Project LV One – Day 18

Posted on May 12, 2014 by Guthlac

Heads - 11

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Project LV One – Day 17 – thinking about last year

Posted on May 10, 2014 by Guthlac

Heads

Choices and decisions.  This is the whole point of life – we all make choices whether we want to or not – our lives are resplendent in them and the we have to learn to live with the results.  One of the decisions I have had to make is about my 2013 year book – just what images should I use?

I have a pile of sketch books,  paintings and other artistic endeavour’s I made during 2013 just waiting to sift through to make the best representation as to what I was creating in 2013.  All well and good but any image I capture of the analogue images will by definition be an image I would have created in 2014 – especially as I was will no doubt post produce the image to meet my current tastes.   Just how do I get around this?   Well the decision I have made is to just use digital images of analogue work I made in 2013.  This will restrict the work that I could include but at least each of the images will have actually been made in 2013.  It, however, has the bonus of saving a lot of time and effort as I will only have to choose from just over 500 images – far more manageable.

This image demonstrates what I am talking about.  Both of the images were created in 2013 yet I have chosen combine them in 2014.  I have also post produced them as well so this images is a 2014 image and reflects how I felt this evening about the combination.  They were not made to be combined and I only decided to combine them as a result of looking at my 2013 images this evening.  Choices and Decisions made in 2014.

Let the river flow.

 

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Project LV One – Day 16…a bit late

Posted on May 10, 2014 by Guthlac

Jands and Feet

A bit of an up and down day yesterday – which meant I didn’t get around to post the latest image – and the world keeps spinning around!   Anyway I’m up to my knees in Medieval abbeys Genoan wool traders so I got a bit distracted.  In the middle of all this I went to my weekly art class.  This time as opposed to creating mountains of paper I just file away and forget I’m going to do all the work in one of my large sketch books – it makes things a whole lot manageable.

 

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Project LV One – Day – 15 – Friends Life Woman’s Cycle Race

Posted on May 8, 2014 by Guthlac

20140508-IMG_1948 - Freinds Life Womans Cycle Race - Enderby 20140508-IMG_1952 - Freinds Life Womans Cycle Race - Enderby

Today was one of those very occasional days, when I wish I still had all my very expensive photographic gear.  The inaugural Friends Life Woman’s Cycle Race passed nearby to me today and I thought I would brave the elements and have a look.  For those of you who have never seen a cycle race in the flesh you haven’t missed much.  If ever a sport was made for TV then cycling road racing is just that.   The riders zip by you in a blink of an eye and then that is that you haven’t got a clue what is happening and what the significance of any of the rider is.   This is why you need fast responding equipment with fast lens to boot. Cycle racing is great to watch on TV just not in the flesh unless there is a reason to do that.  Which brings me back to today.

This week saw the first running of the Friends Life Woman’s Cycle Race.  This race is apparently the only stage road race for women – whether that is true is another matter – but that was what I think the promoted said last night.  Anyway, this was something unique and something worth braving the rain to see.  So how to capture the action?  This is when the longing for times past came in.  I had the choice of an iPhone or a Canon G1x – neither were really that good at capturing quick action.  I chose the Canon and as I stood at the side of the road awaiting the arrival of the bikes I suddenly realised that I didn’t really know who to use this camera for sports action.  After some hasty flicking through the menu I just couldn’t get it to shoot on continuous mode.  So one snap at a time.

Are the image any good – not sure but at least I can say I was there – the day the cycle race zip through my area in a blink of an eye.

Drive… like a pray

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So just what is a photograph any more?

Posted on May 7, 2014 by Guthlac

Anna Hathaway - Variations- small

I no longer have a clue what a photograph is anymore…I really don’t.  In the past it was fairly straight forward and usually had something to do with film or other media used to capture the image.  Nowadays that distinction just doesn’t work.   Yes you can still captured an image using analogue methodology but it will almost certainly end up being digitised and then … well it is an image.

A case in point are these two variations I made on the digital painting of Anne Hathaway I have been working on over the past couple of days.   The original painting was made in the digital environment so it doesn’t really fit the description of a photograph.  Yet the work I undertook to create the image is no different to that which I would have done if I had captured the image using a lens – so perhaps it is a photograph after all?  Or are my photographs no longer photographs – if this is the case then no photograph worked on in a dark room is a photograph and so we had all better pack up right now.

Of course things get even more confusing when you consider the two images above.  Both of these have been created by using exactly the same photo apps that I use to produce images captured on my iPhone.  Does this now make them a photograph as they were manipulated digital images? (almost images captured using a camera obscura in one sense)

So am I a photographer or digital artist or both?  I no longer feel the barriers between these distinct approaches to making images is worth a fig.   To prove this consider this image, it was a ink, chalk and graphite sketch, captured and manipulated using an iPhone – just how would this be classified?

