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May 9, 2009: You've been lied to, let The Mechanic tell you the truth!
[Link: 2009/5/9-mechanic.html] - [Comment]
One hour drawing, one hour inking
I'm sick.
The best way, it seems, to make this shading technique work is if you have all the disparate lines, from each separate planes, all match each other. In other words, you should start a line at the top of the head, and be able to follow the line, down the forehead, all the way through the nose, lips and chin. The next line starts parallel, a few line thickness from the first line you drew and following the contours of the face, in then exact same way.
It seems, if you follow this idea perfectly, you'll get a drawing that looks as if you're copying a marble figure - something akin to the illustrations of the author's for the Wall Street Journal. It shouldn't be quite a surprise, but the whole technique becomes quite mechanical, if taken to its extremes. I'm pretty sure it can be created using a computer program. Perhaps.
Below is a Step Test for testing the exposure time for screen printing (here's a larger version, for detail):
I've been investing a little bit of money in my screen print setup, which sort of means, I've been buying a lot of wood and screws and making things to do stuff. I've gotten some fancy professional emulsion and I have no idea what the burn time is, so I've been experimenting. According to this print, around eight or nine minutes should do the trick.
The print is actually interesting to look at, but it's something that's been made thousands of times, by different people, for purely testing reasons. I remember, when I started screen printing, doing everything was sort of guess-work - I didn't quite know how everything worked, or what I needed and exposing screens was the most difficult part of everything, as the times seemed long and each burned screen seemed to be a gamble - would it work? A lot of the times, it didn't.
I did three such tests, with three separate burns, on three separate screens. Each one told me, the burn time is around nine minutes. And, that's it. Like tightening up the drawing style, it's becoming purely mechanical.
[Link: 2009/5/9-mechanic.html] - [Comment]
May 7, 2009: Justin Beard
[Link: 2009/5/7-justin_beard.html] - [Comment]
One hour drawing, one hour inking
I've drawn/painted Justin more times than I really care to mention.
But I will (a few times):
This drawing is just as sloppy as my other one hour draw/one hour inks - it's just a lot to go through. I've taken weeks on such drawings in the past. Good to keep loose and with a good pace, I guess and work on style just by having it happen. The looseness of the lines reminds me of Pettibon, the all-around shading reminds me of Robbie Conal.
This technique works best when you create tight lines and I really faulter when there's wide expanses of area, like Justin's forehead, that needs to be shaded in. I also snuck in some lines to outline changes in form - not really something that's pure of this technique, but I think I'll keep it.
I also like when I just make those broad pen strokes - sort of controlled Bleeeeeeeh, which is different from the sloppiness I was noting. Makes the form a little less wooden.
I'm going to have to figure out the sloppiness thing though. Just be patient, I guess, or, perhaps figure out a way to guide my pen along lone lines? Take breaks half-way through the line? I don't know, yet.
The ink I'm using has a sort of reflection to it - it's not flat and taking pictures with it sort of sucks. Crap ink.
[Link: 2009/5/7-justin_beard.html] - [Comment]
May 6, 2009: A Week's Worth of Drawings
[Link: 2009/5/6-weak.html] - [Comment]
One hour limit drawing, one hour limit inking
One hour limit drawing, one hour limit inking
[Link: 2009/5/6-weak.html] - [Comment]
April 29, 2009: "Oh.", he said, "I'm a sex fiend."
[Link: 2009/4/29-ignite_boulder.html] - [Comment]
(Charles Bukowski)It's useful for me to categorize most experiences I have as either Adventures: things that you personally have done and, Myth: things that other people have done, that are then told to others.
The Adventurer is the only one that knows what exactly happens on their Adventures and Myths are based loosely on these Adventures. My memory isn't perfect, nor is anyone else's, so all Myths are false to a point. To think of it, attempting to make Myth into History is just another form of control. A form of control that really doesn't need to actually happen.
Once basic necessities in life are met, it's best to go on as many Adventures as possible - as many as you're privileged to do so, so you can create more myths to share. This entry is about going on an Adventure: and the adventure is nothing but a slide talk jam-thing: where everyone was to tell everyone else a Myth of their own. I just so happened to be one of those people, out of around 10 or so.
Another guideline in creating an Adventure is to get in situations that are new to you, but have some sort of root in something you've already done. This is, in essence: Traveling. Starting point and ending point - but the ending point is unknown. You're almost always in the middle of it and that's where interesting things happen.
In this case, it was talk I had done a week before at a different venue - the Denver Pecha Kucha, but it was to a different audience - this new talk was with people I really didn't know very well.
The Pecha Kucha talk was with people I knew and had worked with, done other talks with and helped in collaboration with community-oriented art shows.
This second talk at Ignite Boulder #4 was an invite via a secret email mailing list. I will be getting to why this is important very soon.
So, earlier that day, I ride up to Boulder on my bicycle - and visit the campus of my former college (CU Boulder), where the talk was to take place. It's a college where I basically dropped out of and wasn't during a very happy part of my life. The room was the same room I took some bullshit class in my first semester - something like Environmental Geography - which, I can't remember anything from. You wonder why I dropped out.
My talk was about a few things (you can see the entire slide show here). The first was about my love of going around countries via bicycle self-supported and how I find its complementary to the creative process. I'll let my art and my life speak for themselves about how successful that is.
