Below are The Spinner Paintings that I created in college. These were experimental works that I created as a first step towards interactive and installation type painting. Each painting was 3′ x 3′ in size and had two paintings on it, one on each side of the 2″ x 4″ stretcher bars. The stretcher bars had large dowel rods in each of the four sides of the paintings, and each painting had a stand that I had specifically designed for these works which allowed them to work as an installation piece that would allow the paintings to be viewed at various angles and rotated in numerous ways.
I created this work as a wedding present for my wife. It hangs in our bedroom. The painting was done based on a blown up copy of one of our engagement photos. To copy the basic outline of the photo on to the canvas I used the Pounce Method of Image Transfer with some crushed up charcoal wrapped in a cloth. This method of image transfer is a great way to start a painting, but only if the image you are transferring from and the painting you are transferring to are the same size. With the advent of digital photography and printers that are able to print any size photos, there are tons of possibilities for this ancient method of image transfer.
I do not believe that I have never exhibited this painting in any shows, and do not plan to do that at any time in the future as the work is very near and dear to me, and I’m almost hesitant to put it on my website and blog. However, since I wish for these online locations to outline the type of work I love to do, I feel like this needs to be here.
I created this work back in 2006 as a way of keeping my oil painting hobby going. At the time that I created this work I didn’t have the best studio to work in. We had purchased a house with a large basement that I was trying to use as a studio, but it was dark, moldy, and had a lot of dust and mildew in it. I did light up the place with some hanging lamps, but it still was definitely not the best place in the world to be doing oil painting since there was not much ventilation. There was a small garage door that I put fans nearby but this was still a horribly ventilated area. I fondly remember smelling the chemicals from the studio one floor up in the main living room several days after I created this work… that was something Tekla and Genesis didn’t care for too much. After that incident I went to trying to do works that require less fumes such as acrylic, color pencils, etc.
I believe that this painting was exhibited at the Columbia Art League the year that it was created.
The portfolio site is not complete yet, but it is slowly coming together. I’m sort of doing a combination of revising and adding new content to this blog while working on the site so some of the links over there may very well not work as they should, etc. That’s because I don’t have the full content on the site live yet, or even created locally in some cases. However, over the next few months (or possibly even years?) I’ll be adding more and editing more both here on this blog and at the site… I plan to get it all put together strategically and working well cohesively as my next ‘big project’ that I’m working on an hour or three every day as I find the free time to work on it.
In the not-too-distant future that free time will start going down a bit as our new baby is on the way. However, I’m sure that I’ll still have some time for this ‘hobby’ to finally come together the way that I’m wanting it to. It’s been something that’s sort of been on the backburner since 1999 that I always wanted to do, but never took the full time to actually do til now, at least not as completely as I plan to do this thing… The artfolio part of the new site is the part that is most put together thus far, and only a few pages of the oil painting is really up so far… That is at http://jeffthomann.cwahi.net/artfolio/index.shtml.
Most of the other sections are not up yet…
The ‘old’ portfolio site at http://jeffthomann.cwahi.net/ is still up and running for the here and now… but over time it’ll be phased out and replaced with the new site… It’s just going to take some time, and I don’t want to completely delete the old one all the way until the new one is at least fully working.
I plan ultimately to have a cross link from every blog post with the artwork to the page on the site with the artwork, and use the blog to sort of have an ongoing commentary about each work of art on the site that is probably a bit more lengthy and more of a dialogue than really needs to be on the ‘official’ site… but is still related, so there will be the cross linking to make it all easily accessible…
As time goes by, I’ll probably edit the blog heavily on past posts so that stuff that is really ‘portfolio’ quality is all that’s in the portfolio category, etc.
As I do this, I’m also starting to keep a spreadsheet of all the links, titles, copyright dates, etc. of everything much more complete and in depth than I ever have before. I may publish some portions of that spreadsheet in the future so that it’ll help any viewers or collectors out there find things just as it’ll eventually help myself find things as sometimes finding stuff you are looking for in a blog is not the easiest thing in the world to do… As I create new works of art in the future, they will get added to this ongoing project… so it’s really sort of just establishing a groundwork to eventually build my art career from at a level that I haven’t taken the time to do yet for a variety of reasons.
