http://sketchbookphotosshotjanuary2013.shutterfly.com/

http://sketchbookphotosshotjanuary2013.shutterfly.com/ – a few more photo of the sketchbooks taken today. I used the 1000 watt light (it’s really two 500 watt halogen bulbs) to light it. I think that helped the white get a bit more white than the last batch. This is a continuation of the sketchbook shot in the last batch and the start of a second one. These sketchbooks were mostly from college and a few years after that. Some of the portraits in them are actually of people I quickly did sketches of at various summer jobs during college, etc. I didn’t get a bunch done in this round of photos since that 1000 watt light is extremely hot. The wall near where the light was sitting as I shot these was still hot to the touch about 15 minutes after I turned the light off! I can’t do extended several hour long photo shoots with that light in that enclosed of a space. It’s too dangerous as a fire hazzard and also a danger on my health since it really drains me standing about two feet from that light as I shoot these sketches.

After I get a lot of these sketchbooks uploaded, I probably won’t do a bunch more unless I scan them or photograph them as I create them… something I didn’t do much in the past, which is why there’s such a big backlog.

I suspect a bunch of work in the near future will actually start digital and stay digital most of the way through since I recently got got an android tablet for Christmas and just in the last week or so installed Sketchbook Pro on it as an ‘early’ birthday gift. I’m starting to learn to love that app…

Notice some of the ‘yellow’ on the backside of the sketches… I suspect that ballpoint pen ink does that since it’s acidic even though the pages of the paper is non-acidic. Scary stuff. Makes me really glad that I’m actually taking the time to start shooting some of these before they decay even more in a few decades because of that type of thing.

Advertisement

http://january2013scanphotographartetc.shutterfly.com/

http://january2013scanphotographartetc.shutterfly.com/ – link to a little bundle of pics I uploaded to shutterfly tonight. Most of them are ancient sketchbooks from the late 1990s, but the acrylic paintings, encaustic paintings and photos are very recent stuff.

I might crop some of them and put them here on the blog later. Some of them are multiples of the same image because I like to shoot several pics of one work and pick the best of them with fewest blurs, bad contrast, etc. for various things. I’m not sure – I may have scans of some of these somewhere in the blog already?… Oh well, multiple images of the same thing isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Lighting was not very good on many of these… I was using interior lighting and that’s never good for shooting art. It’s too cold to go outside, and I don’t trust the wind outside when shooting photos of artwork on paper since paper tends to catch in the wind too easily. A few years back (a couple of months before we moved out of Boonville) I did try to shoot a bunch of artwork outside and a lot of it got caught in a big gust of wind. The same day a wind gust knocked over the tripod and busted the screw connector at the bottom of the camera that was on the tripod at the time. That poor camera finally died on me about a month ago or so… it’s had a hard life. I haven’t thrown it out yet in hopes that maybe it will get some life again someday… (I think something’s gone wrong with the battery connection or something).

Shooting photos of art is much faster than trying to scan them. I also scanned a bunch of my ‘morning pages’ today from the last year or so. I have not consistently done that every day, but there’s still a heck of a pile of paper. I probably won’t publish that to the public since there’s a lot of private thoughts on it… but might upload it somewhere secure for a backup like in email or google docs. Scanning those is not super time consuming since I’m going on very low resolution of 100 dpi or so for the scans since there isn’t any real big drawing/painting to it even if there’s a sketch or two here and there from dream scapes I tried to outline the architecture of, etc. Many of my dreams have a very architectural feel for them… various locations tie in together in various ways with hallways, placements of architectural elements, etc. It can sometimes get intricate in how I try to detail my ‘morning pages’/diary or whatever you want to call it because of that… Jung had archetypes. I have archetypes and architecture that those archetypes act in. All the world’s a stage…

#legacy

#legacy
If you don’t want stuff online – don’t put it online… If you enjoy life as a curmudgeon with no social interaction with anyone on the internet, stay offline. If you enjoy life, sharing, and friendship, go ahead and get online and share your life stories with everyone.

