Out of the City well before the 4th this year, though trying (truly) to still get some work done today. (Seriously!) Happy Friday.
Posted tagged ‘iPad art’
Dryad
June 30, 2011
What the “Butter Cow” Lady Never Got a Chance to Sculpt
June 28, 2011
I was moved to read that Norma Lyon, a farm mother of nine who came to fame through her life-sized butter sculptures of cows, celebrities, and even apostles, passed away on Sunday at the age of 81. I can’t even DRAW a butter elephant, hard to imagine sculpting one, especially in the heat of an Iowa summer fair. She sounds like a resolute and resourceful lady.
Clover Elephant
June 27, 2011
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.)
Shedding a Light on Filters (Photogene)
June 26, 2011
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!)
June 25, 2011
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)
June 24, 2011
Face, Cow, iPad
June 23, 2011
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)
June 22, 2011
Public/Private disconnect (Sonnet) (With Elephant)
June 21, 2011
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.
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