Remember, the ‘artfolio’ is more about all of my artwork, including works in progress, works never completed etc. as well as more thoroughly completed works that I’d consider ‘portfolio’ quality. The ‘portfolio’ is just that – completed ‘portfolio’ quality works, i.e. top notch stuff, at least in my opinion. To get to the ‘artfolio’ portion of the blog you can use the artfolio category tag, and to get to the portfolio part of the blog you can use the portfolio category tag.
In many of my dreams the architecture and location of images in a composition I see in detail seem to have some sort of deep and profound meaning to me. At the time that I created the BFA show I was studying Carl Jung’s theories on dream archetypes. I believe that both a location in a dream as well as the individuals can become archetypes. That is why we have dreams that are located in the same, or very similar settings multiple times throughout our lifetime.
I do not practice magic or the black arts (well at least not directly even though art creation itself is a bit of a magical act in some ways), but do sometimes read about these things as they interest me somewhat since they are sort of related to psychology and art history, both of which are topics I have a lot of interest in…
I think that new age ideas about astral kingdoms created via meditation practices are directly related to lucid dreaming techniques that we all experience at some point in our lives and that the architecture, objects, and figures (archetypes) we see and interact with in our dreams can play somewhat of a major role in the worldview and in that way can psychologically help us alter the world around us… but it’s not truly ‘magic’ – it’s psychological manipulation and self therapy techniques that can alter the way we think about the world as the objects, places, and things in our dreams are really our subconscious thought patterns communicating with our conscious brain, picking up patterns and connections that we may never have noticed before, allowing us to become aware of things in a new light that we have not seen them before consciously, etc. Dreams can and do play a role in our waking world realities every day whether we acknowledge it or not.
These are a few 5″ x 7″ doodles on hard board. These works, among others, were presented to my brother in Texas as a Christmas present this year (we met them halfway in Oklahama City yesterday and drove all the way back last night getting home around 1:30 am – fyi – If you are looking for 435 in Kansas City, DO NOT TAKE 135 after the toll booth – take 35 instead! Also, there’s a nice little connector off of 435 that will let you hook over to just south of the Independence Mall that we found for the second time on accident last night – nicely done happy accident since that saved us some time – hard to miss that connector since it veers off to the right so it’s really an exit but seems to not be). Any work that is ‘from the imagination’ instead of depicting something like an illustration or drawing from life, I consider a “doodle.”
The color ones are mainly color pencil or color pencil sticks. The white one is china marker. There’s also a little China marker in some highlights on some of the color ones since I like to use china marker and prismacolor color pencils as top layers to add extra ‘punch’ to Crayola and Roseart (cheap color pencil) underlayers that get worked and reworked over and over. The white of the china marker can’t be beat nor can the pigment in the Prismacolor for the final touch.
Many artists use Prismacolor only and never use other brands. I think that’s just wasteful spending since Prismacolor color pencils average about a dollar a piece and on some really layered works I can rework an area enough to burn several pencils on one drawing sometimes. For underlayers expensive pigments in Prismacolor is not needed if you are going to work, re-work and then re-work again a few hundred times as I like. It is a nice touch for top layers, but for underlayers, it can get very expensive very fast for something that I’ll just essentially erase away and smudge to death so that the pigment itself isn’t visible anyways as it gets coated by layer upon layer of wax with more new layers on top.
In the upcoming year I plan to create many more 5″ x 7″ works. I love this size since it’s exactly twice the size of traditional “art cards”, exactly the same size needed for postcards or framed reproductions, and is just right for travel or hanging in a home vs larger works that work better in galleries that have tons of wall space.
I’m also starting to experiment a little bit with mixing color pencils and oil pastels with encaustic painting (wax painting that basically mixes oil color with a mixture of bees wax, paraffin wax and some manmade waxes to add more durability as bees wax and paraffin are both extremely brittle under certain conditions). I’m not sure I can do much with it since the encaustic doesn’t take the color pencils too well, but if the color pencils are the lower layers it might lead to some interesting potential as the encaustic can be layered three dimensionally much more than flat color pencils can by themselves.
I probably don’t have enough room for it now where we are currently located, nor will I for the next few years, but I’ve always wanted to experiment with mixing plaster sculpture and encaustic painting techniques someday. That’ll be many years down the road though. This upcoming year I really want to focus on the 5x7s and really ‘learn’ all the techniques and tricks I can about working on these small panels.
