Winter inspiration

My twitter friend Dee doing a swirling dance infront of the winter sun.

Just the inspiration I need to restart my posting on the interwebs again.

Last Sketch for a while

I will have to close up my web activity for a while, and permanently close a couple of accounts, due to childish but persistent hacking and stealing of my identity and on-selling it to Chinese and eastern European types with very dubious morals. So please be careful of emails you may receive that look like they are from me. Especially don't send money or personal details.

I now suspect those behind the Faux Social entity aka Annie Stoner because I outed their Impossibly over Photoshopped photos. I still reckon she is a total FAKE

It is the wholesale stealing of my art works. Scrubbing the signature that disappoints me the most. If you see illustration you believe are mine, and without my signature, and used as a teaser for some dodge website. Please posts details and maybe a link as a comment on this blog post. The ones with my signature are likely to be legitimate copies and I appreciate such people and friends who re-post, especially as most ask nicely.

Sketching in the sun

It was good to have the brush and pen back in my hand after a short hiatus. This sketch is of a twitter friend Curvaveous Dee whilst she coincidentally was enjoying some sun as well.

Water, as in watercolour is the sworn enemy of most felt pens (their ink is water soluable) ...so you need to make sure the paper is dry before using the pen. But I think it is worth it, the strong sharp line is enhanced by the delicacy of the wash below!

Hacking me ..Hacking you

Seems I am the ongoing focus of attention of what appear to me to be very childish attempts to spam the comments to this blog with Chinese links to a number of dubious sites. Now that unwanted attention is now moving into my other accounts. Luckily google is paying a little more attention to detecting suspicious activity around gmail than they have been to helping bloggers. But dear reader I will diligent search you out those childish hackers and continue to delete them and report them to the appropriate authorities. And otherwise I ignore them amd please do the same.

中國垃圾郵件發送者和黑客應該被忽略

So please ignore any links in chinesse from this blog, or strange emails even if it looks like it was posted by me.

doodling is good for your health

I must admit I have been very busy not being healthy ...on the treadmill of medical tests, specialist, health fund claims and more tests I was starting to feel rundown and gloomy ...i should have picked up the brush and ink sooner ...an hour or so doodling and I was away in a happier place ...even with the clouds getting darker and darker outside and then heavy rain.

Another water nymph in pen & ink

So I'm not alone

Seems I'm not alone seeing the potential of art rage to free up the mark marking on a computer screen. I realise what I was doing is what Andrea Bianco calls "speed painting"

A speed painting is a painting where you try to define the main concepts as quickly and effectively as possible.

He has a great blog post about and even better, it includes links to a wonderful pdf file he wrote on how to do it in art rage and he even has includes some brushes he designed for the technique. This is all great art, I think any tools that really help you put down what we what to show needs exploration and application. Just because it is not smelly, sticky or messy to use should not lessens its value

a long standing party trick

A long standing party trick on mine, is to do quick sketches of my friends and others ...candid ones while they talk, laugh and dance ..the sketches are just that quick pencil, pen or brush squiggles ..a bit of fun ..and normally well received. I've even been brave enough to attempt a few on the computer, using my bamboo tablet ...trouble is I'm still learning the rope and my computer prowess (or lack of it) detracts from the spontaneity ...well last night a young friend showed me art rage, and even where to download a starter version for free. ...I was away, it made immediate sense to me ...especially when one of the ladies stripped off to pose nude for me ...the whole thing only last two minutes but it was talked about all night.

Mood & Tone

Limiting the palette, simple gestural strokes, focus on skin tone and bold composition ...getting the right mood sounds simpler than it really is

The Hat Series

Watercolour & gouache on paper

more computer art attempts

In a busy house tonight, lots of coming and going ... and getting ready to go out ...must be time to try out some rapid sketching in corel painter. The watercolour is nicely like a real wash, and those washes can be dried at the click of a button :) and ...and it is a big AND ...the felt pen tool can be any colour, even a light pinkish purple that has strong coverage over the underlying image ...wow such artistic freedom.

"exploitation" of nudes within art

I'm becoming a bit more opinionated than usual in my discussions with colleagues about the value of nudes in art ...not so much the nudity versus porn bandwagon that so many social networks seem to be hoping on (and something I am just straight out bored with) ...no I mean real art. I haven't been exhibiting my nudes ...mainly because they are a more personal part of my art journey (ok posting them in here means they are not so private anymore) So my opinion may not count for much, BUT I'll give it anyway. In very general terms the nudes in contemporary art look a bit old hat or mass produced and trite, a few are there to shock but the rest just sit their blandly, not grabbing your attention. Cleo hidden away in Young and Jacksons still celebrates life & femininity. A lot of art in the private calleries doesn't. I blame political correctness, timid artist are becoming scared to slather on the sensuality, lusciousness of paint and arousing colour. All the same I have been savaged by more than one feminist friend, coincidentally all with the same argument saying that porn has over exploited nudity and everyone is bore with it. Come on...

Perhaps I'm getting old but surely painters are allowed to be sensual and erotic in their painting of nudes. May they do with colour,with feeling, with a wink in their eye. I know of two great female artist (both shown here) that have a wonderfully refreshing perspective on the modern view of commercialized nudity . The first is Sophi (aka Carolyn Weltman, an example of her work is on the left) who's art for engineers I have mention before and the second Hazel Dooney (an example of her work is shown above) who's self.vs.self blog is a way better read than this blog you are reading now. May there be many more. Perhaps I need to start exhibiting my work.