The other part of the talk was how going around countries via bicycle self-supported, wasn't enough excitement: that instead of resting, it would be fun to get off my bicycle and do multi-day hikes called, Tramps. And this one time, I almost died doing all that, because I got stuck in a flash flood for days.
Like anything - like this very talk - like what this very talk was about, when you get into something you've never done before, you're bound to make some silly mistakes and it's a great asset to know how to laugh at yourself when you make silly mistakes.
What happened at this talk? This very night?
My twenty slides were all out of order, as soon as the talk started.
So you tell the slide DJ-Guy, the Emcee - the one guy basically paid to be there and make sure things run smoothly:
"My slides are out-of-order"
And they sort of shrug. And go,
"Meh... Eh,"
And you're facing this many people:
None of whom, you actually know. You realize at this point, you are not in safe waters.
I hate talking about Internet life. Mostly, because I find it banal. I think when I was much younger, the Internet was very much important to me - to the point where, it was the center of my world. I didn't really understand other people and wasn't curious to start knowing them. The abstraction the computer made was what I honestly required and probably became an addiction. I became ever more curious and learned the technology behind it and thus, a larger and larger source of new fuel was found. My basic right of curiosity was coupled with an intense fear of actually connecting to someone, but with a computer? It's a one-way conversation, as far as I was concerned and it was all: ME ME ME.
And then, I moved on.
And now, it's a fun little tool for things, but all these new things coming out just seem very much like toys. And, that's fine - I like playing with toys, but they're not my life. I can pick them up, I can put them down. They make life a little funner, sometimes, but hell if it's going to be something I'll revolve around. I do work, Internet-related stuff, but when work is over, it's over. It's life. It's not work.
But even if you've moved on, other people haven't. The people in this audience were really into this stuff. Why are they? I think it's because in the setting where they work, it belongs in the ecosystem: messages passed back and forth via your computer or your phone - no need to actually talk to someone - it's all strictly business. What's the bottom line? What's the need for all this ceremony and culture wrapped around it? It makes things slower. Less efficient. More costly. I don't want to know these people around me, anyway. I probably don't even like this job. Why am I here? No time to answer -
Move away from this setting and these tools become extremely useless. It's what I learned, when I'm away on long trips: what you really need. You really don't need a computer. And I'm talking basic survival. I'm talking about making meaningful connections with new friends. I'm talking about traveling and adventures and creating Myths. Having adventures.
So now, not only am I attempting to do a talk - a talk that's fucking burning in flames behind me in mixed-up slides, there's a live feed to a service called Brightkite and all it's doing is showing text messages people are sending to some special hoopie-doodle computer burning you, while you're talking, in Real Time:
And then you sort of realize, this is not the type of talk I want to do. There's 450-some-odd strangers and it's you on one side and they're on the other. It's like I have to be on defense, while talking. There was no feeling that the audience wanted me to succeed, as I felt while doing Pecha Kucha.
Now, I know the guy from Brightkite. I think he's a really great person. But, I don't know if having a auto-updating wall of comments while someone is talking is really all that good of an idea. Your asking the audience member to multi-task, which is basically a myth. Look: someone is typing away, looking at a screen, which means, they're not really paying attention to the speaker and other people in the room will look up, and instead of paying attention to the speaker, they will then read what some person in the audience is saying. And then, reply. Why is the speaker in the room? This is the same thing people do, home, alone, on their computers.
It's the same thing people do at coffee shops, as their annoying friend, that's actually - physically there is waiting for them to finish up, so they may continue their finite lives in actually physical/breathable/touchable reality.
There were so many things off at this night. It seemed strange that some of the slides where stamped with corporate logos - as if the talk was branded.
Many of the talks were about making fun of the guilty pleasures we all like to partake in - and perhaps take in too much - yet didn't give any sort of alternative. Just reveled in it. Just, masturbation.
A lot of the talks were just about the old rat race and succeeding. I felt sick, at one point. As a talk, I'm not sure anything was getting anywhere. I wanted to go somewhere on my talk, but it's hard to do so, when you're narrative is torn to shit. Wrong room, man, I was in the wrong room.
Not that I really minded. If you travel enough, the way I do, you're bullet proof. My feelings weren't hurt, I just wish the crowd was a little less anonymous and wanted to go somewhere with me, instead of acting as if I was just another sprite on yet, another screen.
Sometimes a little randomness ala John Cage is a good thing. And, I stumbled through and totally lost the, "I got stuck in the middle of a river during a flash flood for three days and this is how art got me through some tough shit" narrative. Which I guess is everyone's loss, except mine. I know the Adventure and they lost out on the Myth. Without their help, we all made a new one: I FAILED.
People have made their minds to make technology rule their lives. They chose the Fresh Prince of Bell-Air theme song, done in Olde English as a slide talk. And, that's their choice.
What I realized on that stupid fucking island, cold, shivering, without any sort of shelter and having my mind wander between, "I'm going to die" to, "I'm going to kill myself" is what was important to my life: People.
People that I've fallen in love with and people I have yet to fall in love with - or have even met. Friends that are actually and truly there for you - how entirely small that pool is.