In other words, SOCIAL NETWORKS exist for BEING SOCIAL…

If you don’t like your pics shared on facebook, don’t put them on facebook and other websites, including but not limited to studio photos websites, youtube, photo sharing sites, etc.. If you want them shared, put them online. If you want to privately share them with one individual, email exists… Anything on facebook has a link to share next to it, even if your privacy setting is set to private – SO DON’T THINK SOME SILLY LITTLE PRIVACY SETTING WILL MAKE THINGS COMPLETELY PRIVATE AND NEVER PUBLIC – doing so you are fooling yourself — much like someone who wants to protect their money by putting it in a pillow case or something – that’s the first place people look… If you do put them on websites and want to limit who can see them, password protect them and only share the password with who you want to see them… however, after they lose the password, or you do, don’t expect to ever see them again since they are basically buried in an online dusty ol closet… from dust to dust… photos that are never seen are no good since art exists only when there is a viewer of what is created. Photos never seen are like phone calls that are made in to a cell phone that is turned off. Even passwords are not 100% effective in protecting things… ANYTHING ON THE INTERNET IS CONNECTED TO SOMETHING ELSE ON THE INTERNET… As long as there is anything online it can potentially be seen by someone someday. It may take a hacker a little while to get your password figured out, but someday, as long as the server exists and someone can try to get it they will get at it… for some breaking passwords is much like solving crossword puzzles… it’s a hobby. Your little password isn’t going to stop someone that really wants what your password is protecting, just like a glass window isn’t going to stop a burglar from breaking in even if it has a siren on it.

Matthew 5:15 Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. …. When lamps are put under beds or in dusty old closets they tend to burn blankets, clothes, etc. after a while. All photography is a form of capturing light… lights typically come from light sources such as lamps. This little light of mine – I’m gonna make it shine…

One reason that I like things to be public is because it’s kind of nice to know that someone someday may see that I existed here that may never have known of me before… a legacy is created… words of wisdom passed on to next generations. Images of our lives are made to have a meaning that is passed on down in our culture hundreds of years from now after the hard drive on whatever computer I’m using today is long dead and gone… but backups of photos and statements and ideas are all out there on multiple servers backed up for the many or even just one to eventually find.

If the afterlife does not exist (I think it might just exist personally, but sometimes I, like everyone else question it), all we have is this life. It’s a short, fragile thing… It’s definitely worth sharing with others, don’t you think? Have you started creating your legacy yet? Isn’t it time?

workout and weird dreams…

Last night Tekla and I worked out with Power 90 tape for the first time. We are off to a nice start! Hope to keep it up. I’m really glad she’s working out with me. It is so much easier to stay on course when you have a great workout partner. Together we are going to Kick ass and take names.

I had a weird dream about 3:30 or so this morning. I journaled about it… Then tried to go back to bed since REM time was broken by it, but laid in bed about an hour and a half never fully falling asleep. I did have the bipap machine on though so got some rest, just could not sleep too deeply after that.

Lots of odd bits and pieces to that dream… I might write more about it someday, but for now, I’ll just say part of it involved “G-I-N-G-WHORE” being sung to the tune of B-I-N-G-O in reference to someone named Ginger…

I did a little more writing this morning, but am not doing the midi keyboard practice this morning since I feel like I need a full night of good rest to take that on.

