Diary Of An Artist In A New World

I Love How The Rain Turns The City Into Visual Art

 

 The walk from the studio down William Street to the city CBD is one I love at any time, but I especially love it in the rain. Tonight the rain was teeming down. There was no wind, and the rain was the sort of warmish rain that is the best. The rain was streaming past the streetlights. That is a special delight seeing the rainwater turned into a stream of cascading jewels as if it is a sparkling carnival necklace draped around the lights. 

As I walked past the Cathedral the bells were peeling and that itself gained a surreal quality as deep chimes of the big bells danced it time with the rhythmic plittering and plattering of rain in the street. Even the cars join into the chorus as the normal car sounds are modified by the swishes and sloshes of the wheels in the river of water on the road surface.

 

 

 

Ultimately, however, the greatest joy is the colors and the lights reflected from the sidewalks and street surfaces that turn the normal street view into a work of impressionistic art. Everything looks so different. The night rain increases the contrasts so there are more darks and grays so that the colors of tail lights and traffic lights increase in intensity and then are doubled as reflections mirror an up world with a matching down world.

I hear people complain about the rain and I wonder why. Can they not see the mysterious poetry that envelops the skyscrapers in the rain, the change that overtakes them as their tops disappear into the low cloud and they become like trunks of trees in a gray forest holding the sky up. Do they not see the softening of the world that occurs like some giant Pissarro had taken his paint brush to the city.

I think it is beautiful and I love rain so much I wish it rained like this often enough to satisfy the poet in my heart. Where I grew up in North Queensland in the rainforest near Ravenshoe it rained on average 120 days a year. That is one day in three and I never tired of the misty beauty that would come into the mountains and valleys and all the inevitable results like all the waterfalls, and the emerald green color of the grass and the way everything always had a luxuriant feeling of growth. Rain in the city has a different feel to in the rainforest and is much more about light and colors. It is a creator of a different kind of magic, and I love it just as much or more. 

Walking With Surreal Horses, Leaves, And Rain

I love rain. It is a wonderful warm experience to wake up with heavy rain on the roof. It starts as a sound as if a distant part of a dream and then the realization that the wet is outside and the sheets are dry causes a womb-like feeling of protection and safety. It doesn't happen very often so it is a mixture of familiarity with unreality.

Later I had to go to Macquarie Street to take photos to upgrade a website. On the way back I saw dozens of Sacred Ibis digging worms in the park. Photographing them lead to photographing reflections on the path and then to leaves and then to two leaves that seemed to interact with the lights and darks on the wet path in an extraordinarily beautiful way. I couldn't stop. Well, I could, but only after around 300 photos and the battery was getting low. I loved those leaves.

Walking further I discovered blue shed like constructions around two large equestrian bronze sculptures. A Japanese/German artist, Tatzu Nishi has enclosed Gilbert Bayes bronzes so that they now appear to be inside a room. My favorite is the one in the photo that looks like the horse and rider are stepping onto a bed. I know that it is a rather fashionable idea to dress up someone else's artwork to give a new appreciation from a new perspective, but this was a particularly good version of that genre. Like the rain on the roof it had a delicious unreality about it, as if it was a Magritte painting that had just come to life.

Appreciating The Ability To Paint: Viktor Lyapkalo

A friend of mine, a former student and a very talented painter, Ryan Daffurn has recently been in Russia and sent me a link to the work of a Russian artist he rather admired. His exact words were "there are painters, then there are painters!". I have to agree, this guy can paint - his tone, observation, color are all superb. His subjects are very simple - mostly busty nudes, and they often display a bit of humor. 

I have heard some people describe his work as "its only illustration" as if that makes it somewhat unworthy to be taken seriously. I have heard the same thing said of the work of John Singer Sargent and if more people in the Anglo Saxon world knew of Joaquín Sorolla (a Spanish painter I admire and a contemporary of Sargent) I am sure I would hear the similar comments.

I never have figured out what the great difference is between us visual artists, illustrators, designers, photographers, cinematographers, musicians etc is. We are all artists. It is true that some have a particularly beautiful heart or poetic vision that we might find easier to relate to than with some other artist, and there are some who have better skills than others. In most of the arts great skill is regarded as fundamental. The more skillful a guitarist is the more we clap and cheer. It could be argued that the greater the skills, the easier it is for an artist to convey the feelings and thoughts behind the performance.

