Archive for the ‘iPad art’ category
Before Mother’s Day
May 8, 2011“Warhorse” with Brushes (App)
May 7, 2011
I had the good fortune to see Warhorse last night, a play that shows a slice of the horrors of World War I through the story of a horse and his boy. Based upon the children’s book by Michael Marpurga, as adapted by Nick Stafford, the play is, well, very sentimental in the manner of almost all art that focuses upon the bonds between humans and animals, playing powerfully upon the heart and tear ducts. The emotional force of the story is compounded by the horror of the truth of World War I, the devastation of both the humans and animals caught in its web. (The program notes that 8 million horses died in World War I, as armies learned that a calvary was no match for machine guns, barbed war, tanks.)
One wishes, at times during the performance, that some of the sentiment–the “Lassie” elements of the story–were toned down. Even so, the production is extraordinary–genius found in life-sized puppets–horses, animated by three handlers at a time, whose ghostly and yet matter-of-fact arms and legs and wonderfully subtle but emotive faces spirit the horses across the stage, whinnying, snuffling, hoofing, rearing, stomping, fly-whisking, trotting, being ridden, being shot at, screaming, dying. One loses all consciousness of the puppeteers; one falls in love with the horses.
The lighting, set, costumes, all production values, are fantastic, bringing a sense of a no man’s land (no horse’s land either) palpably to the stage.
Thinking About Different Things…errr…the Same Things
May 3, 2011
Reporters, yesterday, described “relief” as the primary emotion experienced by those interviewed at the World Trade Center site about the capture and killing of bin Laden. I live right next to the World Trade Center site, and a part of me does feel a kind of relief over these events. There’s another part of me, however, that can only put the words “relief” and “the face of terrorism” into a single sentence if I also add in the phrase “just not think about it.” Example: ‘the only way I can feel relief in the face of terrorism is to just not think about it.”
The fact is that if you live down here, and pass the site every day, you really do have to make an effort to banish past and possibly future events from your mind and to just go on with your daily activities.
In my case, these activities have lately involved goofing around on the iPad or iPhone, especially with the great painting app “Brushes”, and more recently with the photo app, “Photogene.” Above is a painting of lilacs that I made with the Brushes App using a real photograph as a visual model. I then deleted the photograph (it had been a separate “layer” in the painting), and saved my own painting as a photo. That’s what’s above.
I then pulled the painting/photo up on Photogene, which offers a bunch of cool filters to adjust it. Below is the same painting, filtered as a “comic.”
Not perhaps a great art, but a great way of occupying the mind.
P.S. – These pictures got cropped a bit weirdly in the upload to WordPress! One of the hazards of working digitally.
Thoughts on Bin Laden’s Death From a Downtown New Yorker (and Pacifist)
May 2, 2011
I must confess to feeling somewhat shaken over the news of Bin Laden’s death. My reaction–a kind of deep and trembly somberness–makes me realize, first, what a both intense and nervous pacifist I am. The death of even an enemy at another’s hands is not the kind of thing that brings me jubilance.
On the other hand, I’m a downtown New Yorker. I saw the second plane hit the Trade Towers, and, for months and years, have mourned the 9/11 attacks, not so much because of the immediate loss of a loved one, but because of the loss of–I don’t know what exactly–an old life in a different New York City? A time pre-ongoing wars? (Of course, there were the loved ones. No New Yorker can forget the photos and pleas that coated every lamppost and street corner, the terrible sorrow that filled all of our lives for some long time.)
There are also the countless deaths overseas, people killed because of the conflicts arising (rightly or wrongly) out of 9/11. Can the deaths of Iraqi civilians be blamed on Bin Laden? I don’t know (I have some doubts, certainly, about the handling of it all). Still, there is a sense that it is all knotted somehow together; collateral damage to the nth degree; violence that brought on more violence, and was intended to do so.
Being a downtown New Yorker post 9/11 also brings with it easily re-awakened fear. I woke up this morning to the sound of helicopters. The blades raise a resonate shuddering in the stomach.
