#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?

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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.

New goals…

I’ve been procrastinating on things a bit, but no more! I’ve decided that I want to start getting up at 4 AM instead of 5. Up til now I’ve been trying to get up at 5, but usually ended up going back to bed til 6 sometimes, or more often got up and just wasted time online on forums, etc. Going forwards, I want to change that… I have no idea if I’ll be able to do this or not but think if I can I’ll see some major improvement in my art, in my attitude, etc.

Goal is to do more art, do it in a way that suits me and gets things accomplished, and make time to live life a little too more than in the past. No more wasting time…

so… tentative schedule is…
Up at 4 AM. Do 3 pages of Morning Pages for The Artist’s Way/Journaling/diary type stuff… Then eat breakfast (probably a bowl of cereal, maybe fruit on occassion) In theory, that’ll take up til about 4:30 ish… maybe 4:40 or 4:20 sometimes?

4:30 AM – 5:00ish (maybe earlier depending on the above) do a 10-30 minute drawing… probably with ball point pen since it’s a speedy thing, but maybe other stuff like charcoal or color pencils sometimes?… maybe even graphite even though I hate the shine graphite produces. Number one reason I hate acrylic too unless lots of matte medium is used – also why I love oil paint and have decided on encaustic as painting medium of choice…

5:00 AM – 6:30ish = Work on 3d Modelling. I’ll probably do speed modeling for now… then go back and redo the fine details as needed later on. Maybe do a whole week of work without going back in to finish it up til the weekends?… I’ve been on Turbosquid for a very long time, so am at the level in there where you can get the keywords for free, so those keywords will be my subjects for these 3d models since that’s stuff that is known to sell, etc. I’ve been trying to copy/paste the keyword lists in to an open office file every morning, and will continue to do so and then will pick the subjects that interest me… I may sometimes stray from that and use my own ideas or keywords/topics, but there’s lots of ideas in there, so I think I’m going to focus on that a bit.

6:30 – Take a Shower, Make Lunch, Get ready for work, etc.

7:00ish – Head to work…

At work, walk with my Aunt on my morning and afternoon breaks (assuming I’m not on hold with blasted insurance companies when she takes a break)

11:00ish (my time for lunch varies) Eat Lunch and Read a page or two out of Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain or The Artist’s way… Maybe other books on kindle, etc. Possibly do a 5 minute doodle session at lunch, but probably not as there’s not really much time since I only have half an hour lunch.

After work – Start up the Encaustic heating up as soon as I get home… Maybe draw for a few minutes while it’s heating up and the wax is melting. Paint after it’s hot with the encaustic til Tekla gets home.

When Tekla gets home, we’ll head to the Arc to workout. This is something I’ve neglected doing way too long, and is really why my sugar’s not under better control at the moment, even if it’s not too hugely bad yet.

After that we’ll have supper, and enjoy the rest of whatever is left of the night spending time with one another and enjoying our time together.

Go to bed around 10 or so since that’ll give me 6 hours of sleep. If I can get myself off of caffeine, I think 6 hours of sleep is enough… Going to be hard to do, especially at work since it’s free there and they have a huge thing there that keeps 3 pots going all day every day… they usually have one pot of decaf, one of regular, and one double strong – I usually try to mix half decaf with regular but half of the time the decaf is gone… need to drink water more, coffee less… very difficult to do, but I think if I can and can excercise more, this crazy schedule might work…

19 Minutes – 6/7/2011 © 2011 6/7/2011 Jeff Thomann

19 Minutes – 6/7/2011 © 2011 6/7/2011 Jeff Thomann
Media: Ballpoint Pen on Paper

This is a quick little still life sketch I did last night.

a few more quick drawings.

I’ve been sketching after work for 30 minutes or less to just sort of work my way back in to drawing. I’m using ballpoint pen for these so far since they are easily scanned without a mess, and also are not messy. Here’s a few of the recent drawings. I’ll try to upload more of these as they are made in the future. I KNOW my skills can get better, and practice is the ONLY way to make that happen.

