COMIC-CON 2010 (part 4)

At Comic-Con, artist Neal Adams defined a comic book artist as:

someone you put in a closet with a drawing table, a lamp, a radio, art supplies and you slide paper under the door and he'll keep filling it up -- just so he can get new paper to draw more.

There must have been a thousand artists at Comic-Con who fit that description. Some of them were still blinking as their eyes adjusted to being out in the light. At tables on "artist's alley," in booths and leaning up against fire hydrants, you saw them inking highly detailed backgrounds and individual strands of hair. They didn't seem to be weighing the costs and benefits of their actions, the way sensible people would. They drew unfazed by the economics or the logistics of what they were doing.

There must have been 423 of them specializing in slick, polished images of huge breasted barbarian women in leather and chain mail bodices. (Question: if there are only 360 degrees in a full circle, how is it possible that there are an infinite number of angles from which to draw barbarian women bending over?)

Most of these pictures were keyed to grab at your attention -- every muscle flexed to the max, every gun blazing, every body extended mid-leap. Walking down a corridor of such overwrought images was exhausting.

Most of these pictures were technically accomplished. The artists had clearly sacrificed huge chunks of their lives to acquire technical skills. Some of the art-- a very small percentage-- was even excellent.

I would not live my life the way these artists do, but from a safe distance I can admire their willful disregard for actuarial tables. I am reminded of Archy and Mehitabel's famous Lesson of the Moth, in which Archy asked the moths why they continued to bang their heads against an electric light bulb in an effort to fry themselves in the beautiful fire. He asks one, "have you no sense?"

plenty of it he answered
but at times we get tired
of using it

As Archy returned to his rational life, he remarked,

i wish
there was something i wanted
as badly as he wanted to fry himself

COMIC-CON 2010 (part 3)

Comic-Con provides a unique vantage point on the digital future of the popular arts.

The invention of digital media had an obvious quantitative impact on art, but I always listen at Comic-Con for early evidence of a qualitative impact.

Everybody knows the quantitative benefits: computers enhance the efficiency, speed and precision of the creation and distribution of images. They permit sharper, more consistent pictures than traditional tools can. They expand the range of possible subject matters by overcoming previous limitations on scale. For example, animators today have the ability to show individual strands of hair, or flowers in a field, or faces in a crowd that once would have been economically impossible to convey.

Yet, it is not clear that any of these miracles crosses the line between quantitative and qualitative change.

Contrast digital art with the invention of oil paint, for example. Many historians believe the invention of oil paint transformed the nature of art qualitatively. It gave artists versatility and sensitivity to create rich, glowing surfaces (such as polished marble, radiant jewels and-- most importantly-- human flesh).



This is supposed to have helped inspire the transition from the medieval obsession with the afterlife...



to the Renaissance focus on the human body and our physical world.

For me, the most fascinating question about the future of digital art is whether HCI (human-computer interaction) has the potential to trigger a similar kind of change.

Can it help make our images more sensitive? Better designed? Can it lead to better compositions? More poignant or evocative or profound images? Can it help make artists visually smarter, or perhaps release some primal aspect of aesthetic communication that has been straightjacketed so long by the limitations of earlier media we're not even aware of it?

One of the more promising areas discussed at Comic-Con emerged in a presentation by USC professor Henry Jenkins on "Transmedia," which he defined as:

The systematic dispersion across multiple platforms of a unified and coordinated entertainment experience, with each platform making its own contribution.

While in many respects transmedia is a marketing concept, it can also alter our experience of creative content by mixing genres together in what seems to be a new and potentially rich way. Digitalization enables people to become part of a movie, or to experience the movie through multiple points of view; to immerse themselves in a story and to later extract parts of it to take back to their own world; to incorporate the content in their own play (think of people using youtube to adapt and perform their own versions of the songs they see on Glee); to move the content from one medium to another, the way bees cross-pollenate. Jenkins impressed me as smart and disciplined.

It's too early to tell, but this strikes me as a variation on the creative experience worth thinking about as we shape our stories and other creative content.

COMIC-CON 2010 (part 2)

John Henry said to his captain,
"Well a man ain't nothin but a man,
But before I let that steam drill beat me down,
Lawd, Lawd, I'll die with that hammer in my hand."

Tim Lewis 2000

We have had several discussions on this blog about the expanding role of software in the creation of art. I have argued that programs such as Painter and Photoshop allow people to purchase a level of talent that previous generations had to struggle for years to master. Others have responded that you can't hide bad digital painting/drawing in Corel Painter or bad character animation in Maya any more than you can hide bad oil painting.

Our discussions have ranged across a wide variety of theoretical scenarios. But in the words of the great Yogi Berra,

In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is.

