King Squid Mosaic

I finished my most recent mosaic this morning. I like this guy a lot and can not wait to get him framed. I guess I have done 8 squid themed mosaics now. I am going to try to do one mosaic a month this year. I have so many projects in my head.

For (Visual) Art's Sake

Danielle Van Ark's photos often seem unreal, directed. Yet reality seems to provide her with events so rich they seem definitely out of this world. Out of mine, for sure.
See also her great Taxidermy series...

Modbook Mac Tablet

"Andreas Haas, CEO of Axiotron, tells InformationWeek how the company turns the dowdy MacBook into its sexy Modbook Mac tablet, and why its not afraid of competition from a rumored Apple-made Mac tablet.

If you live all day in Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, or some other visual Mac app, Axiotron has its eye on you. The company makes the long-awaited Modbook Mac tablet, designed for designers, illustrators, and other visually creative professionals.

"It's for people who draw, scribble, and paint," said Axiotron CEO Andreas Haas. We sat down with Haas for a one-on-one interview recently.

The Modbook, priced starting at $2,290, was announced at Macworld 2007, a little more than a year ago, and finally started shipping Dec. 31.

Axiotron built the unit in cooperation with Apple. The Modbook is manufactured by the same companies that make Macs. Axiotron ships the manufacturers the pen displays, the manufacturers rip the displays and keyboards out of standard MacBooks, and then add the Axiotron display. The manufacturers keep the notebook displays and keyboards and use them to repair defective MacBooks -- displays and keyboards are the most common points of failure for notebook computers, Haas said.

Apple is reportedly developing its own tablet computer, but Axiotron isn't afraid of the competition, Haas said. The Apple tablet will basically be a bigger version of the iPhone or iPod Touch -- a consumer device with a 7-inch to 10-inch display, running a cut-down version of Mac OS X with little or no third-party application support, with an interface that's lacking in fine control, in part because it'll be controlled using the user's finger. "Finger painting is fun -- when you're four," Haas said." View Full Review

Cat Portraits "Patches"

Yes we do cat portraits. Been awhile since we posted any so I thought I would post Patches. We worked on this pretty cat earlier this month.

EXITO=success / EXIT=exit

I am delighted to inform you that I have been invited by the TR Warszawa theater (Warsaw, Poland) to create and direct a video department/workshop/center/section/thing. There is great enthusiasm concerning the project on both sides.
Thus, I am thrilled to be going back to Poland (at least for some time).
Thus, I am extremely sad to be leaving Portugal (at least for some time).

I hope to have more on this initiative in a few weeks.

For now, all my friends and friends of this blog are invited to a farewell party on February 2, at a place that will be disclosed any moment.

UPDATE>> we will be partying at the Lounge bar (www.barlounge.blogspot.com, although I have no idea how knowing the virtual address can help), at rua da Moeda n.1, in the Cais do Sodre area (by the post office, near the ETIC school). We'll be starting around 11pm. See you there!

Who are your Mentors?

Who are your mentors in life? How many have shaped you and do you currently have a mentor? In my monthly brainstorming group among friends, my photographer pal Kris asked this question last month. In business I would have to say I do not have a mentor at present.

I would like to talk today though about a mentor I had at the age of 20. While in school I worked at Montgomery Wards in Denton and I had the most dynamic, hardest working manager on the planet, her name was Jimmie Holland. She was like 5 feet tall and yet she walked with a confidence that made good ol boys step aside. She was in her late 50's at that time and she was a role model, a surrogate Mom, and in general a force to be reckoned with. To say she was respected in business is an understatement. She had a long career with Montgomery Wards back during the days when sticking with a company was a sign of loyalty that would be rewarded. She made her way in business the way many women did back then, in high heels with a sense of humor and a strong sense of self that must have served her well in a male dominated work force.

Jimmie reinforced in me a strong work ethic that was already present and more than anything she lead by example. She was an important woman in my life that gave me confidence at a very impressionable age.
Jimmie Lee Holland died Sunday the 27th at the age of 83.

Find New Jersey now and win!

Is it possible to take a picture of New Jersey regardless of where you are in the world?

If you think you can answer this question with an image of your creation, accept the challenge of iheartphotograph and participate in the contest.

