The workshop is open – won’t you peer inside? A few projects are in process now. 

House Painting:

Quite a while ago I embarked on a watercolor project to paint every place I have ever lived in. So far, I have completed 3 of 12.

The above I drew from photos that I took. I am so-so pleased. From my experience making lots of “live” figure portraits and also copying photos, it is obvious to tell which was done referencing a photo. This link also has some general comments on the importance of drawing IRL. This was my favorite quote about how photograph drawing trains new artists:

Students become precious about every drawing they make, which sets up an impossible expectation that every drawing must be successful. They are so afraid of making a bad drawing that they refuse to try anything new. This severely limits growth and keeps them from expanding their abilities.

I think I will likely try and redo these, by sitting on the sidewalk and sketching…if I get the courage.  Another dimension to explore is to draw from memory. What is important in my head? Below I explored just that:

Definitely a different vibe. More movement, a little dreamy. I think it’s more interesting. What do you think? Also on the left was a first stab at a sketch. I think a few iterations are in order.

It has just been a while so I’ll be trying to sketch more as the weeks go on. 

Digital windchime

• Lots of sounds/notifications in our world are holdovers from analog times – i.e. telephone rings, doorbell sounds, church bells. This interesting video about telephones made me wonder about if they were samples of analog devices, recreated in software, or in the case of the video link, samples of samples!  A wind-chime struck me as something that I wouldn’t imagine ever needing a digital approximation (maybe in the vacuum of space?) but could be digitized. Moving towards using the same physics as a wind chime but extending the idea further I think would yield some cool results.
  • I’ve ordered a “joystick” used for making arduino based game controllers. Link here. Maybe this is the base of the striker (wind chime paddle) that gets pushed by the wind? Will it actually be tugged by the string of a traditional windchime? Or maybe it springs back to center so it needs something rigid attached to it to be blown around. 
  • Obviously this has a lot of possibilities from a coding, design  engineering, musical composition angle. Anyone want to collaborate?