I realized how horrible I was at being a lover and a friend in the past and that people around me also were in this conundrum, but we all, as a mixed up bunch of imperfect beings - had a little bit of hope that we could be better at it - that if we can just be honest and allow ourselves to apologize and accept apologies we'd be all better off. And that some of us are trying. And sometimes, sometimes it takes almost dying to appreciate what it really means to really live.
And this isn't something I will really ever relay on a 20, 15 second-per-slide, slideshow to 450 people at a time openly criticizing me in Real Time; or 140 characters via a cellphone to a web server somewhere.
That investing great amounts of time to shoehorn ourselves to use these technologies and methods almost exclusively (keyword, there) is a step backwards - computer applications are making us think like computers think and that's stressful. It's an additional layer of abstraction between your heart and someone else's. It's another excuse to not really be a whole person, but be happy to be broken, with shit job in an unfair world, surrounded by people who don't actually love you. And that's I guess, all some of us know.
The break in the middle of the talks happened and I decided to go out for some fresh air. A women comes up to me.
She says, "Hey, I like bikes too - and bike touring, what kind of bike do you have?"
And I tell her, "A Black One"
And she says - somewhat put off by my new-found disillusion, "Oh, I'm sorry if you don't want to talk about bikes, so..."
And I tell her, "No! no - let me show you my bicycle - it's just outside."
And I do. We take a walk. It's refreshing. I hate sitting still for too long. And I tell her it's no big thing, just black. Beat up. But, it's mine and I take it places. It's been around the world. Almost. And then, she shows me hers.
And it's beautiful. Power Coated blue/violet with well-thought details and she tells me about the tours she's been on and how she likes to camped on farms and in graveyards. She's excited about it all. Someone here, I find, is truly alive. And she shares her love for climbing hills and mountains, which is something I love to do, as well.
I say, "Can I take a picture of you and your bike?" And she says yes,
We talk for a little bit, then return to this giant, claustrophobic room. I decided that we needed to hang out some more and go on bike rides and extremely important things like that, so I told myself: find that girl when this stupid fucking thing is over and see if she's game and give her a way to contact you.
And when another round of empty and worthless talks are over - one's that reiterate some sort of wild-fire Internet meme and composed by the speaker, entirely on a screen (screens! More Screens), I turn around and she's gone. So, I decide to leave a note on her bike. But, after finishing the note, walking to her bike I realize the bike is gone too.
Sometimes, you know, that's how it is. Important people in your life can be fleeting and it's not really the time you spend with them - the amount, that is, but that you actually did spend some sort of time with them. That that person - the only person to do so, said, "Hello" and decided to share just a little bit of themselves to you and out of the entire crowd - the entire joint, one person connected with you. Not as some bullshit "friend"ing on a website - which amounts to nothing but a new row in a RDMS database, but just with a smile and a few sentences.
Then, good-bye.
It's something that's not time stamped, or tagged; not something able to be geo-located, rated or consumed in a vast electrical field that spans the globe, making us want more and more plastic, consumable and on a schedule to self-destruct at the most inconvenient times as they ever so slowly burn up our natural resources and monuments - places where Adventures happen -
It belongs now to myth - not history. Not to the consumable history of empty connections, coming to the flashpoint of absurdity.
[Link: 2009/4/29-ignite_boulder.html] - [Comment]
February 2, 2009: On Slowly Dying, Halftones, The Disappearance of Outdated, Expensive Technology and the Techniques That Replace Them
[Link: 2009/2/2-halftone.html] - [Comment]
I remember, sometime after I turn twenty-four, getting up in the morning started to become a painful experience. I'd awake from the couch in my studio and some muscle of mine, or tendon or hand, foot or something - most likely more than one thing, would hurt. I'd get a cramp here or there or just feel shitty all over. "No way is this what the future holds for me"
But, yes, that's what it does hold. Every year seems to bring just a little more incurable, life-long pain.
I also seem to remember, that I was a whole lot smarter when I was around nineteen or so, than as I am now. This is an imperfect comparison, obviously, but I know for sure that my short term memory is shit. Watching me attempt to leave my apartment would have you believe that I am obsessive compulsive, having to look here and there and touch this or that, before I embark - but what I'm really doing, what my silly dance is actually all about, is just the constant search for where I put my keys. And my wallet. And my bike lock. And my gloves. And about a half dozen other items that I find I require before embarking to go outside.
It would make sense to just put all these items in one place, but I'm stupid enough to forget to do even that, so I'm left to forever do this stupid little "I want to leave" ritual.
I'm not even out of my twenties and I'm complaining about this. I now see, or at least have a glimmer - which I'm sure will fade as I, as well, forget how to feel this way, how one changes when one gets older. Even my relationship with alcohol has changed, even from six months ago:
What was never a real interesting thing for me, now, really seems like a good solution for many a problem: being depressed, being angry, being stupid, being heart-broken, being bored - hell, anything really. It's not as if I never drank because of these things, but now, boy howdy, it's the first thing I think of. And that's pretty scary.
Side stepping the substance abuse issue, I may see how it could be possible that I, one day, may have children: One day, I'll just wake up, and, "It'll make sense." Somehow. I can't tell you know, because right now, it doesn't make any sense.
But, one day, I'll change, and forget how it used to feel like, before. It's sad, almost, to think you have no real choice on the matter, that you just change away and then, die.