Yes, I am glad that the U.S. has been able to accomplish what it intended, that it’s been able to feel and show that competence.
I also hope that this can be the justification for U.S. extrication of itself from foreign wars, and that Bin Laden’s death provides some kind of comfort, at least some lessening of bitterness, for families who have lost loved ones.
I just wish there were ways other than killing for all sides (ourselves and our opponents) to move towards an idea of justice. Maybe I was born on the wrong planet.
(P.S. whatever one’s feelings, however happy one may feel that Bin Laden has died, it seems too serious a matter for jumping up and down. It brings back images of people celebrating 9/11; it’s hard to believe that that kind of pay-back can do anything but promote more violence.)
IPad Art, Brushes App, Photogene, Lots of Options – Elephant/Pony Show
May 1, 2011
If you like to play at art-making, as I do, the iPad offers lots and lots of ways of wasting time.
There are many art apps. The one I know is the Brushes App (also used with great success by David Hockney.) My lack of knowledge of all the intricacies of the App also requires me to combine it with a great photo App called Photogene, which includes editing, framing, and filtering tools.
One of the big keys to using the Brushes App is the use of layers, which allows you to change backgrounds and foregrounds and details. The iPad Brushes App allows for at least six of these; they can be deleted, added, put in front or behind one another, allowing for a lot of change and adaptation.
Photogene has these wonderful filters which allow you to completely change the highlighting and coloring of a drawing.
At any rate, some variations below:
National Poetry Month – Day 29 – Royal Couplet
April 29, 2011
National Poetry Month – Day 28 – “Relic”
April 28, 2011
Relic
Poets write of rust, decay, time wearing out or thin,
but time’s spin makes for a preciousness too, imparts
like dew, an aura, as seen around
Ty Cobb’s dentures, still firm, at The Baseball Hall
of Fame, George Washington’s at Mt. Vernon.
Even the belongings of the obscure
acquire the gild of treasure–the small green
rubber boots bought as a joke for my dog
found fifty years later in my mother’s garage.
And then there are objects that become relics
even before time’s passage. I think of
the chocolate Easter egg, kept in the freezer, that my grandmother took a nibble
from every night before her fall; she’d gotten less than
half-way through; my mother saved the remainder, still foil-wrapped
in blue, for years afterwards, the surface of the
chocolate whitening like the cataract over an eye, making it
harder and harder to see what was once so clearly
in front of you.
All rights reserved. Suggestions welcome.
National Poetry Month – Day 26 – Posting To The Other Side ( A Dog Poem)
April 26, 2011
Very pleased with my iPad 2 drawing above! This one is of my dog Pearl, an old dog but very much extant. Draft poem of the day below.
Posting To The Other Side
You talk to me of waterfalls.
I think not so much of spray–well, yes, I think of
spray, splash, droplets, glasses bespeckled–
but what I think of most
is this side and that,
the icy flow of everchanging wall, the stillness
behind that wall, and how,
as a child, when my dog died
my first beloved dog, that is, the first
dog who felt truly younger than me, needful of my protection,
I tried, like Demeter, to reach beyond such a wall, to
communicate, as it were, with the other side–no easy task with a canine–
and how, since I was already being mystical, I wrote the dog a letter,
and since I was desperate in my grief, I posted that letter
in one of my Junior Britannicas, a cherry red series of volumes,
under the letter D, praying that the Dog (Deceased)
would find it, and how, for many months afterwards,
I was afraid to open that volume, to retrieve that carefully
folded piece of lined notepaper,
in case it was still there.
All rights reserved. Suggestions welcomed. (One question – “retrieved”. I like it because of the dogginess–but may be “seek” or “look for” would be better?)
Happy Easter (from iPad 2)
April 24, 2011
With a combination of apps, I am slowly learning to do things on a digital device that are much much easier with good old-fashioned paints and paper, What fun!
Happy Easter! Happy Spring!
ManicDDaily 
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