Diary Of An Artist In A New World

iPhone Sketching

 

On Sunday I took the train up to Windsor, partially to see Saul, my sculptor friend, and also to try out mobile drawing, especially on my new iPhone. This little drawing is tv first result. While I had drawn and painted a few experiments back at the studio, this is the first true sketch outside. I love that the iPhone is so flexible that it allows sketching like this. The possibilities are endless, and I look forward to what I can do as I gain skill using it.

To highlight the abilities of the iPhone, this entire post is composed and published on the device.

Seeing Saul was great, but sadly, I was so tired when I returned, I managed to accidentally delete all 88 photos I had taken. Fortunately, my sketches were here on the iPhone.

My Brilliant Son

CONGRATULATIONS   LEIF

Leif has just won a state wide competition to design a cover for the TAFE student association diary for next year. Here it is:

Seeing Clearly

Busy times, creating a web site for classes, but it seemed to grow as I included all sorts of interesting things and it is taking forever, but will be worth it in the end.

Meanwhile I have also been quantifying my vision. Needed new glasses as the old ones literally fell apart and as part of the process I requested a field test to analyze some changes I had noticed over the last 12 months - a reduction in peripheral vision. Essentially it seemed only the rods were involved as it was noticeable only in light so low that no color is visible.

Computer Purgatory

Finally I can make posts on the Internet. It has been 2 days without a functional computer. It feels like I have been through the valley of death and while I am not entirely free of troubles yet, at least I can see the sun again finally.

I have a new computer. It is beautiful to use, but for a month it has been like setting up home in a new house. After what seemed like forever I was getting back to real work again making some pages for the web about my Sketch Club when disaster struck.

Suddenly I could no longer open Mail because I couldn't enter a password. Working out what was going on I soon discovered it was much worse than that. I had lost the use of my keyboard in my administrator account. It wasn't a hardware issue as I could log out and the keyboard worked fine in other accounts and I could log in by entering my password. Without the ability to enter a password one is cut off from life and work. It is a terrible feeling. I couldn't sleep through it all until I could see the solution in sight.

My Boys And Mothers Day

Saturday night I have my 5 boys in the studio for dinner. That is often hamburgers. Last Saturday I made spaghetti, Sicilian style, with mushrooms. Gian wasn't there for the food, he was working at MacDonalds but arrived after work to participate in the project for the night, which was a large Mothers Day Card.

Root Canal Therapy

Toothache

To have it out or not? that is the question --
Whether 'tis better for the jaws to suffer
The pangs and torments of an aching tooth,
Or to take steel against a host of troubles,
And, by extracting, end them? To pull, to tug!
No more: and by a tug to say we end
The tooth-ache, and a thousand natural ills
The jaw is heir to.

- W.

For me it was not to have it out but to save the tooth with root canal therapy and braving the anxious spasms of fear and surprise as this or that makes a noise. In the dentists surgery even the smallest noise becomes the snap of the twig that the soldier, all alone in the woods, hears magnified, and fears more than anything.

Ralph Dayman is a superb dentist with an unusual ability to instill calm in the over imaginative artist. It is a pleasure in some perverse way to, at such a vulnerable moment, be in the hands of a patron of the arts. In that spirit here are a few poems about dentists and teeth.

What I Am Reading At This Time

When asked "What are you reading now" people seem to get disappointed by "The news" as an answer, yet the unexciting truth is that the majority of my reading is the news. I always start with Google News, although I have to admit to configuring it so that science and tech news is the main part of it, then there is arts news, world news, and after that I have had enough.

I also find myself in encyclopedias and dictionaries every day, far more than I am reading books, I like to "look things up". I put it down to rampant curiosity. Other people, being polite say "inquisitive" when they and I both know they mean "a bit mad". It is okay, artists carry the cloak of madness with honor. Where the hint of insanity is problematic for most other professions, artists enjoy the notoriety.

Next come podcasts. Podcasts are my magazines, how I get the light forms of reading that are more about pleasure than anything else. My favorites are the scientific American podcast and This Week In Tech, usually called TWIT.

Last comes books, although I use the term loosely as all my "reading these days is done either in my computer, or in audible form on my iPod. My current book is on the iPod, it is called Cultural Amnesia by Clive James.

East Sydney Academy Of Art - Sydney Life Drawing And Sketch Club Art Class

Already it is the second term of art classes and sketch club. It hardly seems possible that time could go so fast. The classes are busy and have a wonderful buzz about the artists who come along. Some are just beginners and some are very experienced, but they all feel like part of a family. They probably don't realize that the principal reason I hold the classes is simply because of the joy I feel in seeing artists gathering with the model and each discovering their personal triumphs and frustrations as they take charcoal and chalk and pencil, watercolor and ink, and make marks on paper (whether perfect or imperfect) that reflect that deep human need to make sense of our world through making pictures.