Two great Josephs

"To be hopeful in an artistic sense it is not necessary to think that the world is good. It is enough to believe that there is no impossibility of it being made so."
- Joseph Conrad

quote taken from the lengthy and uneasy, but interesting Guardian article about Conrad.
(found here)
I should look better and find material that would do justice both to Joseph Beuys and to Joseph Conrad. However, the video above, although somewhat naive, does present Beuys at least in some respect, and has excellent footage from his I Like America and America Likes Me. For more resources go here, and a great overview of Beuys and his influence on today's art can be found on this Tate page.
As for the article about Conrad, its style does actually do justice to the Polish writer. And it is certainly enlightening. However, other suggestions are welcome.

What links those two? What impresses me? Beyond a difficult, though creative, dealing with one's identity - which that doesn't really make them stand out among artists... A sense of a profound and paradoxically bitter optimism. And amazing self-discipline.



Desert:

The Fat is on the Table
Maurizio Cattelan on Joseph Beuys

beuys is dead
beuys is also uniting love and knowledge
beuys is more present in a desert freak
beuys is sponsored by museum für moderne kunst
beuys is appointed professor of sculpture at the düsseldorf academy of art
beuys extends ulysses by two chapters at the request of james joyce
beuys is surely not a sartre follower, but of course there are many parallels
beuys is mentioned next to steiner
beuys is back in town
beuys is back in belgium, in berlin, US, active in germany
beuys is the contemporary artist responsible for the popular notion that politics is an aesthetic activity that anyone can engage in
beuys is inspired by steiner
beuys is not so reactionary as to deny the existence of the entire art history repertoire
beuys is widely acknowledged as one of the most influential post-war german artists
beuys is the identification with everything from mythological 9gures and historical personages to writers and artists
beuys is a mythical figure in the art world, however
beuys is particularly significant in the light of his introspective research on the possible reuni9cation of human and natural life
beuys is in the creation of the social sculpture
beuys is either loved or hated
beuys is considered one of the most
beuys is widely regarded as one of the most important german artists since world war II
beuys is demanding sun instead of rain/reagan
beuys is more like an evangelist
beuys is famous for an extraordinary body of drawings
beuys is such an obvious candidate; he started making art following a breakdown that was a result of his experiences in world war II
beuys is represented in depth in dia's permanent collection
beuys is
beuys is among the most famous of today's artists
beuys is one of the most famous performance artists
beuys is valid because wolfgang laib shares his belief in the transcendent power of art
beuys is another sculptor that
beuys is one of the major figures in post-war german art
beuys is known for his shamanistic artist's persona
beuys is among the world's most comprehensive
beuys is in these digital photographs represented not by him directly
beuys is a real people's artist understood by a professor
beuys is megjelent a kövek mellett és hamarosan heves vita bontakozott ki közte és a közönség között
beuys is a 1972 lithograph in which the essential feature is that of beuys as everyman
beuys is elvesztette
beuys is átvett és ami interszubjektiv jellege miatt nem volt
beuys is called to account by his presumptive offspring
beuys is veel materiaal verdwenen
beuys is questioned by the activities of maclennan
beuys is instructive
beuys is very important in mail art
beuys is understandable
beuys is known to
beuys is not completed by his death
beuys is i was never secure and happy in the world of galleries from the very beginning
beuys is and how it is pronounced
beuys is cleverly recontextualised in
beuys is of course enormously interesting
beuys is l'eminence grise of community building as an art form
beuys is interested in the proportions between crystal and amorphous states
beuys is able to evoke the experience of the past
beuys is a magnificent
beuys is based on three stages
beuys is a special case because of the build-up of a curious sense of obligation to respond positively
beuys is the generation of my father
beuys is talking about the much wider concept of creative potential
beuys is regarded as one of the most significant personalities of the past
beuys is steeped in the struggle of world war II
beuys is a big influence right now
beuys is unavoidable
beuys is purely a decorative artist
beuys is hype
beuys is cited as the great collaborator of the twentieth century because
beuys believed everybody was a potential artist
beuys is on e-bay
beuys is a mythical figure in
beuys is one artist i wanted to ask you about
beuys is one of the biggest art world phonies of recent years
beuys is probably unique in the history of art
beuys is supposed
beuys is a very controversial sculptor
beuys is grounded in a tradition of narrative sources that is often absent in american art of the same period
beuys is hardly a household name in the history of twentieth-century art
beuys is the great shaman of twentieth-century art
beuys is represented with his monumental work created shortly before his death, lightning with stag in its glare
beuys is best known for declaring "everyone an artist"; koons seems to declare that everyone is a consumer

