Painting - xkcd Paintings
So a couple days ago last week, on xkcd there was a great webcomic done by Randall Munroe.
I adore xkcd, and the webcomic was titled Click and Drag.
You can view it above. What rapidly becomes apparent as you look at it is the incredible scope of this particular webcomic. What Randall has done is created actually a much more intricate, massive image that is fully scrollable. There are probably more than a hundred little inside jokes, pieces of art, nuanced characters, or lines throughout this massive image.
It really got me thinking, partially in awe, but also in terms of the digital divide for us between computer generated work and physical mediums. The two are irrevocably split in many ways now, even people skilled in one medium, may not ever pick up skills or have needs to in the other. I know many painters who profess no skill at all in cgi, and cgi artists who have never mixed paint before in their lives.
If you wanted to, at proper appropriate scale print out this comic it would be incredibly large. Probably impossibly large, and without the scalability would be impossible to really appreciate as a piece of art.
And yet here it is, freely available for anyone to look at.
Everything on the internet, for the most part is freely available to look at. It's our art, ours, as artists, we took it back. We took it out of the hands of museum curators, or critics, or reviewers. We put it up where we will in our own little slices as we choose. It shocks, or confronts...or it doesn't. It's available for the viewing, or it isn't. We archived it, this is ours, put up on the internet. It's us.
Anyway, I took these and did some work painting the otherwise black and white images. It was a lovely exercise in working on my cloud paintings. I hope you enjoy.
Monday, September 24, 2012
Saturday, September 8, 2012
Painting - Artwork Translation
Painting - Translation: Van Gogh's Starry Night Over The Rhone to Jackson Pollock / Jean-Paul Riopelle
For this final assignment, we were tasked with taking a certain classical style painting, and translate it to a more modern art movement style. I picked Van Gogh, but instead of doing the famous 'Starry Night', I chose a slightly (barely) more obscure one called Starry Night over the Rhone. Taking that painting, here's my process of making it into an Abstract Expressionism, similar to Jackson Pollock or Jean-Paul Riopelle
Read on:
Wednesday, September 5, 2012
Painting - Clyfford Still
"I am not interested in illustrating my time. A man's "time" limits him, it does not truly liberate him. Our age - it is one of science, of mechanism, of power and death. I see no point in adding to its mechanism of power and death. I see no point in adding to its mammoth arrogance the compliment of a graphic homage."
-Clyfford Still
Monday, September 3, 2012
Thursday, August 30, 2012
Painting - Lifeline in Paint
For an assignment in my painting class, we were tasked with creating an original painting utilizing ten specific shades of colour. The specific shades were to be utilized how ever we chose, in any combination. Each hue was to represent how we felt a year in our life was, ten hues, each for a year spanning our last decade. We were otherwise given very little instruction.
It was, in many respects a very free-form exercise. I picked my hues, wrote a brief blurb for each, figured out what each year was or meant, and then simply went to task. What follows is a fantastic expression of who I am on canvas, but also impressively cryptic. It is me, in many respects, but only through the rationalization of my own head.
I did the following on stretched canvas.
It was, in many respects a very free-form exercise. I picked my hues, wrote a brief blurb for each, figured out what each year was or meant, and then simply went to task. What follows is a fantastic expression of who I am on canvas, but also impressively cryptic. It is me, in many respects, but only through the rationalization of my own head.
I did the following on stretched canvas.
Thursday, August 23, 2012
Hearing - Sound
Hearing - Sound
Sometimes when I close my eyes, in the silence of darkness...I can hear music. It sounds like such a strange thing, but I think I can hear the life around me ebb and flow. I hear the sounds of wind rushing past life, it cascades and swirls around my mind. I can hear the breathing and the heartbeats of a million souls. There is a kind of casual peace to them, a growth and reworking of hammer to anvil.
A friend of mine, is preparing to teach children soon. One of the constraints on the position of her teaching is that she cannot touch on a number of subjects. One of the constraints, is that she cannot teach instruments. Singing is alright but there are no instruments permitted where she teaches. She cannot even show them how to make maracas. I wonder what music sounds like to them.
Do they hear it the same way I do? Do they hear strands of creation in the vibrancy of tone? Is it all just noise the way some things are? Have they been taught to tune it out, that it has no worldly existence at all?
I wonder what they would think if the heard the things in my mind.
Sometimes at sunset, I can hear music. A violin plays across the wind, just barely audible. I shift the balance of my body to hear it better, straining and yet still. I can hear it, my head tilts ever so slightly, imperceptibly towards it. I nod and continue to listen to the people around me, overhear their conversations, consider their words. But I hear. I hear music. Tone and song, it's so far away, quicksilver, mercurial.
What do you hear?
Sometimes when I close my eyes, in the silence of darkness...I can hear music. It sounds like such a strange thing, but I think I can hear the life around me ebb and flow. I hear the sounds of wind rushing past life, it cascades and swirls around my mind. I can hear the breathing and the heartbeats of a million souls. There is a kind of casual peace to them, a growth and reworking of hammer to anvil.
A friend of mine, is preparing to teach children soon. One of the constraints on the position of her teaching is that she cannot touch on a number of subjects. One of the constraints, is that she cannot teach instruments. Singing is alright but there are no instruments permitted where she teaches. She cannot even show them how to make maracas. I wonder what music sounds like to them.
Do they hear it the same way I do? Do they hear strands of creation in the vibrancy of tone? Is it all just noise the way some things are? Have they been taught to tune it out, that it has no worldly existence at all?
I wonder what they would think if the heard the things in my mind.
Sometimes at sunset, I can hear music. A violin plays across the wind, just barely audible. I shift the balance of my body to hear it better, straining and yet still. I can hear it, my head tilts ever so slightly, imperceptibly towards it. I nod and continue to listen to the people around me, overhear their conversations, consider their words. But I hear. I hear music. Tone and song, it's so far away, quicksilver, mercurial.
What do you hear?
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