Visual Thinker Studio Setups

Visual Thinker Studio Setups

Jes and I have been doing some cleaning and organization around the house lately. I'm painting a lot more so, we're trying to create good functional space for that. We are also trying to plan ahead for some space for her to do some small-scale wood work, since she has a slick dremel-style tool and engraving gun on their way. Mind you, our space is peculiar to say the least, so I think eventually we will be implementing some real indiviualistic solutions to workspace issues.

Anyway all this had me cruising the internet, looking for examples of how other folks have setup their studios.

This is a subject that has always fascinated me. I love visiting other painters', photographers' work spaces. Recently, when visiting Jes's parents, I had the pleasure of walking through her father's shop a few times. David builds racecar engines, and performs other feats of engineering and machining wizardry that are far beyond my meager mechanical skills to comprehend. But I could appreciate the functionality of his workspace. I could see how a mechanical mind could easily move a project from visualization to completion, by flowing it through the various workstations he has set up for the different processes in the workflow.

So while David's engine shop (which is such a misleading term, his shop is so clean and organized, it is more akin to a library than a stereotypical garage) was engaging to me, if somewhat foreign, stepping into another artist's studio is like stepping inside their head.

There are no classes in art school on how to set up a workspace. Some instructors might throw a few hints your way, but these are usually on very specific issues, such as where to place an easel or a mirror, or how to organize colors on your palette. In general, studio setup is a very idiosyncratic and individualized endeavor. Which is why I find it so intriguing.

I also think it is interesting that so many people in the blogosphere spend so much time thinking and talking about Getting-To-Done strategies, and the right way to keep notes (be it hipster-PDA, moleskin, or smartphone), but I don't see alot about creating and organizing workspaces. Maybe I'm just looking hard enough, I kinda get sick of all the office supply websites that come up in those searches.

On-My-Desk is a really cool blog, if like me, you are interested in how people organize their workspace. Each post on the blog is by a different artist, describing their studio setup. And of course there are lots of pictures. One thing that surprised me, though perhaps it shouldn't have, was the ubiquity of computer workstations next to the easels. This just kind of cements my attitude that media is really being transcended. The lines between painting, photography, and digital imaging are pretty much gone, if you want to be a purist about it. Photography, rather than killing painting, as was long predicted and assumed, has rather been assimilated by it, via digital techniques.

But that is of course, another rant...

Ummm....Flatfiles.... Yummy!

DIY Publishing

DIY Publishing

Microcosm Publishing has a new mini-guide out: Let's DIY: Tips and Tricks on Organizing Zine Workshops Microcosm Publishing
AT $1 somebody out there needs this.

Steampunk PDA

Steampunk PDA

Brass Goggles just hipped me to this great site for anachronistic gear, Jas Townsend & Son. This pocket notebook is made of brass and ivory, and is... well I'll just let the Townends tell ya:

It's the 18th century version of the PDA. Beautifully crafted here in the US. Based on an original that Jefferson owned. These are made of sturdy brass stock with 4 old ivory pages and a pencil. Use this for making notes in the field and just erase with a wet finger when you are done. Folds up into a nice small package 1-1/8 inches by 4-1/2 inches by 3/16 inch thick. No batteries needed.

I'm curious about the stylus for this, is it a piece of graphite sheathed in brass? It looks like from the photos, the stylus slide through the curls of brass and locks the unit. Also, I'm hoping that by old ivory, they mean the ivory is recycled. Of course this doesn't seem like an intricate design, and Jes has a stash of old ivory keys from some old pianos which seem like they'd be just about the right size...

Liberal is not a Dirty Word.

And neither is conservative.

Of course it would be nice if we could use these words according to their true meanings, not the strange Orwellian Media-speak meanings that have come to be associated with them. Here's a nice little vid of Bill Maher and Wes Clark tilting at that pop-linguistic windmill.

Bubba Sparxxx vs. Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?

Bubba Sparxxx Versus Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?

I just realized I've never posted a video of, or even mentioned, one of my favorite contemporary musical artists. I really can not emphasize enough, how much the Dragon loves me some Bubba. As the sagacious Mr. Eamon has commented, Bubba exemplifies how much of America has just moved past racism.
Bubba also represents what I grudgingly miss about the South: good music, good people, good food, and good times.
I was gonna blather about how the Cohen brothers seem to most succeed when they are focused on capturing the spirit of a region, and on how the South is such a mythic region, that they were forced to use a mythic plot. But I won't.
I imagine this video has been out forever. I've had the song for acoupla years. But living without cable, I haven't seen BET in years. Which is really a shame, 'cause it's good late night painting session TV. Standup comedy, and music videos. Really, what else do you want at 3:30 am on a Sunday?

