buxom dreams

pastel on paper

what is art?

I get asked this question a lot ...as if i should know the answer! ...welll i suspect art like beauty is in the eye of the beholder not the object or the action ...so I can labour and toil and call what i di art, but i would be lying ... i think my art is a gift of inpiration or joy to the viewing ...a gift i may never seen given ..but one i give in honesty and full knowledge that it may not be recognized of generate income of bring fame ...but is a gift all the same.

Stolen Art

I'm not sure why the art heist in paris has gitten so much media coverage, when so much art is stolen every second on the net. Sure the picaso, braque, modigliani and matisse works are worth a lot these days, as museum pieces. The reality is they should be worthless, ok the could earn the thief or indiscreet purchasers a lengthy jail term, while they are at large. The problem I an getting more and more confused about is what is the real vale of art and why is the art creator so unlikely to benefit from its value. The worse problem in my mind is all the direct theft of art, photos, videos and songs because it has been posted on the net. Doesn't the artist deserve something?

I will skip over the question of whether art is also stolen when it is largely copied (plagiarism?)

If you have valuable art and are worried about it being stolen, make sure it is properly photographed (you gallery or agent can help with that) and document it specifically with your insurance and not down the useful web servicw the Art Loss Registry (which lets you register stolen works). It will also let you do additional check up on that "unearthed" Picaso from the guy at the pub!

restlessness

I have become restless in my art ...two things are nagging me about what i see others doing ...the first is fashion and fads, the look at me i'm a celebrity wannabee ..which is just copy/plagiarism in disguise ...and most of all boring ...you don't neeed it to look like a beyoncé or lady gaga film clip ...ok lady gaga is becoming a recycled madonna and single ladies has more than a few dance moves from the Yolngu Zorba Dance ...don't get me wrong there is talent there also but i yearn for more originality in the rest of us

yet I know you need to follow some rules of say composition and sketch a pose that artist and photographers have used many times ... but it works

the second concerns is about colour ...i love colour ...i'm sure you have noticed that ...its just that colour consciousness seems to have left the building ...am I the only one who see the beauty in a purple shadow? perhaps i just need to keep sketching :)


BTW I'm still posting on TwitPics

They say ...

They say that doing too many self portraits is the way to madness ...they sight Rembrandt through to Van Gogh and many more ...well I might have a dutch name but I'm not the slightest bit psychotic ...Ok I keep getting reminded I'm a child with an inflated super ego (them there are harsh words from a professional) ...its justt6hat those self reference things keep cropping up amongst my scratches and doodles ...ok the one below I did waste some time creating on-line. It is supposedly me in the future according to my webface.com ...to be honest it looks nothing like me. It even looks a bit creepy, kind of troll like a photoshopped buddy icon on a dating site, and he is the last sort of bloke I'd even chat with ...little lone draw ...C'est la vie.



Surely there may be some advantages to appearing mad, a little off or not quite the full bottle maybe I'll be left alone. ...alone to create and just do what I want. But then I am reminded by someone who knows these things there is zero benefit in going crazy

“Madness is to think of too many things in succession too fast, or of one thing too exclusively” Voltaire

Alas poor twitpics....

i liked the way the badge or widget or whatever it was from Twipics worked (just on posting the last item I had uploaded to twitpics. All automatic and no code to copy and paste ...something that tests and old bloke like me) ...but alas it has disappeared without trace and I have to do some editing and such to show my work here ...such tedium

Time to look for a new photo to twitter methods : )

By Bye Twitpics ...was nice while it lasted

Don't forget to revisit Pandora

Congratulations to the Hungry Beast Team, their Avatar 2 trailer has had over 1.5 million hits on You Tube

Appropriation or Plagiarism

The Art news that Melbourne is a buzz with this week is the discovery that Sam Leach, a local Melbourne boy, and winner of the prestigious Wynn Prize for Landscape, was outed for copying. No one realized how heavily he had borrowed from the 1660 work Boatmen Moored on the Shore of a Lake by Dutch master Adam Pynacker. Leach makes no attempt to deny he was "influenced", the gallery says they didn't realise. but the tongues are wagging on radio and TV, plagiarist rather than appropriation!