So, now as I write, I realize I didn't really want to get into any of this - about how we're all just brightly lit lightbulbs whose filaments are slowly decaying, but wanted to tell you how I figured out how to make an image into a halftone and I wanted to do that by going back in time, all mysterious-like and show how I used to be a little smart ass and now, I'm just an old poop. I'm not even thirty, by the way.
It's strange to think, but one of my favorite and most important classes in high school was actually, "Communications Technology". So much, in fact, that I won a scholarship by writing an essay about how, once the Internet basically functioned as TV, but better, the bacon would really sizzle - and hey, I turned out to be completely correct on that. I had to tell them that I was going to be a Communications major, which was false and when I did get the scholarship, they just cut me a check. So, naturally, I cashed it, went on a camping trip and spent the rest on books and CD's - strangely enough, some of those books and CD's are still some of my favorites. Velvet Underground and Nico, anyone? Life-Changing.
I didn't really win the scholarship because it was a good essay - I'm sure that the essay actually pissed off whoever read it, since it was being given out by the local cable company and if they weren't pissing themselves over the idea of, user generated, always available content, without even an inkling of a model for making money then, they certainly must be now. I won that scholarship, because I was the only one that entered it in my school. And my communications technology class had as much to do with a Communications major, as the Metaphysics section at your local big box book store has with Metaphysics in Philosophy.
But what my communications technology class had was a liberal teacher that could still keep us all in line, a darkroom, an AB Dick 1 offset printer, a process camera and tons,
and tons of Macintosh computers.
Our end-of-year project in my junior year of high school was to produce a year-long calendar. Each student got one month and we all collaborated on a cover. Easy enough - and what most people did was take an image, print it out, shoot it on the process camera and print it out on the offset printer.
Looking back now around 11 years from then, it's pretty funny to think that teaching us what a Process Camera is and how to make plates for an Offset Printer would somehow play a major role in ours lives - I think my teacher did quote that we could, after this class, start working at a print shop ourselves... maybe I'm making that up...
But what I'm getting at is, no one now uses a process camera and I don't know anyone that has an offset printer, except perhaps Rick, who's seems more interested in his two, "New Style" (and over 100 years old) Letterpress printers (and I know at least one other person in town with some of those as well). Every day, I hear of another printing house in town going down in flames, usually with millions of dollars owed to its suppliers.
So, last week, I thought it would be wild, since I just, live on the edge to make my own photograph-to-halftone imaging application. The ubiquitous Photoshop does a good job when you Convert to Bitmap..., but it does a really bad job when you use the filter supplied. Why? The filter is sort of an approximation, but the bitmap command is sort of a faux RIP. What I was going for, was the latter style, so that I could make, say a little web-app to make halftone images. Again, I live on the wild side of things, clearly.
My first stumbling block on all this is the technology originally created to make halftones doesn't exist in any real sense, since no one uses process cameras, I have no idea what the actual screen you use to make a halftone looks like, so I can't emulate it, using some nerd code.
My lazy web research yielded little results, since, like many things, if it's not a technology that's born while the internet was around, it's really off its radar and there's not a weird hobby/craft, "process camera halftone imaging" group around, most likely because process cameras can weigh several hundred pounds and take an entire room, if not be built into a room. And they cost thousands.
I didn't even try to look in the library, since I don't even know what type of book will give you a how-to on making this stuff and my guess is that such books have been purged from the library, since they weren't really circulating.
I think it's funny that this sort of technology - so important for creating images in the past one hundred years is plenty hard to get a grasp on, technologically in the present.
And I sit in my studio and I look at my screen prints, with their halftone designs on and I feel like a total fake. I don't even know how the image I'm emulating is emulated, nor do I know what the real way is. I'm pretty sure I'm fairly alone in having such existential dilemmas over a simple image filter.
So, I'm sitting at my home computer in 11th grade, which was an absolute and complete surprise to have, as my family wasn't the most well-to-do or technologically leaning, working on my month's design. I decided to have it skateboard-themed and commemorate Danny Way's record breaking backside air. Oh yes:
Now, I want you to forget about the horrible all-centered composition and bad typography choices and look at some tricked out things going on:
-
The giant knock-out of Danny Way, front and center. Talk about a few hours in quick mask
-
The frame-by-frame photo montage in the upper left hand corner, directly ripped from a VHS video tape - I can't even remember how I got this on my computer, but it flipped out my teacher, I think.
-
The secret, "Where's Waldo?", Waldo guy, hidden in the whole image
I remember working on this image at like 600 dpi and every change I made would give me the status bar of DEATH, waiting for it to make each change. I also remember finally bringing the whole composition to school on like a Zip disk and having the Mac at the lab fail to open it, because it was too big. Oh halcyon days!
But what I really remember futzing with for hours and going through reams of paper was the halftone.
I forget what the teacher told us to do, but I figured out that if you have a high DPI image, you could output it to hella-high quality that would still be compatible when shooting with the process camera onto the photographic plate and still, still worked when run through our little offset printer.
Here's a close up:
I just remember being on top of the King of the Dorks mountain when you couldn't even see the halftones in my calendar top, unless you looked reeeeeally closely. I don't think anyone else gave a damn, but I think halftones and I started something a little bit more than casual. Sadly, about a day after that, I discovered that I had a copy of Front Page Express on my computer and that was the beginning of web stuff.