2013 New Year’s Resolutions
1. Exercise Regularly, and avoid setbacks
2. Get back in to creating art regularly.
3. Learn to play music.
4. Eat Right.
5. Write things down.
I’ve fallen off of the band wagon on sticking with the above. I am writing stuff down more, but got off of exercise a couple of weeks ago when my calf had a major issue…it sort of tightened up after I went down a flight of stairs a little too fast and it actually had me on crutches about a week… The pain stayed with me a long while. For the longest time I could not do stairs since it hurt so bad when the leg was in a certain position where the sore leg was behind the other leg… The pain has started died down a lot. It still does feel like a stiff, sore muscle in my leg sometimes… it is mainly one of the calf muscles but it sometimes radiates up to the back of the leg behind the knee and down to the Achilles heel… The ultrasound they did the day it happened didn’t find anything. I was told an MRI might find something since it has a finer scanning reading in looking for muscle tears, etc. Thank GOD there was no blood clots that the ultrasound found since I had the hernia surgery back in December.
I fell off the bandwagon also by moving my avatar in Entropia Universe to Rocktropia a few days back and exploring the entry level missions there. However, I’ve started to block myself from the forums related to Entropia with extensions on various browsers I use on home computer and blocking it elsewhere using other techniques such as content filtering in internet explorer and host file editing.
I got off target on eating right… I do plan to get back on target though. My goal has got to be 45 or 55 carbs a meal.
I got off target on the exercise because of the calf issue noted above, but plan to re-start exercising again regularly in the next couple of days. I have been doing some wii Just Dance 3 lately. I might re-start the Power 90 but it honestly scares me a little since I’ve read about how bad crunches are the last few days in a few blogs and websites. They can really screw up your back over time if you do too many. If I do do the power 90 again I might sometimes replace doing crunches with just doing a long plank or some other type of exercise?
I have been doing a little bit of MOOC (massively online open course) on coursera for song writing. It has been interesting learning about how line count affects stability/instability, etc. I find myself counting lines on songs playing on the radio these days. I haven’t been keeping up with that course or the social media MOOC I’ve been doing on Canvas Network the last few days since work has been very stressful and after work I just headed directly in to Entropia to reduce some stress through mindless grinding quests, etc. However, as I move forward and start to remove myself from Entropia as often as I have been playing lately, that will slowly come to a halt. If I’m spending all my free time in that mmo I’m not spending it doing other things like exercising and creating art, etc… I need to get back on path.
I see a lot of negativity around me at work, hear a lot of negativity on tv and in social networks, etc. I want to remove a lot of that from myself and focus with zen-like precision on tuning in to my own creativity and positive vibes. The world we live in is a wonderful place. I want to appreciate it more. I want to live long enough to appreciate it for many years to come. I can do much. I must do much. I don’t want to continue to “should all over myself.”
Awesome little video I found on youtube showing someone modeling in 3d with lightwave:
I really need to get back in to Lightwave. I might start doing some stuff with it in 30 minute bursts from time to time to get back at it a little. I’m still on version 9.6 so am a bit behind the times, but it does the job for now.
Eventually, I wouldn’t mind learning blender, but it’s got a gui that will take some getting used to. Who knows maybe there’s a online learning class for it somewhere? I have a book or two on it, but it’s still hard to learn. I’m still in the Canvas Network Social Media Class right now, and loving it. I signed up for a few other freebie classes there and at a few other similar places. I actually have http://www.class-central.com/ as a home page tab nowadays so I don’t miss sign ups. Not sure I’ll have time to do all these classes, but they are pretty fun, and free, so it’s definitely worth giving a try. Really makes you think and learn new things, even on topics you may already know a heck of a lot about.
This digital photo collection of bricks is available for purchase now at Turbosquid. This collection is great for pulling textures from for your various 3d projects.
This digital photo collection of bricks is available for purchase now at Turbosquid. This collection is great for pulling textures from for your various 3d projects.
pretty productive day even though it doesn’t seem like it was… got laundry done. dishes done. downloaded a ton of video tutorials from 3d buzz for motionbuilder and a few other things for concept art, etc., and various lightwave tutorials on youtube. Thinking about getting back in to doing a little digital art.
I’ve been working on trying to do a ‘poet-trait’ type of thing in Adobe Illustrator yesterday and some last weekend, using text to sort of paint a picture, putting the words in the shadows of the art using splines and words on the splines. It’s a fairly time consuming little process…
Working through that project is making me want to get back in to digital art a little more… even if it is extremely time consuming. I have tons of fonts on this computer that I have never used in any project before… might be time to start changing that.
