November 2007 Archives

Rapidograph on Poster Board

Five years old - dressed in a clown outfit in August, standing next to the herb garden in my back yard. Third grade - sitting with my Father in a lounge chair, listening to Reggae. Christmas, 1981 on the sofa with my Father, smoking out of his pipe. 4th Grade, practicing my violin recidal in the kitchen - the kitchen has a random assortment of baskets and large cookie cutters. 1983 - Halloween, dressed up as a bum. Third Grade, in Montery Califofornia, feeding a monkey besides an organ grinder - a large tale of hair is very prominent. ~10 years old, standing next to a sunflower in my back yard - the sunflower is almost three times my height. 6th grade - in my kitchen, holding onto a pet squirrel, which died a few days later mysteriously. Some unkown date: Father in sweatpants and sweatshirt, fixing a Thanksgiving Turkey in a unconventional way. Some unknown date: My Father, wearing a trucker style hat (brown), blue shirt and short running pants on the front porch, holding a black crow - the other side of the photo says, "Dad + the 'Crow' she lived only one week-". Another unknown date - Halloween - again dressed up as a bum.

One day, my Sister sent me a shoebox, filled with nothing but snapshot pictures of myself. It also contained snippets of hair and all the teeth I gave the Tooth Fairie. Most of the pictures are from when I was in grade school or younger. It's basically the only recording of my childhood and I don't know what to do with it. I don't know if I want it. I look at the photos and they're - well, they're snapshots, mostly by my Mother with a 110 film camera. There's all these wholesome and/or cute poses and pictures, but I can't help but see a dark side to them all. Like, what the hell was I doing in a clown outfit? Why was I smoking a pipe, what were my Parents thinking? Maybe you'd have to know what happen to my Parents, how tragic they died and why so much random shit went on, when things needed to be Fixed, and they weren't and now they're dead and I'm left with a shoebox of snapshots of me on ponies and visiting the local fire department and unwrapping a tricycle on Christmas Day.

I don't want these photos because I don't want to see the lie that only I know that all these photos have embedded in them. This was a messed up family. Sure, no families are perfect, but I'd at least think that a family can't totally self destruct like mine did. It's the family that doesn't call each other at Thanksgiving.

All I can think of is that I was raised as a spoiled little shit that wasn't told what really was going on and now I'll never honestly know. But I have snapshots of smiles and happiness. Playing checkers with my Father, February, 1986. Playing checkers another night, February, 1986. Holding a stuffed alligator for some random contest the Parks and Rec. dept. had for a yearly festival; age 7?. Is this one of my Uncle (or was it cousin?) He's with his Boyfriend. But now he's a born again evangelical Christian. Less than 6 months old, at the dinner table, on my Mother's lap - I've been posed as if I'm taking a drink from her wine glass; my Mother has a large, beautiful smile...

In college, I took a few illustration classes. I was a painting/drawing major and certainly wasn't what makes an illustrator an illustrator, but my school's drawing/painting program didn't teach many courses that actually taught you how to draw or paint (except the basics, which everyone, regardless of major, took).

My teacher, whom was quite good at his craft talked about painting shadows quite a bit in Figure Painting. FIrst off - it's the first thing you paint - our underpaintings were done using a the rub out technique - you'd basically draw only the shadows, using a large brush, or even a rag.

The next bit is where it gets interesting - once you're done with blocking in the shadows, *you never touch the shadows again*. His reasons were simple: No one ever pays attention to shadows, so don't worry about them.

There's some interesting ideas in this technique - for one - he's probably right. Secondly, shadows are supposed to retract - adding layers of paint would only make the shadows, "pop out", which isn't what you do.

I didn't take the prereq's of figure drawing, so I missed what the teacher had to say about drawing shadows, but I'd guess that painting shadows is similar to drawing them: don't take too much time in drawing the shadows - except to make sure they're there.

What I like about these pen and ink drawings is that, yes, you're blocking out light/shade, but the shade is what also communicates form - and not in simply the intensity (or lack of intensity) of the shadow - the lines themselves almost trace over the figure of the image. It's an optical illusion - almost.

There's plenty you can do to play with this technique - my favorite seems to work with the tight/loose diadic relationship of the light. I can make tight contour shading in the facial areas and get looser in other places.

These techniques and my technique is nothing new. I don't know why I've been working with pen and ink, except that I find pleasure in it. The vocabulary of pen and ink and the affects created seem very much displaced from how your eye actually perceives lightness, darkness, depth and highlight.

Data on computers is sometimes thought of as, "streams". You'd open a file much like you'd pour water into a glass. *

Disrupting this stream of data gives interesting results. To me, it's similar to what happens when a DJ speeds up, or slows down a record using their hands.

There are several ways to work with data on your computer in ways not expected by the developers of the software. This is usually known as, "Breaking the API" and such breakage can lead to what is known as, "Corruption".

Corruption has negative connotations. Not doing what you're told is an act of dissidence that, at frenzied times in history, is said to lead to a complete breakdown of society (anarchy).

Computers, like political organizations have safegaurds against such attempts. For a computer, a integrity check can be performed on a file, before it is read into a program. A corrupt file, when used can lead to more corruption, as the file interacts with other files via the file system - much like a cancerous cell.

Political organizations check the integrity of their citizens by making sure they follow closely a set of rules known as, "Laws". These laws aren't something the political organizations themselves have to follow. This creates a neat back door to, "make disappear " anything and anyone that is against the view of this organization.

For these images, the trick is to control the visual affect of the corruption, without having the detrimental affects of the physical corruption itself: keep the message, get rid of the corruption itself. It's far simpler than it sounds.

* Even though I've programmed for 8+ years, I probably don't know what I'm talking about. One does not need to know computer science to write computer programs. One does not need to know what one is talking about to write about art. That's why I like art.