Optical Art With Illustrator

"Illustrator’s transform functions to create a stunning op art piece with a real sense of movement. Mark Mayers shows you how...Optical art, or op art, is a genre of visual art that makes use of optical illusions. Op art is also known as geometric abstraction and hardedge abstraction, although the preferred term for it is perceptual abstraction. The best-known method is the creation of illusions through the use of pattern or line where the viewer is given the impression of movement such as hidden images, vibration or warping. All these techniques trick the eye into seeing three dimensions even though the image hitting the retina is only two dimensional. This tutorial pays homage to the English painter Bridget Riley, who is one of the foremost proponents of op art and evolved a style in which she explored the dynamic effects of optical art". Go to tutorial page.

Pet Portrait Contest Winner "Rags"

Today I finalized the artwork for our "Cream of the Crop" contest winner. Rags is a stunning cow-dog with a challenging photograph. This pretty boy is no longer with Jamie so we had to work with the photos she had on hand. The image used was scanned and ended up containing a lot of noise or "grain". The other thing you will notice below is that once we erased Jamie this pretty boy was in hard profile staring up at nothing. I worked around this compositional challenge by giving him a ball to focus on. By placing that ball in the top left corner our eye will stop and not continue off the page. It also creates a story and a sense of play.
Scroll down to see a few of his proof choices. The 3rd proof down has the strongest "crop" and most unusual layout, however it is not really the most flattering.


I am really happy with how this pup's artwork turned out. You can see this boy's entire proof set by clicking here.
Rags was Jamie's soul dog and has been gone awhile. Even though this boy was really the four legged love of Jamie's life she had a tough time finding great pics to choose from, so let this be a reminder to all of us to get out the camera as often as we can. Shoot, shoot and shoot some more. These guys are with us such a short time.

Guerrillas looking for Budapest museum director

The site claims:

Position Summary

Museum Director

Director I, Full Time

Monday - Friday, 9:00am - 6:00pm

Hiring Range & Group: 2-4.000 EUR / Month

Closing Date: Open Until Closed

The Ludwig Museum Budapest (LUMÚ) is one of the major Hungarian Museums and exhibition spaces, and holds the most important collection of modern art in Hungary. (...)

Our aim is to create an alternative platform for applicants in order to emphasize the opportunities which lie in this position in order to put LUMÚ on the global map with an internationally recognizable program.

If you wish to apply please send your application (concept) as told below. We do not evaluate but only post all applications on this website.
We hope all decision makers will consider all information collected on this page and will be influenced by your ideas and concepts. We hope they might consider the applicants for the official call. There have been precedents in Hungary where the highest positions have been hijacked by public initiatives in the midst of political status quo. We believe that if you are a sound applicant, you can become the director through public support.

Basically, here is a beautiful case: a group of people really passionate about contemporary art want to have a good museum. So they try to be active. They see that the formal way of solving the issue seems impossible. So they take matters in their own hands, and they announce a pseudo-contest. You can send your candidature, but - and this is the brilliant part - they will not judge it. They will limit themselves to showing those in charge that you exist. And, hopefully, those in charge will take you into consideration when looking for the right person.

Sounds impressive. Guerrillas fighting for justice. Guerrillas who don't want to take over, only think out-of-the-box to try and open minds. After all, if there are competent, interesting candidates out there, why not present them?
A few things worry me slightly: 1) As of today, there is still no candidature online. People don't take it seriously? Possibly. Or maybe, they are not ready to take the risk of becoming associated to something that seems quite a rebellious initiative (after all, it does suggest the Museum has a good chance of receiving the director the politicians will nominate, no questions asked)? 2) What can the real force of such an initiative be? Doesn't it remind you of the rallies that have been so popular these days, say, against the invasion of Iraq? The guerrilla tactics seem more like an interesting phenomenon than an actual force.
Now, the real question might be, what is the strength of this particular utopia?
I hope it does raise the issue of a fair selection. And even if a director is nominated from among the friends and relatives of the Right People, they will have to stand up to the challenge of being compared to the other candidates. The unofficial ones.
What better place to start this sort of initiative than a museum of modern art?
Now, this only works if competent people do send in their proposals. And impress the heck out of everyone.

