After a couple of posts about my recent travel and a few posts about induced demand some of you are probably wondering what happened to the other stuff I usually write about. You know, the art, the 3D art, and the music? Well, it’s complicated. But rest assured I’m still doing all of that it just hasn’t been of the volume that I’ve been able to write a lot of posts about. It is only just starting to pick up a little bit with more coming soon. I do have a bit to write about, for now and then I’ll be getting back to it, so I have even more to write about.
First the music. I don’t remember if I mentioned it at some point this year. I did something odd to my left hand. My fretting hand. I was forming a chord of sorts on the guitar, and something popped. I was not a good little human. I didn’t run to the doctor or nurse or urgent care center. At first, I continued on thinking it would get better since I’ve popped things before, and it’s not been an issue. But I did a good job with this one and it wasn’t getting better and at times, because I was still playing guitar and trying to learn piano, it seemed like it was getting worse. So, I plopped it in a brace and tried to go about things. Semi-successfully and ultimately probably causing peripheral damage. The pain got into my shoulder and other parts of my arm, and I finally went to someone for it. It’s not completely back to normal. It is getting better. I have had to take a considerable amount of time off from the music stuff I was working on and while I can do a little now, I try not to do too much so that I can stretch and strengthen the hand without re-injuring it. I hope.
With the music on the back burner, you would think I would be getting back into my art. I’ve worked on a little. I started on that Blender character course and was having fun until I got stuck in my head trying to decide what I was going to do about something that needs fixing. And I’ve worked on a few painting type of pieces. It doesn’t really feel like I’ve done much, though I may have done more than I realize. I would like to be working on, starting and finishing, more pieces or even regular sketches. I haven’t done it. I suppose I set a fairly high bar for myself when I was doing the daily sketches. And maybe that’s why it doesn’t feel like I’ve done much so far this year.
I will also add that the changes in the day job have definitely impacted my focus and motivation. For those that haven’t heard, my manager, who was the only other person on my direct or local (US) team announced at the beginning of the year that he was retiring at the end of the first quarter. My day job is as a database administrator and an application administrator. We had been working on migrating off of an old version of Microsoft SQL to a newer one and we have a few legacy and homegrown applications. Not all of those do I have a lot of familiarity with. So, the time from his announcement to the time of his retirement meant that I needed to get as much information out of him as possible to be able to pick up and move forward after his last day. As you can imagine, this was stressful. And there were many a day where my brain was full, or I was unable to think or function well for at least an hour after my day ended. Not especially conducive to being creative. His last day was the Friday before I went to Orlando for an overall departmental meeting and then on to Paris the next week. I’m still getting my bearings but I’m ready to get back to some art.
I’ve got a couple of ideas for paintings, at least two of which will probably be watercolors. And I’ve got two paintings to finish. A large-ish Octopus I’ve been working on in soft pastel, and that crane I started on in oils. Not only that. I brought back from Paris some really lovely handmade paper that I’m going to use for at least one of the watercolor paintings. And I brought back some soft pastels that are dreamy. I can’t wait to find something to use them for. Oh. I also picked up a small guidebook for pastels at the Sennelier store I visited. The book’s in French but the pictures are really descriptive, and I’ve picked up a little so that I might be able to get the idea from context and the pictures. And then there is always one of the translation apps.
I found something out about my sister when we were preparing for the trip that I didn’t know before. In high school she was part of her school’s academic team, or something like that, and her area of interest or expertise was art history. I find that so interesting. Here I’ve taken just enough instructional art courses, but I’ve not had much art history. Much like when I went to the museum in Melbourne with the friend I was visiting, when we finally got to visit an art museum I discovered more about the renowned artists and their styles and how they produced their art.
The only art museum we really got to spend any time in was the Musee d’Orsay which houses a lot of impressionism art. I like detail. I find it important and so I try to include a lot of it in my art. And yet, I struggle sometimes to tell the story I want to tell with my art because that fine detail gets in the way. It isn’t always realistic to draw every single head with hair and a nose and eyes if you’re drawing a crowd of a hundred people. You have to find a way to give the ‘impression’ of there being a hundred different people. Looking at the impressionist art I was able to understand this a little better. I can’t say yet if I’ve figured out how to internalize it and apply some of it to my own art. I may not. At least I better understand it.
