - cryptomnesia, as a thing in itself, is closely associated with plagiarism.) Now I'm cutting up the cut-outs further. The next stage will be to assemble them into some sort of picture. Haven't actually decided what the picture should be of, yet... Will load 'em all into gimp and play around, most likely.

Second Life stuff. Making very slow progress on the texture for an underwater grating thing. This is what I have so far:

Wasn't happy with that, and couldn't quite figure out why, so I googled some pictures of octopussies. Got the tentacles all wrong.








Also in SL, I've finished playing with shapes, and have a bunch of screen shots of things, which I'll load in the next post.

Art 17

Feeling scattered, probably (maybe) thinking about too many different things. Also trying to do a few too many things at once... Need some coffee.

Saw a fantastic exhibition on Thursday. Very unsettling, very very good, very... uncanny valley, I guess. Patricia Piccinini's Relativity, at the WA Art Gallery. Here is her site, but it's hard to convey through the pictures how disturbing the exhibit was.
We looked at other pieces around the gallery afterwards. Everything seemed incredibly, almost supernaturally, ordinary. A bit like going outside on a bright day and then stumbling around in the dark upon coming back inside, y'know?
Not that I'm comparing Patricia Piccinini to sunshine or anything...

Another thing we liked - or found interesting, anyway - was a painting by Dale Frank. It was called Daniel Radcliffe (that's Harry Potter!) and looked like an oil slick. We decided it was probably evil.

The WA Art Gallery also has a site, by the way.

We! That is, me and my sister. We are a team, yeah. I've been thinking that maybe we should figure out some kind of thing like applying for joint studio residency somewhere. Haven't a clue how/where to start that. Also, it's kind of scary... But we work well together, even though we work separate.

Started on the postcards that I got from Smiggle. Yaay! Three have been posted, and one has already arrived, so I can feel okay about uploading a picture of it. The others will have to wait until they arrive. Buut I haven't transferred the pics (or any pics) to the computer yet, so blah blah etc.

Also started work on another digital collage thing, inspired by a song and also a word. The song is by the Cold War Kids, the word (and song title) is Cryptomnesia. This means, when one remembers something without realising that it's a memory.

Still playing with shapes in SL. Will upload pics of that relatively soon. Soonish.

There's something I'm forgetting here, I know it... Oh yeah! On Thursday we also visited PICA, the Perth Institue of Contemporary Arts. It was... okay. Would've liked it better if we hadn't seen Relativity first. Mildly unfortunate, because there was some good stuff there. My favourite piece is pictured here. One of the artists written about below the picture did it, but I can't remember which!

In other news, feeling somewhat better about things. Go go endorphins, yeah! :)

Art 11

Something I really love about the internet - aside from the vast stores of information and entertainment, and being able to communicate on a global level in real time, and all that other wowy stuff - is WEBCOMICS. I love webcomics. I follow so many of them - 36 at last count, with a few more completed - most by individual artists/writers (although a couple are done by the same person, who possibly has a small universette with it's own discrete time to pop into every so often for those little luxuries like sleep).

I love comics in general, actually, but find webcomics 1) cheaper, 2) easier to access. Sometimes the writing is... eh... dodgy, and sometimes the art is... "quaint". But each that I follow is charming in its own way. There are a few I've started to follow and then dropped, for overwhelming negativity, boredom, or some other reason I might well regret now. But they're all still good in their own way.

So! Given my love for the medium, I thought I'd write a bit about each webcomic I'm currently following. Or webcomic artist/writer, as the case may be. And also about the webcomics that have finished that I'm still saving in my favourites folder for probably sentimental reasons. I'll start this in the next post, or something.

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Because in this post I've got other stuff to write about. Like Smiggle. Sigh. I'm a little in love with Smiggle. Smiggle sells stationery... which is a little like saying that McDonald's sells sandwiches. Anyway, on Thursday I had the opportunity to have a wander around that delightful store. I didn't intend to buy anything, but that's not saying much. I came away with only one purchase - go me! Twas a bee-ootiful postcard book, full of blank postcards. Smashing idea. I already have a mental list of recipients. Hopefully I'll remember to photograph the drawings before posting (although of course I won't put them online until they're received. That's cheating).

Also on Thursday I picked up (a new cardigan, too much caffeine, a couple books) the latest issues of 2000AD. Well, the latest issues available to me here in the Vinkus, anyway (for reference, I'm up to prog 1685, and the latest issue printed is, I think, 1694). A story I'm really enjoying in the current (from my perspective!) issues is The Grievous Journey of Ichabod Azrael (and the DEAD left in his WAKE). The writing (by Rob Williams) is kind of flamboyant, verging on cheesey-cowboy every so often. It's a westernish tale, so that suits. What really suits is the artwork. Black and white (I'm getting a real liking for black and white comic work. I blame Evan Dahm, whom I shall post about another time), heavy on solid ink, angular, some lovely use of silhouettes. It's by Dom Reardon - there's a link to his myspace page, but there's a bunch of other stuff too if one does a search.

Another 2000AD artist whose work I'm liking at the moment is Simon Davis. I was fortunate enough to be buying 2000AD regularly when they ran a story illustrated by him called Stone Island. The art, like the story, was messy and visceral and down-right gory. I loved it. Messy and visceral... That being said, there's still a lovely clarity to the work, particularly in the composition. Sometimes with more "traditional" comic book art I find it a little difficult to actually see what's going on - scenes can be beautiful, but amazingly cluttered and busy. (I think by "traditional" I mean sort of... standard Marvel/DC fare - crisp lines, bold colours, etc. I remember reading an Ultimate Spider-man and getting bewildered at a few pages that were possibly a little less than well-executed). Anyway! The above link unfortunately doesn't seem to have any comic book work of Simon Davis's, so here's another link.

By the way, my favourite 2000AD artist is Carlos Ezquerra. Kind of grainy and lumpy. Man, I miss all that Strontium Dog my brother got rid of...