Monthly Archives: Sep 2005

2 new ones

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clear then stormy
Canvas: It’s not often that I start TWO new pictures in an afternoon. Today I have. Mind you- one of them is a picture painted over with something else, and the overpainted one transferred onto a new canvas. What fun.
The composition was all wrong on a square canvas, so it has the something-else on instead.
DivX: I received a complaint about using DivX to encode video files on my website today. It’s a real dilemma, balancing file-size against quality. DivX isn’t standard, it doesn’t come with Windows, but a lot of people do have it. The image quality is very good for most things, also the Stirling animation is a silent one which rules out windows .wmv format which has to have sound. On the other hand I have collected sound files that can be edited in to make that format possible. The same sounds will be included in the Whitley animation incidentally. That new one should have some animated characters on the ground too.
 
Whatever happens I hope it doesn’t irritate page visitors who want to view the animations. It’s going to be easier when I have more webspace available.

Recessive eye

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Windy, refreshingly cool
These floaters are really bugging me today. I have appointements to keep.
The latest painting is probably not going to make it to this section- I may as well put it straight into the "Finished pictures" section. I can safely start the new picture having proven the idea in this one.

Floaters

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warm & very windy

I have floaters. They are bits in the eye that partly obscure vision. The thin thready ones have always been there, the ones that have diffraction rings around them. the new ones are more blobby and get in the way of seeing things. Its like having mucky glasses on- at least it’s only one eye and not the dominant one.

Painted freckles today. That picture with fractured eyes now has freckels. Come to think if it, it has eyelashes and eyebrows too.

Down the drain

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17°C, sunny and clear.
Imy came home distraught, she’s dropped her mp3 player down the drain. It’s been missing for weeks then  today she found it again. Hours later dropped it down the drain in a moment’s clumsiness; in a hurry to get to work I suppose.
 
Below are the pictures of me trying to retrieve it. The drain is like a big pot, about 4 feet deep, with an overflow to the sewer. If it went down there it would be lost forever. So I had a go at getting it out of the accumulation of mud & decaying leaves in the bottom of the pot. The drain cover had to be removed first, which was hard at first as it was bunged up with a summer’s worth of muck. You can see from the picture how I got it levered up eventually. Then the search began.
At one moment I felt something solid while probing with the garden rake through the jelly like mud paste. Then it was gone, inverting the rake let me pull lots of mud out, I still couldn’t feel anything so back with the rake down the hole.
This went on for over ½ an hour.
Suddenly there it was in the mud on the rake, still glowing.
It was still switched on!
It’s on the radiator now- drying out, after a blow dry with the hair-dryer. I only wish we’d got a picture of its back-light showing up in the glob of dead leaves and muddy pulp.
.
This is an amusing site- thanks to Dawn_82. Online text-speech. Quite handy for finding spelling mistakes I suppose.
I popped a rib getting that cover off, don’t think it’s broken, but it definitely "popped" as I levered it up.. ouch.

resumed

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rain & sun
Here’s the work in progress photo promised yesterday. the eyes them selves remain untouched, but there are new layers on skin and pthalio blue added to the shadows.

Post sleep

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21°C, light westerly + sun
Despirately tired yesterday, hence no blog. Just had time to fix a bit on the Whitley that was bugging me then to bed.
Oil painting today: It’s funny the phases you go through making a painting. It’s comparable to a relationship, the first phase is usually the bit where I dislike it. After the second oily layer though  I usually start to like the picture. the relationship continues because some of the most important artistic decisions are not made while painting.
I usually pick up paintings while in progress to look at, to consider and anticipate. It’s also good to look at the picture under a few different lighting conditions, especially sunlight, & north-light and maybe halogen.
 
Ten minutes ago was the end of an hour long painting session, muscial acompanyment was Kristin Hersch.
 
Picture post tomorrow, it’s too dark now to take a WIP shot.
 

UVW unwrap

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17°C, changable
Most of that mapping is now done. Hopefully there are few missed bits of light green on the mesh.
With some luck animation can begin.
I have to sleep early now, long day tomorrow, up at 6am and don’t finish work until 9pm ( ok ok I do get a break in the late afternoon for 2 hours).
 
 
picture

NURMS

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Character building to add into the Whitley mesh. This time (compared to the Stirling project video), I am trying Edit poly modelling for characters. That means that in closer shots the mesh is more detailed & so smoother, but further away- it has fewer triangles so the computer ran run faster.
Actually it’s done apart from bones & skinning it.
This is taking up painting time – so progress is reduced there.
In the long run….
 
Added a render : but you can hardly see the pilot, oh well. It will show up under different lighting. I can see some mapping that should be moved. I have also started some buildings for an airfield, namely a control tower.

the Ballet

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Cloud, 65.3 miles cycling, light westerly wind
Since there is not that much to report from today, here is some more of yesterday.
Went to the Ballet

Independent Ballet Wales presents:
A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Which was entertaining, rather traditional, and mostly well choreographed. It’s not the best technically that I have seen- there was a lack of flow in movement. The main moves were fine, it’s just the incidental secondary stuff that was not thought through/inelegant. Mostly good then.

Here’s a vote for more "contemporary" dance next time.

Maaan it’s hot in here, just turned off the heating ( hence my personal statement).