(via)

Vanity The Sharpei

Vanity is a stunning Sharpei we worked on during the holiday season. This old girl's human sent us this terrific shot of Vanity ... admiring Vanity. I thought this shot was just way too clever, and have been meaning to post it all month. Her pet portrait is posted below.

How many of you guys have dogs that are self aware and seem to know when they look good, or maybe they pass by a mirror and get mesmerized with their own image? There is an interesting article over at Wikipedia about the mirror test developed by Gordon Gallup Jr to measure self awareness.

Scratch Brushes for Adobe Photoshop

A set 17 scratch texture brushes for Adobe Photoshop from daughterofsnape...

Might be of use if you are esigning a grungy scene or a distorted layer mask.

Download

Squid, Bull, Pig ... Oh My!

Your Dog Will Dig It! Check out this very cool on-line shop for dogs. This Austin based business is a brick & mortar sort of place called Fetch, but if you can not make it to the coolest city in Texas then cool dog toys are just a click away. Go To: http://www.yourdogwilldigit.com/ And start spoiling your dog today with very fun and hard to find toys!
I asked Cynthia what her best selling toy is and she told me to check out the "i-bone". I'm sorry, but all I need is for my dog to understand how to program a plushy phone while I still struggle with my own. It is a great gift for the techie dog owner in your life.

Chocolate Lab Pet portrait

This is Hollywood's bold & experimental proofing option. The background was created from scratch and then duplicated and laid across the face using a layer effect. The sloppy paint line going across the face is intentional and probably not every one's cup of tea, but you never know. I have included a couple of details since it is hard to really see the layers of texture this piece has with a small web-image. Hollywood's entire proof set will be on-line tomorrow.

Towers Vector Pack

This vector pack contains the shapes of the Eiffel Tower, The Tower In Pisa, Big Ben, Berlin TV-Tower, Burj al Arab in Dubai, Sears Tower, Tai Pei 101, Petronas Towers and Empire State Building. Download (eps format). Thanks to Nimpsher

Porn

Last night I came out with this composition. I used the concept of the Official NBA Logo, for the silhouette of the girls I actually used a Norp Icons 2 font available for download here. The actual silhouette shape is the letterform for number 7, and I made a few manipulations in Adobe Illustrator > Select the letterform , Type , Create Outlines. With the rounded rectangle tool I just created the background element and diagonally cuted it with the Knife Tool and used light blue and pink gradients for fill colors. Pretty easy and basic composition, but I really like the final result. I'm actually thinking of creating a poster with that logo, but we'll see. The wallpapers below are in 1024x768 px and 1280x800 px .

Golden Retriever Art

Bear's Mom ordered her 3rd portrait with us last week. She wanted to try out our Cream of the Crop Promo Special. I am still working on her proofing set, and hope to get her proofed Friday.

The top image is a painterly style Bear with an asymmetrical crop. The bottom image is the same digital painting pushed to some bold extremes. The bottom image is very flat ... the detail has been lost and replaced with more of a graphic illustration, digital art style with text about the Golden retriever breed overlaid in the background, along with a dog toy. I do not know where I am going with this look, just trying hard to push my boundaries and come up with a new style that will be a new direction. I will be experimenting a lot this year and while we will always proof with my proven painterly style and what we know works we will also try to throw in something brand new every now and then.

Bear's humans are wildlife photographers, visit them here:
http://www.teamhusar.com/

Species p.2

(via)

35+ brush sets (1400+ brushes) for GIMP

Well, browsing around digg.com I found a great link for all open-source lovers, especially GIMP users. 35 free artistic brush sets.

"GIMP is an open-source image editing program, one of the most popular image-editing programs. It is supported by a huge open-source community that is open in every aspect - development, source, sharing and participation.As is common to open-source applications, GIMP too has a huge repository of plugins, scripts, brushes and gradients (we’ve already covered Top 40 GIMP plugins). The open-source enthusiasts pour hundreds of hours into developing the application and its add-ons for no cost, and shares them generously with the community...