One of the great things about Comic-Con is the opportunity to watch experts perform live demonstrations of the latest art software. After watching the current software in action, I have no question that it artificially provides a user with a remarkable level of technical skill to draw and paint.

I was particularly impressed with a demonstration of Z Brush. I watched the demonstrator use a scanned photograph to establish the topology of a face and then choose from seemingly endless options to customize the face into the image she wanted, selecting not just the skin tone, but how shiny or textured the skin would be, or even how conspicuous the pores would be. When it came to creating the hair, she pulled up a hair cap from a sphere, selected whether she wanted the "hair" or "fur" option, and then simply pulled the hair down to the desired length and cut and combed it the way she wanted. The computer placed her at a level that it would have taken a traditional artist many years to master.

I later looked at the demonstrator's drawings created without the benefit of a computer. They were not nearly as sophisticated or technically skilled.

The benefits of the computer were truly amazing, but I'll tell you something else that I found even more impressive. The demonstrator shyly revealed that she had just resigned from a plum position with the acclaimed computer animation and graphics studio Blur to take classes at the Los Angeles Academy of Figurative Art. The audience gasped. But she said, "I go home at night and I draw and paint, and I feel so happy!"

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COMIC-CON 2010 (part 1)

The ancient marketplace of Byzantium swarmed with traders, cutthroats, fishermen and merchants selling spices, livestock, textiles and goods from all across the known world. Its crowded stalls and narrow streets reeked with exotic smells and clamored with a dozen languages. When normal language failed, the vocabulary of commerce always prevailed.

[I just returned from the world famous San Diego Comic-Con-- always a mind-altering experience. This week I am posting a series of observations about my experiences there.]

The exhibition hall at Comic-Con is an airplane hangar sized petrie dish, where the conversion rate between artistic talent and cash is renegotiated thousands of times each minute. Art is bought and sold in every form, both as originals and in all manner of tangible and intangible reproductions. Oil paintings from the past are marketed alongside vapor ware from the future. The tools for making the next generation of art-- magic brush pens from Faber-Castell, Tombow and Prismacolor, or software from Z brush-- are marketed like the magic wands in Harry Potter.

For me, one noteworthy story about the value of art comes from these beautifully painted animation backgrounds which could be purchased by the fistful on the last day for $10 apiece.





Original paintings produced by skillful artists cost less than a printed poster.





Walking the exhibition hall, you developed an appreciation for the fact that the price of art is tied less to its quality than to its function. No matter how talented the artist, or how these images look, they were produced on an assembly line for high volume use, and the artists had already been paid once by their corporate employer.

The price of these paintings was discounted far below their inherent quality because the pictures had already served their primary function.



The same observation can sometimes be made about the price of illustration art generally. It often sells for less than its artistic quality would justify when compared to gallery art, because the primary cost of creating the art has already been covered by its initial commercial sponsor. Once an illustration has fulfilled its primary function, the secondary collector can sometimes purchase the work of a talented artist who in a rational world might be unaffordable.

The Sights

The Acropolis, Athens, Greece

How to submit add blog sitemap to new bing webmaster tools

The first thing is to create an account or use one you already have for the services of pages of Microsoft, like Hotmail

If this is the first time you access the service and never have sent your URL, you will see the option to "Add Site. You can have multiple websites / blogs in the same account.

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Enter the address of your blog where it says (2.)
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Now comes the step of verification. They will display a window to ask for proof that you are the "owner" of the site / blog in question.You have two ways to prove it: "Option 1" is hosting a file of type XML in Host where is your blog (for the case of blogs on Wordpress.org, for example), whereas the "Option 2" is to add a goal -tag in the source code of your blog (recommended if blogs on Blogger / Blogspot)

verify your blog in bing webmaster tools

Follow the steps (no mystery).
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Adding sitemap of your blog to bing webmaster tools
Until now only register your blog and most important step of all this is to send a sitemap for your blog to be crawled more quickly and help the algorithms to find and read its contents (you know your blog exists and everything that has it).
Within the service panel and Bing Webmaster Tools with your blog already checked, click on your URL. On the page that opens, click on "Crawl" (1.) And then on the "Sitemaps" (2.)

Adding sitemap of your blog to bing webmaster tools

To begin, click the "Add Sitemap". Nesse ponto você terá de adicionar o endereço do arquivo de sitemap do seu blog. At this point you have to add the address of the sitemap file to your blog.

Add your blog sitemap

For blogs on Blogger (Blogspot)

 This is pretty simple.Where you must enter the address of the sitemap, you will enter the default address of Feed Blogger, as in the example below:
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You may have been using
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Calm Before the Storm

-Little treasures found on today's walk with Turbo.

-Hand carved rubber stamps inspired by old seaweed pressings that I made today.

