Back to it!

Time to get back into the habit of creative thinking.  New venue, different group of students, but fortunately I will have the pleasure of being with the same teacher again. As opposed to last year, it seems I will be the token “old fart” in the class this year. 

It is with some trepidation but also a sense of excitement that I enter into the first term of 2011.  No doubt the expectations of my work will be higher this year – hope I can rise to the challenges.

First assignment – a stop-motion video has now been completed and is here for all to see. Had the usual codec conundrums, but YouTube digested my f4v file without too many protestations. The video probably does not meet any of the criteria set out in the brief – but heck – isn’t that what artistic licence is all about!

The Journey

“Learn to see” was the main objective for the year. I thought looking through the camera lens would be the answer, but participation in this course taught me otherwise.

Looking at what I achieved and the range of activities I have engaged in – merely pursuing a photography only course would have been a limiting experience. Approaching the learning process from so many angles has been liberating as well as mentally challenging.

Having spent the best part of my life in a left-brain environment - suddenly having to attempt to fully engage the right brain in my approach to the arts, at times “messed with my head space”. However, I feel richer for the experience. No doubt, having been with like-minded people in an encouraging and friendly environment made the journey easier.

I feel I have achieved my quest - it is now a matter of building on the foundations laid down during year. I intend to continue this journey next year and hope to travel together with some of the wonderful colleagues and friends I have been with this year.

I would like to pay  tribute to David – his enthusiasm and steadfast belief that we all have artistic abilities was greatly appreciated. The end of year exhibition proves that he is right! Thank you.

Quotes and Quips

Half the modern drugs could well be thrown out the window, except that the birds might eat them.  ~Martin H. Fischer

I have in between paroxysms of coughing, sneezing and feeling generally miserable found time to read a few quotes. It’s been mainly one-liners as that seems to be the sum total of my current attention span.

Over the past few days/nights, I’ve put a few of these quotes on a webpage – and I shall be happy to include your favourite if you post it in the comments section below.

The webpage may not work well in some versions of Internet Explorer but is fine in Safari and FireFox. In IE8, there is an icon resembling a torn sheet of paper on the address bar - clicking it may resolve the display problem! The webpage may take a moment or two to fully load.

I used the @font technique in the webpage – you may very well not like my choice, but free @font libraries are at this stage very limited. Shows great promise though.

Bed-bound

Despite having engaged in all-out pharmaceutical warfare, the nasty little bug currently bothering me, is winning too many of the battles.
Mind and body have turned into mush, making any attempt at useful activity quite futile.

Fortunately Pradnya has rallied amongst the failing troops, and the first copies of the Exhibition Catalogue have been produced, with the rest to be printed and collated on Monday. Go Pradnya!!

Briefly caught the late afternoon light in the garden. Always lifts the spirits:

Image © PeteM2010

Further dispatches when mind and body again join forces.

Colloquialisms

First time I heard the expression “crook in bed with a wog” I had no idea about what it meant, but it sounded exotic! Believe me, from my current experience, it isn’t. To add insult to injury, the attendant fever induced hallucinations over the past few days have been totally uninspiring.
However, I have during a few lucid moments made a webpage from a few of my photos from the Zoo outing. Just click HERE to have a look.

I have used a few CSS3 selectors on that page, so if you have an up-to-date and compliant browser (which does not include IE7 or IE8, but Microsoft is slowly getting the message, IE9 is apparently showing promise) you can see ‘rounded corners’, ‘drop shadows’ and ‘opacity’ in action – no Photoshop. The page XHTML and CSS weighs in at just over 4KB!

Old (type)faces

Visiting the Melbourne Printing Museum was quite an experience. There can't be may places in the world where you can still see hot metal typesetting in live action. Michael and his fellow old boys had a Linotype and a Ludlow machine all steamed up and in fine working order for us to see, hear and smell.

Image © PeteM2010

The culmination of a perfect day’s outing was the production of a hand-printed letterpress poster. Additionally, for me, having had a chance to rummage through cupboards full of old matrices, wooden typefaces and some glorious Italian paper stock, was pure bliss!

Like to see a few more images? Just CLICK here!

Seal Charmer

After a day at the Zoo, it's hard to say what was more fun – watching the animals or watching people’s reactions to them. Without doubt, the Zoo trip put a smile on everybody’s faces. For me, one of the many highlights was seeing Lidia in full flight photographing the seals. Poetry in motion! 

Image © PeteM2010

This chap was used to posing for the camera - didn't make a move until I'd set up the camera and was ready to shoot!

Image © PeteM2010

Glass

Image © PeteM2010

I was going through my photo library looking for images for the triptych, but instead got waylaid by photos of glass. I have put together a web page with some of the images. To have a look at the photos:-- just click here! There are quite a few images so give the page a moment or two to load!

The above image was captured in Sydney as we walked to the bus stop on the last day of the class excursion. 

Black

It was reading a quote by Victor Hugo late at night that triggered the imagination and became the inspiration for a bit of messing about with XHTML, CSS and JavaScript. The result of the night’s toil can be seen by clicking here. 

16:9

Made another trip to the city to gather images for the photo and video assignments. 

Image © PeteM2010

Composing for the 16:9 format has its own challenges, but the more I work on it, the more I have come to see the opportunities it presents. I have posted a few of today’s results on this web page:
 My latest 16:9 images

Blue

As I have been working on the photo assignment - blue has been a recurring theme:

Image © PeteM2010

I have posted some of my other images for the photo assignment on this web site: Movement and Colour

Ron Rado

I’ve finished reprinting and stretching the image for the competition. All that remains is to give it a coat of medium, a couple of hooks and write the obligatory blurb that will accompany the print.

