March 2008

Doodle-a-day...not so much.

Here's March:

February 2008

My "Doodle a Day" pocket calendar has slowed a bit. I'll catch up eventually. Here's February:

Wall Arch

I was pretty startled to hear the news about the falling of Wall Arch at Arches National Park in Utah. Here's the National Park Service article. We made a trip out there two years ago, and that particular arch was one I remember well because of its proximity to the hiking trail. A stone wall blocked one side and the Wall Arch spanned along the opposite wall with the trail sandwiched between. The structure seemed very delicate at the time, but I got that same impression with most of the arches we saw there. It was a humbling feeling knowing those stones could topple on our heads at any moment.

I'm glad we took so many pictures.
(Arches National Park: Wall Arch 14 June 2006)

Total redesign!

Just wanted everyone to know I've totally redesigned both my graphic design/editorial illustration site: www.graphx.us and my fine art site: www.norathompson.us. I was hoping to make both of them a little more classy than they had been, so I created the pages in Flash and dropped them in a main page I created in Dreamweaver.

And, although it's been up for a little while already, I guess this would be the official announcement of my fine artwork online. I use many mediums including oil, acrylic, graphite (powdered and in pencil form), charcoal (powdered, vine and compressed), conte crayon and many natural materials, to name a few. I have also included several of my silver gelatin photographic prints on the site as well as previous show listings, my artist's statement and bio.

I'm hoping for feedback, especially if anyone encounters problems in the technical area.

And thanks to everyone who has already fed back!

Images 2008

Over at the Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts at State College, I had a painting accepted into their annual exhibit, this year called, "Images 2008." The painting is titled, "Scream Without Raising Your Voice," an acrylic and mixed media on canvas.

The show ran June 11-July 13.

2008 Westmoreland Art Nationals

I had a Polaroid emulsion transfer accepted into this year's Westmoreland Art Nationals. It's actually four transfers together on one piece of watercolor paper. I didn't do many of these; at the time I was just experimenting with the process and had access to a Daylab Copy System. I had done direct Polaroid image transfers a few years back using film and photos straight out of my dad's old Polaroid that he had brought back from Korea when he was stationed there in the army (1959-ish). But this time I wanted to use copies of 35mm photos that I had already taken.

This is the piece that was accepted. It's called "Stephie's Hands." The show ran May 31 through June 13.

Ohiopyle Weddings

I've finished my first entirely Flash Web site for Ohiopyle Weddings. I still have way too many things I want to do, but don't know the ActionScript to do them, and don't know the correct terminology to be able to search for the scripting on the Internet. Still, it's functional and basically attractive, and best of all, approved by the clients!

Westmoreland Biennial

This image was accepted into the Westmoreland Biennial which ran from May 11 through June 8. The exhibit included 83 works of art from 80 different artists who lived within a 125-mile radius of Greensburg, Pennsylvania.

The image is called "Murder of Crows," it's a 16"x20" acrylic on canvas. The handwritten text in the background is partially painted over, but only because my husband stopped me before I painted over all of it. He walked in at the point you see here, and made me promise to stop where I was (even though I said I wasn't finished) and look at it with fresh eyes the next day.

Thankfully, I took his advice.

Up on eBay!

I've listed my first item on eBay. It's a small chalkboard, hand-built from stoneware clay with a fabric eraser and using hemp as hanging material. It's one of my fine art pieces, and is inspired by indigenous creations and natural materials.

The Raw Shark Texts

So. I know I'm late. I finally got around to reading The Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall, and if I'm writing about it on my blog, you should understand that means something. The book takes bites from The Matrix, Memento and Jaws. The DaVinci Code should probably be thrown in there as well, except that Hall doesn't telegraph his passes (as my high school basketball coach used to tell me I did with mine), and he certainly doesn't hold your hand throughout the plot.

Where to start?

First off, the reason I bought it was because I like novels that have visual thought somehow. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer, The Thin Place by Kathryn Davis and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime by Mark Haddon come to mind. I'm a graphic artist; what can I say? These novels, however, didn't affect me like TRST.

Secondly, the novel is written in such a way that different readers can come to different conclusions. I know, I know. How is that possible? My best possible answer is that it just is. Hall, who is British, meant it to be that way, and he basically says so in the title. With a British accent, "The Raw Shark Texts" sounds an awful lot like "The Rorschach Tests."

And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

The official Web site, www.rawsharktexts.com, has many discussions on what readers believe is going on. Look under the "Unspace Exploration Committee" link, and see for yourself. I would suggest not allowing yourself any spoilers (the "Crypto-Forensics" link) before you have a chance to read the book, but after you've finished, you'll probably be heading there for answers.

But guess what? There aren't any. And Mr. Hall is tight-lipped, as well he should be.

I also love how this book is still developing. New things are coming out in new editions, games have been played online about it and Hall has even developed Raw Shark Texts "negatives" (From the site: "For each chapter in The Raw Shark Texts there is, or will be, an un-chapter, a negative. If you look carefully at the novel you might be able to figure out why these un-chapters [are] called negatives.").

Please read the book. Then get back here and tell me what's going on.

Forwarded emails create SPAM

I know the people who think I would be interested in some email they've received aren't trying to cause problems when they forward it to me, but it turns out they are.

It's not so much in that they are forwarding, it's in the WAY they forward. This also includes any time an email is sent to everyone in an address book, even if it's not forwarded.