5/3/2011 – 5 minute drawing

5/23/2011 – 25 minute drawing

5/24/2011 – 25 minute drawing

Basic Principles of The Artist’s Way:

BASIC PRINCIPLES
1. Creativity is the natural order of life. Life is energy, pure creative energy.
2. There is an underlying, in-dwelling creative force infusing all of life — including ourselves.
3. When we open oursleves to our creativity, we open ourselves to The Creator’s creativity within us and our lives.
4. We are, ourselves, creations. And we, in turn, are meant to continue creativity by being creative ourselves.
5. Creativity is God’s gift to us. Using our creativity is our gift back to God.
6. The refusal to be creative is self-will and is conter to our true nature.
7. When we open ourselves to exploring our creativity, we open ourselves to God: good orderly direction
8. As we open our creative channel to The Creator, many gentle but powerful changes are to be expected.
9. It is safe to open ourselves up to greater and greater creativity.
10. Our creative dreams and yearnings come from a divine source. As we move toward our dreams, we move toward our divinity.

CREATIVE AFFIRMATIONS
1. I am a channel for God’s creativity, and my work comes to good.
2. My dreams come from God and God has the power to accomplish them.
3. As I create and listen, I will be led.
4. Creativity is The Creator’s will for me.
5. My creativity heals myself and others.
6. I am allwed to nurture my artist.
7. Through the use of a few simple tools, my creativity will flourish.
8. Through the use of my creativity, I serve God.
9. My creativity always leads me to truth and love.
10. My creativity leads me to forgiveness and self-forgiveness.
11. There is a divine plan of goodness for my work.
12. There is a divine plan of goodness for my work.
13. As I listen to the creator within, I am led.
14. As I lisetn to my creativity I am led to my creator.
15. I am willing to create.
16. I am willing to learn to let myself create.
17. I am willing to let God create through me.
18. I am willing to be of service through my creativity.
19. I am willing to experience my creative energy.
20. I am willing to use my creative talents.

5 basic skills of drawing (from The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards)
1. The perception of edges
2. The perception of spaces
3. The perception of relationships
4. The perception of lights and shadows
5. the perception o fthe whole, or gestalt

6 and 7 are for Art with a capital A.
6. drawing from memory
7. drawing from imagination

In order to gain access to the subdominant visual, perceptual R-mode of the brain, it is necessary to present the brain with a job that the verbal, analytical L-mode will turn down!

Getting Organized, and Moving Foward…

Getting Organized, and Moving Foward…

Over the last few days, I’ve decided to start getting organized again and make more plans on how to get motivated and move forward in my life and in my art.

The cgtalk forum thread over at
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=2&s=f7856855978ca716d6c6734dd8c5ecb7&t=969336 got me thinking, and as I noted over there, I’m starting to work with a few notebooks and sketchooks now.

I started the Artists Way again, and am at least trying to do the Morning Pages again. I had given up on that a month or two back because my allergies were really hurting me a lot, so making the time to get up earlier in the morning then necessary to write down the 3 handwritten pages needed for that every day was too much.

We also were going through some personal crises type of things recently that was having big emotional impact on me… My mother-in-law passed away April 10th and her funeral was on the 14th. In the last couple of years my wife has lost her mom, dad, and last living grandparent as well as a six month second cousin who she never got a chance to meet that now rests in peace next to her mother and grandmother. All of these tragedies make me realize how fragile life is an how short it is, and how important it is that I start following the Artist’s Way more strictly since, as the book discusses, it really is ‘selfish’ to have talents and skills and not share them with the world or take the time to perfect those skills and talents as a gift to myself and those around me, even if it does cost a bit to do so in the form of art materials, etc.

I’ve started a notebook that is acting sort of like a diary and daily planner type of thing like the one described at http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=2&s=f7856855978ca716d6c6734dd8c5ecb7&t=969336 and http://studium.tobiasdeml.com/2011/04/02/making-your-life-more-efficient-than-ever-before-the-notebook-battleplan/
I’ve also started a second notebook that is a to do list similar to the one listed at http://www.erica.biz/2010/getting-things-done/.

As mentioned at http://advancedphotosolutions.blogspot.com/2010/07/why-you-need-grimoire.html we all need to do this sort of thing, especially if we focus on technical things like art, computer programming, game development, and hacking, all of which are sort of niche areas that I have some interest in on some levels.