Dealing With Anxiety At The Dentist

Root canal. The words strike irrational fear. Like snakes, we instinctively recoil from certain things. Dental work is one of them. I was at the dentist today, and root canal therapy was the agenda. I get very anxious. I was a victim of a country schools dental program in which there were dental nurses only - no dentists - and they drilled without anaesthetic. It was the country in the 1960's. Boys displaying courage was more important than spending money on anaesthetics. The only encouragement consisted of being told that only girls cry and be still. Now I would never go to any dentist voluntarily unless there is great pain.

Stargazing

Tonight Saturn is so very bright and strongly yellow in the northern sky. I don't remember it being so bright before. In the city I don't use a telescope in recent years. I cannot escape bright street lights at the studio. Years ago when Pablo was young and Leif was an infant we put together a 6 inch reflecting telescope. I painted Johansen & Sons on the tube. That was in Cairns. I remember the first time we saw Saturn in the telescope. We found it low in the eastern sky. It was the strangest sight. The rings were nearly edge on and it looked like a ball with a nail through it.

New Baby Arrives - 6.8lbs (3.08kg)

Isn't it beautiful? A brand new 17inch Macbook Pro laptop with high resolution screen. All shiny aluminum. It represents new possibilities and long months saving up. The zen-like simplicity of the machine barely hints at the power beneath. 2.5GHz Penryn Core 2 Duo processor, 4GB RAM, Nividia GeForce 8600M GT video card with 512MB of GDDR3 memory, 250GB hard drive. Most desktops aren't that powerful. Pure geek heaven.

Real Refusés XII

The afternoon was busy with hanging and dealing with the difficulties artists present hanging crews. It seems many artists think that somehow magic is involved in holding an artwork on a wall because sometimes there is no easy way to get excessively heavy, warped, and poorly constructed "stretchers" hung in any kind of professional looking manner.

Miracles are necessary. A little swearing sometimes helpful. But some how, some way, the last of the paintings were hung just as the first visitors arrived. Just enough time to quickly change into a suit and get presentable for the show.

My role from there is to greet visitors and speak. Lesley welcomed everyone, then I did a small talk and thanked everyone and then introduced our official opener - alternative media publisher Lawrence Gibbons.

At the exhibition opening visitors vote for the Peoples Choice award. This year it was a thousand dollars donated by a lawyer who likes life drawing and remaining anonymous. Her generosity is appreciated by all.

The Wait For The New Computer

Photographed in isolation like this it doesn't look like much does it but that is the new Penryn processor I was waiting for. It is the first of the new generation of processors made with the new 45 nanometer technology. I know some people find it hard to get excited about that but I find it fascinating that this chip now has 500 million transistors and that 100 of them could fit inside a human cell. 45 nanometers is small. Very small. The wavelength of red light is 700 nanometers, and the shortest light - violet is 400 nanometers. 45 nanometers is way smaller than the wavelength of visible light. The most powerful optical microscopes can see down to only a thousand nanometers. 45 nanometers is very very small.

So whats the big deal? Well besides more power from fitting on more transistors it is far more efficient and uses less power. That means more battery life. It seems like I hung out forever for these new processors to come along. Well they did - at the end of last month and the new Macbook Pro's included another option I was wanting - LED back-lit screens in the Hi-Res display I wanted. They also included a multi-touch track pad like on the Macbook Air, although that seems more gimmick than necessary.

My Friend Clarence

Dr Clarence Rainwater was my friend. He was my best friend. He died recently not long after his 88th birthday. Over a few months whenever I phoned him I could see his decline. He would repeat himself and at times was confused and toward the end found difficulty in relating a voice on the phone with someone he knew well. I spoke with him 4 times while he was in hospital. It seemed to me he was getting better, but then the next time I tried to ring I discovered that he had died.

I first met Clarence in the late 1980's in Cairns. He was interested in drawing, I was running a sketch club. I soon discovered he was a wonderful artist with the camera. I loved his individuality, his love of books, his love of fascinating things like crystals and old microscopes and cameras. I built his darkroom for him at Boden Street at the end of his garage. He gave me a Graphlex camera in return for it. I also bought a Speed Graphic from him. We generally spent Tuesday nights together talking science and philosophy and art. In the country it is rare to find someone really interesting to interact with.

Launching A New Art Newz Web Site

Over the3 last couple of days I have been preparing my latest web site. It is a sister to my popular Gatherr web site and has the same minimalist look appearance and a very simplified format. It is called Arty Newz.