I was happy to get to see a couple of Georges Seurat paintings. I do like his work. His pointillism work is incredible. Particularly when you find out he did it as something of a scientific investigation. And when you think about the idea that the way he juxtaposed dots of color so that the eye ultimately mixed the colors is very much the idea of how pixels on a computer screen end up working it’s easy to geek out over.
Another painter’s work I was really happy to get to see was Henri Rousseau who is considered post impressionism. I really like his bold colors, detail, and crisp delineation. My first encounter with Henri Rousseau’s work was not direct. The Fleetwood Mac album Tango in the Night has cover art by Brett Livingstone Strong and the piece is titled ‘Homage A Henri Rousseau’. The cover art is very Rousseau-esque. So, it was really cool to see a Rousseau painting up close.
I also found a new to me impressionist who’s work I like. His name is Gustave Caillebotte. His colors are vibrant and bold and his subject is more delineated. He was part of the impressionist group and exhibited with them. He was also financially well enough off the he supported some of them by collecting the works of his friends.
There are a couple of painters that their most well-known paintings aren’t my favorite. Vincent Van Gogh is one of them. While I did get to see his ‘The Starry Night’ and I think even his ‘Sunflowers’, those were not the pieces I enjoyed the most. I was pleased to find that the museum had others of his work and those, though I did not note their names, those I liked much more.
So, the trip to Paris and the Musse d’Orsay and the Sennelier store were great for feeding my art. If not directly in style, execution, or technique then in understanding and opening up options. And a bit of inspiration.
And believe it or not, the something of the same can be said about the visit to Cirque du Soleil at Disney Springs. ‘Drawn to Art’ was a very cool story and the way they demonstrated some concepts, like squash and stretch, was fun. And even the gift store afterwards contributed. I picked up the book ‘Walt Disney’s Nine Old Men Masters of Animation’. I haven’t read it yet. I also picked up some pencils. Wait. Hear me out. There are these pencils that are so revered by some animators that one even has her social media handle as ‘blackwingjen’ and I remember seeing a post from her a few years ago about finding more of these pencils. Anyway. I bought a box of Blackwing pencils, and I bought a journal book with a Blackwing pencil. I’ve used the pencil for the journal and all I have to say is: “oh my. They are lovely.” They really glide across the paper differently and have a different feel. I’m kind of excited to get to use them for something.
Which brings me to the current state of my art. I’ve worked on the Octopus because it’s big and on an easel. But I haven’t gotten to the watercolors, or even sketching yet because my art desk is a minor disaster zone. It wasn’t especially tidy when I left and then I came back from Orlando and Paris with all my goodies, and I’ve stacked them there. So, I need to clean my desk. I thought I might get to it last weekend, but I didn’t. I think it will have to be a priority before the end of the next weekend. Which means, if I can get it tidied up during the week, I’ll have that much more weekend time to do some art.
There you are. The state of my music and of my art. As it is now. I am looking to what I want for the art in the future and am exploring options for selling some of my art. As more than just greeting cards. I haven’t quite figured out how to go about it in a way that will be effective. Which means there is a bit of the boring art office work to do. There is a lot to learn, I don’t doubt. I’m hoping to find some good tools for marketing and getting the word out because that is something I really don’t do well. That means, some of what I find and learn will likely end up here along with more art or discussion of art.
I’m looking forward to doing more art and getting back to writing about it again. I hope you found the posts about induced demand interesting. If not, well, things might start to get interesting for you again. At least I hope so. And thanks for staying around through it or coming back around. As I think I noted, induced demand was something that was really bugging me, especially since once I started seeing it, it seemed like I was seeing it almost everywhere. And I’d venture that it doesn’t just seem to be, it actually is. I found that the more I looked at it the more frustrated and annoyed I got. And I think that is as it should be. In an ideal situation it would spur action and change. Which it has to some extent. I try to be more cognizant of my choices and reasons for purchasing things and doing things and right now, I think it’s the best I can do. And maybe that’s the best any of us can do. If we are more aware of the choices, we make and examine the reasons for them periodically I think we can start to break the hold of induced demand. I don’t want to forget what I’ve observed and shared and hopefully you won’t either. Now back to the regular schedule of programming. At least for a while. Peace.