Monthly Archives: Jul 2006

more sub-aqua

Posted on by
Reply
22°C, some rain- nice

Linseed: quite a long session on this today, nearly 2 CDs worth of time. Only had ot stop to let paint dry before adding the next layer tomorrow. Most of the work was with a No.2 round to add detail. just in case you’r ewondering what that loop is above the bloke’s head- it’s going to be a bubble, one of many which is the last stage of this picture.

Spotting

Posted on by
Reply
28°C, still hot

Linseed:Sub-aqua day 6– detailing the refraction patterns from the ripples above. Following on from here will be more work on the figure in the background and then the foremost layer- the bubbles. this is turning into quite a detailed piece. It’s fairly easy to do but will consume a lot of hours. I guess that’s the way the others are going be with something like sea surfaces involved.
Note to self: I really need to tighten up the technique here, although the picture looks ok, there are dashes of white canvas showing where colours don’t quite meet pencil lines;  "spotting" them took up a while today. This should not happen, it’s sloppy, unnecessary and time wasting. That suggest a basic problem with the practice of working from photos. This piece has been penciled in then base colours put down.
Next time: cover with a wash, then do the pencilling in with a No.2 brush, which can easily be blended to correct any errors. After that dries, then put under-paint layers on
 
There are passing thoughts in my mind about the nature of surfaces, somethig about the patterns in waves that’s worth exploring in a purer way, maybe unfettered by realism. Just a thought…

Today Friday, WOMAD

Posted on by
1
27°C, last hot day for a while

Back home before the main act came on stage, and I live 100 miles away!  We nearly came home much earlier.
 
Best bits: music on the BBC Radio 3 stage. Good musicians, clear PA
Hardest bits: the heat 
Strangest bits: Not much from the far east. It was all either; African, South Central Asia or Latin America. I saw nothing of Japan, Thailand or China or any "oriental" places.
Worst Bit: too hot for the minimal amount of shade available there. We spent a large chunk of time outside the venue sitting under trees by the river.
Most annoying bit: when you’re sitting in a café next to a venue, why are the café’s speakers blearing out some crap when there is quality live music there. If you were in the cinema watching a film would anyone ever set up a bunch of TV sets around loudly playing ITV or some Sky channel?
Most beautiful bits: the flags. Silken, themed, and just like the ones at The Eden project.
Nicest bits: food
Most Dubious bit: the mineral and fossil stall that offered what they called "Tektites" for £13 each. I don’t think so, they were pieces of partly eroded Obsidian if you ask me. They did, howerver offer a small piece of meteoric metal that appeared to show Widmanstatten patterns, this I was more intrigued by.
Harshest bits: PA systems on the big mainline stages. They made a row that sounded like a mass of Kazoos. In all three cases the PAs got in the way of the music and we were listending not to a band, or solo, but the noise Peavy/Marshall makes. This is not good enough.
 
I shalln’t go again. And… Hannah has decided to sell her ticket to V2006.

day four

Posted on by
Reply
30°C, hot and very humid

Linseed: you’ve missed the whole turpentine stage on this picture. Though it’s day four in the photo, the sessions are  short. My time has been taken up with loafing about in the garden broken up with fixing software on my computer (all of which is done now). Expect more ultramarine and foggy water.
 
Not much written today, with 3DS Max freshly installed – I want to go and play with that.

Quality

Posted on by
Reply
24°C, +easterly.

mp3 degradation: BBC written about a group of self confessed HiFi geeks
"He said many people did not realise what a compromise they were making when ripping CDs into formats such as MP3.

"People have not been trained. MP3s are stuff you listen to at the gym. Audiophiles do not see digital music as throwaway music – which is what digital music has become to some people."

Hear hear! Nice to see I’m not the only one unhappy with the poor sound quality from mp3/WMAs.
 
Turpentine: the ground is laid on the swimmer painting.

Heatwave: it’s the hottest July since 1911. That means it was hotter back then, so how does that fit into global-warming-journalism?

Computer: fixed MS Outlook . It was ZoneAlarm ( my firewall) that was stopping the home-page loading.

Peak District: it’s all dry and sandy looking. there is no green grass there now, never seen it like that before.

Putting the windows back in

Posted on by
1
27°C, hot

Re-installation is tiring: It takes ages to put windows back on, the OS is the easy bit, but it’s all the fiddling with different software. MS Outlook is still generating errors, possibly due to this version of ZoneAlarm. The whole idea is to make space for things, Win 2000 needs at least 10 Gb to hold all the files for 3 users and leave room for defrag to work properly.
Aand, I want a separate OS to run 3D animation and video editing software. That one should be without firewall or anti-virus software so it runs faster. That means no internet access with it ( WinXP). I shold have warned you that this bit isn’t very interesting. It has taken most of the afternoon to do , and taken away some paitning time.
 
Turpentine: started submarine swimmer picture. More tomorrow, it’s drying right now.

Reena, who are you?

Posted on by
5
24°C, humid & feels no cooler.

End of term: it quite a busy thing. It has throw wet sponges at the teacher ( on a very hot day really was fun); a staff "do" for all the staff who are leaving. The rest is more mundane but relaxed after submitting the threshodlapplication. It doesn’t even matter if the the appl gets turned down, it being done and no longer looming is the relief
.
Oh, and the girl who brought me a bottle of Champagne, signed  Reena.
The tag says "your’re* really safe"! ( Eek- that means I let her get away with something). Reena– who are you, I teach two Reenas, but you put no surname so I don’t know  to whom my gratitude goes!
 
* I’ve returned the gift of an apostrophe 😉

Hottest day

Posted on by
Reply
34°C, blimey

Hottest day yet, possibly record breaking

My legs are sore from yesterday, it makes my gait wobbly.

Linseed: Shoulder painting is now finished, later when it’s dark I can shoot a photo or two. TIt will be going of course in the Finished gallery.
So wait just there…

the next one will be somewhat nautical.

Getting fed-up with computer games, going back to do some animation over the holidays- only two days to go!

 

Legs not working

Posted on by
Reply
33°C , low humidity etc…

Threshold application is in. If you don’t know, we teachers have to apply for a pay rise, and I submitted mine today. Big hurray to that.
 
Run: School did the charity mile event thing today. Most of Britain did it on Saturday, but we did it this afternoon, at the hottest time of the day. There was plenty of bottled water to keep us fresh, also lots of big trees for shade. The boss asked for some to run, so I went into town at luch to get some running shoes. Runners were set of first & I found myself on the front. It turend out to be better than I thought- running. I never run. On reaching the finish and collecting my water bottle I decided to go again.
The second mile was also ok, though leg-ache was becoming noticable.
 
the ride home was a bit wobbly in places, my legs aren’t working properly and that meant sliding forwards on the saddle. An unexpected effect.
 
The sports shop was a curious place. I asked an assistant who soon gave the impression of knowing nothing about the products sold. With annoyance I went elsewhere.
 
It’s very hot now.
Linseed: detail, wrinkles around the eyes, work up the tunic, eyes, glaze layers. I’ll do a photo later, but getting the colour balance is tricky in this light.