a goddess reclining

It seems the goddess venus was a favourite with the old masters because she was a subject that allowed to be painted nude... pity they all copied the same pose

Venus reclining (after giorgione) charcoal on paper

playing with light and colour

I've been experimenting with new, thicker, watercolour card, so i can paint wet-on-wet to try and get a more luminous light on skin tones... also experimenting with cadmium red over yellow ocher against blues


the blue bed


the blue dress (after Ken Howard)

new toys.... how can i resist

Blogger if offering its "new adaptors" a chance to to have a play with some new toys in blogger (well its being called blogger in draft)... but who am i to resist... the one thing that appealed to moi... was polls, being able to add polls as page elements... so look over on the stuff on the right hand side and give it a GO! Please....

I am getting a bit feed up with the good stuff on the net always being overrun with bullies, cowboys, trolls and childish behaviour... I really see the social networking side of the net being a great thing for the true creative spirit... somewhere where they are free to flourish, and collaborate, and do brilliant things, and some good things... maybe do a few things that aren't so good but without hurting anyone.. so where is that place... VOTE NOW (its over in the right handside remember)

Am I being too naive?

twisted torso

This is a sketch for illustration friday's twisted topic sorry its a bit late!

I had read about anamorphosis some time ago, but an email conversation got me doing some left hand writing and thinking about left handed painting, then painting in a different dimension, so I researched this art form a bit on the net and found this wonderful place Art of Anamorphosis, and their is a gem of a little program inside that can be downloaded for free, called anamorph me, created by Phillip Kent, it let me create a perfectly twisted torso that you can "unfold"...actually you must fold it... and see the "true" torso sketch.



To make the image I fist took a photo of my friend from flickr and trimmed it a bit and ran it through the anamorph me program using first the convert to a greyscale (I only have access to an old black and white laser printer today) and then used the inside a cone anamorph function... printed the result... then cut it out and folded it into a cone...(note have a small tab on one side of the segment makes it easier to stick the cone together)... nothing special yet? I them copied this flat image as a pastel sketch and that is what you see above, print it cut it out and fold it for yourself... it contains a lovely surprise



OK turn the cone over and look inside!

filtering out the world

It seems even second life is getting into the content filtering caper, but the way i picked this up through a tweet on twitter, not via second life... so chance are the source is a rumor not an official announcement

On the technical side I scanned this pencil sketch in with paint.net (a free download), as all HP scanner owners will know by now the controls over scanning are frustratingly inadequate not that paint.net has more controls it does the scanning as i would want!

in search of a new gallery

yahoo photos are shutting down... hmmmmm, i will have to look for a new home for some old favourites... what about flickr... well I dropped my pro account when I was made NIPSA, so i only get to display 200 photos

AND now HORRORS of HORRORS I'm rated UNSAFE... which means I can publicly display ZERO

This hurts a bit as I have been an advocate for Flickr self filter systems... and I was diligent in rating my nudes... so why am I unsafe?... why am I a loose cannon, maybe it because I stand up to bullies and self opinionated morons...perhaps it is just that other see the nudes and i get lumped in with the pornographers, the picture thieves, fakrs, spammers and other low light making flickr into something more like the wild west than the creative place it should be... AND I'm too tired of all the jibberish to participate in the current Flickr Censr(ship) debate.

but let's not cry over split milk... i will just need to find a different on-lime home for my sketckbook pages... c'est la vie

A short break

soft pencil on paper

There is a lot going on in my life at the moment so this may the last sketch posted in here... well for a little while

just a bit of fun

"That's quite interesting camouflage"

For Illustration friday's topic camouflage

Colour in a torso

water colour and aquarella pencil on paper

seems I am not the only one to have their use of colours in a torso questioned... far greater men that I have walked there before me

"Try to explain to Monsieur Renoir that a woman's torso is not a mass of decomposing flesh with those purplish green stains with denote a state of complete putrefaction in a corpse."
Albert Wolf on Renoir's Nude in Sunlight.