Yet it is hard to be totally original, some of the best art is built of previous ideas and works.

Good artists borrow. Great artists steal.

(Pablo Picasso)

Thinking too much

I am about to die, not tomorrow, not next week but some time. The trouble is I'm loosing little bits of what life is about and that worries me a lot more. I think it is so important to live life to the full. Sometimes I need to do the living on my own so I can focus on creative stuff. Other times I need to be surrounded by company, preferable the amiable encouraging kind ... but a good argument never hurt anyone ...at the moment I seem to be getting a lot of flack about living on the net ...being too social ...letting my "bad habit" be viewed by the world (sketching naked ladies is not in my view a bad habit, posting it on a blog might be what offends them so?) ... and laughter, what a joy a group laugh can be. ...but I do need to live on the edge occasionally too ...take a risk, back my own judgment ...sometimes it is my art ...sometimes its the ocean ...now it may be my health, such is life

I am not an adventurer by choice but by fate
Vincent Van Gogh

two minutes for boobs

I've been distracted a lot lately by stuff in the real world ..fixing, repairing, doing errands, drinking beer and yarning with friends ... the stuff that gets in the way of those creativity juices ...not excuses so much as different pathway in life STILL I did have some new paints to trial ...I had loved using a set of cotman colours in a neat plastic travel pallet (I'd got on special some time ago) but was coming to the end of the best colours and I can not get the replacement tubs ..such is life ...any way I decided to splurge out on the equivalent windsor & newton grown up watercolors (and they are about twice the price) I loved the cotman Dioxazine Violet (for the under painting of shadows of tone, maybe with a little red to take the edge of the intensity) then glazing this in layers Raw Sienna and Alizarin Crimson over this. Well a two minute torso exercise seemed a logical first start ...ok this is more precisely a two minute boob job...and yes it took longer than two minutes but I was having fun ...nipples are difficult forms to make convincing ...and these where particularly proud nipples ..I had to do three separate washes in violet to just leave enough edge and tone. then it was back to wet on wet washes with the colour glazes ...I was very pleased it turned out very magically translucent, but where the new colours better? not sure, nice model though.

Autumn is for ART

art show appeal
Originally uploaded by sighclone

This time of year is art season, down here in the south eastern of Australia ...and I'm busy preparing for, getting things framed and transporting work back and for to art shows that have been popping up everywhere ...OK you won't find my works in the Archibald this year, btw congratulation to Sam Leach, who won booth the Archy and Wynne prizes ..and good works they were too ...my works are still competing with everyone elses for wall space ...especially in those expensive little inner eastern surburb galleries (no they are not even listening?) and shows.

So my theory is grin and bear it, if my art truly appeals, I will get enough to pay for my materials and perhaps framing ...after that ego could be in danger of becoming harmfully inflated.

Such is Life

REALLY - or yet another of the FauxFolk

Annie Stoner- nude from behind
Originally uploaded by AnnieS25

I chatted with this idenity a while back on ipernity, she seemed nice enough and I even decided to use her photo for yet another return to my 2 minute torso exercises. ...that started well enough

then I noticed something ...can you see it?

hmm ..why is the waistline so different? ...have i lost it? have i got the anatomy so wrong? ...that skin is pretty damn flawless ...why is annie's head and body in such different proportions in her other photos ...am I paranoid or is she just too flawless to be true ...and how does a body like that sing like stevie nicks? ah mais oui, encore un autre faux pas

perhaps not,
Is she fake?
She is a photoshop abuser

hope i'm wrong on this one.

PS Well not surprisingly I got a less than happy email from the identity involved. about my "bullshit blog" post, seems it was a jaded boyfriend that supposedly started the rumor she was fake. This is very feasible and thus I have removed her name from this post (and my illustrations, to avoid my contribution to furthering the shadow on her name in net searches). However she added "buy my album and see for yourself" ...well that just complicated things ...I can find her songs on last.fm and ovi podcasts & they are free to download BUT not for sale in either ITunes or Amazon. I remain very skeptical

SPOILERS | Hungry Beast

SPOILERS | Hungry Beast
You'll have to watch the clip to discover what spoilers are. I must admit I love the hungry breast's GRAPHics ...trés trés chic ...and this time I don't think I missed the intent of the self reference at the end of the spoiler segment.


