Vintage Video

I found an app on my I-phone that makes video footage retro!

It's a bit limiting, as it simply works its magic on what's there, and without a Mac I can't then import it and add extra to it, or fade it out...but still, for £1.79 it's a lot of fun!

This is some footage I took of a silk worm weaving it's magic around an orchid in Bali.

Check out this studio!

I am so jealous. I want a studio like this! I do have a room, but it's not really usable as a proper studio. No sink for a start, which really frustrates me. Our bathroom is downstairs, my room is upstairs. That's a long way to go when you're as lazy as me.
Anyhow, take a look at these pictures:
AWESOMENESS
The whole vibe of the place makes me want to jump right in and play. Having all those supplies would be great too!
A girl can dream...one day, one day...

Polaroid Love

I've been painting!
Yep yep.
It may be an ugly painting, and I may still not yet believe that it's OK to make ugly paintings and that it's all part of the process...but ho hum. It's a painting.
Better than airwaves full of my moans at not having done one.

I love how it's real. I can hold it, touch it, put my hands in the not-yet-dry paint and smoosh it all around. It causes mess and I don't care. Well, I do, I care very much that the pretty goddess I drew last night is now looking more like a freaky vampire girl with orange eyes, but that's not my point.

What was my point? Oh yes. Polaroid love!!

With my photography, I tend to pretty much always work digitally. The only time I work with film is when I'm experimenting with toy and vintage cameras. Fun, but expensive, and the processing chemicals wafting around the bathroom make me strangely neurotic. And the gelatin is unethical, but that's a whole other post.
What I love about polaroids is how instant they are. I don't have to wait until I can afford to send a roll of 120 off to be developed (rare), and I don't have to go through the process of converting the bathroom to a darkroom (and back again - that's the worst part). I click, expose and out it pops! I love watching the emulsion drying and seeing the image appear. It's like 'normal' film photography and darkroom work, especially designed for impatient people.

I have a set of images that I produced using a dodgy camera, that didn't expose properly. It shot the polaroids out, but with no real image formed in the emulsion...this meant that each time I made a photograph, I had a piece of film with wet emulsion for me to do what I wanted with.

And this is what I did. These are a few of the photos from the series, entitled "And All This Trapped In A Body".

"This girl has, as I have said, the qualities of greatness:

passion and vision, a wild ambition, a powerful social awareness,

an overpowering thirst for learning and development,

an impassioned love of life, a great gift of expression.

And all this trapped in a body."

Kim Chernin, on Ellen West (1981:171) 

I hung the fresh polaroids to drip some of the emulsion, and manipulated some of it by hand/finger nail. I wanted to form shapes that express the female form, in an abstract non-perfect way. The work has been described as "X-rays of the soul" and I like that. Also "an effigy", "the orange..disturbed by the borders closing in...not so peaceful". My husband said "I see the being push hard from it's social snare, the representation of the species evident and oppressive" - it's interesting to me to hear about what others see in my work. It can add completely new dimensions, or even suggest something I hadn't even considered myself.

It's important to share for this reason. Art requires a audience to bring it to life.

On just doing it, and sand art

No matter how much I moan, I won't make art until I make art.
Pretty obvious, right?
I can go through all the excuses in the world. But I have. to. get. off. my. arse. And DO IT!
I'm going to finish this post and then stick a sketch onto some wood and apply some gesso so it can dry overnight.

I don't have my art class in the morning. It's half term, so it's not on. Is it really bad that I'm quite happy about that? I mean, I do enjoy it, but it's stifling. I think I already mentioned that, so I won't go on about it. It gets me out of the house, which is good, because it was, after all, an exercise in just that...but I'm quite sick of the Impressionists now, and that's a sorry state of affairs. A week without it will do me good.

I enjoy my online Suzi Blu classes though. Even just watching her videos. It's meditative watching someone else paint, even if you don't do it yourself.

Talking of watching others make art (do you like my link? Good eh?), I came across this girl the other day. She won the "Ukraine's Got Talent" or whatever they call it over there. It certainly puts us and America to shame....because she does actually have talent.

Check her out. I've no idea how to embed video, but the link should take you straight there:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=518XP8prwZo&feature=related

So so moving. Tears to eyes. Goosebumps. That's what art is about.

I also love this one.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzfX7hsKY3Y&feature=related

I love how her medium is so suited to her subject matter - impermanence...life...death...cyclic.
Simply beautiful.
There are more. I really encourage you to take some time out to watch these. It's time you won't regret spending.
She's doing great things.

