Lining Up

One of the biggest challenges behind the three piece self-portrait is getting the three pieces to line up and look like they belong. As I have done more and more ink strokes, my stroke style has changed. So now I am having to alter the top of the first piece to match the bottom of the second piece. Interesting challenge.

Wiki Trig

Wikipedia has the most amazing article on trigonometric identities! Wonderful.

Meditation

I know my last post was on what art is, but I must add an addendum. Today, after hours of doing tiny lines, I realized that doing them is meditative. I end up in a sort of trance after awhile, and feel totally brain dead. Then this passes and I feel relaxed and ready to go at it again. Tiny, tiny lines -- thousands of them. Each piece of the portrait is life-size (30" by 22"). In other words, each piece is BIG. Thousands and thousands of little tiny lines.......

What Art Is

I have come across people who think that art is produced through spontaneous creativity. Wrong. Great art is produced through effort -- lots of it. Planning via drawings, preliminary paintings, and much time and effort. Many of the great paintings have taken months, years for the artists to produce. To be an artist requires enormous dedication, physical effort and lots of mental energy.

Bidding

I deepened my understanding of Game Theory tonight during the old Mission Impossible TV show we were watching. Various representatives from various governments were bidding on a nuclear bomb. I realized that someone bidding in order to prevent others from getting the bomb (the MT team) would make sure they had vastly more money than someone else who was bidding in order to process the bomb for their own purposes. The MI team would need to make sure they could out-bid anyone. The other person would have money based on a perceived value worth equation.

What An Angle Is

I like the manner in which an angle is presented in my textbook. The difference between an angle and its measure is clearly delineated. An angle is a formed when one end of a line is rotated around the line' midpoint. The measure is the amount of rotation. Nice.

Clay Witt

From one of UVA's teachers, Clay Witt, this is interesting.

Photoshop CS3

For the first piece of the self-portrait, I used a photograph. It took about 20 hours manipulating the photo (low contrast on the pants and high contrast on background, plus I divided it into nine pieces) to get it the way I wanted it. I used MS Paint and a freebee that come with my computer. I would print one of the nine sections to find out that the registration of objects did not match other pieces that I had already printed. It was a long and frustrating process.

So my husband, bless his wonderful heart, suggested that I download a free thirty day trial of Photoshop. Not doing this earlier in this process was a big, big, BIG mistake. Over a few hours yesterday and today (probably about 8) I have adjusted the contrast on each section of my body but also divided the torso piece and the head piece into the nine pieces. I have printed them all and checked the registration to find that it is perfect with the first printing! Awesome product. Advice to any illustrator or artist who uses photos in their work -- buy Photoshop! It will pay for itself in a very short while.

Exhausting Fridays

My Fridays are exhausting. It usually takes a very short amount of time after I get home to fall asleep in a chair. I get up at 6, begin my drive to C'ville at 7:15, attend class from 9 to 3; and then drive home. I have been getting home around 5.