The cane toads piece with wonderful ...but so truthfully sad ...maybe it may have had a happier ending if Peter Garrett had offered them free insulation!

all buzzed out

Seems buzz has got the huff with me ... i have so many unread Buzz'es, is that the right term?, that they are ow just showing 100+ unread ...what the ...i don't scroll back on twitter ...do you really expect me to read them google? Isn't my gmail bulky enough it? are there empty spasces on a server somewhere just creeking for more! Or sm I just to stuck in things to do in the real world?

Such is life

2010 Funbag Calendar

I will have to admit that I have been a fraction slow getting this year's funbag fascination calendar organized. I'm sort of doin as the year goes along, which should matters since it is designed to fit into an old CD jewel case and sit nice and neatly on your desk ... you will just have to keep and eye out and download the new page each month.

Here are my sketches for next month calendar girl.

river nymphs

A couple of rough sketch ideas for a new series of water goddesses

the satire is not lost on me

The Hungry Beast, a good new show on the ABC, tonight had a segment with lots of graphic detail and the true terms about Labiaplasty, a bit of a surprise from conservative aunty. Yes it was about snipping the lips back of a woman's genitals. I have no complaint about the segment but I get the feeling most people missed the point that it was satire not a documentary. I doubt the plastic surgeon was really a doctor at all and the expert witness, a graphics artist from a soft porn magazine, who voice was disguise to protect his identity. Come on! Are models really going to undergo surgery to look neat, just to get in a cheap magazine when a bloke at a computer screen of said magazines can airbrush it all out in a flash? Are you starting to realize now? This was good satire, but it is not to be taken too seriously.

The truth is the Hungry beast team is hoping to exploit the same classification that let the magazine publish clear and frank frontal nudity photos.

PS Seems I miss read the intent of satire in the story (see response in my comments) & I'm not trying to critize the hungry beast team, they are well worth a watch

The first drinks on me

Well I finished Feb Fast without any big fan fare. Not having alcohol for a months was a lot easier than I expected, ...probably because most of my friends where in it as well. The community response was pretty amazing as well, nearly $650k raised in support of services working to reduce alcohol and other drug related harms in young people. Well done everyone.

Watching the weather

Today is supposed to be exciting weather, and I have taken a twitter friends tweeted request literally.

I wonder what the difference is between thunderstorms & thundery rain? Be on the look out today ... weathergirlbug

So just for today I'll be updating this blog with my hand painted observations of how the weather is progressing today. ....Live Art on the Internet? ...Calm Down, old fella, just my observation of the sky from life in watercolour wash

Twitter me some love

A Canadian twitter friend & follower, who just happens to be great singer ... has just posted her latest song and especially nice animated video onto YouTube ...This is worth tweeting your friends about ...go Marcomé ....check out her other new age style music

out of my depth

First Itunes is playing naughty ...now twitter ...or is it just karma getting back at me for slagging off apple inc

on being a non-apple 'puter artist

I'm starting to get depressed by the loyality my creative friends show to second rate apple'ness on their computers. I really don't like the appl'ific software ..it only appears easy to use because it doesn't let your do very much ...ok ok some really creative types can do ammazing things but they tend to do all that with a lot of work ...manual work ...lots of fiddling .... lots of time wasted ...my feeling is in 75% of the cases just doing it manually with a pencil and paper... or paint or whatever ...would have done a better job probably in less time ...I have come to associate apple software as a time black hole just sucking in the creativity and giving a bland results, if any result can be created in a reasonable time frame. RANT OVER

So Having said all that, I am finding it hard to find the type of artistic software I would like to use to do my art directly on the computer, a much battered but loved toshi notebook running vista. Corel draw & paint are ok but expensive .. the adobe stuff also ok, albeit applish, but even more expensive ...gimp is pretty powerful and free but oh what a learning curve ...where is the middle ground?