But I will not give in, the female torso deserves colour, and appreciation, and so does life

Bullying & throwing out the baby with the bath water

seems like a lot of folk are getting a bit over excited and carried away now with the censorship issues over on flickr... (see also my earlier blog)



I think the flickr self-filters are a good thing, they do give you the freedom to express yourself, but act responsibly.... my worry is about all those that try to impose their will on others and there has been a lot of unnecessary name calling and bullying... here is just one example

Tantrictim
Originally uploaded by Sassy Fox

this guy doesn't deserve to be recognized, because he seems to be a campaigners for the rights to express and make our own judgment and yet he has so many images that have been taken from others, time to grow up mate... and as for calling, those that point this out names, well that is totally childish and bullying is not acceptable behavior for creative folk... delete yourself or tantric one (you wish)! not the groups you have gained control of.

she was magnificent

watercolour and aquarella pencil, this is an immensely personal work that has taken me a long time to do.

TWICE or thrice had I loved thee,
Before I knew thy face or name ;
So in a voice, so in a shapeless flame
Angels affect us oft, and worshipp'd be.
Still when, to where thou wert, I came,
Some lovely glorious nothing did I see.
But since my soul, whose child love is,
Takes limbs of flesh, and else could nothing do,
More subtle than the parent is
Love must not be, but take a body too ;
And therefore what thou wert, and who,
I bid Love ask, and now
That it assume thy body, I allow,
And fix itself in thy lip, eye, and brow.

Whilst thus to ballast love I thought,
And so more steadily to have gone,
With wares which would sink admiration,
I saw I had love's pinnace overfraught ;
Thy every hair for love to work upon
Is much too much ; some fitter must be sought ;
For, nor in nothing, nor in things
Extreme, and scattering bright, can love inhere ;
Then as an angel face and wings
Of air, not pure as it, yet pure doth wear,
So thy love may be my love's sphere ;
Just such disparity
As is 'twixt air's and angels' purity,
'Twixt women's love, and men's, will ever be.

.... air & angels by John Donne

Censors will steals your eyes

Censr steals your eyes
Originally uploaded by pioforsky

There is a fair bit of buzz going on in flickr at the moment... the sad part is it will not be reaching the places it needs too ...in singapore, korea and germany (yes germany) you may only be able to get in to view safe content (no opportunity to do otherwise...) but in china you now have no hope of even getting in at all... its not just flickr affected, many blogs are being taken down or barred ... when I was in sinagapore even I recieved a email from my ISP questioning the appropriateness of the nudity in this very humble blog

the saddest part is that it is not about nudity, nipples and sharing more intimate photos/moments, which you can legitimately do by appropriately using the flickr's self filtering system ... the actual reason is just political and obsession with control and power.... giving people the opportunity to actually see and express what is going on is what is at risk!

Please blog about this yourself.... raise the concern with everyone you can ...the freedom of what you can hear and see is as precious as the freedom to express yourself

a postcard in RL from SL

today i got a postcard from second life ... well I really did, from my friend in there Wings Ares, she's quiet a stunner and she has visited LeMusiqueFire and wanted to share that with me... its not everyday a postcard arrives from the virtual world, with a nice note as well... something worth sketching and as i began I realised that I more clearly understood what it was about SL (Second Life) and all the glamor that had previously distressed me ... it is so super real in overwhelming detail but at the same time spooky and way to difficult to sketch ... I had the urge to simplify, just take in the mood and romance of the place... leave out the detail...and soon i realized an ultra-reality virtual world doesn't need an artist... well a human one ...the computers can do all that if you have the time and money.. (there is a lot of shopping to do in SL) you can surround yourself with delicious textures and colours and things that are so difficult to collect in RL (Real Life)... but then i realized just as soon that others can create beauty with love, and romance, and relationships ...all I have is some pastels and paper.

That spooky side of of ultra real amination & robots was called the uncanny valley (others now call it scary valley) by japanesse robotic professor Hirishi Ishiguro... for me I guess I was scared by it and yearn for that softer more primal exotic notion that drove gauguin to the pacific and glorious colour!

inviting the colour in

bit by bit i can see my art... actually becoming decent art... I have let the colour start to position itself and lift the mood, using bolder strokes, an am leaving the detail till the very last minute... having a model full of life, joy and understanding helps

It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living.
I want to know what you ache for
and if you dared to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.

