Archive for the ‘iPad art’ category
Buggy This Time Of Year
June 4, 2011Dabbling in Painting Apps
June 4, 2011
As even non-Apple partisans admit, one of the appealing aspects of having an iPad or iPhone are the Apps.
As an Apple partisan, I freely declare that some Apps are pretty terrific. Some, such as the “Bed Bug App,” that I saw advertised on the NYC subway the other day, don’t seem terribly appealing, but others, like the Brushes App (a finger-painting app), have become tools that I use almost every day.
Lately though, as much as I love the Brushes App, I’ve been a bit curious to branch out.
The good news here is that most Apps are quite inexpensive (much much cheaper than comparable computer software) so you can try different ones without a huge outlay of cash. The bad news is that most of the art Apps I’ve seen do not seem to come with “user manuals.” Rather, they seem rely on either (i) pre-existing computer graphics skill or (ii) a lot of time spent poking at the screen and hoping that something comes out.
I’m not saying that I would actually read through a user manual even if they had one–but some of these painting Apps are extremely complicated and seem, to me at least, much less intuitive than Brushes. So I’ve downloaded a couple, like Art Studio, which look really promising, but which I simply can’t operate.
One that has worked better for me is Sketchbook Pro. It seems (so far) a bit more cumbersome than Brushes, but has definitely possibilities. It allows for text (which I do not have the hang of yet–see above), weird geometric templates (below), and (very cool) mirrored effects in drawing. (See the Siamese Elephant.). (I confess to having finished this last one on Brushes, because I couldn’t figure out how to narrow certain strokes–the air brush style–on Sketchbook Pro.)
At any rate, a very new and odd world for a dabbler like me. I encourage others to give it a try.
No Time In The Present
June 3, 2011
People who know me know that I frequently complain about not having much free time in life.
I really should not complain. (It’s just so satisfying.) The fact is that I am the main person who fills up all that “un-free” time. (Well, me and my boss.) I manage, in other words (and despite all the complaints) to spend a relatively large of my time of activities of my own choosing. But to satisfy my guilty Lutheran temperament, I slowly convert many of these chosen activities into “obligations.”
A part of me knows that they are not true obligations. I am not required to write a daily blog, to do yoga, to try to write poetry or novels. I am certainly not “obligated” to troll the internet (supposedly to keep up with the news, or the market, or “money-saving” sales.)
But, somehow (perhaps as a substitute for discipline), I convince myself that all these activities are somehow mandated, morally-uplifting, essential to maintaining a sense of self, and neglected at the expense of sanity. This results in extreme…. busyness.
(And then, of course, there’s my actual boss. And job.)
All of which makes it incredibly difficult to deal with anything extra, something not normally part of the routine. Take for example a driving license renewal.
I recently got a ten year license renewal notice that, because I wear strong glasses, requires the submission of an eye test along with the regular forms.
Which requires me to go to my eye doctor. Or an optometrist. Or the DMV.
All of which was supposed to be done before my birthday earlier this week.
No wonder people hate government intervention!!!!
For some reason, they (all those bureaucrats at the DMV) think I need to be able to SEE to drive.
If only I could take an eye test online. From my laptop. In bed.
If I could at least multi-task–take the test at my desk, or while doing yoga. (Say Tree pose.)
But they probably expect me to actually focus on something like that. An eye test! Geez!
(For now, I’m simply staying off the road.)
Sounds of Stillness (Summer begins in downtown NYC)
June 2, 2011
Full summer here now. I wake up to a kind of thick stillness in the air and somehow, clearly perceptible in that stillness and yet not really disturbing it, is the sound of a lawn mower.
It all seems absolutely, perfectly, summery.
And then, I think, lawn mower? You’re in New York City!
Okay, there are parks down here. There is even a little parkish-sort of area (with tress photographed above) just outside my window.
Still, probably not a lawn mower.
A weed whacker?
(I swear it’s not just a truck idling.)
And now (I’m listening harder), I suppose it could be some kind of construction somewhere. The WTC site a couple of blocks away is the obvious choice.
But I kind of hate to think that I am confusing the sounds of the upcoming Freedom Tower with a lawn mower.