Que le meilleur artiste toujours peindre le nu feminin.

mood in pastel

I had my rant about strong colour in pastels in the last blog post ...so now I'm using them in a more muted colour schemes ...not to disprove my own rules, just to show that pastel is a lovely way to capture mood and feeling

red satin dreaming in pastel

red satin dreaming pastel
Originally uploaded by sigh clone

The power in pastel for me is in its rich colours, not the smudged out weak colours that fashion industry know as pastels. Soft artists pastels are almost pure pigments (ok there are binders and fillers in them) so I like try and use that power, just enough smudging to get the tonal gradations but I reckon the media leads itself to powerful full on strokes or contrasting colours. I had a lot of fun sketching these red satin sheets against delicate skin tones

hand .vs. computer

I'm still playing around with computer generated painting via Corel Painter Essentials. I do really like the programs BUT I don't really like the tracing paper it kind of stiffles my action ...maybe I need a bigger tablet? I don't really want to draw lines anyway ...they become so restrictive. SO what about the eye dropper and "taking" my colours from the photo (under the tracing paper) ..its also a very nice feature BUT I tend to get very bland washed-out colours ...not the colours I would choose by eye ...maybe I am being a little harsh. Here are two portraits of the same saintly friend from flickr. I trust you can recognize my hand drawn effort.

two minute torsos ...some more

Whilst pastel doesn't lend itself to ultra fast sketches (the tones need to be worked and blending reworked before the pastel looks rich!) I still like the two minute torso exercises as a way to lead into a fuller exploration of gesture & posture & composition & ... the list goes on and on ....what is working well for me at the moment is to do this quick torso sketch in watercolour ...then begining of the pastel ...I have even rubbed pastel over a watercolour ...life is to short not to exploit and enjoy it ...even when painting

framed

Checking around the photo "hosting" sites, like twitpic, yfrogger, img.ly ...etc and reading all the "fine print" in the terms of use ...it is pretty obvious that many sites now consider nudity offensive and not to be posted! ...some still say pornographic, but most now just use the words nudity or nude!


BUT that is not the real shock ...the real issues is in the "fine print" that might try to suggest that the owner is responsible for the content and it must be his own (ie they is the copyright holder)


...BUT and it is very legally worded when you post anything you are given them (and anyone they want to share it with the right to use your image "royalty free"

Art ...orginal art ...is not welcome ...I'm getting the message

Does this offend you?

Ok I admit it I like to sketch nude ladies ...what is worse I often like to do it quickly ...do gesture studies, two minute sketches of torsos, I have been posting this on the net for some time. Some sketches have been heavily criticized, by self opinionated wankers (the wankers bit is my opinion btw) but I hope enough people see beauty in my work as well. However I suspect I am fighting a loosing battle over the censorship of nudes on the social webs ...and that is because these places quickly adopt the manners and conventions of the crowd ...and that is unfortunately that nudity must equal porn ..it doesn't! I know that! I'm a grown up!

For a while there I thought Flickr had got it right offering a content filtering system that let you mark the content safe, moderate (and they had prepared good guidelines, so this equals exposed breast) or restricted (full frontal nudity and other things offensive!) They also had 18+ groups for grown ups. All was ok but then they started marking folk like me unsafe, which means if you don't log in and click that you are old enough to look everything I do is hidden from you. At Least they didn't remove my account. From recent discussions in some flickr groups a lot of accounts have been summarily suspended. The anti nudity witch hunts are probably increasing, yet I think there are just reasons, there is way too much stolen porn and other folk's photos and artwork being re-posted in flickr and all across the net these days. It is theft and plagiarism gone feral and it is distasteful ...Unlike my art!

The real rub for me came today when I discovered I have been suspended on TwitPics, presumably for posting the sketch above. No reason give no correspondence, just messages at the end of links that image no longer exist and member suspended. Such is life.

So Artists may soon not able to display their own original and real art, if it doesn't conform to the latest web stampede/fashion on popular social networks. The trend is worrying, aussies should particularly watch out for the net censorship noose (aka clean feed) proposal Senator Stephen Conroy is fashioning for australian web users (he is suddenly quiet about it at the moment? that's right there is an election loaming, but the stupidity is still their on the books).

Vive Le Art

chalk on my fingers ...again

kool portrait,
originally uploaded by sigh clone.

I haven't used my pastels anywehere near enough for a while ...I like being able to apply the rich pigments directly mixing the colours on the surface ...but i think i need to have a watercolour wash of use coloured paper to really see that richness ...which doesn't scan well by the way

...Vive le pastel

dark torso

I've started to find my own way to work in corel painter essential ...I like to start with a little bit of "borrowed" colour into a quick background wash,(broad wash brush) then add a few tiny little details (using the edge cloner brush) or just tracing some free and easy fine lines (using the 2B pencil brush and purple colour) and splash or two on the nipples for interest. Still not quiet 2 minutes but getting faster and freer. Hard to image it is done on the computer ...or am I pulling my own leg?

giving it a red hot go

Its winter here now and has been cold, rainy & cloudy for a few days ...great time to stay inside by teh fire and watch the rain ..and maybe practise with my hand at painting on the computer ...I have a new wacom bamboo tablet with corel painter ...still in the learning stage ..those demos & tutorials make it look easy but ...but ...ok there are lots of buts ...and hows? ...and arhhhh! So there I was with a blank canvas and staring out the window with a bad case of "painters" block ...just as the sun was setting it was beautifully silhouetted against a large banksia tree and some dark clouds ...strongest of warm colours (almost the colours of the aboriginal flag) ...I had to go for it ...and it was easier than I expected. Choose the brushes (impasto followed by opaque arcylic), select & mix a couple of colours and wow ..you can push the colours around on the canvas just like real paint...not as hard as the instruction seem to make me believe.

I think I could get used to this!