...from the invitation by Oriah Mountain Dreamer

a surprise sitting

I was sitting on yahoo... waiting for a different friend... when suddenly an old friend cincy said hello and even posed for a quick sketch... thanks

fragrancy of the tropical light

Whilst I am back in the cold now... I loved the light in the tropics, the richness of colour in the shade... the vibrancy... it doesn't photograph that well and capturing the richness of colours in watercolours is a challenge BUT colour is the key ... exactly as the impressionists realised over a century ago .... art without colour is art without passion and soul

la couleur est la vie

sketching in paradise

for illustration friday's topic your paradise

returning to the sketching

P1010001,
originally uploaded by sigh clone.

Thought it was time to get the sketchblog back to what it was originally intended to be... an online sketch book... so here it is... (but the scanning won't be the best since I'm traveling and don't have access to a scanner so they'll just be photographs or sketched instead) ... as I'm trying out the email to flickr route to do the posts... hope it works

Fields of Gold

So she took her love,
for to gaze awhile,
among the fields of barley
In his arms she fell as her hair came down
among the fields of gold

Pastel on paper

amber inspiration

pastel on paper

The sketch book is dead ... long live the sketch book

as part of stream-lining my on-line existence (trying to get rid of the time consuming bits and stuff that just waste bandwidth) ... i've decide to kill off my original sketchbook ... its not actually the original which was in MSN groups but they threw it over to world groups because it had NUDES ... yes people without clothes ... no one had visited it for years so its gone... but that leaves a big hole since flickr only has my recent work so i'm working on a more refined sketch book using googles picassa web albums and a version on my notebook to managed the big mess that is my electronic scapbook of my work ... so softly ...softly I will create some on-line albums with my earlier images ...watch this blog for links there ... BUT remember there may be NUDITY!

Nudes & Torsos

soft 25 hours of flickr (the rejects)

soft 25 hours
Originally uploaded by sighclone.

Yes this is heavily based on Dali's persistence of memory (better known as the soft clocks) ... i had been invited to the 24 hours of flickr rejects group and realised I had missed the whole thing due to other things taking my full attention on saturday... when i noticed they just had a black icon (at least it wasn't an undefined grey bot) ...and the whole time draped over the tree of life thing hit me ...

By first I must set the scene, I'm having a late night coffee in a cyber cafe and I didn't have much at all to create with... certainly no art gear ...well expect a felt pen... so i scribbled the back of a flyer. Instead of digitizing.. I photographed it on my phone ... uploaded it using bluetooth (with about 5 minutes of frustration in the process) then found the usb port on the cafe computer, and plugged in my memory stick ... with it's portable apps system and specifically gimp.. converted the image to black & white, with a couple of bits to edit and then colour fill ...viola, about 10 minute later my idea is on flickr and uploaded as the group logo overnight...

not bad for an old bloke ...I have even impressed my self

Is this really me ...

I decided I needed a new, more web 2.0 style, buddy icon come profile pic ...Maybe i'm geting old and grumpy but those folk without a profile pic or even some descriptive text all get assigned to ignore land these days ...too many little annoying trolls and otherwise antisocial types seem to hide in the guise of anonymity ...ok they can do that but the will not be accepted as my friends

so conversely I want other to see me as a little creative, not to complex and basically harmless ...do you think this suits me? ... do you even care?

Twiquette

"Should good girls wave at a bligmobile"

car(toon) for Cherrie Exx

what are you doing?

In line with my scaling down for better portability ... I've become a twitter(er) ...its a little strange to describe ... some call it a microblogging ... basically you just use the web, email, IM or even SMS from your mobile phone to answer the question "what are you doing?" ... and then the fun starts BUT beware it can be addictive and expensive on OZ if you do i via SMS ;)

... so if you are interested you can now see what I'm doing, and countless thousands of others are up. look way down the bottom of the righhand side of this blog and you will see the RSS feeds of my stuff and a twitter feed ...watch that cube-head roll around the net ...boring yet! or maybe you's like to join in the conversation?

So where is the art?

don't despair ... i am still drawing, just not things that can be posted here (at the moment) ...in the meantime here is a cartoon, well cartoon-ish drawing ...is it just me or is there a misguided blurring of focus on the difference between celebrity and tacky meaningless behavior ... is miss world abort to be replaced by Slut of the Universe?