Not sure if I’ll finish the project or not, but at least it’s got me thinking about getting in to digital art more again.
Here’s what it looks like so far…
If you have more than a few fonts on your computer, I’d suggest using AMP FONT VIEWER to help you visualize what they look like. Nice little program.
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Also, tonight started reading a book for a MOOC that I just signed up for earlier this week that ‘officially’ starts tonight at midnight. This is the first one I’ve ever tried to participate in one. It’s kind of exciting experiencing this type of thing. It’s been so long since I had to do ‘home work’ I’d forgotten what it was like to be given reading assignments.
http://www.behance.net/jeffthomann – This is my Behance Portfolio. I haven’t been utilizing it much up until now. However, going fowards, I might start using it more since stuff posted in it goes directly in to facebook, linked in, and twitter.
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.
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
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?
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.
Added a few tablet photos in a new folder tonight. Most of the past folders are family photos and things. If you are a friend/family ask me for the password sometime if you don’t have it yet.
The Tablet sketch folder doesn’t have a password. Not much there… just posting it as a sample of where my skill is now… very bad… will improve over time.
I’ve been wasting too much time playing video games, and other non-productive things now and then the last few years. I have enjoyed that since it helped me stay away from getting too serious about things, and/or to lower stress from work and other places (or blow off steam from stressful situations at work – what better way to deal with stress at work than going in to a video game to blow things up, go hunting, etc.)
I’m starting to work on an excel database linking blog listings of various images I’ve uploaded here to locations of those images on the hard drive and where they’ve been uploaded online.
It’s a very time consuming project, but eventually, I’m going to try to use this project to help me do several things.
It’s going to help me figure out what is worthy of being in a ‘real’ portfolio either online on it’s own website, and/or in a printed format.
It will help me figure out where I need to put my next efforts going forward
It will help me organize things, get rid of duplicates, etc.
It will help me organize things in a way that I can group things that are related together better so that I can create ‘collections’ of items to group together to sell as packages on Turbosquid, etc., or to show off in categories in other locations, etc.
It will help me organize keywords better and figure out what needs new ones, which ones to dump, etc.
It will give me a chance to look at a lot of great stuff (and some not so great stuff) that I’ve created that I haven’t looked at in a while since it’s been hiding on a hard drive, hidden away from my two eyes
The surgery is scheduled for the week after Thanksgiving. I am going to have to have at least a couple of weeks of recovery time after that before I can get back in to working out too much. I do plan to get back in to that. My goal is to work on this database project, the blog, and possibly creating more artwork as I do that so that I’m developing a bit of a recovery in health as well as mental focus/art focus, etc. I have not been doing the artist’s way writings, and might not except now and then? I actually see this blog and posts like that as sort of doing that without doing that. I don’t want to make it so that the art focus takes away from the exercising focus going forward. However, I don’t want to balance it out the opposite way either and focus too much on working out and not enough on art – I think I may have done that when I was trying to do the two a days…
so… I might just go down to the one a day workouts when I get to where I’m doing the working out again.
I’m not sure if I’ll keep up the 1000 day tracker thing or blog about the exercise so much, but I might since it was helping me stay focused and on goal. I probably will sometimes list some groupings from the database project in the blog here from time to time. I tried something like this a year or three back, but never got too far with it. I think part of that was because I got too off track with various things, including but not limited to the video games, moving to where we are now, etc.
It is very time consuming and difficult to organize thousands of photos and sketches, etc. However, it’s something I think I need to do. Strangely, the video games have somewhat gotten me to realize that a little… Organizing the shop, booth, and apartments in Entropia Universe, and organizing the hundreds of blueprints and other items my avatar owns in there has helped me realize my real world life needs some organization… time to unclutter and CREATE FROM THE CHAOS.
Above is a link to a photo I took a while back of a floor grid pattern that is typical of industrial construction factory type locations, stairwells, etc.
Above is a link to this image of rusted and peeling metal on Turbosquid. Since I’m not able to do much the next few days in the ways of physical activity, it’s back to trying to upload stuff to Turbosquid as my hobby for now.