And what better way for me to admire GIMP than by presenting a list of some amazing, beautiful and stunning brushes? The name, link and description of each brush are given just below each illustrative image. There are also sections linking to huge GIMP collections and further resources aimed at every group from novice to expert."

VectorDesign : MacHeist 2 Bundle

Yesterday, TweakerSoft’s VectorDesign was revealed as the final app for the current MacHeist 2 Bundle. As Pixelmator is to Adobe PhotoShop, VectorDesign is to Adobe Illustrator. For those of us who want to be able to create and edit vector graphics (.svg, .eps, etc.), but don’t want to spend several hundred dollars, VectorDesign looks to fill the void.

MacHeist aims to bring the best shareware from the brightest independent Mac software developers to the masses. We’ve already highlighted the contents of the bundle, but since then all of the original apps have been unlocked - Speed Download has been included, and two games from FreeVerse have been added as well. So now VectorDesign has been included as well.

As it now stands, the bundle has a value of nearly $500 worth of quality Mac shareware for under $50. not to mention that $300,000 has been raised for charity! Read more

Squid, Squid and yes more Squid

People have been giving me squid things lately. It all started last year when I started doing mosaics of octopus & squid. Last week my teacher, Katrina Doran gave me the perky paint by number squid you see above. By the way check out Katrina's website ... she is super talented and has been very supportive of my work and my new adventure into mosaics.

At Christmas time Allison brought the dogs some squid-toys ... you can see how popular they have been below. Poor blue squid is loosing his guts, he seems happy though ... still smiling.

Anyway ...very excited that class is happening tonight. I always think oh gosh ...I do not want to get out and go to my mosaics class, but I always have the best time. Below is the last mosaic I finished in December as a present for Dan. The squid is to the left and he has thrown the ball for Big Tommy ( ball is green shape in top right corner).

Below is my current project. I really wanted to use some yummy and garish combo of pinks, reds and oranges. I have quite a way to go on this guy. His body is close to being done. All of my mosaic projects start life on the computer since that is where I am most comfortable designing these days. Working in a media that takes forever has really calmed me down, it is like my Yoga I guess.

Species

What is absolutely astonishing about this photo by Jill Greenberg is that it seems almost as if taken by chance. Although it is a carefully studied pose, its context is nowhere close to the conceptual play we see here. It is part of a series portraying primates in a relatively classical way - their faces showing somewhat human characteristics, with adequately human titles ("Anxious", "Dude", etc.). They are wonderful and funny pictures, but this one here is really something else. The title is "Mala Centerfold", and that seems an understatement. We are not in front of some cheesy centerfold here. Oh, no! - this is the real thing, this is the indecent Olympia, this is the lascivious Maja.
It is challenging Darwin to a truth-or-dare.
And it is delicious.

Kieoki

This cute little fluff-ball is Kieoki. The original image file on this girl was very low in resolution and yet I think she turned out pretty good.

I have been making to do lists for the year this morning. I went and got 2 spirals ...one for business and one for my personal artwork ... I plan to write my creative ideas for projects promos and so on in these little journals. The trick is to take a gander at them every quarter or so to see how things are going and if I have indeed been able to bring some of my ideas to fruition. All creative types have more ideas than time and this can make us feel scattered and unproductive. By keeping my ideas in one place I can trick myself into thinking I have some control over them. Ha, we shall see how it goes anyway.

2 videos found by chance

Star, by Alexander Reyna


Metalosis Maligna, by Floris Kaayk

The Best Of : Adobe Flash Tutorials Around The Web

Although usability evangelists often consider Flash to be a usability nightmare, used properly, Flash can provide users with a rich and interactive interface which would be impossible otherwise. Today Flash is the de-facto standard for interactive elements on the Web as most users install Flash plug-in by default. And in fact, there are many paths creative designers can take to create a more interactive and user-friendly interface.

Searching for ‘flash tutorials’ via Google & Co. won’t provide you with the results you expect. Not that you won’t find any relevant results, on the contrary — you will be directed to a large number of Flash repositories which offer everything: sometimes useful, but mostly not. Besides, browsing through these repositories isn’t that much fun — as you sometimes need to figure out whether a link you see is a hidden AdSense-block or the actual tutorial. And it’s really hard to find something “refreshing” and new simply using some standard keywords.