Are silly, but harmless, old artist that post nudes on the net really responsible for this trend?

take five

take five,
originally uploaded by sigh clone.

my newest passion, on last.fm ... is to listen to the same songs, by different artists, ... it was a simple enough discovery, if you sort your itunes library or playlist by name (or title in monkey media), there they are all side by side ... just waiting to be played one after the other ... I have several version of take 5 by Dave bruebeck .. there is a long one, a short one a mid length one but my favourite is the Dave Brubeck trio with gerry mulligan, recorded live in Berlin, which last over 9 minutes ... anyway the weaving of the rhythm and melody across the sax(ex), piano, base and drums needed illustrating .. so here is my attempt

well how about that

On my yahoo 360 profile page I have, an art quote of the week link ... this weeks is ....John W. Gardner "Life is the art of drawing without an eraser."

So I put this into the flickr search and it couldn't find anything :( Then I started taking out the little words until i just has Life art drawing ... and well it found mt life drawings, (not that surprising you say when you see the tags ... but I do love this series.

So then I went over to google and guess what there were exactly 248,000 matches to Life is the art of drawing without an eraser ...towards the top are a couple of artists over on deviant art, sandpiperw, as in the bird and monaattya, then quiet a few links to the quote again.. I suspected looking at more would not help much.

so I turned to blog radio, and guess what? ...nothing found, but i did fine the art of life by X Japan, never heard it before and it is kind of epic, and a live version to boot



Such is life & art

more self filtering

Don't be discouraged ... deviant art has followed flickr and added self filtering for mature content ... I fully support this, it means that grown ups (like me can "publish" works without worrying about them being "accidentally" viewed by minors (those innocent children of mythical importance) ... yet i hate to be a spoil sport but the big problem of the moment on lots of on-line communities is that most of the pseudo pornographers, images trolls and generally annoying folk on the net are young adolescent people, and very immature at that ... probably in their bedroom while mum & dad think they are doing homework!

still I would rather not risk corrupt a purely innocent soul, so I applaud the self filter move.

My presence on deviant art has been a bit sparse to date ... maybe there will be more now

...quilting?

No I haven't hit menopause ... well i don't think I have .... but i have taken up quilting

This widget from last.fm will let you see the albums I own and listen to.. impressive don't you think? ...watch way down on the right hand side of this blog, to see my current favourite artist that I listen too anywhere, my ipod, web-radio, from podcasts...hear what inspires me! click on the pictures and find out more if you want

something nothing

is it just me or is second life really the web 2.0 incarnation of the B ark (hitch hikers guide to galaxy fans will know what i mean)? its an interesting concept and is at its center a just a game ... but how obsessed are the airheads inside their ... such conspicuous spending on nothing, (or more precisely something-nothing) ... where are the real bohemians, the creative folk, the intelligencia ... the self obsessed inhabitants inside are all supposed to be the smartest people around ... not the one's i have meet... where did that myth come from, they just seek fame and instant celebrity... then again i decided to be poor ... which translated into being totally ignored ... ok I'm a little older and a little wiser, and no damage done to my wallet, and I can get on with my life ... enjoy the journey without me, second lifers ... i know what happened to the golgafrinchans

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mixing media (again)

this small sketch was just a playful experiment, using pastel over a watercolour wash ... but i was thrilled with the colours ... lotta on the other hand would have rather her eyes where the same size ;)

Art for Arts Sake

Art for Arts sake
Originally uploaded by big al davies.

I guess this is not a big deal for a lot of my more net & flickr savvy friends ... but I have just at some good fun typing simple quotes into the flickr search everyone's photo box at the top the the flickr page ... for example art for art sake got this great photo and a lot of others

So I have decided that I might make a visual &/or musical quote search a regular feature on the blog ... hope I don't bore you all to quickly