The calander/diarly/battleplan book is sort of a daily summary thing so far, where I’m keeping small notes on mostly everything I’m doing that is of some importance in my life daily and out of the ordinary. This is sort of a reflection guide that tells me what I’ve done and when I’ve done it that will come in handy later since the calander part of it you do forwards to backwards and then back and forth… so each page has dates that are months apart so you can sort of mentally review what you did earlier that year or last year and keep your mind fresh and clear on where you’ve been so you know where you are going…

The Morning Pages notebook I’m doing is just a bunch of loose leaf papers in a 3 ring binder I keep on the coffee table and I enter 3 handwritten pages in the mornings. If I just ‘have’ to sleep in an hour I only do one half page or one page as time permits before work. I don’t try to sleep in much, but if I had too much caffiene the night before, or allergies are extra-ordinarily bad that caused me to loose sleep, or stomache is upset or loud neighbors disturbed rem time, I’m not oppossed to skipping the morning pages and just doing a shorter version since it’s all about getting healthy and wealthy on a lot of emotion and psychological levels, and you can’t be too healty or wealthy if you are lacking sleep…Eventually if that 3 ring binder is full, I might either bind the pages in some other way (likely using leather, yarn or something, or just buy another 3 ring binder… Plan on doing this the rest of my life essentially, so it’ll take up a lot of room over time I suspect.

The TO DO list is something new that I’ve not done before. I used to do to do lists in excel and notepad some for daily and weekly stuff, but never one that I wrote out by hand and updated every day. I’m finding that writing the stuff down and actually crossing it off as I do it gives a nice sense of accomplishment, and a motiviation to actually do what I put down there every day in the morning after I do the Morning pages… I want to get really detailed with this to do list and add all sorts of various technical things in it eventually every day. That way it’ll act sort of as a grimoire type of thing along with the daily calander/battleplan book.

I’ve also got a couple of voice recorders. I bought them several years back to record sounds when I was getting in to 3d animation a little in 2005 or so, but never did much with them. Now I pack them with the ‘manbag’ type of laptop case I carry with me everywhere to record notes to myself on the way to or from work and also to just do various sounds. Sound driver on computer is glitchy though, so can’t always listen to what I record there… Need to fix that eventually but not sure how. I DO NOT CARRY A LAPTOP with me ever, so don’t even think about trying to steal it from me if you see the laptop bag. All that I carry with me is a paper notebook, a cheapo mp3 player and a cheapo voice recorder in there, and somedays a cheapo digital camera somedays, lol.

Over time I might scan these various notebooks and put them online somewhere at least as backup… Also might buy myself some more external hard drives (only got one small one right now) to save backups to and actually keep one at my parents house that I’ll do backups to on a monthly basis or something going fowards.

All this writing and organization is helping me think clearer and be organized. The morning pages sort of ‘clear my mind’ in the morning. The other two notebooks help me ‘clearly define my daily goals’ and keep track of what goals I’m getting done and not getting done daily so I can become more productive as an artist and guide myself towards where I want to and need to be.

If I’m not doing all this, which is the way I used to be, my mind becomes unclear on what I need to do and when I need to do it, so I would find myself watching forums and emails or youtube and movie channels for hours without being productive. I’m probably one of the few people that call myself a painter but have not painted or sketched a lot in years… Hopeing to change that… Hoping to do small skill challenges and things to increase my skills in drawing and painting to where they were back in college, if not go beyond that level, far beyond it… to the professional level I want to be at, and that I know I can be at with a little practice… daily practices… practices that will be in that to do list that I will actually do and cross off as I do them! 🙂

I do plan to buy acid free sketchbooks too, but that, along with other art expenses will be something I’ll tackle one thing at a time… Art materials don’t have to be super expensive, and to do lists and stuff like this don’t need to be on acid free paper since scanners exist. The old me would have just not suited for anything but acid free sketchbook paper, but that’s silly and way too darn expensive just for writing stuff like the morning pages and to do lists…

The Artist’s way

A couple of weeks ago one of my friends on Facebook posted about the difficulty of doing a week with no media because she was working through the Artist’s way. It was very ironic because Facebook is a form of media. Anyways, that sounded like something interesting to me, and is something I had vaguely remembered seeing or hearing about some many years ago somewhere… so I went to Banes and Noble and bought the The Complete Artist’s Way: Creativity as a Spiritual Practice.