This article provides hand-picked professional Flash tutorials which can enrich your design skills and improve the quality of your works. We’ve tried to select most interesting and useful tutorials. Most sources can serve as the entry point for further tutorials. Full Article

Puzzle Brush

Puzzle bursh set for Adobe Photoshop The set includes 64 BIG Brushes (1400-2438px). Download from here. Author's profile

Doggy Sculpture

Check out this cool doggy snow-man. Found on New England Photos Blog.

And the winner is....

Actual hat used is shown above with actual comments.

We have a pet portrait winner! Allison drew the winning comment out of the hat for me ... ( I know half of you guys so I needed a non-partial person to draw the winning name). Jamie #1 is the winner! Congrats!
Jamie's winning comment: "I have followed your work....forever! Thanks from us dog lovers for immortalizing our pets in pictures. Keep up the great work and creative ideas."
Send me a photo Jamie and your pet portrait will be created later this month in the "cream of the crop" theme.

The New Corel DecoStudio®

Wilcom International, a leading developer of embroidery and decorations technology, and Corel Corporation (NASDAQ: CREL; TSX: CRE), a leading developer of graphics, productivity and digital media software, today introduced DecoStudio®, a revolutionary new graphics and embroidery technology ideal for users in the apparel and promotional items industries, as well as embroidery hobbyists. Offering the industry’s most comprehensive solution for multi-decoration design, DecoStudio offers the ease-of-use and full creative power of CorelDRAW® Graphics Suite while delivering the digitizing quality and flexibility of Wilcom ES.

With DecoStudio, users can effortlessly combine embroidery and print, moving easily between vector art and embroidery elements, while keeping everything in one file for production purposes. In addition, designs can now be layered with different techniques including screenprint, direct-to-garment, print embroidery, applique and more, making linear workflows a thing of the past. Read full article

The Four Elements

Cris Vector

Halftone Background in Adobe Illustrator Tutorial

Using both Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop together can produce some original designs. I’ll go over a technique of creating a shape in Illustrator and then using it as a clipping mask in Photoshop, which is then partially hidden for a nice background effect. Full tutorial

A few amazing finds, and a very subjective text

Magnus von Plessen, Felicity

It is hard for me to imagine a live performance that would have (that I would find to have) the density of some visual art. Yes, I distinguish those quite clearly, mainly by the dilating of senses I experience when watching most performance, as if there was no way of just getting to the point, or points, or of just hitting me with whatever they have. "Just". There is justice in this just, a sense of the right measure, like an object where the proportions feel right. I simply cannot recall a single performance I have seen where the proportions just felt right. It seems time and a live body introduce elements that are somehow completely out of the scope of my spectator experience.
Compare the best you've seen on stage to this:






The above images, by the astonishing Tim Hawkinson, are more than powerful: they range from publicity-like to classical sculpture to highly conceptual (the last one is a self-portrait mapping of all the area the artist sees on his own body, the picture before is a Balloon Self-Portrait, a blown-up mold of the artist), and yet each of them seems complete.
Or see these, by Huma Bhabha:


How are we to compete with the perfection of something that is? Another language, you will say. Another state of presence. And yet, the choice of what to lay my eyes on remains. And diversity is no argument, when time after time what is live seems to be disappointing, less thrilling, less surprising, exciting, fresh and bold than what remains there not waiting for the sight. But then again, it is also less exciting than film, which seems only to live when seen!
Indeed, it is perfectly useless to speak of the spectator's responsibility in all this, when the spectator admits he is not up to it and instead choses something less desperate, even as it may be darker and, at least on the surface, less active.
(Both poor quality reproductions are by Magnus von Plessen)
And yet, after having written all this, I still feel that live art somehow retains an incredible potential. Not because it is live, at least in the sense of having live people in front of you, but rather, in the sense of it being an event, and so, something that remains unexpected, but also unfinished, incomplete, and fragile in its egomaniacal form ("look at me!"). I'm still not sure where this is heading, it remains confused, but it might have something to do with the amazing phenomenon of enjoying something while it is bad, enjoying it because you appreciate it as an event, enjoying the fact that you are in the privileged position of



PS: Here is a picture dedicated to the effort of some colleagues from a theater project that has been on these days:
(The picture is by Amy Stein. I believe the title is Domesticated.)