I also wanted to add the sond art for art sake by 10cc, but i could not locate anything on blog.radio and you will only get a scrobbled snippet from last.fm. On Utube the only thing remotely like the song was by the Bon Fuher ...which was a very hopeless attempt at sing really and being dress like hilter is way.... not now or every was... sorry that was so bad I won't bore you with that clip ... so please make do with the scrobbled bit from last.fm

armed & dangerous

If you see an old bloke in a cyber cafe armed with a handful of electronic thingos, and a sketch book, and maybe drinking a short black (espresso to the coffee heathens) don't be alarmed he will probably be harmless old me ... i've decided to downsize my hardware... an particularly get rid of all the bloody cables... I've been puting my best art on my ipod for a while now and it now has a great gallery, with a wicked miles davis soundtrack... my phone is filling with art as well ... it is web aware so i can email and even find myself on google maps ... the orange thing is amazing its the new Australia next G network wireless broadband modem, on a USB plug... works anywhere my phone does... but the best bit is on the memory stick... I've moved over to using portable apps ... and it was painless.... i can now have my own same old work space, favourites, bookmarks and all and software on any computer that takes the USB plug... even crappy old cyber cafe 'puters.

Whilst I am deeply saddened to hear about the Virgina Tech massacre, ... it doesn't surprise me ... guns kill people ...as an Australian I know gun control people works ... those folk in the USA please look at the stats you are far more likely to be shot my someone you know, because they have easy access to a gun when they get annoyed. Remove that access and you will stay alive! ... but your president says it better than me

Mr Bush: "It was just a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time"

(UNHEARD part of the interview ---

Reporter: "And what place was that Mr. President?"

Mr Bush: (looks blank for a while) "Errr ....America" )

soul food

I've been so involved in my pastels of late I have neglected my simpler cartoon like sketches and doodles ...such behaviour was good for my soul ... viva the goddess ... good music... and purple

An on-line exhibition worth visiting

My very favourite "grown up" web artist is carolyn weltman (aka sophi,
aka art for engineers) ...she's a lovely person as well. anyway she has been selected as the as the featured artist on the british museum of erotic art website (look under the exhibition section, while it lasts)... congratulations carol

It is definitely worth a visit if you are not familiar with her work ... especially the sensuality in the way she does her shoes... but take your time to have a look around at the originality and creatively that still exists in the art world ... the all to boring "me too" celebrity/pornish/fackr copyism and image theft doesn't have to be the only thing you can look at on the net you know ... there is life outside second life,myspace, yahoo & flickr!

I love it ....

wondering why the artistic output is down ... well the wordl cup cricket is (still) on over in the west indies... the complete opposite time zone to here... and being a bloke I can't watch TV late at night and sketch ;)

opps

Sorry about forgetting to update the blog calender ... ok you loyal blog viewers how about reminding me ;)

And another thing ... just discovered that the nude suduko has stopped working... seems that changing the public access filtering has hidden my nudes from third party access ... i'll see if I can fix it first, but don't be surprised if that link disappears

Raison d'Être

Whilst I still draw on paper ... butI am getting more and more convinced that art has to make the move onto all our personal technology ...otherwise that technology will remain cold and remote... showing some creatively on your personal things will enhance your life ... and it doesn't even have to be a nude ... the problem is really the rate at which the technology changes ... does your mobile phone now have a camera? ... have you personalized your PC yet with an original wallpaper ... do you want to? would you rather wait for the video ... have you ever thought about
it.

Should I start to consider making more of my art for technology ... such as screen wallpaper ...or is blogging art enough ... willflickr (and yahoo) ever let the art flow ... are the millions of screens of the rapidly developing range of personal devices the biggest art gallery of all? ... perhaps I am a pioneer ...not just an eccentric

missing chatting with me?

If you miss my pressence in the chat rooms.... or my terrible typos.... the old yahoo ones, or MSN, Trillion or Pal talk ... here is your chance to have a nice chat with me without the chat room

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Monthly FlickrMat

Monthly FlickrMat,
originally uploaded by sigh clone.

This is a nice idea, inspired by artjunkgrl. These are recent works (not exactly all last months, but hopefull a nice start to my monthly flickrMat routine.)

1. gucci rush, 2. pastel torso8, 3. gemma in pastel, 4. torso1 in pastel, 5. fees famous backside, 6. torso2 in pastel, 7. ayame in pastel small, 8. kimy's secret in pencil, 9. aussie louise in pastel

Created with fd's Flickr Toys.

another Pastel Torso

Life drawing, Pastel on paper.

Light is a thing that cannot be reproduced, but must be represented by something else – by color.

Paul Cezanne