:barbaric yawp:

In the awful coincidence department, a few weeks ago I was writing here about an illustration that I unearthed of Robin Williams, then, this past Monday, we hear of his death, one that is pretty much being attributed to suicide.

I was shocked to say the least. I rarely let celebrity deaths affect me, but this one has left me a bit numb, probably because I had probably followed his entire career, from "Mork & Mindy" onwards. When I discovered his stand-up comedy performances, I was hooked. I wore out my cassette tapes of those shows. True, he may not have consistently made the best movies every time, but I feel that like Bill Murray, he still captured one's attention even in the bad ones. And of course probably supplied hours of deleted scenes of him just wildly improvising.

Now some people seem to be intent on making him an poster child of what depression can do to you, even with all external appearances seemingly the opposite. This is not the the only example of a comedian having this sort of life, there's something about that sort of personality that makes one try to make others laugh to hopefully drive away the demons within. I myself was more likely to be a class clown than not. But when your "audience" is not around, you're left with yourself and sometimes that's not the company you want to keep at certain times. People are rightfully shocked that someone so high-profile and seemingly loved by so many wouldn't reach out for help, but so far we don't know the final straw in this case.

A park bench in Boston's Public Gardens that was part of a scene from one of his most loved movies, "Good Will Hunting," became the site of a memorial not long after his death was announced. I visited it yesterday, the bench was covered in flowers and gifts, and the walks surrounding it were covered in thanks, quotes and love written in chalk. Proof of his multi-generational appeal were evident, from "Mork & Mindy" to "Good Morning Vietnam" to "Aladdin" to "Hook" to "Dead Poets Society." I even saw a quote from "Popeye." Of course I added one myself, something from his stand-up act: "Joke 'em if they can't take a fuck."

Sadly it rained all day today and probably washed all those messages away. I'm sure they'll be replaced by others soon enough. It doesn't appear that his memory will be washed away quite so easily. Laughter is something we need almost as much as oxygen.

More pictures on my flickr page.

:kaleidoscope:

Tired of saying it, but Real Life intruding upon the scarce free time that I do have, and so very little time for creativity this past week. I may have to actually start scheduling it now. But there's always time for a little doodle or sketch or writing, it's not an easy thing for me to turn off anyways.

One new thing was "accidentally" discovering some settings on my new point and shoot camera, which, you may or may not recall, I bought to replace my older one because I found that even the camera in my cell phone was more powerful than that one.

The documentation that came with the newer one was quite sparse, but since it was also a Canon, there wasn't much of a learning curve for me. There is a PDF of a larger guide that I clearly need to read now, since I just stumbled across these settings recently. There's a setting specifically for fireworks, which I wish I had known about when I did photograph some fireworks on the 4th of July weekend.

"Vivid colors" does pretty much what you'd expect. The water truly was not this blue.

"Toy camera"

...and the already overused "miniature" effect. I'll have the find the right subject matter for it.

And again, Vivid Light turns nature into a psychedelic explosion.

I should be visiting more islands this weekend, we'll see what I discover and photograph there.

:time capsule:

Continuing the archaeological dig that is my life, I came across a folder marked "works in progress," that will need further examination, but a quick glance through it unearthed a lot of source material for an art piece about 9-11 ( that probably wouldn't have the same impact now than if I had done it closer to that date - oh well ), evidence that I've been planning my next tattoo for quite some time, and these little paintings from 2000:

As near as I can tell, these were done to test out different brands of acrylic paints, to see which one I'd prefer. Painting was never my favorite medium, I could not get the control out of it that I could in other ones. Especially not oils. I often said that the first thing that I learned in art school was that I hated oil painting. And I think the oil paintings that I did only recently dried.

One reason for this digging, other than the hope of finally being free from clutter, is an attempt at inventory. This past weekend some friends of mine were the victims of a fire. They are fine, but they've lost damn near everything they owned. ( money is being raised for them here )This sort of thing terrifies me. I do have renter's insurance, but have yet to make a list for it, so this is showing me that it's long overdue. However, they expect you to know when you bought things and the price you paid for them. Who keeps tracks of such things?? Overwhelming.

