The Cartooning Course.

The 50 foot tall Robot Lady

Progress Report on Re-learning to Paint.

I started these last night. They are oil on canvas, 24"X36 for the portraits and 22.5" X 36" for the plane.

The First 11 Pages

About 5 days into the New Year I finished the first Fabriano sketchbook. 192 drawings on 7" X 9" paper - I think about three were scrapped and cut out of the book and two pages were just used for testing media. You can read a little about the first book in the third post in this blog.

So, these are the first 11 drawings in the new book.

#1 Frontice
#2 Curtain Up At The Bloor,
#3 copy from Daumier.
#4 same
#5 Parking Lot At Loblaws.
#6 North York Centre
#7 The Tall Guy In Front, Bloor Cinema
#8 Elizabeth Street, (this is where I wait for deirdre when I go to pick her up after work.
#9 Elizabeth Street Parking Meter,
#10 Supper At Te Drake. (Waiting for my order to come.)
#11 North York Centre Tower (De Chirico Comes To North York)

A Label Gallery Show

Flyer looks pretty good.

Possibly, Perhaps.

What I need to do is post some of the stuff from the cartooning class Deirdre and I are taking.

Some Images

-- Taken with my Olympus D-540 point-and-shoot digital camera, at night - illuminated by street lights or predawn ligh. Camere settings on "bright sunlight", max optical zoom, while moving the camera.
Corel Photo Paint filters applied.
#1, China Town, Dundas and Elizabeth Street, from Elizabeth Street, across from Japango, looking north towards the bus terminal.
#2, 16th Ave. west of Warden. This was a van turning the corner with the reflections of passing cars
#3, 16th and Hwy. 404, the northbound on-ramp and the light poles in the median. I should provide Google Earth links to the exact locations each image is from. It really doesn't matter where the photos were taken since there is little or no resemblance between the image and it's location. Or, it is a resemblance that is difficult to glean as the elements of time and motion have been added.

I Heard It Called The "Buggy Corral"

"Buggy corral"?
Now that conjures up an image:


The sun's hangin' low over the Arbie's sign. It's the end of another long day for the buggy wranglers. A long day of wraslin' buggies, cuttin' out carts and herding 'em into the mall - All the while, fighting off buggy-rustlers and dodging distracted drivers. The cart-pokes gather 'round the corral for an impromptu rodeo. Before long, someone's pulled out a guitar and is singing "Buggies Lament " as he sits on the top rail, slouched over the instrument with a hand-rolled cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth, one eye squint tight against the smoke:

Whoopie-ti-yi-yo, get along you little buggies
It's your misfortune, t'ain't none of my own
Whoopie-ti-yi-yo, get along you little buggies
You know that the Loblaws will be your new home.

It's twenty four-seven that we round up the buggies
We push 'em and shove 'em and bend up their wheels
We round up the loose ones, line 'em up by the score,
Then send them damn buggies a-rattlin' though the front door.

Someone else is passing 'round a hip flask of cheap rot-gut whisky. An injured cart-poke is helped up after being tossed from a cart. He takes an extra swig as he picks grit from the road-rash on his elbow.

As the sun sets behind the the Red Lobster a cool breeze picks up and fluffs flyers and coupons left in the buggy baskets. The conversaton inevitably turns to the buggy stampede of '03. It's a hard life on the asphalt desert. Hard and short and spent like summer wages.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
I'll need to get some good images to go with this :o)

Some Small Paintings

Terrible photos.

Fuzzy Photos

Self Portraits

These were from a figure drawing Course I took with Deirdre at George Brown College.

Pencil and coloured pencil.




















Pencil, brush pen, and colured pencils.

















Pen and ink.














The idea was to show some expressions.

On the subject of blurred vision

Much to my delight and very unexpectedly, I've been invited to participate in a group exhibition of art, opening in Winnipeg and touring to Kitchener and Montreal. What seemed to get the attention of the organizer, James Culleton was my "fuzzy" photographs, fitting with the theme, of "blurred or double vision" as they do, of course. So I've thought about how my work fits into that theme. I'm trying to decide what pieces it include.

