Jack is one of the most excellent liars I know. When people asked what his major was, he would tell them nonchalantly: Spirographer, with a straight enough face as to make it entirely believable.
We were sitting around Illegal Pete's and I was drawing in my sketch book. For some reason, Jack wanted to show a party trick to everyone. He wanted to draw a completely perfect circle without the use of an actual compass. He did this by placing his thumb on the paper and twiddling his index finger with the pen around his thumb just like, well, a compass. I showed the same trick using a Penelope.
Jack's trick reminded me of the story of Giotto (*), who was approached by a servant of the Pope to produce a drawing to show the Big Guy for a possible big commission. Giotto drew a perfect circle in red on a piece of vellum, using his elbow as the point of a compass and his entire arm as its axis. This was not what the servant had in mind.
I switched from my penny tracing to Jack's mini-Giotto technique, but the paper kept moving and I continued my circle from a different angle. It made a sick sketch though, which I kept in my bag. I find it's always a good thing to keep such things.
The next week at school I made a painting from the sketch, using Giotto's method and a little bit of nondetermination.
For some reason, I've become more interested in first why and second how you make "Art" and less on what the finished piece is. This most likely leaves out the viewer on what the piece is, "about", but I'm not sure that's the reason to do anything.
I bought a new camera today. It's the model higher than the camera that was stolen. I'm in the process of defacing it, so as to make it as ill attractive as possible for a would be thief. The entire couple of weeks I was without a camera were perculiarly unbearable. I always saw something I wanted to catch, some visual idea I wanted to store. Actually I also bought a new webcam as well, since my last one was also stolen on the same campus a few months before. It's sort of important for a project I'm starting to work on again.
It's sort of wild - I'm a painter that has 2 polaroid cameras, one SLR, a webcam and a digital camera. Perhaps, "painter", will not be a term for one who paints, but rather one who expresses their surroundings, whatever those are.
This is from Men of Art by Thomas Cravin; published in 1931 - page 42-43:
The Pope, Vasari tells us, proposing to have certain paintings executed in St. Peter's, sent a messenger to Florence to negotiate with Giotto and to procure specimens of his art. "Giotto, who was very courteous, took a sheet of vellum and fastened it upon the wall, and dipped his brush in a red color; then, resting his elbow against one side to form sort of a compass, with one turn of the hand he drew a circle so perfect and exact that it was a marvel to behold. This done, he turned, smiling to the courtier, saying, 'Here is your drawing.' 'And am I to have nothing more than this?' inquired the latter, conceiving himself to be jested with. 'That is enough to spare,' returned Giotto, 'Take it along and you will see that it will be recognized.' The messanger, enable to optain anything more, went away very ill-satisfied, and fearing he had been fooled." It seems that his holiness and "such of his courtiers as were wwell versed in the subject", were amazed at the red circle, and that they "perceived in it how far Giotto surpassed all the other painters of his time." The incident, needless to say, has no aesthetic significance. Any well-trained fresco painter could have done the same, and no artist, not even Giotto, could have imparted a personal touch to a perfect circle. Giotto was fooling that is to say, he was, in his own jovial manner, asserting his independence. The man who had designed the enormous frescos at Assisi needed no recommendation. If the Pope desired his services, let him say so.
Jack is one of the most excellent liars I know. When people asked what his major was, he would tell them nonchalantly: Spirographer, with a straight enough face as to make it entirely believable. 