When you forward an email to a group of people and put the list of email addresses in the "To" section of the email, every one of the people on the list now has an entire listing of "live" email addresses. If one of the people on the list who received the email from you then forwards it to a group of people in their address book, suddenly a whole group of people--who you probably don't know--now has not only my email address and everyone else's on the list, but also YOURS.

With the speed of the Internet, my email address is now in countless boxes around the globe, and the odds of one of those boxes belonging to a spammer or someone who sells email addresses to spammers for cash are surprisingly good.

SO...

I don't want to stop you from forwarding me something you think I might find helpful. I'm not interested, however, in jokes, inspirations or petitions, and please don't put me on your list when you get an email saying, "Send this to 10 people...".

If you REALLY think there is something I should see, here's what I ask you to do:

• If it's a Web site, please copy and paste the Web site address in an email. Please don't forward the address once it has come from somebody else.
• If it's an email you've received, please copy and paste what it is you want me to see in a NEW email. Please don't forward the email as-is.
• Please don't put me in your address book and use my address in a forward to the group of people in there with me. I don't mind being in your address book itself; of course it's easier when you have an email address handy rather than having to type it in or even remember it. I would just rather not have my email address included in a group of email addresses that is going to get forwarded, and forwarded, and forwarded...
• Please don't include me in a bulk mailing to all your friends with everyone's address in the "TO:" section of the email, even if it's a brand new email that you started and isn't a forward.

Unfortunately, I don't have any kind of filter for my email that totally rejects anything that has been forwarded to me. I've blocked the word "Fwd" in both the body and subject of a message, but that hasn't worked. It only takes one person to get your address out there, and suddenly your BUSINESS email is inundated. That's what happened to mine.

I don't mind if you copy and paste this in an email, but please follow some Internet etiquette and don't send it to a group of people in your address book with everyone's email address in the "TO:" section.

And, please, stop forwarding me stuff.

Fontstruct

I'm signed up for the newsletter that FontShop puts out, and they've apparently been working pretty hard over there. It looks like they have a new font-building application on their site that lets you build fonts (albeit on a grid) that work on both Windows and Macs. It's called FontStruct, and here's the link: http://fontstruct.fontshop.com. Once you've created your font, you can share it with the rest of the world to look at or to download. Or not, if you're shy.

Great for fontaholics.

And it looks perfect for the typography classes I'll be teaching this fall. I'll have to do a little FontStructing of my own before I unleash it in class.

Flash

Been learning Flash and loving it. I'm still taking baby steps, but I've got so many animations and Web sites in my head, I have to keep pushing myself to get there.

One week more...

Well, for me, the semester is almost over. I've been teaching a Digital Imaging class for seven Saturdays now, and next week will be the last one for this class. After that, it's nose to the grindstone to crank out some graphic design I've been putting off until I had more time. I've got two Web sites to put together, a logo, some odds and ends that it's been so long I can't even remember what they are! And a tattoo design!

I hope everybody will forgive me for just one week more...

January 2008

I won a pocket calendar for 2008 last November at a conference, but thought of a better use for it. A "Doodle a Day" maybe? "Calendar Doodles?" Either way, here's January:

Firefly Chocolates

I just finished putting together a simple Web site for some nice people I know from Ohiopyle. They have a couple restaurants down there (The Firefly Grill and Highwaters Grill) that are open through the summer, and then they make chocolate goodies through the winter season. They just opened a shop at Seven Springs Mountain Resort a few weeks ago, and I've been working on their graphics for it.

The image above is what I designed for the sign that hangs outside the shop in the hallway of the ski lodge at Seven Springs.

Punxsutawney Phil

In honor of the most famous groundhog in the world, and the people who like to celebrate his Feb. 2 predictions.

If you don't know who he is, look him up. He's quite a holiday for some of us in the area.

Birthday!

Stu's birthday today. He didn't want anything special, just to stay at home and enjoy the evening.

The cake was marble.

Hand Lettering

Here's a preview of a new area I'll be uploading to my site: Hand lettering. I copied the "Kids Pix" to my other site (www.nora-jayne.com), and as soon as I'm comfortable that the word has gotten around that it has moved, I'll post samples of some hand lettering that I've done on my graphx site.

I won't be making fonts from these, at least not anytime soon. I just like the way hand lettering allows letters to hug each other. It feels more live, and more personal than an un-manipulated font. Not that fonts are bad -- no way, I love them. These ones are just...different. But I'm not a calligrapher. They're way better than I could ever be. I'm just a hand-letterer.

Career

Met with my friend, Rose, this afternoon to talk about the direction of our illustration careers and what our next step(s) would be. Of course, we met at Panera. What a productive afternoon! My friend Alice even popped in unexpectedly, neither of us knowing the other would be there. Anyway, Rose and I talked about studying, drawing, blogging, taking museum and gallery field trips, and our April Illustrator's Conference field trip to New York.

I guess you could say I got a little over-stimulated.

Cold cold cold

Pretty cold here tonight. Only 16 degrees and snowy. I'm sure you folks in Anchorage would probably think that would be a heat wave, but for those of us in southwestern PA, that's a wee bit chilly.

We built a fire.

New Year's

Here's my idea of a new year with the potential for lots and lots of drawing and painting and illustrating.