I’ve also downloaded the Autodesk Sketchbook program onto my ipod to see how easy or difficult it would be to draw on the touch screen. My dream is to get a modbook or, failing that, an ipad to do sketching so I wanted to see whether the ipad would be worth it. I think this might be easier on the larger screen but it definitely doesn’t stand up to full art programs.  Still with a pen the ipad might not be too bad for sketching on the go, and it’s less than 1/3 the price of a modbook.  On the other hand, the modbook is half the price that it used to be!

I have been obsessing over this question for nearly a week, even though I’m not in a position to buy either one right now.  Window shopping!  Someone slap me into visiting photoshop and painter again.

I enjoy working with different software like this. In both cases the limitations force me to be novel and creative with how I do things and I enjoy that kind of constraint. It’s too easy with digital work to be… too easy! Media that pushes back is more interesting.

At first it made me almost angry, as this new perspective had muddied up my meanings.  To finish the piece I had to think about and accept the idea that  what’s bad could always be worse.  Furthermore that sometimes bad choices are still better choices, and that evil things can inadvertently do good.  It doesn’t make them less evil.  I don’t care how many earwigs and silverfish this guy eats, he’s still really creepy.

But the arterial and vascular system…  It looks like string, comes in beautiful red and blue, and is a way to express the inside of the body without ever actually having to look at anything inside the body.  All the evisceration without the gore.

Apr 3, 2010

Last night, while I was having dinner and getting ready to make the 12 hour pilgrimage out to see her in the hospital, my grandmother died. I cannot easily describe to strangers how deeply important this woman was in my life and how close we were, and this morning I couldn’t find the will to get out of bed until this image, one that has already been slowly developing in my mind during the last days of Actaeon, leapt into view in my mind’s eye.

I am also writing for the funeral, but this is for me.  Drawing it is soothing. It fills the space around me.

Apr 4, 2010

The art of stealing moments.

Apr 5, 2010

My grandmother had a wrought iron wall piece for hanging pots and pans, that has very much inspired the way I’m rendering the cage.

Apr 6, 2010

I just really wish I could give her a call.

Apr 11, 2010

Her eye coloring was really special, and this doesn’t even begin to capture it. Blue ring around a brown center. The blue ring was so shocking, and gave her a doe-eyed dilated look from far away, and a much more intense impression up close.