Work and colour

This has been a crazy week for work. I seem to flit from meeting to meeting to meeting on a variety of topics, then get back to the office to find another load of emails asking me to more meetings, conferences, teleconference calls, etc., etc.

This week's meetings have been interspersed with presentations. Why is that at the office I can get a power point presentation to work beautifully, but when I get to the site and hook it up to the data projector it decides it wants none of it? It performed true to form today at my presentation, but luckily I was rescued by a techie guy who even acted as my assistant, forwarding slides on the laptop. I was impressed.

Tomorrow I do another presentation (yes Saturday morning). Its the nature of non profit organizations, you work when others work - in addition to regular working hours. You get time off in lieu of payment for overtime and you can't take the time off because the work builds up when you're gone and you work longer to get it done, accruing more time in lieu, etc., etc., etc. If the average person could experience day to day operations of a non profit organization they would view the world very differently. Nothing is taken for granted in a non profit as it often is in private enterprise. People don't spend frivolously in non profits, every penny is crucial to existance. Its a very different way of life that has good and bad aspects.

Drawing has taken a bit of backseat this week, as work has occupied most of my time. I try to go into my studio for a little while before bed and add a bit more graphite to my drawing which I am doing for Armin Mersmann's class, but that's slow going too. I'm enjoying it, but it's a challenging drawing. This weekend I want some colour in my drawings so I'm going to have another go at this sketch which I started awhile go. It is a coloured pencil drawing of me when I was 21 months old. It was done on the only version of mylar that I could find at the time and is too grainy and was never completed. I do have some proper drafting film now which I found at my printers. Its amazing what you find out about in general conversation... So I will try this one again. THe original photo was black and white - no we didn't have colour film all those years ago - or at least my parents didn't. So the colours are very much from my imagination and hazy memories of my mother.

Art in your ear

The world is full of those who communicate and those who listen. Podcasts fulfil the needs of both, and even those of artists, as I've discovered. Podcasts are a newish form of communication to the masses. Wikipedia defines a podcast as this:

A podcast is a digital media file, or a series of such files, that is distributed over the Internet using syndication feeds for playback on portable media players and personal computers.

Art is a very visual medium so why even consider podcasts about art? Well, they provide access to a lot of information that normally would never be available to most of us. From art history, museum, technique, design, marketing and the business of art, they are all available to download to a portable media player such as an iPod or available to listen to online through your computer's speakers.

If you have an iPod you can access lists of podcasts through the iTunes program, but there are lots of other podcast search engines available to find the programs you are looking for. I have a couple of favourites that I listen to regularly and keep an eye out for others that may come up from time to time by searching online for new editions.

Here are a couple of links to get you going in the quest for art through your ears.

Podcast search engines
Podcast.net
Podcast.com
EPN (Education Podcast Network)
iTunes

Interested in voicing your own views in a podcast?
How to create your own podcast
GarageBand and iWeb
Gcast

Finally a few of the podcasts that I'm currently subscribed to
ArtBizBlog
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden - Smithsonian museum for contemporary art
SF Moma
Guggenheim
Tate Modern/ London

Experiment, search and see what you come up with.

More cats

I am overdue to do another dog portrait, but found myself drawing this cat which was this week's challenge in a weekly drawing thread. I guess cats and dogs are similar exercises in form and colour and fur...lots of fur. I'll work on it for another day or so, but its more a sketch than a drawing then it goes into the files.

Towers and pigs

I played with an image of a tower that had wonderful lighting. The tower is located in Laguna Beach in Southern California where I was in February. This drawing was done in pen and ink with coloured pencil, about 11 x 14. It is an image I keep threatening to paint in oils and I will. Eventually.

The next experiment is a little video of the piglets filmed yesterday in the barn. They LOVE potatoes in any form and this is the chaos that ensues when they all try to eat out of the same trough. The noise in the background are the geese who were still in their pens in the barns. They are soooooooo noisy!

Growth

When bankers get together for dinner, they discuss art.

When artists get together for dinner, they discuss money.
Oscar Wilde

The greenhouse is a sea of greens and oranges as the marigolds start to bloom and other flower continue to grow. These early blooms will be taken off the plants to encourage more flowers, as they will not be needed until mid-July for a wedding.

Meanwhile, the piglets continue to grow and become more curious about their world. They are still in the barn right now but will be moved to a pen in the field as soon as it is constructed.