Image © PeteM2010

This time I believe I found the correct printer settings, because the colours almost jump off the canvas. Whether you like the subject matter or not, at about 90cm x 100 cm this print will be hard to ignore!

Wow – what an opportunity, what a privilege this course is!

Movement

This term’s photo assignment will be a total antithesis of my established approach to photography. Rather than worrying about a colour profiled workflow, optimised image sharpness etc., I simply put a moderately long lens on the camera and let it rip.

Image © PeteM2010

Maybe it was looking at images by Magnum photographers like Larry Towel, Burt Glinn and Bruce Davidson that got me thinking along this path, but this current series of street photographs is part of an idea I have been brooding on during my recent travels. More on that in a future blog.

Seems funny, doesn’t it   - having spent a lot of money putting together a marvellous camera and lens combination just to take blurry pictures, something I did years ago with a cheap plastic camera costing just a few dollars!

Restoration

Image © PeteM2010
Having completed another block of work, I felt it was time for a change of scenery so after Friday’s class I headed south to Phillip Island for a few days. Fresh air, serious cooking, good wine and general debauchery were what were needed to relieve my suffering brain from art overload.


However, as the final block’s video theme had already been announced there was no escape from brainstorming possible solutions.  One thing is coming up with novel ideas, quite another to execute them. Lack of technical know-how and experience, let alone artistic ability, caused mayhem with my circadian rhythm during the last video production. Not to be repeated! 

Funny, isn’t it, a few intense sessions in the kitchen accompanied by good company and pinot noir and all that pain is forgotten.  Whilst ruminating, a story line evolved for the new video, but this time a few test shots will be done well before I get too involved developing the idea further. 

Collograph

Printmaking has been fascinating - very messy, but fascinating. From work-intensive dry point to spontaneous one-off monotype – all new techniques to explore, learn and have some fun with. Tried a few different methods of printing the collograph, but still prefer this basic print: 

Image © PeteM2010

I tried to extend the print further in Photoshop. Made a few attempts and have now posted them on a  web page: my collographs.

Found it satisfying playing with HTML, CSS and JavaScript again, quite another art form.

Power Outage

It was a wintry, windy, stormy day when I was spending endless and less than fruitful hours on the “Dream” video. Progress was severely hampered by technical problems, which proved more and more insurmountable. 

Not unexpectedly, we lost power and from past experience, it could be many hours or possibly days before power would be restored. The open fire was lit, candles and torches gathered and it was time for other activities. Time, I thought to revisit the “Ear, Nose and Mouth” drawings. However on viewing my efforts to date, there was little evidence of enthusiasm or passion in the work. They rather reminded me of my school days, when I had detention for some misdemeanour or other and had to write 50 lines on the blackboard before being let out.

There was only one thing to do. I decided to end the misery and unceremoniously committed the drawings to the pyre.

Staring into the flames greedily consuming my artworks must have stimulated my otherwise waning creative powers, because rapidly and overwhelmingly a new video storyboard took shape in my mind’s eye. I got so carried away that after some time I burst out aloud: “I GOT IT!” My poor suffering muse was scared witless by my sudden outburst and the startled dog started barking. Nothing like a peaceful evening in front of the fire!  

As for my drawings – well they will just have to wait for another creative raptus.

PASTICHE

I have played in the past with the Wacom tablet in Photoshop for fixing up photos, mainly dodging, burning and refining selections, but drawing – that‘s something new.

Image © PeteM2010

Haven’t found it easy to get the painterly or drawing effects I try to emulate, but that may come as I keep experimenting. The plethora of brush settings and adjustments are just mind-boggling.

To improve my “Wacom skills”, I decided to attempt the Giacometti, Jawlensky, Auerbach and Picasso assignment purely in Photoshop. We were supposed to allocate 30 - 40 minutes per drawing, but at my working pace, hours passed by. Learnt a lot though even if the final results bear little evidence of the time spent. 

Pastiche - a literary, musical, or artistic piece consisting wholly or chiefly of motifs or techniques borrowed from one or more sources.

Photoshop Tutorials

Image © PeteM2010

The Photoshop portrait assignment has been a great challenge and learning experience. The Internet tutorials are by and large well written and not too difficult to follow, but --- most are done on images a lot smaller than ours.

So, although some of the images end up somewhat similar to the finished tutorials, many do not! There’s been a fair amount of fiddling with Photoshop settings, which has for me produced interesting and often quite unintended results. Part of the fun!

Flash

Photoshop, After Effects, Premiere Pro and Flash are all supposed to work together seamlessly - or so the advertising blurb tells us. Putting it  into practice has not proved to be quite so straight forward. Anyhow, this is the result of todays Flash experimentation:



  I coded (AS3) a stop button into the animation - the repetition can get a bit testing!!

(File size about 130Kb - takes a few moments to load)

May not load in Internet Explorer - use FireFox , Safari or any other W3C compliant browser!

Illusion/illusion

Illusion/illusion is a group exhibition at McClelland Gallery and Sculpture Park developed around the theme of visual perception and deception. Through the work of four young contemporary artists, Briele Hansen, Justine Khamara, Dorota Mytych and Kit Webster, the exhibition exploits a full range of multi-media disciplines, ranging from photography and drawing, to video display systems and digital video projections. The exhibition explores contemporary themes ranging from social commentary to the enjoyment of pure abstraction. (Abstract from gallery web-site)

Dorota Mytych – Tea-leaf reading 2 (Video):

Still image from artists web-site

Spent all morning exploring the works, re-visiting the works, deconstructing the works and unreservedly enjoying the works. It took considerable time to fully appreciate the fine details and to participate in some of the video presentations, but wow, it was time very well spent. Go and enjoy! (Unfortunately – photography NOT allowed)