Everything We Need

We have everything we need to make the present moment the happiest in our life, even if we have a cold or a headache. We don't have to wait until we get over our cold to be happy. Having a cold is part of life. I am happy in the present moment. I do not ask for anything else.

Thich Nhat Hanh

Vietnamese Buddhist Monk

 

I like this. Kind of follows on nicely from last nights meandering ponderings as well. 

I don't feel particularly great today, but it's true that we don't have to wait.

There will always be something.

Something we have to get over, do, achieve...

It's constantly putting conditions on our happiness and it will never lead to happiness.

It also reminds me that I have to quit with my 'I'll do it when...' thinking. I get nothing done.

"I'll paint a picture when I've bought some canvasses" (What's wrong with paper?)

"I'll paint when I have an easel, so it's better for my back and neck" (Like that's ever bothered me with anything else before)

"There's no point in trying X, Y, Z, B, M, Q, until I have A, D, T, W, F."

"There's no point trying, because it won't be how I want it to be, anyway".

The latter is my biggest stumbling block I think. Fear of "failure" - but it's only failure if I define it as failure. I've had perfectionism and high-achieving banged into me all my life, it's hard to break free. I must try and break free though, as it's stifling. I fear things won't be as I plan them to be, and so somewhere along the line I find it makes most sense not to bother. 

I am going to get the book 'The Artists Way' and make an effort to commit to it.

Or could that just be roughly translated as 'when I have the book, then I will do something about it...' ?

Thinking

I'm sitting up, it's pretty late at night but I napped through the evening.

Just thinking.

I feel so lucky.

Things aren't great in my life, I battle with illness every day, but I am lucky.
I have a home. I look round this room and it's filled with things that belong to me. I have books, crayons, pencils, pens, paper, soft cushions, photographs of my husband and my friends, cameras, music, an inflatable parrot...

I also have a cat clawing at my feet. He has a mad half hour each night during which he tries to eat me alive. I think this is it. He's sharing my chair, I'm having to kneel on one half of it.

But all these things, they make me smile.

'Blessed' doesn't sit right with me but I guess that's what it is. Fortunate.

I've been where I didn't have a home. I've been in hospitals, with no access to my belongings. I've been in dark places, unable to appreciate the small things. No doubt, as is the nature of this, I'll still go back there, but it's OK. I don't feel scared right now.

I'm trying to be conscious of these things. To remain appreciative of the things that are good. I think of today and I think of a pretty nothingy day...but that's not entirely true. I have sent emails and received emails, I have played the piano for a while, I have drawn, I have been to the supermarket and not just stared at food, I've bought it and have plans for creations with it. Which I also plan to eat, without fear or guilt.

It's hard thinking and knowing this won't last, but I need to also remember that it will return.
For now I'm going to go and slather peanut butter on a piece of thick white farmhouse bread and sink my teeth into it. YES!

Even though I am being weighed tomorrow. And am just as petrified as usual.

My webcam still scares me too.

But it's OK. I can ignore.

Screenprinting ideas

I'm absolutely exhausted this evening, so only a quick one.

Just wanted to share this other 'collage' (if you can call it that, it's a half-arsed one) that I did using malacima's sheets, blending, painting and I lost track of what else... I love the marks that make up the face and hair, and it makes me want to start investigating different designs that I could work with in the screenprinting course I'm enrolled on in the New Year.

I'm completely new to print techniques, but screenprinting sounds like something I'll enjoy. I did a bit of research, and was watching a YouTube video showing how to prepare screens with photographic emulsion. That certainly appeals! The fact that it looks very messy also adds to the excitement.

But now it's bedtime. More tomorrow, on faces, my 'draw' du jour...

Mixed media - digital styleee

I love mixed media. I love the lack of "rules".

There's no "we're doing acrylics today. No graphite. Pencils AWAY! I said acrylics, what do you want pastels for too?..." from an inflexible art tutor.

With mixed media you just take your pick of whatever takes your fancy. Like handfuls of your favourite sweets mixed together with ice cream and sauce....yum.

I have some digital download sheets of various ephemera, some from Etsy and some freebies from a lady over at malacima.blogspot.com.

I am going to print and use in 'physical' pieces, as I much prefer having something I can hold, and being able to feel the textures of all the different media, but playing with Photoshop is just as fun. I hadn't realised that there's a whole group of people out there doing Digital Scrapbooking! I guess they get their pages printed as photographs to put in an album. Stuff shouldn't just stay inside a screen, it needs to be made real. Which reminds me, that I have a huge pile of photographs to print.

