Here’s a little advertisement for those of you who live in the Bay Area. Neil and I have a booth at the Alternative Press Expo this year. We’ll be selling posters and fine art prints of Neil’s artwork for very reasonable prices. The location is at 620 7th Street in San Francisco. There’s more information about parking, other exhibitors, and other details at the APE website. Please come by and say hi, and maybe buy something if you feel so inclined!
October 29, 2008
October 28, 2008
A little Challenge
I’ve experienced a small tectonic shift in the past few days. Our plumbing issue, which I haven’t mentioned here, has been taken care of. The contractors that have forced me to move my car at 7:30 AM have, for the most part, moved on. And it looks like I’m going back to work next week. Also, I finished the drawing displayed in the last post, I finished a baby sweater I was making for a friend (I am kicking myself for not photographing it), and the computer migration is pretty much complete. So I’ve been relatively productive. It’s time for a new challenge.
I am going to attempt to make a post every day for the month of November. I’m participating in something called National Blog Post Month (NaBloPoMo). I’m mostly going to try and post drawings. Nothing as elaborate as the crumpled paper. Sometimes it might be very crude. But even if I don’t get a drawing done, I’ll at least post a few words every day.
So for my readers, all five of you, this should be a little something to look forward to. New content! Every day! Yay!
October 23, 2008
Back to Basics
I decided to get back to basics, and I’ve spent the past few days working on this charcoal drawing of a crumpled piece of paper. I saw this as kind of a boring exercise, but when I would sit down to draw I would find myself absorbed in the task. I used a technique where I laid down a thick layer of vine charcoal and then used a kneaded eraser to create the white parts. I’m not quite sure how I feel about it. I guess it’s good. I’m not sure what I’ll go on to next.
October 22, 2008
Comments
October 18, 2008
Interesting Article on (artistic) Genius
Malcolm Gladwell has an interesting article in the New Yorker this week. It’s about Genius, or what we consider genius to be. Generally the world tends to equate genius with youth. Guys like Picasso and Mozart get a lot of attention, because their artwork pours out of them early in life, fully formed.
But there are other, equally successful artists who take years and years to produce successful, “genius”-level works of art. Cezanne, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Alfred Hitchcock are a few of these. These are considered to be “Late bloomers”. Their genius does not arrive on the scene as dramatically as that of the first category, and so it’s not as exciting. They reach their successes after years of experimentation and struggle.
The article is long, and encouraging to folks like me, who like to believe that great things are possible with a lot of hard work and discipline.
(via kottke)
October 17, 2008
Hike to Barnabe Peak
So, there are contractors doing all sorts of work on our house this week. Having guys hammering on the house all day makes me crazy, so I decided to get out yesterday and go for a hike. I consulted one of my hiking books and chose to do the hike to Barnabe’s Peak via Bill’s Trail in Samuel P. Taylor State Park. It was about 1200 vertical feet but Bill’s Trail is so graded with switchbacks that you barely feel the ascent. It’s a slow, meandering hike through dense forest with lots of ferns and quiet all around. The ascent was about 4 miles up. I took the fire road down; it was only a 2.1 mile descent. More steep than the ascent, but much quicker. I’ve attached a few photos here, but if you want to see more, visit this page here on flickr. The hike was excellent. As I was driving to the park a part of my brain was saying, “you shouldn’t be doing this, you should be home, getting chores done…” but I kept going. After I parked and got onto the trail, all my worries about the outside world fell away and I enjoyed the quiet, shadowy forest world. My only concerns were what sort of critter was lurking in the bushes, and whether or not I’d make it to the summit and back down before dinner. I did the hike in about 3 hours 15 minutes, and that was moving at a slow, easy pace with lots of stops for water, taking photos, and just enjoying the view.
October 16, 2008
Cutting Through the Red Tape
You know what would be great? If I could bill entities like credit card companies, insurance companies, and utility companies for the time I spend working out problems I have with them. I can’t begin to tell you how much of my day is spent dealing with entities that throw as much red tape as they can so that I will just give up and throw money at them. If I could bill these people for my time, I bet things would be a LOT easier.
October 7, 2008
New Computer Blues
I bought a new computer a while ago. I bought it sort of secondhand (it’s a long story), and I bought it long enough ago that the computer isn’t really all that new anymore. I probably bought it close to a year ago. I finally got around to installing an operating system on the thing in June of this year. And today I finally migrated my e-mail, installed some antivirus software, and am getting around to installing all of the various software that I will be needing. I’m finally making the transition to the new computer.
Believe it or not, this is only the second computer I’ve ever really owned. There was that Mac that Marco gave me, but I never really used it as much as I had intended. I purchased my first computer in 2002 with my own hard-earned money, and it has served me well for a long time. But lately it’s been showing its age. I’ve outgrown the single processor, and the single gigabyte of ram. And it seems like a phantom of some sort has posessed the cd tray. It will periodically freak out and open and close and open and close and open and close and open and close and open and close and open and close on its own, repeatedly, for no good reason. And let’s admit it: I’ve got a lot of crap in there. It’s time to move house, and it’s a time to throw out a lot of old junk and get the junk I want to keep in order.
I hate this process. It goes on for a long time. It takes a while to get settled into a new computer, just as it takes a while to feel comfortable in a new home. I ended the day feeling like I hadn’t accomplished very much. But now that I think about it, migrating my e-mail, installing antivirus software, and installing my printer drivers is a pretty big step. Migrating my e-mail alone is huge. Now that my e-mail lives on the new computer and not the old one, the new computer is now my main computer. It’s like when you move, and you get your bed set up in your new place. When that happens, that’s it. You sleep where your bed is.
And speaking of sleep, it’s time for me to get some.
October 6, 2008
Pre-coffee
This morning I got out of my bed in a semi-zombie state, as I usually do. I took this as inspiration for a quick self-portrait. This is me before I’ve had my coffee.