So... emulating halftones.
I had a sneaking suspicion that this problem may be very difficult - I mean, hey! it's something that's built into Photoshop - sounds like hard stuff.
I kept running into dead ends, until I found a paper about texture shading in Open GL - 3D games, basically about using the halftone system to efficiently change textures and... and stuff.
http://isgwww.cs.uni-magdeburg.de/graphik/pub/files/Freudenberg_2002_RTH.pdf
Quote:
The basic ingredient in halftoning that determines the visual appearance most is the halftone screen. This is a gray-scale texture containing threshold values. To create a halftoned image from a given input image, the intensity of each pixel is compared to the corresponding threshold value in the halftone screen, and a black or white pixel is written depending on the outcome of the comparison (see Figure 1). If H is the halftone screen threshold value and L is the target intensity, we could write the threshold function in a C-like fashion as
H > (1-L) ? 1 : 0.Here, (1-L) represents "darkness" which reflects the subtractive color model of ink on paper.
Right. I'll take your word on that. It goes on:
So to make real-time halftoning work, we need a halftone screen texture, and a function to perform the threshold operation. The halftone texture specifies how the image intensity should be mapped into a black-and-white rendering.
And then! Then, it finally shows a picture:
Halftone screen + Lighting Intensity = Result.
Halftone screen + Lighting Intensity = Result.
Halftone screen + Lighting Intensity = Result.
I must have looked at that diagram for hours going, "I don't... understand."
I took bike rides. I sipped on coffee. I did anything but type something out on my computer to make that happen.
And then, I thought - the hell with it all, I'll ninja program this and in 15 minutes, whipped up a little program:
#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
package Halftone;
use GD;
use Mouse;
has 'image' => (isa => 'Str', is => 'rw', required => 1);
has 'width' => (isa => 'Int', is => 'rw', required => 0, default => 600);
has 'height' => (isa => 'Int', is => 'rw', required => 0, default => 800);
has 'screen' => (isa => 'Str', is => 'rw', required => 0, default => 'halftone_screen.gif');
sub transform {
my $self = shift;
my $orig_img = GD::Image->new($self->image);
my $scr_img = GD::Image->new($self->screen);
my $trans_img = GD::Image->new( $orig_img->width, $orig_img->height);
my $white = $trans_img->colorAllocate( 255, 255, 255 );
my $black = $trans_img->colorAllocate( 0, 0, 0 );
my $w = $orig_img->width;
my $h = $orig_img->height;
my $x = 0;
for($x = 0; $x <= $w; $x++){
my $y = 0;
for($y = 0; $y <= $h; $y++){
my $img_index = $orig_img->getPixel( $x, $y );
my ( $or, $og, $ob ) = $orig_img->rgb($img_index);
my $orig_thresh = (($or + $og + $ob) / 3 / 2.55);
my $scr_index = $scr_img->getPixel( $x, $y );
my ( $sr, $sg, $sb ) = $scr_img->rgb($scr_index);
my $scr_thresh = (($sr + $sg + $sb) / 3 / 2.55);
if($scr_thresh >= $orig_thresh){
$trans_img->setPixel( $x, $y, $black );
}
else {
$trans_img->setPixel( $x, $y, $white );
}
}
}
return $trans_img;
}
1;
package main;
use Halftone;
my $ht = Halftone->new(
image => 'image.gif',
);
my $new_img = $ht->transform;
open my $foo, ">", "ht.gif" or die $!;
print $foo $new_img->gif or die $!;
close $foo;
(Or, something like that)
Then, I made a halftone screen,
Gave the program an image:
And got this as a result:
"My Dog," I thought, "I did it. That was EASY!"
It's actually quite magic - all it does is it looks at each and every pixel of the halftone screen - what we're using to emulate the effects that light had on a real, physical halftone screen and compares it to the pixel of our source image -
If the source image is more, "intense" - it's brighter, farther away from black than the halftone screen, we put a white pixel in that same place in a new image. If not? A black pixel. And we do that for every single pixel.
That's. It.
So, that's fun and all but what I want to do is make fancy halftone images, not make chunky bands of black and white. Would this same idea work for a complex image and a complex halftone screen?
Ran into a problem, since I didn't know what to use for, "A Complex Halftone Screen"
I finally found an itty-bitty image on a web page that hadn't been updated in 4+ years that said, "Traditional Contact Screen" and showed, what looked like, some bad faux 3d balls -the kind you used to use for "Bump Maps" in Photoshop:
So... I took that image of what looks like a bunch of faux 3D balls, and made a whole slew of them, like so for my halftone screen:
Got a new source image:
And, ran it through the program again. And look what happened:
[Link: 2009/2/2-halftone.html] - [Comment]
January 24, 2009: Obnoxious Extroverted Pseudo-Bohemian Art-School Loser
[Link: 2009/1/24-art_school_loser.html] - [Comment]
"It's Ironic, because I'm not really any of these things..."
"Look - bullshit, you made the shirt, because you knew it'll get you laid."
"It's from a comic book!"
"Someone's going to read that and you want them to feel sorry for you. Wha wha wha."