Ok back to the rant, Itunes has trashed my music library yet again ...and goobled up most of my free disc space in the process ...bugger ...buggger ...more bugger ...it is time I learnt the lesson I should have realized sooner ...remove itunes and try something else ...so I'm rebuilding with songbird portable (ie it and the library are happy on an external USB drive) and now for my ipod ...hangon Ipod device not supported ...What the?

its too hot to worry about all this now but keep me away from apples tonight! even the edible kind

with a little help from ipernity

This is my first attempt at a blog post images directly from Ipernity ...why? Well Ipernity if a lot like flickr but at least so far doesn't have quite the same shame you, because you post nudity, attitude as Flickr ... maybe thats because it is essentially europian and more grown up ...maybe the trolls that ruined flickr with stolen pornsite images haven't found their way to ipernity yet ...no matter there is a chance I can once more be publically viewed and my links won't be blocked ..so if you are bored with flickr stick around and I will give you an artist opinion of how it find it in some future posts

DON'T PANIC if i have sketched you and posted that only on flickr, it will be safe from me ...I'll keep my flickr presence. If you prefer the image removed, also let me know and better still tell me if you prefer it also posted in ipernity

That wasn't so bad

Its a dull day here ... drizzly rain, which we need badly but not art inspiring I'm afraid ... and after my third coffee of the morning and a twitter read or two ...I got an itch to change my blog template

I was scared this would be a big technical issue, requiring too much patience and text editing ... so I had keep avoiding even looking ... ok I was wrong

I soon founf Deluxe templates, and liked their creative art template as I was seeking a sketchbook look & feel ...i still have to tweak that stuff over on the right but overall I'm please and it was easy to change the template (just read the instructions that come in the zip file with xml when you down load it. the step about backuping your previous template is good advice) :)

The Great Wall ..or Not

I'm not happy I've just deleted a larger number of anonymous comments in Chinese with lots of links to goodness knows where and what, added to MY blog posts ...many just posted in the last day or some in posts as far back as 2004 ... not sure who would spend so muck time doing that, ...AND how have the bypassed the standard google steps to stop anonymous comments ... inscrutable ,, or just childish ...No matter they have been deleted and will keep being deleted ... MOST IMPORTANTLY dear readr do not follow these Chinese links I suspect they is no good to be found behind them

HEY GOOGLE
How do I even reportt this stuff to you?
Do you even care?

iPad

iPad
Originally uploaded by vicequeenmaria

I'm not sure the ipad is really likley to live up to te hype ... but i'm also certain it will be a very popular must have toy for most ...and a tools for a few creative types ...i do see it as the technology that overcomes the resistance of the OLD CENTRALIZED CAPITAL CONTROL of the creative folk among us. ..Magazines and newspapers will struggle but the real battle line is all about intellectual property and copy right or wrongs ...if it just means more blanant stealling of work and plagarism then we will be living in a darker world ...on the other hand if we learn to share and acknowledge creativity, we could be on the verge of a gold era with nifty toys to enjoy it in our pockets

raising the flag

i feel like dancing

Went along to the globe to globe festival of world music today in the semi-official capacity of artist for the brazilian style full body paint for the samba band ...ok just for the girls (no photos sorry) ...massive amounts of fun ...even got to play in a west African drum band workshop ...loved it ...this evil rhythm type dancing is for me ...it was a great day out ...great food ...great music and lots of dancing ..lots of happy faces, multiculturalism does work and is alive in this little corner of this humble globe

View from on Top

“There are many paths to the top of the mountain, but the view is always the same” ... Ancient Chinese Proverb.

Beware I am a promiscuous tweeter

I actually get a lot of flack from my so called friends, because I'm an old guy and I tweet, that almost as perverted as using facebook to them. The really bad news I must hide from them (seriously they will never read my blog ;) ...is I am not choosy where I tweet ... I will tweet from anywhere using anything ...shame on me ...I know this because I have checked with TweetStats.

