Michael Barrett
Egg study
[caption id=”” align=”alignnone” width=”2500.0”]
Two eggs 8″ × 8″ Acrylic on birch panel [/caption]
I made time for a little painting this weekend. Real painting with real paint. I am trying to turn off the tiny project manager who lives in my brain and just do work instead of thinking in terms of a larger project or an exhibit. Because I frankly just need more practice.
I also have guilt over the painting supplies I bought which have been lying dormant since I fell in love with digital painting.
It’s so much easier to turn real paint into mud. There is so much more set up and clean up with real material. However, I have an artifact from this weekend - a tiny little painting. It’s not my best or my favorite, but if I put it into a frame and gave it to someone it would make them happy. A digital work flickers by on Instagram in a second and doesn’t have an opportunity to make much of an impact beyond a quick double-tap-and-heart.
It’s an interesting set of trade-offs - digital media has nearly infinite possibilities with no ongoing cost or material, but no impact in the world. Physical media generates garbage and is dreadfully slow and costly.
I want to commit to burning up the rest of my painting supplies and call it all practice. The supplies are already doomed simply because I’ve purchased them. So I may as well get some value out of them. If I burn through them all and I still want more - that’s probably an OK sign.
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="2500.0"]<img src="http://abouthalf.micro.blog/uploads/2018/14da4bc5c1.jpg" alt=" Early underpainting - this bowl looks like a coconut. "/> Early underpainting - this bowl looks like a coconut. [/caption]
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="2500.0"]<img src="http://abouthalf.micro.blog/uploads/2018/4f2c3fb310.jpg" alt=" Middle stages of the painting - the egg on the right took a long time to capture. I should paint more eggs. "/> Middle stages of the painting - the egg on the right took a long time to capture. I should paint more eggs. [/caption]
I read this stupid article and I don’t feel good about it.
Most Apple related editorials could just be farted out by a poorly trained chat-bot.
They could sell it to news-orgs as a service. “Open-letter-to-apple-bot” or something.
My gut reaction to this article was “well probably no” but the phrase “artistically justifiable” got stuck in my brain. What does that mean? Does that include some kind of ethical point of view? - the artists interviewed respond as if this is so…
“Artistically justifiable” is a tricky phrase - Everything is artistically justifiable - but morally? Ethically? Politically?
Is there a german word for the the feeling of emotional despair when embarking on a long commute without any new podcasts?
Sunday still life painting with a couple of process photos. Acrylic painting on birch panel, 8” x 8”
(that first sketch of a bowl looks like a coconut)
🥚🥚
Three thoughts
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A work in progress, with big eyes. [/caption]
Bones
I am finding that I make the same mistakes when I draw people. I elongate the face, especially the space between the nose and chin, and I enlarge the eyes.
I noticed that part of that problem is how I sketch in these features. I’m sort of cartoonishly outlining the shape of the eyes and then filling them in. The outlines are large (because I sketch with a broad, flat, tool usually), and so the final form becomes larger and then they’re all wrong. And huge.
Secondly, I struggle to find a balance between mapping, planning, and sculpting a drawing and just diving in and piling on value, color, and detail. I need to slow down and measure and see. Speed will come with practice.
Drawing tech
I listen to the Good Point podcast with Rafael Rozendaal and Jeremy Bailey. I am an unapologetic fan of Rafael Rozendaal so I took it on the chin a bit when they sort of mocked iPad as an art tool. Well not really. They were discussing how painting and drawing become symbols of creative work and how products like the Microsoft Surface and the Apple Pencil are marketed to hypothetical artists in, perhaps, a cynical way to push technology they’ve developed into a market.
I love drawing on an iPad so I took some offense to this…but I see their point. But I think they have the cause and effect backwards. I don’t believe that Apple would have developed their Pencil if there wasn’t demand, or a pre-existing addressable market. Ditto for Microsoft. I also think they failed to ask the question “why is drawing emblematic of creativity?” I think the answer to that question is the answer to why every new technology platform has a painting tool.
Tiny little blogs
I created a Micro.blog account because I needed one more place to post things on the internets. It’s hosted at [abouthalf.micro.blog.](http://abouthalf.micro.blog.)
It is a distraction from posting on my “proper” blog but it’s also so frictionless and easy that it’s more fun and almost automatic. I also find that it works well as a front-end to Twitter. I can post things that appear on Twitter, without having to ever look at Twitter. This is a plus.
I like the idea a lot and I like that the platform integrates with many other blogging systems (but not Squarespace, unfortunately). I also can get behind the idea of individuals taking back the open web from the clowns in Silicon Valley. I’m hoping that writing there will fertilize more writing here.
Morning commuter drawing session. Needed about 20 more minutes to get this closer to “done”. I’ve been using marketing emails from a clothing brand as reference material. I think there’s a idea in here somewhere. A pop-art spam thing…
Simon Freund has released a new piece “onwards & upwards”. Step-ladders intertwined, supporting each other, and made useless.
I’m realizing that I need to just slow down with my art work and not worry about where I’m going with it. I need to retrain and relearn my skills. And unlearn some things in the process. I’m going to try to be more content with just working and practicing. Seeing where it leads.
I ran across this explainer video from Vox on minimalism in art.
It’s a good introduction - and does an OK job of getting the concepts across. But..so…many…examples aren’t minimalism…
(as usual, don’t read the comments)
I don’t know who Ivan is, but his artwork makes me yearn.
I like this comic. but the plural of “Stephen Fry” is obviously “Stephens Fry”. And secondly. if we have an abundance of Stephen Fry clones, we’d all just invite one to live with us and read to us. I’d buy mine a sweater and a scarf.