[Link: 2009/1/24-art_school_loser.html] - [Comment]
January 23, 2009: The Deflowering of the Hand-You Flower Bouquet.
[Link: 2009/1/23-hand-you_flower_deflowering.html] - [Comment]
This print is actually available to purchase, here.
This is a boring description of it:
"A small gesture of kindness and generosity"
A somewhat surreal scene of plant-like arms protruding out, offering up a simple gift of a sunflower, without any rhyme or reason and totally by surprise. This series reflects my own gift and flower giving experiences over the years and the innocence and selflessness I try to emote will giving them. In a sick and sad world, it's always nice to be giving just a little gesture of kindness.
The print is made from an original crow quill pen and ink drawing by myself.
Printed on 14" x 17" Strathmore "Wind Power" (paper is made using renewable energy resources) Bristol 100lb Acid Free paper, with a Vellum finish - it's a really nice paper with a little tooth and has a very nice surface texture, with the ink likes to sit well on.
The print itself is about 12" x 16", centered on the paper, signed/dated/number in pencil on the lower side. This series is a run of only 250 prints.
The print is five colors (blue, green, yellow, flesh-tone and black), hand printed, one color at a time in a very time-consuming process (no machines, or even a rotary press! or anything like that). Each one is slightly, ever-so different, but the registration of the colors is really tight.
The ink is actually top quality acrylic paint with really excellent light-fastness qualities.
Makes a wonderful gift and all the materials are of archival quality.
This print was a very very long process to make. Here's the five separate drawings:
One
[Link: 2009/1/23-hand-you_flower_deflowering.html] - [Comment]
January 22, 2009: Part of the Curriculum
[Link: 2009/1/22-part_of_the_curriculum.html] - [Comment]
The picture above was taken in a drawing class at the University of Colorado, Denver on the topic of, Gesture Lines. (Here's a better shot of the drawing)
The other artist shown was, "Luis Jimenez", who I know from his, "Mustang" sculpture near the airport - a sculpture that took 16 years to complete and actually caused his death, while he was working it. Thirty two feet of sculpture, falling and crushing you.
Damn.
Good slide show company, no?
[Link: 2009/1/22-part_of_the_curriculum.html] - [Comment]
January 21, 2009: On Experimenting With Living a Life of Little Sleep and Lots of Caffeine
[Link: 2009/1/21-drugs.html] - [Comment]
I bought Pablo's, "Breakfast Blend" coffee yesterday. It has a lovable dinosaur on the label and that's all I really need. What I didn't understand was, it's Crack. I am cracking out at the moment.
I decided to go to the library today.
I was almost out of the door and I decided I also needed to go to the bike shop, so I got the wheel I needed to get rebuilt and then decided I should go there, first, just in case. (timing)
So, I did - I told them, "build this really strong" and they were like, "OK - we'll call tomorrow for a quote" I go - "Oh and I need tubes and a patch kit", since I go through about a patch/day these days. I've been riding on two, TWO flat tires for a week now, just too lazy to change them and without any patches to patch them anyways. Um, thus the purchase.
So, I'm about the leave and I realize I forgot my lock at home, so I said, "Fuck, I forgot my lock and I wanted to go to the library and get some coffee and eat some food and buy some fucking PANTS (although I didn't forget my pants at home) and drink more coffee!"
"Yeah, like YOU need more coffee - here, borrow this one"
So, they let me borrow a lock.
I went to the coffee shop - and bought some coffee, drew drew drew and went back to my bike.
It was laying next to the bike rack, um,
without being locked - just next to the pole....DDDDDDDUHRRRRRRRRRRRR.
It was a great, "I'm completely out of my mind" feeling. I think when you drink too much coffee, you just start dreaming, while being awake and the weeks past have been full of this, for me. Everything seems extremely boring and normal, but with odd coincidences that I can't explain - but the coincidences themselves are also extremely boring
But, but! before all that, I went to the library and actually - successfully, locked my bike to the bike post.
I went to the "Bring your books back here" station and told them I had a major debt I'd like to pay. I was hoping they'd be sympathetic, seeing that it was in collections and there was a random, $20 fee on my tab. They told me that was because of collections. Damnit. Damnit!
So, the guy wasn't sympathetic, even though I told him all I was going to get was comic books - since boy, was this guy into comic books! But I lied, I also looked for a John Fante book, but they didn't have one - except in the Young Adults section... wha? But that wasn't there, either. But it said it was, but it wasn't. Hmm.
I left and there was a pretty girl next to my bike! Pretty girl. Next to my bike. Next.... to some dude.
Like,
in my way.
They were talking about screen printing. Oh! Oh, how I wanted to interrupt them and tell her to, COME WITH ME AND WE SHALL SCREEN PRINT AND MAKE BEAUTIFUL LOVE AND BEAUTIFUL BABIES TOGETHER. I was even wearing a shirt I had screen printed. It had a picture of Jack Kerouac on it and mentioned, "Naropa University" - it was my unconscious library-fine-wing-man shirt, in an attempt to get a lower fee - as if, if I wore this shirt, they would KNOW I meant Library Business.
But... I didn't say that COME WITH ME line, I just gimped along, since my knee sucks.