As you might imagine, in my case the biggest loss would be my artwork. Totally irreplaceable. I don't want to become paranoid, but I wonder if I should store such things elsewhere. I often see storage facilities and think, that's a sure sign you own too much stuff if you need storage outside of where you live. But now I'm pondering it.

:relapse:

A week filled with other stuff that kept me away from working on art, so other than the usual random photos, nothing to show the class this week. So I will re-post my artwork from this recent April, partially because I think hardly anybody saw it. Especially on Facebook, because of whatever algorithms they use now, or maybe because I posted it near my birthday and it got buried under the greetings posted ( the cynic in me doubts that most people would remember my birthday without Facebook. I still write people's birthdays down in a paper calendar. ).

Another reason to re-post it is I think it's the best non-photographic work I've made this year, and naturally I want as many people as possible to see it. Some feedback would be nice as well. Again, the main person I need to satisfy with my art is myself, but I'm not creating it just to hide it away. 

It was done entirely in Photoshop with a Wacom tablet, so it was also a test to see if I could get better at it. I believe I did. Now to get faster!

Having so much opportunity to show one's work online is both a blessing and a curse these days. The ease of it and of course the possibility to reach many people is a good thing. However the sheer number of others doing this as well makes it difficult to get anything seen as much as one would like. And also piracy. The only safe way to not get images stolen is to never post them. Sadly that's not a real solution.

One reason I haven't made a Facebook page for my artwork, and I'm doubtful that I will, is that the current state of such specialty pages does not reach the number of people that it once did, and even buying ads or posts do not up the viewings significantly. Such a sad thing. It seemed like it started out as something the users had a lot of control over, but more and more it's being taken out of our hands. It does not feel like a community anymore.

:forward into the past 15:

Nothing creative this week beyond some photos, but nothing terribly spectacular, so I'll dig into my old works again for a random picture.

This was done for illustration class at MassArt in 1989. I hope I don't have to tell you who it is. If so, then I failed (I know I really didn't because I graduated). If you want to see more of my past work, the previous blog entries in this series are in the 2009 section.

Kind of appropriate that I chose an art school piece, as I was in a comic shop today (bought the first two issues of "The Wicked & Divine" - much recommended), and two other people in there, including the owner, also went to MassArt. It was an interesting conversation, almost like three generations of alumni. We all talked about hidden rooms that we found while there. And the shift from fine arts to a more commercial curriculum. And those weird performance art majors & teachers (of which the owner was one).

:final tally:

After looking through the remaining photos from last month's photoshoot, I've decided that there's not really many more that I can work worth with, so the final number stays at ten, which I think is a good amount anyways.

I've been posting them on my deviantArt page and some on my Model Mayhem page (which is where the model contacted me), and once again I find it curious to see what other people like vs. what I like about my work.

That's assuming that there's any feedback to begin with...creating art is already a solitary activity most of the time, and while of course the first person that I need to please is myself, it's also helpful and frankly uplifting if other people like it as well. I've shown in galleries, but you don't really get much feedback there unless you're there as well and somebody asks you about the work, or better yet, buys it. In our modern age, we've got pageviews, "likes," and hopefully comments to let us know what people think. And sadly sometimes I take the lower number to mean that the work might not be that good, and when said piece is one of my favorites, it makes me question my artistic direction. I don't want to blindly follow what "sells," but one does feel like giving people more of what they like. And maybe actually developing a following.

In both of the above sites this was the most popular shot (no censorship this time; another artist whose opinion I value both complimented these photos and recommended not censoring them). Interesting to me because this was the first shot of the evening, usually that's not the best of the lot.

This shot was the last one that I worked on and originally was not one of my favorites, however combining it with another shot, I'm quite pleased with how it evolved. Yet it's not one of the higher rated shots; go figure.

No other shoots have been planned just yet, but I hope to have at least one more before summer's end, to again photograph outdoors.

:brittle air:

Three more finished shots from last month's photoshoot; these may be the last of them, but I'll need to revisit the rest to be sure. Still, I think ten is a good number for completed ones, and once again I'm pleased with how quickly I've finished these and how I made the "mistakes" work.