Anyway, my offering today:



The girl is from a sheet purchased from 'Lisa's Altered Art' on Etsy. The newspaper wings are from malacima's Vintage Collage sheet. The bubbles from malacima's 'Autumn Mood' sheets. The background photo of the moon and sky is one I took nearly two years ago (I have hundreds, nay thousands, of unprocessed and unused images on my harddrive). I love how you can get texture using Photoshop filters, playing with different styles and intensities...but I'm still not convinced by digital collage. I want to run my hands over the textures and feel the 'canvas'. I also think it's much more therapeutic to actually use paintbrushes or crayons, to cut and stick, rather than just dragging a mouse around and clicking every now and again.

I'll probably print this onto card stock, and work into it with 'real' supplies.

Webcams and Emin's bed

I have a new laptop, after my old one died in a pot noodle related incident.
This new one is great, brilliant for all things media...except it's going to have to go back. It restarts itself randomly, driving me to distraction.
The brand support are useless, sending 'copied and pasted' responses, and giving up after step 1 and 2 don't work. I would continue sending them 'will somebody PLEASE answer me', but I fear I'll be ignored even more (is that possible?) for sounding like a crazed computer-support-attention-seeking weirdo.

Anyway, that wasn't the point. I have this new laptop, and it has an integrated webcam. I knew this but hadn't really thought about it...I've never used a webcam in my life, and had no desire to. I'm a photographer for a reason, I like being behind the camera. This webcam isn't so easy to ignore though, as when it cycles through screensavers, the laptop decides to show the webcam view not in one screen, not even two screens, but three, just in case I have narcissistic tendencies, perhaps.

I don't.

My image scares me.

My beloved husband pointed out that I would need to work out how to turn it off, in case someone hacked in and was watching me. I'd never even considered that before, but I suppose there are crazy people out there, and maybe people would get a kick out of that sort of thing. We then got talking about all the webcams that you can 'watch' live online around the clock. I find it a bit weird. A bit voyeuristic...

There must be some people who are comfortable with this though, or they wouldn't set up their webcam so that the worldwide internet surfing population could watch their every move. I have no desire to watch what happens in someone's lounge/kitchen, especially not bathroom/bedroom. That's just creepy.

It made me think about Tracy Emin's bed though. The installation that she set up at the Tate, and how it got such a marmite reaction. I never saw it, I just read about it and saw photographs, so I never had the whole voyeuristic experience.

Photo from http://www.nhuhuy.com/

I kind of wish I had seen it though, as I think my reaction to the exhibit would be very telling of how much I can deal with voyeuristic tendencies in myself. I believe we all have them, but I don't believe that we can all accept that it's natural to have them. Of course, accepting that these tendencies are part of what make us human doesn't mean going overboard with our use of them.

Would I have stayed back from the installation, feeling an imaginary wall that stopped me from getting too close into someone else's personal space? Or would I have rationalised that Emin had placed it there, I had gone to see it, so I had every right to have a good poke around? I'm really not sure.

I just know that I would never put my mess out for all to see. I'm too embarassed. I also think some things should be kept private. Yet I still find this exhibit fascinating, and wish I could have seen it.

I cannot seem to reconcile this.

I don't want images from my webcam viewable, yet I kind of have a weird fascination with what may be out there for me to sit and watch, without anyone knowing I am doing so. Hypocritical?

Interestingly enough, there is an exhibit at the Tate Modern next year exploring these themes... "Exposed: Voyeurism, Surveillance and the Camera"
You can read the press release put out last month here
I absolutely MUST get down to London for that one.

Interesting that they are not just including the obvious, the CCTV footage for example. Nan Goldin's work is an obvious and exciting choice, but Cartier-Bresson? Candid photography? I guess that could be classed as voyeuristic too, in a way, it would certain come under some shade of a 'surveillance' definition.

I enjoy candid photography. Some people criticize, citing lack of respect, privacy... maybe because it's another form of voyeurism, and people just aren't comfortable with the idea of it.

An Arty Party!

Come join me!

I dream of throwing an enormous party in the most fabulously inspiring location, with everyone who is open and willing to be creative. We would paint and draw and craft and photograph. We would talk and share. We would find that artistic spark that has probably been lost, and nurture it. There would be no room for arty farty...none of that pretentious self-important "high" or "fine" art. Everyone can be an artist: you just have to make art. How you define your art is up to you.