It’s actually 3 books in one, but the first book is a 12 step process that you are to do one chapter of weekly, but according to the forums some do it in more then one week per chapter or even a month a chapter, etc. It’s a very cool process. The first chapter deals with doing “morning pages” and “artist dates” where you have to write 3 pages out every morning to sort of clear the mind of thoughts that sit and hinder your creativity unless you get them out somehow, and going out somewhere to explore the art world around you for inspiration about an hour or more a week.

It is a neat little process, and it’s been about a week since I started this. I am looking forward to working through the rest of the process.

Find out more about all of it over at http://theartistsway.com/

Shakespear was wrong.

Shakespeare was wrong – all the world is not a play. All of the world is a Dance Hall.

Plays are scripted. The director knows what is going to happen next, and the actors and acrtresses have rehearsed their parts and at least have a good idea of what will happen next even if everything does not go right.

Life, on the other hand, is not scripted. We all have our parts to play, of course, but how anyone will react or what they will do next is not completely known. Some will try to become the center of attention doing ball room dances they have studied for years. Others will move in strange and interesting ways, listening to their own beat and rythm. Some might break dance while others do waltzes. Some may dance closely together with others while dance on their own in line dances, constantly trying to fit in with their peers. Some may make the music while others listen to it… Some will simply sit there on the sidelines, sipping their alcohol, doing nothing all the time that they are in this dance hall of life, watching everyone else until it’s time to go.

Art is Life and Life is Art.

Something that I have come to realize is that Art is not a reflection of life nor is life a reflection of art. ART IS LIFE and LIFE IS ART! Every minute that I am not creating art, looking at art, or thinking about art in some way, it’s a minute that dead. Art is the substance that created the universe, and is the substance used to substain the universe. It just is as life just is. In order to live a more fullfilling life one must live art, embrace it, become it, think it, be it. Art’s true focus is in opening the mind’s eye so to speak… connecting the dots between the physical and metaphysical… All religions are art, and have rules, ideas, myths, stories about creation. Creation IS ART. Art is the act of creation. It is the act of connecting the dots that make up the universe. Art is the act of learning to percieve the world with a more detailed view. Art is the ability to perceive infinite levels of detail in all areas of Life. Science would not exist without art as a basis. Religion would not exist without art. Technology is science fictional art before it comes to exist. Our dreams are creations of art. Our realities are created because of our dreams.

ART IS LIFE AND LIFE IS ART.

I want to embrace, become, and be art so that I have a more fullfilling life. You should too! 🙂

fantasy stuff… role playing… virtual reality… art – back to the basics

I’ve been kicked out of Entropia Universe a few days now since Vista went kaput on my computer and I don’t have a restore cd that works. I hate HP for not putting the restore cd in the box when they ship it out and rely on a hard drive restore that may or may not work when you need it… and then they want you to pay them lots of cash to buy a restore cd that may or may not work since their blasted hardware is junk that relies on partitions on a hard drive that might get corrupted someday (which happened to me I think)…

I am trying to figure out a way to make Entropia Universe work under Linux, but it’s not promising. I got the installer to work fine under Wine, but now need to install Direct X on wine and a few other things, and even then, it still might not work.

In the mean time I’ve been reading some of my old art books, studying some old drawing books more, and also reading a lot of old role playing books and things. Future posts will probably have more scans of my drawings and paintings, but might also have some other more philisophical thoughts, thoughts on role playing, stage lighting, animation, and a number of other things. Being offline in the virtual reality I spend so much time in has started to get me ‘back to the basics’ on a variety of trains of thoughts that I had several years ago and wanted to follow through back then but didn’t because I got too distracted with this other “virtual world”… I enjoy fictional worlds as a means of escaping reality sometimes – but it’s very easy to take it overboard with a super hyper imagination and make that false reality in to your over-arching real reality sometimes… Its something we all do on some level – people think about their soap operas while they work… or maybe their comic books… maybe something else. We all have hobbies, and most of us don’t have the ultimate job that keeps our attention that we love so much that we never think of anything else — anyways, I’m getting back to the basics mentally and physically on a lot of various levels at the moment…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escapism

German social philosopher Ernst Bloch wrote that utopias and images of fulfillment, however regressive they might be, also included an impetus for a radical social change. According to Bloch, social justice could not be realized without seeing things fundamentally differently. Something that is mere “daydreaming” or “escapism” from the viewpoint of a technological-rational society might be a seed for a new and more humane social order, it can be seen as an “immature, but honest substitute for revolution”.

a few poems… simple and complex.