I don't often like to do things without a reason. Or a sense, at least, that there is a reason. The reasons may often arbitrary, and clouded in uncertainty to be sure. As we navigate through life, both physically and metaphorically, we try to attach to some sort of firm ground to provide a sense of certainty about who, where, why, when and what we are - In relation to everything else. Sort of a "You are here" sticker on a mall map. In this context, I see blurred vision as being synonymous with uncertainty.

I'm a graphic designer. My area of expertise is wayfinding signage. I'm employed by a transit agency and a large part of my job recently has been the background work on redesigning our signage standards. When one is designing such a thing, it is important that it look good, but the first item of concern is function. You don't just change something because you feel like it. You need a reason, and the reason needs to be the right one. Who does it serve and how can we make it functionally better and not cost too much...

An actuality is that not only is the demographic mix of passengers getting a little older but most of our passengers catch their trains before sun up and after dark for most of the year and in all sorts of weather. After taking the train once, you pretty much know your way and never need to look at directional signs again. It's not rocket science, but with growth and the turnover rate, as people change jobs, find other ways to get to work, etc. There are hundreds of people every day who are new to the system. People are rushed, distracted and not fully awake while trying to find their way to the right train, figure out how to by a ticket, when the next rain arrives and so on. A sign is virtually never needed when viewing conditions are ideal, so we needed to find a typeface that could be demonstrated to be more legible than all others in all viewing conditions. I did this by selecting a few that were design to meet those criteria in the first place.

They were; Tiresias, designed by a team of scientists at the RNIB ((British equivalent of our CNIB.)) APHONT. Designed by a similar team at The American Printing House for the Blind. ClearviewHWY, designed by a graphics firm in co-operation with Transportation engineers and thoroughly tested in all weather conditions using cars moving at highway speeds on a full scale test track. ((Subjects were tested for the distance they were from a sign before they could read it and how long it took to read.)) And finally, Transit Font FF, designed by Eric Spiekermann for MetaDesign in their German office , to meet requirements for improved signage after a fire at Düsseldorf International Airport that killed quite a few people. It is now used by quite a few German Public Transit Agencies - Hence the name, I guess. The typeface we have been using is Helvetica.)

I then had signs made up in all the different faces photographed them and blurred the images digitally. I then asked people the read the signs and had them rate the legibility of each character in the sign on a scale that ran from "can't tell what letter is al all" to absolutely certain what letter it is" From that exercise it was I was able to choose and back up my preference for Transit Font FF over the rest, based on relatively objective criteria. (Second most readable at identical letter heights, but since is more compact, you can use larger letters in the same space.) It also happens to be the best looking of the lot, which is a bonus.
Any how, To get back to the subject of making art and embracing uncertainty...

Sort of a follow the dotted line idea, but you rely a little on their logic and a little on your ability to communicate visually, but in the mean time, there is a lot of noise to interfere with both. (the dots maybe very far apart and not easy to see at first) Imagine trying to find a washroom at a mall. You start with some basic reasoning:

• the mall wants you to be able to find the washroom on your own, possibly because they are nice and want to help, but more likely so that shoppers will take up less time of the employees of the mall and their tenants, who would otherwise be asking where the bathroom is. - So there will be signs.


• B: they don't make any money off the washrooms so the signs will be discreet and out of the way of advertising and they will be grouped with other similar signs pointing to other services.
  

C: Architects hate directional signs, so they will be more discreet than the should be, but the signs will be at points where you need to decide which direction to take.

• 
  D: The wash room will likely be near where food is served. (not for your convenience. They have to, but because that's also where the plumbing is.)

So, there are certain things you know at the outset. A set of logical conclusions you can make before you begin looking, even though the design and layout will be different in every mall. There is still a degree of uncertainty until you can picture where you are in relation to where you need to be. Once you know, you can relax. With my art, I want to take that certainty away. It's about looking for things. Not finding them.What I found with the type face tests was that (mostly with Helvetica), certain letter shapes would close when blurred: The letters s & a and e could be come indistinguishable. Other letters or combinations of letters are the same shape, as in the word 'Ill' for example. We read by word shapes as much as by letter shapes though, so even if you can not identify any letters in a word you can make an educated guess about what the word is, and when the word is in context, you can be 100% certain. The process is slowed down though, which is why it is an issue in wayfinding signs. On the other hand, it is interesting how much information we can dispense with and still function.