Day 2

We didn’t do the Power 90 last night… and I also didn’t do any art. I did go in to the ‘art room’ last night… which is our second bedroom which is currently used as a storage room in half of it and I have a few tables set up for art in the other part of it. It was extremely cold as we have it blocked off to keep the cold air from the rest of the apartment to save on heating costs, etc. I tried to set up an encaustic painting area, but got a major headache. I played around with taking the feet off of a skillet in there since they are partly broken. I re-arranged quite a few things… However, after that I think the stress from being in there mixed with the cold and the thoughts of how little I’ve been in there, etc. just sort of gave me a migrane headache… I was in there a couple of hours probably, just re-arranging things… shortly after I left the room Tekla got home since she worked last night. After that we went out to eat at a Chinese buffet across from Golden Coral. It’s a nice place… and it’s fairly cheap. I think it’s usually about twenty bucks between the two of us. I was really feeling ill during the meal. I think it was the cold from the room mixed with some sinus problems I’ve been having as well stress from being back at work the first day in many days dealing with very complex system issues (adjusting some hold bills are tricky – have to queue claim, print to screen to create an Account Receivable Counter on the Plan, then manually adjust off the balance, and note the visit – a very multi-step process that should only take 30 seconds but really takes about 5+ minutes per claim, and I had quite a few of those to deal with the last hour of work… among the many other things I did the rest of the day – have to jump through hurdles to just get the system to do what it should do automatically but never does as it was not programmed to do things the right ‘smart’ way of handling EVERYTHING… )… Tekla rubbed my head to try to help the migraine a bit, but it only helped so much. Needless to say after the dinner we pretty much went directly to bed shortly after that… Today, I did write some more in morning pages. I also did practice midi about half an hour, but only about 15 minutes of it got recorded since the computer ran out of memory or something as some error message popped up about virtual memory running out. Not sure why it worked yesterday in recording half an hour, but not today?.. Here’s today’s recording. I tried to practice more of the C-scale. It’s very difficult to get my left hand to do the transition when heading back down the scale. My middle finger just doesn’t seem to land on E all the time since it’s such a complex wrist movement… It also doesn’t help that the keyboard is probably on a desk that’s a little too high compared to where the office chair is at maximum height. Elbows are probably about even or a little below the keyboard, and they should be above for optimal use… might have to get a new desk or chair someday down the road?… might need a new keyboard too someday as this one has a lot of static in the sound coming out of the speaker in the earphones (I use earphones since it’s so early morning and I live in an apartment)… so here’s the short version of what did actually record. I was hoping it would be the full 30 minutes, but the computer thought otherwise.

https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B5pC9Gwr9zBIOEgxbVlpdzA2aXM

Day one of 2013 goals

Goal 1 of the day – 3 single space ‘morning pages’ – complete.

Goal 2 of the day – half hour practicing on the midi keyboard – complete. Mostly practiced the C Scale using 123-12345 fingering. Prior to watching a piano practice app/youtube video the other day I was always in the past following the 12345 way of fingering the keyboard that is taught in some entry level books. It’s far more difficult to do the 123-12345 way of fingering the keyboard, but it is more professional and it seems like it will ultimately be an easier way of doing things and learning the full keyboard eventually. With 123-12345 you put thumb on c, index on d, and middle finger on e, then thumb goes under those to f, and so on up to the next c. With the other hand it’s little finger on c, then ring finger on d, middle on e, and then move middle over those to f… that move with the left hand is more difficult, especially on the way back down the scale since fingers are going under instead of over… I did a little bit of ode to joy in the middle in this practice. I recorded the practice just so I can reflect back on it later at how bad I was just starting today, and to see improvement over time, etc.
https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B5pC9Gwr9zBIZC1QWEhsSG93OEk

Goals for this afternoon/night: make some art, and do some working out. Tekla and I are going to try to re-start the Power 90 from scratch at the beginning… but this time we are doing it together. I am so very happy that she will be joining me this time. I really think that will help motivate me to keep going.

I’m hoping I can help motivate her too.

We bought new yoga mats last night! That was an exciting purchase we made together. The mat I was using prior to now is really a ‘camping mat’ so it didn’t have trenches in it, so it created a bit of a suction cup effect on a sweaty back if when doing crunches, etc. if there was no towel or tee shirt on top of it… this new one should avoid that problem since it’s got some breathing trenches in it.

I believe that “The Age of Aquarius” has now begun… The new calendar has begun now that the Mayan one has ended, and it is a new one of love, peace, prosperity, and many blessings.