Oh! The funny thing was she was trying to get OUT of the conversation, which I thought, poor boy... - the way I knew this was her excuse to leave was, "I gotta get to Kinkos in time" - but Kinkos,
Kinkos is open 24 hours, even the one on 15th is open until 10:00pm. It was 6:00pm at the moment. Poor girl. Stupid boy.
Oh and the girl from the bike shop called - I had forgotten the patch kit and it was now taken hostage and won't be given back until I give the lock back.
......
There was one day, I went into the bike shop with a lock and came out, without it, so I went back in and the lock was gone - gone! - someone had stolen a locked lock from me, while I was at the bike shop.
......
A week or two ago, I couldn't find my Gym ID - I looked everywhere. For those of you that know me personally, you know that I am not an organized person, but there's limits to this disorganization. For example, I just keep the gym ID in my bag at all time - not because I think I want to make impromptu visits to the gym - like, I'm downtown all of a sudden and have a hankering to, take a shower! - the ID is just small enough that it stays in one of the pockets of the mess bag. When I need it: it's there.
I couldn't find it on that day - so I went to the gym without it, but prepared: "Here's the receipt, I got the membership a month ago, I can't find the ID - DO YOU HAVE A LOST AND FOUND?!"
The girl checks, says, "I don't have it", says this time AND ONLY this time, I can go in to use the gym but NEXT TIME, next time, have the ID, or no entry - blah blah. I see the same 10 people at my gym, I see the same four people working for the gym, so it's not like they have never seen ME.
Laster that week,, I went to go to the gym and of course, I forget about the lost ID, and go, "Crap. Crap!" and I bone up the $15 for a new ID - but not before saying, "Here's my money, but look, I'll get a new ID, as long as you're POSITIVELY SURE it's not here - I've turned my place upside looking for it - and it's not like I have a big place", and they said they didn't have it and... - wait. This makes no sense anyways, since if you get a new membership, they give you an ID anyways, but since I had an old ID from my OLD membership, they just re-used that. What I'm thinking, I should get a $15 discount, or $15 tab, or - but I digress.
So I get the ID the next visit and two days later I get a phone call,
"Hey this is the gym, we have your ID - it's been here for *weeks*. You can pick it up, if you want...."
I put down the phone and I just about threw something out of the window.
...............
I went to the coffee shop today - leaving, as I said, the bike outside, unlocked, for anyone to take - it's a great bike! really... and inside there was a man and a woman - they met online, it's really obvious - and kinda cute. A coffee shop isn't the worst place to find out if the dude you just met is a serial killer or not - this guy definitely wasn't, but they weren't doing much with hitting it off, sadly.
It's always weird to hear the, "introduction" speech, I've heard it a thousand times. The guy must have talked about tango dancing and tango partners and how he can dance with his best friend and not feel all uncomfortable and all that and blah blah blah.
The guy wasn't wearing socks.
It's January, and the guy wasn't wearing socks. So it's 70 out. I don't fail to put socks on - ME! King Slob. They don't MATCH, but, hey!, they're on.
Anyways, they mentioned the Denver Turnverein, which I used to go to, that few years I was some sort of Swing Kid! Not in any sort of social butterfly sense - I *hated* asking people to dance and I *hated* when people asked me to dance. I know, it's weird - I'm weird. The Turnverein is an old German hall though, as weird things in Denver go, it's a needed stop, if not for the wall Bavarian paintings in the basement, slowly peeling off, celebrating much simpler times.
So I get coffee somewhere ELSE - and I'm sitting outside - it's nice and all it's too crowded inside and I'm reading, and there's a group of 3 or so girls and they all met online as well - you can tell! You can tell, because they always ask what the hell everyone is about, for the most basic things, like what you're REAL name is. And then, THEY mention the Turnverein - and it's the same conversation, the same thing, directly from the guy at the previous coffee shop - and I'm looking for light switches to flip up and down to see if I can control the ambiance of the environment.
.............
A got a card today in the mail, it had a heart drawn on the back. It had my first and last full, real name on it, but it forgot the zip code. Someone else, in a different pen, filled that part in.
Inside, was a card from my ex-roommate, the one that I didn't get along with very well.
It was a thank you card. She thanked me for sending a juicer she forgot when she moved. Awwww, shucks.
Then, I get an email from her b/f, my OTHER ex-roommate a minute later. He says he bought something for her online, but forgot to update his address, so it's coming here to Denver and not Austin and oh - would I be nice enough to mail it over when it does come?
..............
Last Friday, speaking of online dates, I had one kinda/sorta - but I knew she only wanted to be friends - which was totally completely cool and fine and whatnot. What was strange is that my roommate also had one - and there was potential for more.
This was more like his first online date meeting-together type of thing and I laughed at him. Because, I'm a major asshole.
I did bid him good luck, we both left at the same time. I went and picked up my friend and I rode her to a cuban restaurant on the back of my bike, all downhill.
We went over a bump. I think I said, "Bump!" after the fact - and we almost biffed it - like, emergency room is next on the agenda, type of biff. But, we didn't and we had so-so cuban starters. Meh. Cuban food can be really bland done badly - it's as if the restaurants are afraid to use lard in the beans, or something. The place was called, "Mojitos", which was interesting, because I met the girl in real life a few weeks before, while she was making mojitos at a party and after 6 of those, I forgot her name and had sex with someone else. Which was a bad idea, through and through. That's actually why we decided to go to, "Mojitos", it sounded like a bad idea.