In The Interval

Between now and my last entry Deirdre and I have signed up for a drawing course, Saturday afternoons at George Brown College. We like to do things like this together. We are also learning to speask French at The Alliance Francais together, two nights a week. She's in the level ahead of me, because, well... Because she's just that much smarter than me. We still do the Wednesday life drawing sessions at the Gladstone.

This coming Saturday will be the grand re-opening of the Gladstone. From what I have seen so far, it is going to be pretty terrific.

Life Drawing And a Beer (or two)

WE have been attending an informal figure drawing class at the Gladstone Hotel, in the "Art Bar" (so called because of the weekly figure drawing classes, ongoing since 1968). We buy ourselves a beer, then sit in the company of some really quite accomplished artists and draw.

This has become something My wife and I look forward to: Two and a half hours of 2, 3, 5, 7 and 10 minute poses. I hadn't been drawing like that for many years, and at first anything under 5 minutes seemed like and impossibly short amount of time to turn out anything that wasn't embarrassing. Even 10 minutes was too short. Now, after a few months, 10 minutes almost seems to drag.

I'm still very rusty with the heads and faces... So,naturally, in the guise of artistic licence, I've been leaving them off.

I'll try to work up to it.


















Eventually.

The Fabriano Classic Artist's Journal

In October, 2003, my wife bought us each a 6 1/4" X 8 5/16" sketch book. 192 pages of a very nice, slightly toothy Fabriano drawing paper. Cartiere Milani Fabriano was founded in 1282, in Fabriano, Italy and is the oldest paper mill in Europe. They are credited with inventing the process of embedding watermarks in paper and gelatin sizing to make paper more receptive to ink and paint and more stable as a medium for documents. I could mention at this point that my wife and I share a delight in the texture, weight and feel of a really good paper.
Fabrianlo makes some of the best.


The vary first thing I did was draw a title page. After that I was a little hesitant to draw in it. It invites sketching. Doodling even, yet I didn't want to sully the pages with - Just anything.

Recently, though I have been taking the book with me every where I go and drawing in it if I have some time on my hands. This started when my wife was working late and I'd drive downtown or to the bus stop to pick her up. I'd draw what ever was in front of me while I waited. I began to carry a variety of drawing supplies as well.

I try to do a drawing a day in it. In reality I manage 3 or 4 a week. More so since I started going off during my lunches to draw.

There Were Fault Lines In The Electromagnetic Field.

There were fault lines in the electromagnetic field.

You could map them out following a sequence of Lorenz graph plots, spanning vast periods of time. They would show up in weather patterns and earthquakes. They would show up in crime statistics, unspeakable atrocities, wars, UFO and Virgin Marry sightings. Pins on a map of natural and man-made disasters. Boulders under a fast moving stream revealed only by turbulent disturbances in the current.

Finding that pattern was next to impossible. Once found though, tracing a line forward would inevitably take the observer to a sweet spot - A precise set of coordinates where, as with finding the the stone in the stream, if you caefully trace a line back up-stream, you may find the precise place and time where you can drop a leaf and know, from any distancer, it will go neither to the left of a sand bar nor the right, but run aground like an unlucky sailor. The art is in knowing where to look, and when. The science is in narrowing the range of probabilities and tracing the line back as far as possible.

These Spots are active.

I Have Seen the Enemy's Weapon And It Is A Fuzzy Photograph

... Which means, what? It was a line from a story I wrote many years ago. Something sureal about it. I liked that. Still do. I no longer have the story. Just the line and a fuzzy recollection of a "B Street" and a plant with machinery inside that rattled windows in surounding run down, turn of the century industrial buildings, and the protagonist was always threatening to blast the listener. The fuzzy photograph is a sort of vague memory and not a partucularly valued one at that. At least not by most.



I'm not sure where to go with this Blog.
Stories/photos/drawings? Maybe all.