New Flyer for April 4 show at the Viking

Struggling for ideas, poor internet connection today so I gave up perusing images online. Resorted to adapting one of my original paintings for a new flyer design. Added the cat and the fish skeleton. Cropped the painting image down to an essential core. Lightened up the tone of the blue cat and added pink framed sunglasses to give it character and lighten the feeling since the background is rather somber.

A success despite a world of trouble

The following Saturday night we played at the Viking, a much better experience, the sound system was better and we had a different drummer, well drummers actually, that is a whole other story. We fired our drummer on the day of a significant gig. We managed to line up other drummers to get us through the night, the first drummer we got lined up couldn't make it for the first set, thus we recruited a second. Both drummers were notably better than what we'd had, they also knew how to play at an appropriate volume and use dynamics to fit with the band rather than continually swamping us in loud smashing drums so that we could not hear each other. So we made it through a stressful situation and are better for it. Though nervous about how things might turn out, at the end of the night the bar owner paid us more than he had agreed on before the night began so I guess he was happy enough. This is the flyer I made for this event. Mostly recycling the previous design with some minor alterations. I am hoping to come up with a new design for out next show, April 4th.

Saint Patties Day Weekend

I have continued working with the design. In this case I have modified the color scheme to be appropriate for St. Patties Day. I made the leopard pattern and the frame green, then with much cringing I inserted a couple of shamrocks, they seem inherently cheesy but nothing relates the event to the holiday more clearly or easily than these symbols. I hope I don't get my "artistic license" revoked! 

Checked in with the manager/owner? of  Red Dog, he wanted a banner to say "live" or something to indicate that it is a live performance event since a record is in the image.  Other minor changes as well. 

Music is art too!

It has been a while since I have found time to work on technology art skills. I've been busy with music lately. In fact I/we have resurected a band that we had a few years ago, The ChillKats, named after our local mountain range the Chilkat mountains.

So we had an audition at the Viking on thursday night, he liked us well enough to hire us for the only two saturday nights he has open before three of us disperse to the field for our various summer work projects. Yesterday I learned that the owner of the Red Dog was also at the Viking that night and he wants to hire us for next Saturday night, a pre St. Patties day event. So I guess the music thing is just starting to take off then we will have all summer to think about our musical direction after we get our fill of the blues.

I got the job of coming up with poster art for our fliers and also a band logo. I began by working on the most immediate need. A poster to advertise for next weekend. 

So I'm trying to work with the themes implied by the band name, CHILL; hey there's a snow flake, a COOL looking one no less, and  a cool color. KATS; there is the center scardy cat and also the very groovy leopard pattern round  the outside. It is all about music remember, and vintage music is what we are doing, from the days of ALBUMS, hey does something look reminiscent of a record in this image? See that spindle hole at center? I have combined the elements into a kind of psychedelic mandala. There you go, not much left for the imagination, except maybe some crazy ghost writing that you probably can't detect with this resolution.

Little girl pink or little boy blue for the center banner? hummmmm... 

The show must go on!

The show has begun. Most of the class arrived at the Juneau Arts and Humanities Center at 9 a.m. Thursday the day before the opening. We persevered through a power outage, due to a heavy snow storm, to get the show up on the walls. Luckily the power came on after an hour or so. It helped greatly being able to see what we were doing.

I made some adjustments to earlier works to present in the show. These are the three pieces. 

A good turn-out at the opening. An interesting ceramics display in the main gallery room. Our show occupied the wide hallway. Not a bad space. We filled the available space with over 20 pieces (counting Cathy's matrix of 9 small individual ipod designs as one piece). All of the work is good and shows a wide variety of styles.  John Fehringer did not show work because the technology back-fired on him. The hard drive containing work he planned to print and show decided to exhibit its own artistic temperment and refused to divulge the masterworks stored within.  At the show John busied himself setting out large plates of cheeses and crackers, cookies etc . I conclude from this that perhaps the way to a mans ART is through his stomach.

We each posted our artists statement next to our works. 

The weekly paper "the hooligan" carried a full spread on the various art happenings about town for the gallery walk and December. One of my paintings was displayed on the page along with about 5 other works from other shows. Ironically, they displayed a piece that I didn't even put in the show, also they included the wrong title and a production process that was for a different work. Oh well, just details  suppose.

Refining earlier works

There is nothing like looking back at works from weeks ago to see attributes you wish were different. Unlike our lives, digital art can be changed!

I have increased clarity to the main face in "Dale works late" by adding another layer on top and copying in the original photo, well not the original but an un-cloned version. I then inverted a selection of the face and the pencil and deleted all but. I then softened the edges of remaining selections using an eraser with only 10% opacity.  I also used transform to both shrink and enlarge the various hovering duplicate faces. 

In the "Crazy Dance" I reduced the opacity of the top layer which was partially bucket painted so that more of the original painting shows through. I also redrew some lines that looked too broken and sketchy. Some other minor changes. This one I am fine tuning for our class show that is happening this Friday 12/5/2008 (the gallery walk) at the Juneau Arts and Humanities Center. 

Ends are also beginnings

(Photoshop=PS, Painter X=PX)
As the 'Technology and Art' class draws to a close I hope that Art will continue on. That all of us find the time and inspiration to continue to learn and create. Time is always the biggest problem. Though this is my second time taking essentially the same course I never felt that I was wasting my time. From each class I seemed to pick up something new or get reminded of things that I had not mastered the first time.

I am improving my abilities to use both PS and PX on works and sometimes go back and forth. I find that PS is excellent for doing preliminary work with photos, cropping, light dark adjustments, transforms, and selections. After these processes, PX is a powerful fine- art tool box which I have barely opened. I mostly keep going for pastel brushes so far.

I have been using my cheap home scanner for getting sketches digitized so that I can work with them in both PS and PX. The quality of the scan hardly matters since I merely want a rough layout sketch that I can work over.

Like anything sophisticated, PS and PX will require practice to increase abilities and to learn to work fluidly which is something I now struggle with. When using real materials it is satisfying to work very rapidly when in the mood. The technology is still often a stumbling block in this. I know practice will be the solution.

I will keep a look-out for ideas and will try to make something of them. This will be a means of getting my practice time in. Though digital projects are fun in their own right, and I will find many uses for these skills, I am still thinking that ultimately I want to use this technology to do studies for creating tangible paintings; half paint, half sweat with occasional finger prints. Elements the virtual creations lack. Perhaps these are romantic notions I will out- grow and I will ultimately become a digital artist. These are thoughts I struggle with. Working digitally is easier to set- up to work, the work can go faster, it is far less messy, it is far more flexible-if only my real paint brush had an undo button!

I would love to think of a way to earn some income using art; perhaps a second career. Real painting is probably not a way to do that, especially with my bent for abstraction which is not marketable. Clearly digital art technology is the fast road to commercial art applications.

As a part of my ongoing art practice I am thinking I will continue to make entries into this blog. It makes a useful reservoir of efforts including exercises with new techniques and tools. My notes are helpful reminders to myself and may be useful to others. It is also fun to have interested friends look at the site.