After dinner, I guess girl had to do some work, so I went home, called my room mate while doing it (riding home) - as if it was the call you give to the person on the blind date, so if the date isn't going well, they can make an excuse and get out of it.
But, he didn't pick up.
In fact, at 4:00 am, he STILL wasn't back, so I thought, he was either dead or getting beautifully drilled. I thought well enough with either outcome.
Turns out, he was at the airport. Apparently, this girl is A-OK. They were at the Cupcake Shop and she kept looking out of the window - she was an adamant people watcher. She asked my roommate, "Do you know where my favorite place is to people watch?"
So, to the airport they went. To watch people. On Saturday Night. And no one was really there! Because no one flies on Saturday nights!
And after that, they decided to go watch the sun come up. AWWWWWWW BLEEEEEEEEECCH!!! and they were just about to go up Lookout Mountain or something when,
My roommate's car ran out of gas.
I guess this same girl was at the Halloween party - the same place I first wore that Kerouac shirt and she hangs out at the coffee shop - the same coffee shop that has cracked me out tonight.
...........
Yesterday I rode one-legged a few fucking miles to a design slideshow thing. It was fucking weird. I got there early, to grab a seat, since the leg doesn't do well bent. I'm royally screwed with that knee. I'm there to meet someone, but it fills up quickly and as soon as they get there, there aren't really any seats, except ONE, the one right to the left of me and I feel totally and completely awkward - I'm taken back to grade school, where all I was, was totally and completely awkward and at twenty-seven, NO ONE wants to hang out with me, or talk to me, or fuck - sit next to me. But this isn't true, I was here to meet someone and now they can't, since they came with two other people and there's only one seat left and and and Gah!
And then, walks Andrew. So, right before the slide show Thing starts, he sits down.
I don't really remember where - I think during the slideshow about dead birds this artist mounts on sticks, for a series called, "Birds on Sticks", he gives me this bit of information,
"hey, you know So and So is preggers!"
Which is crazy, since my last actual Valentines date with this girl - I think we went out for 5 weeks or something. We spent the night cracking those Lifesavers candies that spark when you click them and trying to take pictures of it happening. And we actually did, which was the scary part. She bought me oatmeal - Irish Oatmeal. For Valentines. (I bought the Life Savers). We broke up because of Wasabi Peas. (the sound of crunching on them, at least) and I think, I lack on my part, to have any sort of board game available. Roller skates? Got them. Riot Helmet? No problem. A deck of fucking cards? No can do.
What made this all other-worldy was the guy that was telling me was the guy who took her virginity - as if it's this weird powow - the guy that took this girl's virginity is telling another dude that tasted, say, from the same cup, that this girl is now knocked up.
And I'm looking at dead birds on a gigantic screen.
I really wish her well. In the scant time we hung out, most of what she talked about, was having a child, but no Father (I said I'd be interested in being that, "No Father", Feather), really, and traveling, with the child and having this child experience most of the World before hitting grade school. As far as I'm concerned, that ranks up to the top of the list of How Cool Can Your Parent Be?
...........
The other night I bought groceries at 12:30 am on a Sunday. I walk in and nod to the nodding off security guard and I collect the things I want. The isles are blocked completely with new stock on one end, so I double back on each and every isle.
No one at the automated checkout counter, so I begin scanning things, balancing on the platform without a plastic bag, since the machine will freak out if I put my own on. And I bring my own.
I pay, re-bag my things s-l-o-w-l-y and go over to the center desk, pull my receipt out of the machine, then sign my own credit card slip and take my own receipt.
It's quiet here, just a few box knives, ripping apart tape and a few squeaky wheels. The lights are as intense as ever.
I leave.
...........
I keep finding articles about a police officer that shares my first and last name and reports of him, killing people. The last one was a nineteen year old.
No charges are ever filed.
It's depressing.
...........
Timing gets all weird, sometimes.
...........
I've been thinking about hexagons a lot. Along with triangles and squares, I think they're also tile-able. But, Pentagons? Dunno - I don't think they can tile (only using pentagons - regular pentagons), but OCTAGONS?! No way. Try it.
I used to really be into non-periodic tiles. Did you know the Sierpinski tiling used to be the design on toilet paper? Sir Sierpinski sued them for... something. That's some shit.
I wanna buy Tangrams. And maybe SUPER tangrams! God, I love tangrams. And psychological puzzles. I used to have lots of those. Guess what my Father did.
Today, I drew a balding man, with pigtails, blowing a huge pink bubble-gum bubble. His neck was long and serpent-like, and his body was that of a colorful turkey. The turkey's leg was standing on a business man's head, and this business man's body ended right after his tie started - sort of with cut-lines - like in a pattern. Onlooking all of this, was a blonde-haired woman, with a tiny waist and enormous thighs, and flying above all this was a birdie thingy, like when you put your hands together , in a pose you would use to make a shadow of a birdie with two hands and there was a biplane, sky-writing a cartoon-looking cloud in the sky.
[Link: 2009/1/21-drugs.html] - [Comment]
January 20, 2009: I Spoke Too "Soon"
[Link: 2009/1/20-i_spoke_too_soon.html] - [Comment]
do you remember this?? sorry it took a couple years!