=======================
===LUMPS IN THE DIRT===
=======================
———————–
new brick walls…
new lumps in dirt.

Quadrangles are now triangles.

CHANGES, CHANGES, CHANGES..

Rec center is now 4 times bigger.
Construction everywhere.

CHANGES, CHANGES, CHANGES…

The new garage is really huge.
The new facades are really fake.

CHANGES CHANGES CHANGES…
ALWAYS CHANGING.

but,
The art hall remains the same…
always dirty, always grimy, always in need of repair.

MU’s wasted money…

Says the Millionare
as he passes through the
doors that bear his name.

———————-
Creativity stifled.
Funds are now dried up.
changes everywhere.
———————-

==========================
===REMEMBERING LONG AGO===
==========================
Gone are the days of wandering
around the Ville at night
Gone are the days of wandering
a camera without a light
gone are the days of wandering
paintbrush in my hand
gone are the days of wandering
throughout all of the land

running barefoot in the groves
through the pavement
on the concrete and the stone

10 years and more have passed
time pushes on…

History and Present Clash.

Time to begin the new song.

Time to follow the new path.

singing in the rain
watching the clouds again.

prisms of light and dark.
The greys, greens, blues, violets,

and of course the reds, purples, and
hazy darkness behind the trees so
brilliant red

Don’t forget the Oranges too.
—————————–

=========================
==DISTANCE IN THE DARK===
=========================
In to the night
we shall traverse

far
and
close

only

a
flicker
of
light
between

a small dim yellow flick
or maybe a currelean dab

as the night screen closes in
with ultramarine and precious
prussian blues.

—————————–

==============================
===LITTLE WHITE BUNNY TALES===
==============================
Where the fuck did that go?
Never God Damned Mind.

The cursing times…

Hide the tounge
The kids are near.

Hide the truth
Bring out the Lies

It’s Santa’s time.

Tooth faires sprinkling
different colored glitter
all around…

Why’s the colors different mom?

H377 if I know… Oh no…

I mean… darling dear,
oh me, oh my.

Let me tell you some more lies.
==========================

======================
=======GAPS===========
======================
Gaps between the poems
make you stop and think

times to reflect
times to remember
times to pause

and think.
======================

======================
=====SLOW DEATH=======
=======================
you are alive and well
you are sick and ill

the coughs of sick old
middle aged people
coming from their kids

all life is a poem…
REFRAIN is not far away

sound of the
busy bees working away
in their prison cells

those little things called
cubicles…
=======================

==========================
=====Cube cell hell=======
======ever binding========
======ever grinding=======

10 punch numbers worn off

keyboards dusty for years.

Counting down the days
til the weekends is here.

and freedom from these 4 walls
is clear… at least a while.
============================

new goals and organized life…

I’m going to try to get organized in my life again. I’ve created a daily spreadsheet that I will try to write too and check off as I go along that lists all the stuff I should be doing daily. Included in the list are
– walking the dog in the morning
– walking on morning break
– inhaling lunch and doing something creative during the last part of lunch breaks
– walking on afternoon breaks
– walking the dog in the afternoon after work – maybe ride a bike with the dog if I don’t walk him… possibly working up to 5 miles on the MKT trail someday?…
– working out for at least half an hour nightly either at the YMCA, with a workout video, on the wii, riding a bike, on a jump rope, or doing some other form of excercise for at least half an hour
– working on updating online places – this blog, turbosquid, entropia universe stuff, entropiaforum stuff, and whatever else needs to be updated…
– doing at least one chore a night (one chore is something like a load of laundry, mowing, working on organizing the basement, working on organizing the attic, dusting, cleaning one room of the house, working on a 3d project, working on a 2d project)

I like doing little organized excel or google document spreadsheets like this to keep myself organized. I used to do this sort of thing for 24 hour schedule back in college and a couple of years after that, when I was still in shape, healthy, and had a lot of ambitions… Well, it’s time to get my ambitions and goals set again, and not just continue to let myself be an out-of-shape old man… Time to be young, healthy, wealthy, and wise again…

Time to actually stop being a lazy bum with no direction in my life. The time has come, today is the first day in the rest of my life… an organized, orderly, and fulfilling life. A life full of vigor and life. A life worth living to the fullest!