Well, it’s the 29th day of the 1000 day challenge. Tomorrow is day 30, the time of no more taking it easy…
Tomorrow I will start the 2nd month’s challenge, which will be doing that second workout every day, at least 5 days a week – 6 if possible. I will keep doing the one workout a day in the morning, and then do this second workout after work. I expect to see some major calorie burning going on since I’m basically going to be doubling the number of calories burned daily through exercise. Because of that I probably will need to keep an eye on my blood sugar a lot more than I have up til now because going low on sugar can be a big problem for me since I’m diabetic. It’s never been an issue too much up til now since I never really went to my max on exercise, but doing two hard workouts daily might put me there…
Today I also tried doing a little writing at lunch. I’m going to try to make that in to a habit over time.. I’m using the habit tracker from the LDS that was linked to from one of the first posts about the 1000 day challenge. I’m using that tracker for stuff like that instead of the main ones because it lets me track a little easier than the regular one that tracks day by day… since it’s a cross off tracker. I’m also using that tracker to start tracking my times of going to the gas station and paying at the pump (instead of going in, and likely picking up some diet soda and snacks in the convenience store while at as I typically have done in the past – a bad habit I’m trying to start to break…)
I decided to go ahead and shoot the video for this ‘month’ tonight since it’s still afternoon so the light is good…
Plus I really just kind of want to see where I am visually with the video comparisons so that I know where I need to go as that sort of gives me inspiration about what level I need to aim for tomorrow and going forward. The videos take a little while to upload and link to, etc. and this blog posting takes a little while to put together so I’m probably going to not exercise tonight, or on other month ends when these types of videos get posted.
Today’s weigh in weight is 273.6 lbs. That’s 19 lbs down since 9/3/2012, and 22.9 lbs down since 6/24/2012. That puts my goal of ‘getting in to my BMI target range’ at somewhere between 96.6 lbs -133.6 lbs more to lose. It’d be nice if I reach that goal in the next year or so, but if it takes longer, it takes longer… That’s why I’m making this is a 1000 day challenge, not a 30 day challenge, not a 90 day challenge, but 1000 day challenge… In the past I’d have seen this sort of progress and just quit after that… not this time… going all the way to that 1000 days, exercising and doing other things to live a better life than I ever have in my entire life. It will be so nice to actually get to the ‘BMI’ weight that Doctors are always talking about… that weight where people can’t say you are obese any more… where you can look at them and say I got down to my goal weight, why aren’t you there yet?… 😉
Here’s the video I shot this afternoong, Day 29 of the 1000 Day Challenge (10/2/2012)
273.6 lbs:
Here’s the video from Day zero of the 1000 day challenge (9/3/2012) – 292.6 lbs
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Below are the videos and weight ins from before the 1000 day challenge when I tried to do the Power 90 but had to quit around day 60 because of an accidental stab wound… which caused me to have to ‘rest’ 2 weeks which really was not good on the weight loss thing, but that’s the past… I’m looking forward now… Just looking at the videos for comparison purposes… Even though the past is the past, it’s good to know where you came from so that you can tell where you are going…
8/21/2012 – 284.6 lbs
8/16/2012 – 285.3 lbs:
8/9/2012 – 281.8 lbs
8/1/2012 – 284.8 lbs
7/24/2012 – 286.2 lbs
7/17/2012 – 289.2 lbs:
7/14/2012 – 288.6 lbs
Before then
6/29/2012 I was 292.1 lbs
6/24/2012 I was 296.5 lbs
Memorial Day – May 28, 2012 –
4/30/2012
4/10/2012
I have to thank my amazing wife, Tekla, for being behind me all the way in this crazy 1000 day challenge thing. Sorry I wake you up so early darling but now you can start to see the progress…
This is only the beginning…
Much more to come. 😉 🙂 :p
(*note – if some of the videos don’t show yet, it’s probably because they are not done uploading yet… Currently uploading the oldest ones and they are only at 5% upload progress so far in youtube at the time of this posting… if you really have to see the vids, come back and look again tomorrow…*)
One poster in there indicates that he draws 4-8 hours a day. Currently since I’ve been focused on working out/loosing weight, I have cut back my own personal time to do art… but I want to get back in to it.