So, let’s just say that full summer is here now; that I wake up to a warm, thick stillness in the air that somehow overbalances a bunch of city sounds in a way that seems completely unlike the see-saw of stillness/sound in Winter, Spring, Fall. (When, by the way, I usually have my bedroom window closed.)
Hmmm…….
Let’s just say that I wake up and it’s really warm out.
(Above is same photo/drawing “posterized” with Photogene app.)
Favorite Activity and Elephant (Tapdancing)
June 1, 2011
(Of course, my true favorite elephant is in the wild. And I don’t actually have a big mirror or tap shoes. My downstairs neighbor is quite thankful for that.)
Happy Birthday Walt Whitman! (Again!)
May 31, 2011
It is the 192nd birthday today of the incomparable “Walt Whitman, a cosmos, of Manhattan the son.” (Born May 31, 1819.)
I love Whitman and confess to being inordinately proud of the drawing of him above, though I admittedly cheated by doing it with the iPad, the Brushes App, and also the Comic Life App (to insert the quote from “Song of Myself”). These lines come from the section in which Whitman talks of grass as the beautiful uncut hair of graves.
One of the things I love about Whitman is his flow. His surge. His abundance. Sometimes, the current can be a bit overwhelming. (One can feel an almost flotsam-and-jetsam rush about the ears.) Other times–(as in most of “Song of Myself”, “The Sleepers”, “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry”, “Out of the Cradle Endless Rocking”, “As I Ebbed With the Ocean of Life”, “This Compost”, “When Lilacs Last In the Dooryard Bloomes”–actually most of the time), the flow is absolutely crystalline, every droplet sparkling. Happy Birthday Walt!
(This is a re-post of earlier post to be sure to make a correction to typo in Whitman text. Sorry for any inconvenience.)
Pearl Finds Herself in The Brushes App
May 28, 2011href=”https://manicddaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/20110528-052729.jpg”>
Today, I am making a brief foray into “how-to” blogging.
I am a great devotee of the “Brushes” app for the iPhone and iPad. The “Brushes” app is a painting program; because it is devised for the iPad and iPhone it is actually a finger-painting program.
You might think that painting with one’s finger is clumsy–and certainly, it is much easier for many (including myself) to draw with a stylus. But the Brushes program is designed with an array of possibilities allowing for a great deal of fascination, if not always finesse.(If you get really good with it, like artist David Hockney) subtlety and finesse are possible too.)
The tricks are (i) stroke styles; and (ii) layers. The program allows for a large array of specific brush stroke styles that can be varied by spacing and size. This allows for automatic flowers or splotches, very fine or thick lines, various levels of translucence, lines of little blocks or circles or grasses or even fur. These same strokes can be applied to the eraser, allowing for lots of options there as well.
The true magic comes with layering though, and this takes some learning. Up to six layers are allowed in the iPad app. These can simply be used to allow for layers of detail, background, foreground. (The backdrop of solid green, for example, or the grass that goes behind the dogs.)
Layers can also be used in more elaborate ways. A photograph can be layered in to your painting, as a template. You can outline the photograph on a different layer, and then trash the photograph itself. Similarly, the iPad Brushes App (as opposed to the iPhone app) allows for the copying and transposition of layers. A layer showing one little dog can be imposed and rotated on top of another little dog, for example, or a bunch of little dogs. (I used this for my tangoing elephants a week or so back.)
Here your eraser feature can be your friend. My initial dog, above, was drawn in a few different layers, to allow the features–eyes, nose–to be on top of the fur. In order to repeat the dog without using more than six layers, I converted it to a finished image (like a photo), which I then transposed onto a duplicate painting. A photo is not a transparent layer, so I had to erase all the grass and background on the second dog to allow it to fit into the first painting without blocking it. This can be a little laborious, but the technology somehow makes it feel more interesting than drawing a whole new dog or bunch of dogs.
(Apologies, this post was first uploaded in blank.)
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Spring At Last (And Also In My Head!) (The Re-Awakening of Memory)
May 27, 2011
As followers of this blog know, in the last couple of days I’ve been inspired by Joshua Foer’s book MOONWALKING WITH EINSTEIN to try to memorize poetry. I’ve pushed my reluctant brain to adopt some goofy age-old mnemonic techniques, imagining characters from my past in absurd, or even obscene, positions, as visual cues for certain poetic lines and segues. And, lo and behold, it has worked! I’ve learned four or five long poems!