IMG_001460

In the end who cares – I don’t but there are an awful lot of people who do – otherwise organisations such as the Royal Photographic Society would cease to exist.   It is so confusing.

 

A design for life.

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Project LV One – Day 14

Posted on May 7, 2014 by Guthlac

AH 06 - small

Well I think this is it and at the moment I feel really happy with what I have done which is unusual as most of the time after I have finished I somewhat doubt what I have done.

 

 

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Measuring Progress – Anne Hathaway

Posted on May 7, 2014 by Guthlac

Anne Hathaway - Small

Another hour or so working on the Anne Hathaway portrait and time to take stoke.   To help this process along here is the current portrait I’m working compared to one I made last year.  The first thing to say is that the photographs that both were based on must have been taken either side of Ms Hathaway’s Oscar winning performance in Les Misérables.  The second is that the previous painting was much more straight forward whereas the latest version is heading towards a much more romantic, almost neo classical, style.  Now this interesting in that it was not what I intended but just developed as I worked on the painting.  I’m not sure whether the painting is completed yet – I need to cogitate on this a bit more.

Dance away the heart ache.

 

 

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Project LV One – Day 13 – Anne Hathaway

Posted on May 6, 2014 by Guthlac

AH 03

Not sure if she is finished but I like the way things are going.   See how I feel tomorrow.

Go West

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Anne Hathaway – a new project

Posted on May 6, 2014 by Guthlac

AH 01 - small

Itches are a very powerful things.   The urge to scratch them can be irresistible and yet some times you just can’t.  I had that experience this morning when I saw a photograph of the wonderful actress Anne Hathaway – I just had to make a drawing of her – I have no idea why but the itch had to be scratched.  However, I resisted for so long and then I just gave in – this is the result of an hour’s work.

 

 

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Project LV One – Day 12 – Colour and Ink…Vistas and Change

Posted on May 5, 2014 by Guthlac

Colour and Ink

Today has been a bit of back to the future as I had to dust down my old lap top and set it up for a meeting I’m have next week.  This might seem taking preparation to an extreme but I had several things I needed to sort out on the machine and I wanted to make sure it would work.

The first problem was would it start? The machine is circa 2007 and hasn’t been used for at least 6 months.  However, once it was plugged in – the battery was always a bit dodgy – away it went with the old familiar clunks and sounds of spinning as the hard drive sprung into life.    After 10 minutes, yes it really was that long, the Windows Vista OS settled down and appeared to be very stable.  I had switched the WLAN off so as to not get bothered by any updates I might be due and the machine seemed better for that.

The next problem was how to port a huge Adobe Illustrator file created on an Apple into an old Windows environment.  The first step was to reduce the size considerably which wasn’t too problematic.  Then save it onto a SD card and then open the file on the lap top.   This seemed to go quite well until it came to backward compatibility.  Up popped the dialogue box    warning that this might not go as planned, my words not the softwares.   Sure enough it didn’t and whilst the file opened it had put all the layers into one group – which was an unmitigating disaster.   Back to the drawing board.

Eventually I solved the problem by saving the file on the iMac into a more compatible version and things worked really well.  As a back up I also saved the file as a PDF and this seemed to be working ok.   So far so good.  The next step was creating an Access database on the laptop from a CSV I had exported out of FileMaker Pro.

Now for many years I was a bit of a wizard with Access.  I had mastered Visual Basic and could make Access produce some impressive results.  However, the last time I worked on an Access database was way before I had switched to Apple so, to say the least, I was rusty.  However, once I had got into swing of things all the old memories came flooding back and the final result, whilst very fundamental when it came to data management, at least looked quite slick.   I have to say the design interface of Access is far superior to the scatter brain approach of FileMaker.   I guess if I could bothered to sit down and really teach myself FileMaker I might change my views – perhaps.

So things didn’t take as long as I thought and the problems were manageable. Actually as a stand alone computer the lap top is really good.  Yes it is slow to start up and I wouldn’t like to do too much video editing on it but apart from that it does everything you might want from a laptop.  However, I guess if a switched on the LAN then things might get a whole more complicated as all those updates try and screw the machine up.  No best leave the internet alone and instead use the iPhone and iPad.

I have also come to some form of resolution about the way my art should move forward.   I’m going to abandon my attempts to master painting on a large scale.  Instead I intend to work in the  more intimate environment of my sketch books with ink, water colours and gouache.  I really suits the way I enjoy making art.

 

Anchors Awiegh

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