I also might possibly try writing during lunch/afternoon/morning breaks at work to make more time for ‘morning pages’ but maybe not… because I rarely have a bunch of free time at work even on breaks…between going up stairs, to bathroom, to cafeteria, then back down stairs, etc. there’s rarely more than 5-10 minutes of ‘free time’ during breaks… I could possibly get up earlier, but am not sure if that will work or not since plan of going to be bed at 10 only gives 7 hours max when getting up at 5…. been going to bed much later than 10 lately… one night during the weekend I was up til 2 AM I think… luckily next day I could sleep in since it was weekend… sleeping in on weekends is something I need to do away with eventually.
Goal for second month of the 1000 day challenge (which starts in two days on Wednesday) will be to do a second work out a day in addition to the one a day I’ve been trying to get in this first month. I originally was going to make doing the NO S diet the third month’s goal and possibly doing one page of ‘morning pages’ in the evening a goal for the month after that but may make drawing/painting the goal for the third month. I might try to do it some little bit during second month to get used to it more…. working it in might be tough but should not be too hard since I have all of my color pencils next to the couch now all organized by colors… light reds/earth tones, dark reds/earth tones, light blues, dark blues, light greens, dark greens, neutral/black/white/silver/gold, and yellows… I also have some room set up in the art/storage room on a few tables to do paintings/drawings… now just need to make the time.
Honestly, the first few weeks of the working out twice a day will probably be tough on me due to sore muscles/etc… so it’s probably a good thing it’s not the second month’s goal to draw/paint right at the first…
Now for the third month I need to think about how long to draw/paint… and how much time to set aside for each. Paintings typically take me a very long time to do since I’ll rework an area over and over and over and add new layers later, etc. then there is drying time, which for acrylic is not as long as with oil painting but it still is time…
In theory evening workout time should be from about 5:00 pm – 6:30 pm by the time I get shower etc. done. That leaves from 6:30 – 10:00 to try to work in some art, assuming Tekla and I are not spending quality time together, etc. 20 minutes of drawing, either in one session or like four 5 minute speed drawings mith work… maybe alternate between those two, and/or ten 2 minute drawings to fill the same space maybe… then after that 20 minutes go on to longer work.. either with acrylic or color pencil for an hour or three… and then 10 minutes or so cleanup time to get brushes clean, etc. might work. Not sure if I’ll be able to do that every night, but want to make it a goal to get to that level, give or take a little… and then work in art on weekends too. Saturdays being the ‘rest days’ on workouts should be best day for art in theory… but on Sundays being laundry day might be better as a ‘rest day’ instead of Saturdays since gym shorts can’t be dried so have to be hung dry, and are not always dry all the way through before I want to workout if I work out on Sundays… I alternate between shorts and then wash them at the week’s end so that way I don’t have to have a 6 or so pairs. I used to only use one pair but working out twice a day, that’s not acceptable since they are typically still sweat soaked by the time the next workout rolls around. I might need to buy more gym shorts with the next incentive money, if more comes in in the future… and also might get at least one more kettle bell set so that I can do two arm kettle bell workouts eventually, or so there will be one set for me and one for Tekla if we start working out at the same times regularly.
Right now, I’m thinking maybe 2 hour minimum of drawing after month 3 starts might be a good low aim, and any more than that is just nice little extra. that way I’m not kicking myself with negativity snowballs from hell if I don’t get in a full 3 hours a night…
Eventually I’ll need to get the scanner going again… laptop needs to be used for that since main computer doesn’t have a driver for it… laptop is on it’s last legs I think, but it is still useful for that and a few other oddball tasks that I don’t have drivers for on the latest version of windows… Just wish Linux, which is what I use on laptop, had a driver for US-RR 360 sound recorder… becuase i really don’t want to have to reinstall windows xp or drag out an old computer from storage that has it to be able to use the sound recorders again…
I was reading a contemporary art book just a few minutes ago… In it was mentioned that Odilon Redon considered himself to be in a “habitual state of melancholy” and the book attributed that to being one of the reasons he was not suited to be in the Academy. That is a very interesting phrase… It is something that my ‘old life’ involved all too often I think… it actually describes me in a lot of ways from the past… not really ‘depressed’ all the time, but in a negative state that bordered on it and may have led to depression at times… Negativity breeds negativity. However, on the other hand, catharsis is a good thing, so not necessarily all things negative should be avoided. Without shadows light cannot be used to see anything…