Happy Wednesday.

Mixing colors… It’s not what you think it is.

There are two color spectrums that are important in the arts. One is real light and how it mixes in the real world. The other is reflected light and how it works in the real world. Real lighting is visible in Stage Lighting, Computer Screens, TVs, and just about anywhere that there is a real light source – light bulb, sun, window, etc. The primary colors of real light are red, green, and blue.

The primary colors of reflected light on the other hand are red, yellow, and blue. In the print world, black is also added to that to arrive at a spectrum that is abbreviated CYMK – Cyan (Red), Yellow, Magenta (Blue), and BlaCK – CK is used for Black so that it’s not confused with Blue.

Mixing primary colors in real light results in white where the colors overlap. This is easily demonstrated in stage lighting by simply aiming 3 lights at the same area, where each one has a filter on it that matches the 3 primary colors – red, green, and blue. Where the three colors overlaps on the stage or wall or whever the lights are aimed together, there’s white that shows up in the middle.

Painting and other forms of art where color is placed on an object utilize the reflected light spectrum since the paper, canvas, or whatever else is typically not a light source itself. What is really weird about reflected light is that the science behind it does something completely different from what you think it’s doing. The color we see on an object is really what’s reflecting back at us off of that object when the real light hits the object. In other words the “colors” we see in everything that is not a real light source is really an absence of that particular color in the object itself – all the other colors of the spectrum are “absorbed” by the object, so what we see is really the opposite of the color that the object really is. We see the color that bounced back at us and was not absorbed.

Because of that weird way that things work, mixing primary colors with paint usually results in a muddy brown mid-tone color with low intensity. That’s completely different than what happens when real light’s primary colors are mixed.

That means that most stuff that you see on screen will usually look a lot darker than it did in the computer when you print it, especially since printers add more than the primary colors, and throw black in too.

It also means that when you go to mix colors as a painter, you have to think completely differently than when you mix colors with real light, like when you are thinking about interior design issues in stage lighting, or just picking out lights to put in to your bathroom, kitchen, bedroom, or living room.

What gets very interesting is that some sculptures and other forms of art mix and match both light spectrums through backlighting, integrating tv screens in to the artform, adding lights to sculptures, etc. Sculpture is actually a whole different baseball game all together since it can incorporate time and space in to it through relationships of shadows in the real world, locations of the sun at various times of the day and year, etc. Video and painting can do that too on some levels depending on where the painting is placed, what the environment the painting is in, and of course one of the primary elements of video is time – the 4th dimension to 3 Dimensional works so to speak.

With painting, drawing, and other reflected light art forms, there is also a lot going on with how elements of the painting work with one another. Layering colors together is sort of one of the main things painters do. We create depth and dimension to a 2 dimensional plane by placing brush strokes, and other elements next to one another, on top of one another, underneath one another… There’s literally a ton of work that goes in to this sort of stuff sometimes to make a “realistic” artwork. What’s sad though is most viewers of these things that may have taken hundreds of hours to put together typically only view the work for 3-10 seconds at the most unless something in partcular catches their eye or interest in the work.

Big sculptures and video have a little bit of an advantage over painting in that regard – the viewer is forced in to watching looking at those types of things for longer periods of time, leaving more time for the work to create an impression and message. However, painting has a “presence” that exists longer sometimes, in some works. It is a visual thing that can haunt you over time as your brain echos seeing the patterns on the image over and over.

Creating works of art is a bit like wandering through a maze. You have tons of decisions to make, and each one creates subsequent decisions to make. The painting with the most “potnential energy” might well be the blank canvas… just as the work of music that might create the most interest and cause you to think about things is complete silence…http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUJagb7hL0E

Art is life. Life is art. Neither are a reflection of one another because both just are. They exist not in parallel to one another, or as a mirror to one another, but coexist, sometimes peacefully, other times in chaos. Out of chaos comes creation many times, and creation usually does eventually lead to some form of chaos.

The entire universe was created with a major big bang explosion of chaos, and from that came the beauty that we call life.