On Being A Digital Artist & The Lamborghini Miura

A lot of people seem to struggle with understanding what it means to be a digital artist. Sure they know that we work on the computer but apart from that they just don't understand. For people like that traditional media like paper and charcoal and oil paint and canvas are "real art" and everything else isn't quite the same. They are right you know - it isn't the same, and if anything, I look back at my time painting with paint as being a bit limited.

Mel's Drawing Holiday In Europe

Mel Freedman has been coming to my sketch club for more than 10 years. He is from Glasgow and his happy Glaswegian accent and his passion for drawing are well known in the studio. This year he did the big tour of Europe and naturally did lots of drawing while there. He was happy to let me video him showing the art class his drawings from the trip and afterwards I asked him a few questions about his artistic adventures and why he draws so much. This is the result.

Do I Get An Oscar Yet? - Learning To Edit Video

Before my iPhone 3G S I had never owned a video camera, had never made any kind of video. Now I have made 3 and number 4 is in progress as I write this (processing the clips for stabilization which takes quite a long time). With 3 movies on YouTube and viewing numbers going up quickly I am having fun but also experiencing a crash course in editing. The editing process is at least doubled because I spend as much time with my nose in the manual as I do making the edits. Fortunately Apple's iMovie makes it easy for beginners like me. My rapid progress is obvious in the 3 clips (all now on YouTube) however I don't think that the Academy Of Motion Pictures is going to be contacting me any time soon to clear shelf space for an Oscar.

As good as an Oscar (for me), however is going on YouTube. I think YouTube is a huge social change. It removes the artificial barriers of the past between "real artists" and everyone else and gives everyone the opportunity to be a filmmaker and share slices of their life with the world. By uploading videos I had to "sign up" for YouTube which is really easy and has expanded my YouTube usage to more than just looking at videos. I never knew before that YouTube Channels existed. I am loving it.

The Lost Year

It is almost a year since my last post, a very emotional year. Sometimes dealing with the ups and downs of life requires a little privacy, or in this case a lot of privacy. Hence my blogging has taken a back seat for a while. 

Not that it has been a year without good things. Some of them have been very good. I went on an extended holiday to Queensland with my boys in a mini-van so they could have Christmas with their grandparents. It was very special. It was also a big year for computer purchases with 2 computers for my boys, and an Axiotron Modbook for myself. There has also been the joy of the iPhone and most recently making iPhone videos to upload to YouTube. Over the next few weeks as I get back into making regular diary posts I will intersperse them with posts under the general heading of "The Lost Year" to detail some of the major happenings so we can catch up better.

Recently I returned to Facebook after an absence of several months. It was wonderful to catch up with all my friends. I know that this diary has a good readership so to all of you - it is a good feeling to be back. I love social media and the way it has revolutionized life. 

iPhone Sketching

On Sunday I took the train up to Windsor, partially to see Saul, my sculptor friend, and also to try out mobile drawing, especially on my new iPhone. This little drawing is my first result. While I had drawn and painted a few experiments back at the studio, this is the first true sketch outside. I love that the iPhone is so flexible that it allows sketching like this. The possibilities are endless, and I look forward to what I can do as I gain skill using it.

To highlight the abilities of the iPhone, this entire post is composed and published on the device.

Seeing Saul was great, but sadly, I was so tired when I returned, I managed to accidentally delete all 88 photos I had taken. Fortunately, my sketches were here on the iPhone.

My Brilliant Son

CONGRATULATIONS   LEIF

Leif has just won a state wide competition to design a cover for the TAFE student association diary for next year. Here it is:

East Sydney Academy Of Art - Sydney Life Drawing And Sketch Club Art Class

Already it is the second term of art classes and sketch club. It hardly seems possible that time could go so fast. The classes are busy and have a wonderful buzz about the artists who come along. Some are just beginners and some are very experienced, but they all feel like part of a family. They probably don't realize that the principal reason I hold the classes is simply because of the joy I feel in seeing artists gathering with the model and each discovering their personal triumphs and frustrations as they take charcoal and chalk and pencil, watercolor and ink, and make marks on paper (whether perfect or imperfect) that reflect that deep human need to make sense of our world through making pictures.