walking to caesarea (eli eli)

Sunday, February 28th, 2010 | The Score is a Work of Art, series | No Comments

I finished another piece in The Score is a Work of Art series based on the hebrew song, walking to caesarea (eli eli). It is a very powerful piece – originally a poem – written by poet/playwrite/warrior Hannah Szenes who did not live to see 23 years old. The music was written by Israeli composer, David Zehavi.

For me, this is a simple song about walking on the beach and wondering why there is so much unrest in humanity.

I’d been trying to figure out how to do execute this for a while and am still unsure whether this is a study or a final. I had thought about working with polymer or resin casting in order to be more literal, so I may do another version of this piece in future trying those techniques.

I found this series of wooden frames that I liked when framing a print of …Wandering Aengus and on an impulse decided to use the frame and it’s glass as part of the art for Eli Eli, though I think the glass is perhaps too smooth and too close to the sand to be representing water. The idea is that the sand (glued in layers to the canvas) is under the water. The hemp strings of the staff are like fishing nets under the water digging lines in the sand. The pebbles here are floating on the water, which I like because it’s fanciful.

All in all, I really like the way this turned out though the photographs don’t really show the depth very well.

Here is the version of this piece that Harris recorded as part his masters thesis (we both always liked the song): http://harris.wulfson.com/mp3/New%20Music%202005/08-eli%20eli.mp3

for just a moment, variations 1 – 4

Saturday, December 5th, 2009 | The Score is a Work of Art | 1 Comment

Theme and Variations
“In music, variation is a formal technique where material is altered during repetition: reiteration with changes. The changes may involve harmony, melody, counterpoint, rhythm, timbre or orchestration.” - wikipedia

We have a theme. You may recall, For Just a Moment:

Now we have variations. Here are variations 1 though 4 (clockwise).

For Just a Moment, Variations 1 – 4 will be on display at The artdc Gallery from December 6, 2009, to January 3, 2010 as part of the Patron Members’ Exhibition. 5710 Baltimore Ave., Hyattsville, Maryland 20781

self-absorbed sheep

Tuesday, November 17th, 2009 | squid and sheep | No Comments

Trav wrote: “We are the most elite of the hypocritical, self-absorbed sheep!”

autumn tree II (trying out brushes and typedrawing on the iphone)

Monday, November 16th, 2009 | iPhone doodles | No Comments

Today I tried out the much-lauded Brushes made famous by the April 2009 New Yorker cover. I have to admit that after starting with Sketchbook, I was completely underwhelmed by Brushes. First of all it’s a $5 ap (compared with Sketchbook’s $3). Second of all, for an ap called “Brushes” it has only 3 plus an eraser. And they’re essentially the same brush. The interface is simple and the feel of the program is very fluid. But it’s a lot more sensitive to mistakes than Sketchbook. It uses the double-tap zoom. So if you try to tap the paint on rather than brush it on you end up zooming in and out a lot. That got very annoying. You can’t save out in layers to another ap or Photoshop like Sketchbook can either. Your only options are to export a flattened jpg to the photo library or an iphone “screenshot” (which lowers the output resolution). Again, I’m working on the low-rent iphone so perhaps the resolution is better on other models?

Two things Brushes does better than Sketchbook: The resolution is 533 x 800. And you can control the brush transparency. I just felt like I was fighting with this ap much more than I should have had to. I won’t be joining the Brushes cult.

So after upping my iPhone drawing ap purchase debit from the cost of a soda to that of a margarita, my friend Sasha showed me TypeDrawing. My debit then increased to the price of two beers ($10 total. This ap cost $2). It’s a funky little doodle of an application which appears to have been spun off a flash based web experiment that started in 2005. It allows you to paint with text that you input. For now, It only seems to be a black and white ap (you can chose from several shades in between as well as increments of transparency). But what really made it for me is that you can draw over any image in your photo library.

So I improved my “brushes” doodle a little.

autumn tree (trying out autodesk sketchbook on the iphone)

Sunday, November 15th, 2009 | iPhone doodles | 1 Comment

Giving “finger painting” a new name…

I’ve only used the full-blown ap one time on a friend’s computer. I’m more familiar with Artrage. But the iphone ap is definitely in the same category of low-rent painting programs. It absolutely does what I want it to do. The only limitations I’ve hit so far: not pressure sensitive (though I think they’re using speed to simulate that) and you can’t see through your finger to do any fine “brushwork.” I’m probably going to buy an iPhone “stylus” and see how well that works.
The first time I used it, the ap crashed after an hour (gee I knew I shoulda saved!). It’s supposed to have 6-layer capacity but I get only 3 on my device. There are some predictable size limits. Default resolution is 5×8@72dpi/1.333×2@300dpi or 400x 600 so kind of low. The above image is actual size (I hesitate to call that high-res) though the ap says it does 1024 x 682 on 3GS iPhones (mine is not).
Layers copied over fine. Added sig and &copy notice plus did the jpg export in PSD (the ap exports PSD layers or PNG format). The interface is just as easy to use as the larger computer programs. I think I got more than my $3 worth with this little one.

a valkyrie for craig

Wednesday, November 4th, 2009 | General, valkyries | No Comments

(Artrage2/Photoshop)
This is for Craig whom I didn’t really know and will now never get to know. I think the Valkyries are becoming a series of their own.