Restoration

Image © PeteM2010
Having completed another block of work, I felt it was time for a change of scenery so after Friday’s class I headed south to Phillip Island for a few days. Fresh air, serious cooking, good wine and general debauchery were what were needed to relieve my suffering brain from art overload.


However, as the final block’s video theme had already been announced there was no escape from brainstorming possible solutions.  One thing is coming up with novel ideas, quite another to execute them. Lack of technical know-how and experience, let alone artistic ability, caused mayhem with my circadian rhythm during the last video production. Not to be repeated! 

Funny, isn’t it, a few intense sessions in the kitchen accompanied by good company and pinot noir and all that pain is forgotten.  Whilst ruminating, a story line evolved for the new video, but this time a few test shots will be done well before I get too involved developing the idea further. 

Collograph

Printmaking has been fascinating - very messy, but fascinating. From work-intensive dry point to spontaneous one-off monotype – all new techniques to explore, learn and have some fun with. Tried a few different methods of printing the collograph, but still prefer this basic print: 

Image © PeteM2010

I tried to extend the print further in Photoshop. Made a few attempts and have now posted them on a  web page: my collographs.

Found it satisfying playing with HTML, CSS and JavaScript again, quite another art form.

Power Outage

It was a wintry, windy, stormy day when I was spending endless and less than fruitful hours on the “Dream” video. Progress was severely hampered by technical problems, which proved more and more insurmountable. 

Not unexpectedly, we lost power and from past experience, it could be many hours or possibly days before power would be restored. The open fire was lit, candles and torches gathered and it was time for other activities. Time, I thought to revisit the “Ear, Nose and Mouth” drawings. However on viewing my efforts to date, there was little evidence of enthusiasm or passion in the work. They rather reminded me of my school days, when I had detention for some misdemeanour or other and had to write 50 lines on the blackboard before being let out.

There was only one thing to do. I decided to end the misery and unceremoniously committed the drawings to the pyre.

Staring into the flames greedily consuming my artworks must have stimulated my otherwise waning creative powers, because rapidly and overwhelmingly a new video storyboard took shape in my mind’s eye. I got so carried away that after some time I burst out aloud: “I GOT IT!” My poor suffering muse was scared witless by my sudden outburst and the startled dog started barking. Nothing like a peaceful evening in front of the fire!  

As for my drawings – well they will just have to wait for another creative raptus.

PASTICHE

I have played in the past with the Wacom tablet in Photoshop for fixing up photos, mainly dodging, burning and refining selections, but drawing – that‘s something new.

Image © PeteM2010

Haven’t found it easy to get the painterly or drawing effects I try to emulate, but that may come as I keep experimenting. The plethora of brush settings and adjustments are just mind-boggling.

To improve my “Wacom skills”, I decided to attempt the Giacometti, Jawlensky, Auerbach and Picasso assignment purely in Photoshop. We were supposed to allocate 30 - 40 minutes per drawing, but at my working pace, hours passed by. Learnt a lot though even if the final results bear little evidence of the time spent. 

Pastiche - a literary, musical, or artistic piece consisting wholly or chiefly of motifs or techniques borrowed from one or more sources.

Photoshop Tutorials

Image © PeteM2010

The Photoshop portrait assignment has been a great challenge and learning experience. The Internet tutorials are by and large well written and not too difficult to follow, but --- most are done on images a lot smaller than ours.

So, although some of the images end up somewhat similar to the finished tutorials, many do not! There’s been a fair amount of fiddling with Photoshop settings, which has for me produced interesting and often quite unintended results. Part of the fun!

Flash

Photoshop, After Effects, Premiere Pro and Flash are all supposed to work together seamlessly - or so the advertising blurb tells us. Putting it  into practice has not proved to be quite so straight forward. Anyhow, this is the result of todays Flash experimentation:



  I coded (AS3) a stop button into the animation - the repetition can get a bit testing!!

(File size about 130Kb - takes a few moments to load)

May not load in Internet Explorer - use FireFox , Safari or any other W3C compliant browser!

Illusion/illusion

Illusion/illusion is a group exhibition at McClelland Gallery and Sculpture Park developed around the theme of visual perception and deception. Through the work of four young contemporary artists, Briele Hansen, Justine Khamara, Dorota Mytych and Kit Webster, the exhibition exploits a full range of multi-media disciplines, ranging from photography and drawing, to video display systems and digital video projections. The exhibition explores contemporary themes ranging from social commentary to the enjoyment of pure abstraction. (Abstract from gallery web-site)

Dorota Mytych – Tea-leaf reading 2 (Video):

Still image from artists web-site

Spent all morning exploring the works, re-visiting the works, deconstructing the works and unreservedly enjoying the works. It took considerable time to fully appreciate the fine details and to participate in some of the video presentations, but wow, it was time very well spent. Go and enjoy! (Unfortunately – photography NOT allowed)