This is the calm before the storm...
We will be moving into our new house next weekend!
This might be the last creative project I'll be able to squeeze in until we're all settled.
I'll be taking a long break from my web life (blog, facebook, flickr, etsy...)
but I will be back mid August with lots of new photos to share with you!
I will be checking my email occasionally from a nice café.
Can't believe we're packing again...Au revoir...for a little while :)

Kids Draw & Cook

My son Daniel's entry called "Five a Day for Better Health"
for Nate Padavick's awesome new blog Kids Draw and Cook,
a companion to the super cool They Draw and Cook blog.
Daniel (age 12) made these cool little guys with watercolor & ink on paper.

Etsy Treasury!

Made my very first treasury at Etsy, you can check it out by clicking here.


And this bird themed Treasury is my second! Playing "curator" is so much fun!

The Sketchbook Project: 2011

Last month my lovely reader Lisa from Australia sent me the link to this wonderful project thinking I might like to participate...and I did! Thanks Lisa!
Read more about the project here and think about joining too!

The blank Moleskine arrived at my door this week!
I had some time yesterday to personalize the cover before I break it in.

I glued these pretty marbleized end papers and a butterfly bookplate
that my friend Sofia sent me from New Zealand.

I chose "In Flight" from a long list of available themes to work with...obviously ;)
I have to send back my completed sketchbook by January 2011
and I'll be sharing the process with you. I hope you decide to participate too!

The completeted sketchbook will be living at the Brooklyn Art Gallery where it will be barcoded & available for the public to view. So if you live in NY you be able to check out my Sketchbook and take it home to view for a few days :)
And the cool thing is that I'll be able to know who checks out the sketchbook!
Fun, fun, fun!

*Molly Amanda: So funny you mentioned it this morning!
I was writing this post when I read your blog comment.

Drawing Lab Book Giveaway Winners

Carla was so impressed with the unbelievably great turnout that she offered to giveaway
two more books! So we have three winners today! Mr. Random.org chose:
Ludid, Elvia and Indy! Congratulations!
Thank you so much for all the encouraging comments.
You guys are THE best!

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Steps -
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3. The CPALead survey has been removed.
Simple and easy solution.

Tip:You could add the javascript into your bookmarks for faster and easily use. If you find a website which require CPALead survey, just open the bookmard and it's gone.

Painted Bird Tee

My lovely blog reader Ann from Russia sent this beautiful photo of the t-shirt she painted using my free bird embroidery design and white fabric paint.

Isn't it great? She did a fantastic job! Thank you for sharing it with us Ann :)
Don't forget to participate in the "Drawing Lab" book giveaway.
Hope you have a beautiful Monday!

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PANMIXIA ON THE DRAWING BOARD

English illlustrator W. Heath Robinson (1872-1944) was hardly an adventurous guy. Meek and withdrawn, he loved to stay at home surrounded by his books. For excitement he puttered in his garden.



In just about every way you can imagine-- his wardrobe, his manners, his relationships, the food he ate, his morals-- Robinson lived a cloistered life. He courted his future bride on Sunday afternoons dressed in a top hat, frock coat and high collar. Even after he mustered the courage to propose marriage, their engagement lasted for nearly five years (he didn't believe in acting impetuously).

Yet, Robinson fell instantly in love with Japanese woodblock prints-- an exotic art form that had newly arrived in England by way of Paris.



He loved their flat decorative patterns, their asymmetrical and diagonal compositions, their creative use of high viewpoint, and their stark use of negative space. He was smitten by the clean, simplified line and highly stylized designs of Utamaro, Hiroshige and Hokusai.

Robinson adapted these qualities to his own work. He went from drawing in the conventional style of English illustrators of his day:



...to drawing with a cleaner line, using checkerboard and other decorative patterns to enhance his designs:









Note that Robinson didn't plagiarize Japanese images. This is not a story of cultural theft. Instead, it is a story of the wonderful panmixia that characterizes the language of forms. Robinson combined the abstract qualities of Japanese prints with his own style to come up with a genuine hybrid approach. (He was not alone-- the arrival of Japanese woodblock prints in Europe also came as an inspiration to artists from Aubrey Beardsley to Van Gogh).











I especially like the fact that Robinson, who was a cultural hermit in every other respect, immediately understood and appreciated the intentions of artists who were geographically, culturally and socioeconomically on the opposite side of the planet.

Robinson had never traveled, spoke no foreign languages and had no exposure to different cultures and styles. But geographic boundaries and language restrictions are no barrier to the appreciation of forms. Forms travel without a passport and communicate instantly in a global language.

This kind of cross-fertilization continues today in the work of illustrators such as Yuko Shimizu, who are far more open to the potential of other cultures than Robinson was:





Technology also facilitates this cross fertilization of images and styles. When you think how long it took for that first steam ship to introduce exported prints from Japan to European audiences, our own advantages in this area seem overwhelming today.