DIY Wacom Cintiq

DIY Cintiq

This is so SWEET! Bongofish has hacked an older Wacom Intuos 12" X 12" Pen Tablet and a 15" LCD screen, and constructed his own version of a Wacom Cintiq, a pressure sensitive pen tablet display.
These things are the holy grail for digital artists and graphic designers, Scott McLoud even sings their praises in Making Comics. Seriously, a Cintiq, a decent computer, and a copy of Manga Studio Pro, and you are really ready to rock the Comics world. Unforunately, they are priced accordingly, at $2500 they can feasibly cost more than the computer they're attached to. And for some reason Wacom seems to have a monoply on the things, though they've increased the size and features since the Cintiq was first released over 4 years ago, the price for a new one has remained the same. Not surprisingly, used ones suffer very little from depreciation, the oldest, smallest, most decrepit whilst still being functional one you might scare up on ebay is still gonna run you at least a grand.
Why Apple and Wacom don't get together and create an OS X tablet for artists, I'll never know. As things stand right now, you can get a really respectable tablet PC and some cool art software for what a new Cintiq will cost you. Granted your active surface will be smaller, and your levels of sensitivity will most likely be halved, but really... The crazy thing about this is that Wacom makes the digitizers for most tablet PCs.
Yes, this is a subject on which I've expended many hours of thought... I guess Bongo fish has as well. He has a 19 page chronicle of his adventure (which he insists is NOT a tutorial) and has a public forum available, for those who'd like to follow his ingenious example.

Now, let's see, if I built a nice wood case, I could come with a steampunk digital pochade box, using a Mac mini to power the thing... Hmmm...

Fare thee well, Al Held

Fare thee well, Al Held

I just discovered that Al Held, my favorite abstract artist, died a little over a year ago.

Unfortunately he didn't have a great web presence, and there are few quality pictures of his later works, which I find most engaging. The two paintings accompanying this post are from that era, and though I couldn't find much information on them, I'm guessing from the era, that these works are at least 8 to 10 feet tall and up to 30 feet wide.

I'm not an art critic. I'm just a paint monkey who likes to talk shop. The critics say Held is a minor note in American Art. He was a success, but not a stellar one, not a household name, by any means. Held fans think his black and white work from the sixties and seveties is his most important. I disagree. I love the rebelliousness of crafting abstract work that still plays with spatial awareness and volume. I love the shere overwhelming joy and beauty I percieve in these works. Thanks, Al.

Al Held was also interesting as a study in the transformation and persistence of artistic vision. He went through several phases in his artistic development, though there are transitional notes to be seen in the works at the beginning and end of these phases. This site shows some examples of his work from 1958 to 1991, though not in chronological order, but I think it will give you some sense of his evolution. His approaches and techniques changed, generally evolving organically, but looking over the entire arc of his career, it seems to me that there are themes of light and dark, and of the approach and retreat of objects in space, which he was constantly struggling with. One theme he was drawn to over and over, constantly trying to find new and better ways to illuminate it.

A streetwise New Yorker and Navy veteran, Mr. Held embodied a number of contradictions in his art and life. He was a high school dropout who became a professor at Yale University. He was well schooled in the classical tradition of Western art yet worked in an abstract style that suggested the time-warp universe of space flight. Without using computers, he brought a mathematical precision to the exuberant, loosely disciplined abstract expressionist style.

A 2003 review from the New York Sun said:

Mr. Held's paintings are as confounding stylistically as they are geometrically. They pit dumbness against sophistication, dipping into techno-culture yet coming back with synthetic treasure. Neat in execution but messy in the beholding, these hyperactive yet affectless works recall the phrase of Mr. Held's one-time studio neighbor Alex Katz: "Something hot done in a cool way." Only in his case the word "cool" must be replaced by "cold."
It is telling how, with Mr. Held, this phrase operates as a kind of conceptual palindrome: Inverted- "something cold done in a hot way" - it means pretty much the same thing, so wedded in his painting are form and content, means and motif. Mr. Held enslaves himself and viewer alike to a relentless precision and manic cheeriness.

I've also heard Held described as a "cool square."

Al Held, painter, born October 12 1928; died July 27 2005