Happy New Year

Still scannerless, ....but happy :)

Wishing everyone of my friends a happy new year and maybe it be both pleasurable & prosperous

yes ...but the food is great

One thing about having my studio out he back of a french patisserie and cafe, is I get the most wonderful day old cakes for morning & afternoon teas ...just things like a decent coffee morning and afternoon are a great plus in temselves ... not sure it gets anymore art done but it sure is the right way to live ... just in case you are worried i am geting to pampered, I do help out in the cafe from time to time

watercolour sketching

lotta 5 watercolour,
originally uploaded by sigh clone.

It has been a while since i painted something to post in here ... I'm still painting but just not for my blog much ... had a lovely email from a web fiend which included some christmas photo that inspired me to get the brushes out ... problem is I had no watercolour paper .. not too bad i thought, i could handle it ... the washes don't glide on standard printer paper the water sinks in and goes a bit greyish ... the second wash didn't help ... normaly that would starts to bring on the translucency . . it sank in as well and looked even muddier ...damn ... used a few pencils to put a few colour highlights in but I certainly miss that 300gsm archers

why is nudity so misunterstood?

Saw this posted on You Tube by Blunty3000. It does so many things right, starting with acknowledging the other contributors, looks at the human form as beauty, uses the censored blackouts sensibly but most of all it demonstrates that nudity can be treated a perfectly normal form of artistic expression.

Nude
"Consider this video both a love letter to the Human form, and an open letter to any and all either interested in the nude in art, or are confused by it, or have trouble telling what is art and what is porn, or simply want to explore what goes on between model and artist in the creation of artistic studies of the naked human body.

Thank you to all who helped me make this video, It simply would not have been possible without you. Thank you to all the artists who either offered their work directly, or allowed it's use through the Creative Commons copyright license, Your generosity is greatly appreciated. :)" ...Blunty3000

changing scanners

yet another sketch of walkabout,
originally uploaded by sigh clone.

my long suffering scanner died yesterday... in an acrid flash of something electronically amiss it breathed a last vile breath and just stopped .... we never really got along ..she, I called my scanner a she, she always kept me wondering what my image would turn out like ... too dark, too litle, crinkle marks, not eogh contrast ... no matter whoi adjusted the control she would still just always insist on the last word and over tweek something ... ok i found her infuriating ...BUT I had grown accustomed to her face



So soon i have to learn to use another mistress ...just fpr now I'm making do with a multi-function printer that will do some basic scanning, ok scans quiet well and without the fuss

tagging people in flickr

I only just noticed, the new people feature in flickr ... because a few people where identifying themselves within my photo stream. It is super easy to use. Just look for the add people under the people in this photo heading ... its down on the right hand side of the main photo display page ...then type in their flickr name or email address ... suddenly they are famous. You can add people to your photos or they can add themselves to yours

ok famous, is a slight exaggeration ... more precisely tagged in public, and this may have a down side ...a lot of folk including good friends of mine are paranoid at the moment about what the net knows about them ...so I'm probably leaning towards the etiquette that people can tag themselves, rather than me do it ...and on that note I normally ask those i sketch before I post them on the net

the alley cat

I have no idea why I sketch the alley cat sitting on the fence ...i normally throw things at him (or her) ... i'm not a cat fan ...they are vicious killers and torturers of anything smaller than themselves ... they are definitely;y not affectionate pets, they treat their keepers with only contempt ... I can not see why anyone wouls like them ... in fact anyone with a cat as a buddy icon, or post photos of cats in their ablums gets the heave ho from my contacts. So just watch yourself alley cat, i'm bigger than you

something to watch

I started to prepare a post today but my scanner breathed its last breath half way trough and kind of spoilt the flow. So I though i;d give you something from youtube to look as as a reward for stopping by.

what good is a sketch blog without sketches

Some sketches of eyes & ears on normal copy paper using a new type of charcoal stick. Like a conte only oily. Quite like it.

PS It's been so long since I uploaded an pictures blogger asked me to reaccept the terms of service ... maybe I should have read them ... ok nobody every does ;)

some on-line sketches of friends

Opps

sorry about the black box (seems I'm deemed un-safe on flickr again) andits been a while between post ...i'll be back sometime soonish ;)

more dancers