I went in to the ‘art room’ and painted a little today for an hour or two. I will probably do more of this in ‘spare time’ from time to time. It’s going to take a little while to get my skills back up to speed, but I can do it. I also have decided that eventually I probably will add learning to play my midi keyboard as a goal/challenge for myself. I’ve had the thing for years, but never have done much with it. The first few months I had it I got to the point I could play jingle bells, and then quit. I pound a few keys on it here and then, but haven’t done much. I have ways to record it to the computer that I didn’t have a few years back due to low computer specs/speed even though I had the software and connectors to make it happen. I originally got this thing thinking I’d go in to making my own music for animations I put together, but I let that goal of making animations die slowly and let the goal of making the music sort of fade away over time. Now that I’m challenging myself to live better, I want to make these goals a little more of a reality in my life. I may never become Mozart or whatever, but I would like to learn the basics a little more than I can do them now. Even if I never do an animation, the background music for still images in videos and/or slideshows could have some potential. Closest thing to doing some artsy video like that way back several years ago was this little thing I threw together… not very good, but it’s catchy tune, at least to me, lol…
and these little annoying things…
In the future, I might try to do more of this type of stuff… I wanted to back then but didn’t have the time, nor really the computer power that would allow me to do much since putting this sort of stuff together would max out cpu/gpu back then and/or ultimately cause computers to crash if the machines got too hot. Nowadays, this sort of stuff is nothing on the cpu usage… so more can be accomplished. Now just got to get myself to work towards the ‘work’ part of making those accomplishments become accomplished realities.
I might possibly try some various Art Challenges eventually in the 1000 day challenge. I’m not sure about which ones, but I’m posting some challenges that I know about here for future reference. Even if I don’t take up the challenge, I feel these links might be helpful to any fellow artists reading this…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umberto_Boccioni – Umberto Boccioni is one of my ‘art heroes.’ His use of color and brush strokes I find to be very inspiring and something I aspire to do somewhat similarly in my own works on some level.
This work was created just before the time that Photomosaics really became popular. The painting was basically a bunch of photos that work together to create an portrait of my Uncle Dave. However, I painted the photos individually. The images are from a variety of sources.. family photos, and a variety of other scenes, some which were not actually derived from photos, but were scenes I had lived through in person or had some knowledge of… The inability to really tell the whole story that was behind my reasons for creating this work led me to create the Installation later. I might try to get a better photo of this painting later since there appears to be some glare on this one.
This image was one of the 3′ x 3′ works I did for my BFA show. This, along with the other images in the show were derived from dream imagery. I had started several dream journals in college, and the images for this show were painted versions of some of the images from those journals.
Capturing dreams in a journal is not always easy. I ‘cheated’ a little some of the time that I was doing these images since I had to come up with some of the dreams to put in to the paintings. I did this by sleeping with the lights on and covering my eyes when I slept, and I kept the sketchbooks and journals next to me within an arms length of where I was sleeping, and would start writing as soon as I awoken from a dream. Covering the eyes while the lights were one forced me to remember the dreams as I awoke when the light hit me eyes. However, I had to work quickly to put the dreams down in the book as quickly as possible before my conscious waking mind took over the subconscious train of thought and started putting too much ‘real world’ left brained stuff in to the images and cause/effect relationships and stories beyond what the dream actually contained that I was trying to capture. You have a very short span of time to do that sort of thing if you dream journal as the waking mind sort of takes over within 5-10 minutes or so after you wake up.
There is a lot I learned about dreams in doing this. My dreams are very much based on architectural ideas and archetypes. Many times multiple people in real life will join in to one being in a dream… creating a construct of sorts.. and these archetypes/constructs play roles. Dreams really do have a meaning and reflection that comes from the waking world, and there is a method to them. If you every try to dream journal, you can learn this methodology and the meaning behind the dreams. Most dream interpretation books are way off. It’s much much more personal than any of those can every really get to the real reality of because every person’s personal archive of images that they draw upon from their own waking lives is unique to them… I might make more posts about this in the future. There is a LOT to dream journaling.
For a while in college I was fascinated by the idea of driving and the metaphor of how the car becomes a part of one’s self – an extension of the inner self in a variety of ways. Much of my art since that time has revolved around the idea of the journey, and seeing the landmarks on the road we see daily both in cars and outside of them. Roads that parallel highways and exit ramps and overpasses – tunnels to new places, and exits and entries on the highway of life fascinate me both visually, spiritually, and emotionally. We are all on journeys every day. Do we take the time to see what we are passing or just let it pass us by?
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