Last night, though, something even more amazing began to happen. Poems that I had learned years ago (there are only a few) but that I’d forgotten, that I’d consigned to the dustbin of “what I used to know,” were suddenly revolving around my head like old jingles from chewing gum commercials. Things like the prologue from the Canterbury Tales and bits of Yeats and Shakespeare.
It was like I’d hotwired some big memory circuits in my brain, and that, in turn, had burned the gunk off a lot of old funky fuses.
Remembering those old poems has felt like spring (up in my head)–not a full blown May perhaps, but at least a bit of aprill. (“With its shoures soot.”)
P.S. the above picture is a photograph of an apple tree filtered with the Photogene app on the iPad. Have a lovely weekend.
Drawing On Memory (“Moonwalking With Einstein” On the Way “To His Coy Mistress”) )
May 25, 2011
I just finished this morning Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer. This wonderful book details Foer’s journey from journalist covering a U.S. memory championship competition to competitor and actual winner of the same U.S. memory championship one year later.
Foer, both “mental athelete” and terrific writer, not only describes his training for the memory championship and the crazed and blinkered world of competitive mnemonists, but also explores the historical place of memory as archiving and creative tool, and also (to the extent known) its scientific place in our personalities and brains.
This post is not intended as a review, but to mention that the book has set me off on a project of memorizing poetry.
Unfortunately, memorizing poetry is slightly less amenable to the memory tricks detailed by Foer. This, it seems to me, is because a lot of these tricks involve the use of a “memory palace” or locus, and odd visual cues and puns placed about this memory palace. These tricks are frankly not that easy for a newcomer (who is also becoming an oldtimer), but they can be especially difficult to use for poems because the memorable visual cues sometimes run directly counter to the sense of the poem.
The tricks do work though, and are especially useful for lines or segues that are hard to keep in mind.
I started this morning with two poems I already know well – To his Coy Mistress by Andrew Marvell, and The Love Song of J. Alfred Profrock by T.S. Eliot. The tricks worked much better with the Marvell, maybe because coming up with images for things like “vegetable love” and (as seen above) “youthful Hue” seemed much less irreverant than mucking about with Eliot.
The picture above includes some of the images I used to keep the last stanza of the poem in mind. My memory place was my backyard, my youthful Hugh a guy I once knew (who sat in a pear tree in my yard ), the torn “Lucky Strikes” were my visual attempt to keep torn”rough strife” in mind. Treasure substituted for pleasure. (Yes, I know it sounds crazy–but it worked!)
| To His Coy Mistress |
| by Andrew Marvell |
Had we but world enough, and time, This coyness, Lady, were no crime. We would sit down and think which way To walk and pass our long love's day. Thou by the Indian Ganges' side Shouldst rubies find: I by the tide Of Humber would complain. I would Love you ten years before the Flood, And you should, if you please, refuse Till the conversion of the Jews. My vegetable love should grow Vaster than empires, and more slow; An hundred years should go to praise Thine eyes and on thy forehead gaze; Two hundred to adore each breast; But thirty thousand to the rest; An age at least to every part, And the last age should show your heart; For, Lady, you deserve this state, Nor would I love at lower rate. But at my back I always hear Time's wingèd chariot hurrying near; And yonder all before us lie Deserts of vast eternity. Thy beauty shall no more be found, Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound My echoing song: then worms shall try That long preserved virginity, And your quaint honour turn to dust, And into ashes all my lust: The grave's a fine and private place, But none, I think, do there embrace. Now therefore, while the youthful hue Sits on thy skin like morning dew, And while thy willing soul transpires At every pore with instant fires, Now let us sport us while we may, And now, like amorous birds of prey, Rather at once our time devour Than languish in his slow-chapt power. Let us roll all our strength and all Our sweetness up into one ball, And tear our pleasures with rough strife Thorough the iron gates of life: Thus, though we cannot make our sun Stand still, yet we will make him run. |
Tornado (Impression) All Swept Up, and Down.
May 24, 2011
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