This is sort of an elephant of the fields (not savannah), faerie elephant, yes, done on iPad–a wonderful device for some day illustrating a fairy tale (with elephants.)
Clover Elephant
Posted June 27, 2011 by ManicDdailyCategories: elephants, iPad art
Tags: Brushes App, child's illustration, elephant in the clover field, Elephant painting, faery elephant, iPad art, Karin Gustafson, manicddaily, photo gene app
Shedding a Light on Filters (Photogene)
Posted June 26, 2011 by ManicDdailyCategories: iPad art
Tags: Brushes App, different iterations with photogene, filtering paintings, iPad art, Karin Gustafson, manicddaily, Photogene App, Photogene Filters
My sense is that the Photogene App is mainly for photographers, wanting to organize and frame and retouch and highlight their digital photos. But it allows for pretty cool iterations for digital drawings as well. (For those of you who wonder why this blog has been so focused on iPad art of late, it is NOT my concern over my Apple stockholdings, so much as the fact that I am trying to finish a kind of silly novel on the side, which has made it difficult to do any other writing.)
At any rate, the above is an unfiltered digital drawing. Below, only a few of the different iterations available through Photogene “filters”, including Dream, Painting, Comic, Posterize, Charcoal, Sepia, and RAINBOW (for those interested in designing old LP album covers.)
Oops. Forgot Night Vision.
Hurray (from a New Yorker!)
Posted June 25, 2011 by ManicDdailyCategories: iPad art, news
Tags: goofy iPad picture, iPad art, Karin Gustafson, legalizing of gay marriage, manicddaily, New Yorker reaction to legalizing gay marriage, sketchbook pro app
Yes, the above is a goofy drawing–I’m not very good at pictures that don’t include elephants–but I am very happy and moved.
The Weekend. (At last!) Time to Reflect? (With Elephant)
Posted June 24, 2011 by ManicDdailyCategories: elephants, iPad art
Tags: Brushes App, elephant looking at its reflection, Elephant painting, elephant swimming, iPad art, Karin Gustafson, manicddaily, Photogene App, the weekend
Face, Cow, iPad
Posted June 23, 2011 by ManicDdailyCategories: cows, iPad art
Tags: Brushes App, cow painting, distraction of iPad, drawing on iPad, face, iPad addiction, iPad art, Karin Gustafson, manicddaily, Photogene App, sketchbook pro app
I’ll tell you straight out. This is going to be one of my blatantly pro-iPad diatribes.
Yes, the device is a bit awkward for typing, even with the bluetooth keyboard.
Yes, its wireless is not as strong as a laptop, and its camera is not as good as a Canon.
Nonetheless, it’s a wonderful device. The idea that I can just sit there with it in my lap listening to someone on the phone, and draw a face, and shade it in, and give it hair, and erase some of the contours just enough so that they look sort of graceful.
And then, as the call continues, the iPad also lets me paint a cow. A cow! I don’t know why I chose a cow, but there it is, a cow! Which is part painting, part photo, part erasure, part drawing–an act of concentration, and yet as I’m working on it I am also better able to listen to the call.
This morning I used it (on the subway) to scribble down the poem, but I’m only brave enough to look at the face and cow.
Which is enough for me for now,
(I’m milking them anyway.)
Very Tired (with elephant)
Posted June 22, 2011 by ManicDdailyCategories: elephants, iPad art, Vicissitudes of Life
Tags: brushes art, Elephant painting, iPad art, Karin Gustafson, manicddaily, Photogene App, tired elephant painting
Public/Private disconnect (Sonnet) (With Elephant)
Posted June 21, 2011 by ManicDdailyCategories: elephants, iPad art, poetry, Uncategorized
Tags: Brushes App, dVerse Poets Pub Raising the Bar, Elephant drawing, iPad art, Karin Gustafson, Karin Gustafson poetry, manicddaily, sonnet, sonnet about pretending, sonnet about public/private persona disconnect
I hate to admit it but I’m kind of a solipsistic person. It’s not that I don’t like people–I take a strong interest in trying to help others (particularly if it involves telling them what to do.)
But I am just awful in social situations – parties, gatherings, even sometimes work settings. To some degree, this may have something to do with not being completely at ease with either my “public” persona or private persona.
At any rate, here’s a kind of gloomy sonnet about this kind of public/private disconnect.
Because I am now linking this post to dVerse Poets Pub Raising the Bar for critiquing, I am going to put up two versions of this poem, an older and newer. (I think the older may be better, but it’s also the one with which I am more familiar.) They are both a bit self-pitying, although that may be something that makes them universal.
The first is the older version:
Pretending
After years, pretending to be what you’re not
becomes a nature; a second skin
coating you like a kind of make-up, caught
in your pores, nestled in your grooves, a twin
of features, caked, you need not reapply.
But habits, faces, fail and it wears thin,
until, worn through, you can hardly try
anymore. Too wary, weary, the word
“cagey” describes so much of what you’ve been,
the opposite of free-flying bird,
while unheard, and hardly there within,
is all you’ve been saving, what you hid, why
you did this, what wasn’t supposed to die.
Newer:
Pretending
After years, pretending to be what you’re not
becomes a nature; a second skin
coating you like a heavy make-up, caught
in your pores, nestled in your grooves, a twin
of features, caked, you need not reapply.
Sometimes the habit fails, pretense wears thin,
that face that clung is suddenly wrung dry–
you don’t want to re-affix, but the word
“cagey” catches so much of what you’ve been–
the opposite of free-flying bird–
that, though you wish more than anything
to be seen, take wing; fretful, you still try
to keep tight all within. Oh me. Oh my.
If you are interested in my poetry, check out my poetry book, Going on Somewhere (by Karin Gustafson, illustrated by Diana Barco, cover by Jason Martin) on Amazon.
If you are interested in my elephants, check out my children’s book, 1 Mississippi, on Amazon.
Blocking Writer’s Block – Tired of Editing? Next Step (If You Dare.)
Posted June 20, 2011 by ManicDdailyCategories: dog, Uncategorized, writer's block, writing
Tags: blocking writer's block, cute dog hates editing, editing, finishing a novel, getting sick of editing. Pearl!, Karin Gustafson, manicddaily, reading one's work aloud, trying to finish novel, writing tips
Pearl is really really tired of editing.
I am still working on finishing the manuscript of a novel that I thought was just about finished ages ago.
By finishing, I mean editing, and re-editing. Cutting and cutting more, adding teeny bits.
I am not changing the plot at this point, even though it’s a bit silly. I am just honing. This needn’t be such a long process, except that, unfortunately, I am not somewhat who carves, but rather, someone who whittles. Meaning that I have to go over the same surface again and again and again, smoothing and chipping rather than making decisive definitive cuts.
The big problem with whittling is that it feels endless. (If every time you go through the manuscript, you find more to change, it’s hard to ever feel “finished.”)
Though I am quite sure that at a certain point, I’ll feel pretty certain that I am finished. This will undoubtedly be before I truly am finished. It will still feel good.
I am not there yet.
My next step is to read the whole thing aloud. I shudder at the thought, but reading aloud is truly a great way to edit, especially when you are sick and tired of editing. When you read a manuscript aloud, all of the habitual acceptance disappears, and you immediately understand that that part you always liked is simply boring, or redundant, or run-on, or (if you are lucky), pretty good.
You can see why I shudder!
Pearl just wants me to get on with it.
(For more on writer’s block, see multiple other posts in this category.)
Poem For Father’s Day (Baby Birds)
Posted June 19, 2011 by ManicDdailyCategories: parenting, poetry, Uncategorized
Tags: father poem, Father's Day, Karin Gustafson, manicddaily, photograph of bird's nest, poem about father and loss of dog, poem about recovering from sadness, poetry
I’ve posted this poem before, and it doesn’t really go with the picture above, but Father’s Day is almost over, and I would really like to commemorate both it (and my wonderful father), so here goes:
My Father (baby birds)
My father’s voice
when he sang
was deep and cragged and
reminded me of a froggie
gone a’courting.
But this was baby birds.
It was not even a person
who had died.
It was not even a particularly noble dog,
though like all of its species, it was capable
of a self-debasing attachment that could
seem Arthurian.
But after the accident, the rush,
the sad blur home,
my father’s back faced me in my room
with a sound
of birds.
It silenced all gone wrong,
turned me back into a person
who could do things in the world.
(All rights reserved.)
Memorized poetry poem
Posted June 18, 2011 by ManicDdailyCategories: iPad art, poetry
Tags: draft poem, iPad art, iPad poem, Karin Gustafson, manicddaily, painting of words in water, Photogene App, poem about memorizing poetry, poem about remembered poetry, Sketchbook Pro
New experiment today: seeing if I can write a poem on the iPad! (And on the train.)
I love writing poetry by hand. But it is interesting to stretch one’s brain, and, frankly, it’s always terrific to write in a way that does not require transcription.
So here’s my attempt. What I was thinking of was another current interest–memorizing poetry. Followers of this blog know that I was very impressed by memory techniques outlined in Joshua Foer’s recent book Moonwalking With Einstein. My own memorization efforts have slackened recently, but the way in which the memorized poems have stayed with me has been kind of interesting. See below.
The Bits I’ve Got By Heart
In my head the women come and go
talking of Michelangelo.
And indeed there will be time, time for
the lines to formulate in the brain,
and when they are formulated, to drop like gentle rain
from a heaven that’s not quite consciousness;
to break, but soft, into a waking dream,
to be each morning morning’s minion,
as my head turns from the pillow,
plucking, before day is quite begun,
the golden apples from what might otherwise be
a simple rag and bone shop–too bland for foul,
scuttled by ragged part-my-hair-behind prosaicness.
Instead, those half-remembered verses,
gleaned from a teeming brain,
roll up into one ball all I ken
of poets’ strength
and sweetness, and the
dancer, who is part dance,
pirouettes, keeping time
with a beat that echoes
on the inside.
ManicDDaily 
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