4/16/2020 Weirdness and Sketching by Cathy Johnson"Everyone has the same look. We're all 'get this over with' and tired and 'done' and burned out with all this virus stuff," was what Andy yelled at me when I asked him the 1000th time if I was normal with how I feel. Good to know, Andy. I needed that. So...maybe YOU are one of those "taking advantage" of being home? Maybe YOU are someone who needs help to entertain some kiddos? I've been collecting stuff for you, posted by others. Cathy Johnson is a superstar sketching artist. She has a seriously FUN website. She's an inspiration to me. I often thumb through her book that I bought years ago about Pocket Sketching. She has videos, gives workshops, and blogs. Her style is light, textured, and bright. She posts a few things you can try, FREE, during this time. The following are links to Cathy's blog posts. She really has some great links in each, so please click over there! These are listed "in order" of how she posted the lessons. She's a seriously hard working lady artist and I know you'll enjoy all of these, with or without your children. https://cathyjohnsonart.blogspot.com/2020/03/reviving-strathmore-class-free.html https://cathyjohnsonart.blogspot.com/2020/03/reviving-strathmore-class-free_22.html https://cathyjohnsonart.blogspot.com/2020/03/the-importance-of-sketching-in.html https://cathyjohnsonart.blogspot.com/2020/03/reviving-strathmore-class-free-lesson-3.html https://cathyjohnsonart.blogspot.com/2020/03/reviving-strathmore-class-free-lesson-4.html https://cathyjohnsonart.blogspot.com/2020/03/keeping-artists-journal-class-free.html Collage of some of the sun designs made using my iPad, March, 2020, digital art, ©Angeline Marie Martinez
3/11/2020 Figure painting thru the millennia!"Figure painting" is another way of saying "paintings or drawings of humans."
This find is really important, because most cave paintings show animals or hand prints, but not actual fully drawn humans or as more formally called, "figures." Even if you consider that you can barely draw a stick figure, it's so cool that someone 44,000 years ago drew stick figures. You can see some photos here: http://hilltopmonitor.com/2019/12/oldest-cave-painting-in-world-suggests-religion-began-in/ Below is a page from one of my sketchbooks. I take paper and pen with me to every Marlins game that Andy and I attend. I make sure to get the Marlins Park date stamp, as you can tell. These are stick figures that help me get the gesture of each player. I love trying to get the movements of starting pitchers and batters, but I stick to just Marlins. Late in the 2019 season, I decided to add gestures of the in and out fielders once I'm "done" with the Marlins starting pitcher. ack at the iPad 2, I thought I was going to try digital art: draw, manipulate photos, all kinds of things. My fantasy lasted about a year. The apps I could find where clumsy, boring, and limited. No one around me wanted to do the same things...so I had only myself to teach me. My iPad became a more portable laptop...with great video and books. Fast forward a few years later...when I meet artist and quilter Susie Monday in Lisa Call's Master Class. This artist has some seriously cool, colorful, wacky, quirky, serious artworks in digital formats...AND SHE TEACHES HOW! I'm so excited and scared but I'm going to give this a go. It's time. I WILL continue to use paper sketchbooks, but I'm excited about the new tools and apps that will push me into different designs and colors. Artist Danny Gregory is a serious sketcher with published drawing books. He explains and shows why he's using his iPad so much here: https://www.artistsnetwork.com/art-inspiration/me-myself-and-ipad-art/ If you're interested in learning more about art on the iPad, go here: http://susiemonday.com/online-courses In the meantime, I'm trying to using only Susie's "tease list" of apps before class starts. That means I'm actually painting more, lol!!!! A sketchbook and a couple of pens I use. More traditional and way less expensive supplies that I love!
Oh, I'd love to get my hands on this Italian issue of Vogue, January, 2020! NO PHOTOGRAPHS!!! The entire issue, probably not counting the advertisements, are of ILLUSTRATIONS!!! AKA drawings, sketches, paintings...by people. According to the Italian Vogue Editor, the issue is to protest the environmental costs of taking fashion photographs. It's quite a staggering list in the brief article. The magazine knows that they have to use photographs...this is a "statement" magazine, much like the Art Basel Miami banana. The money saved is marked for charity. We can argue that photography IS an art form...but since when have magazines used primarily drawings to show fashion? Since 1960s? 1950s? I wonder if the USA issue would consider doing something like this? Learn more about it by clicking on this sentence. Sketches of deer heads in my last almost finished sketchbook. I do plan on adding photographs to my sketchbooks...but until then...drawings are fun! ©2019
2/27/2019 Selfies, sketches, and memoriesApparently, this little cat's selfie has bubbles in her photo. Oh, well. This one is at her forever home, anyway, lol. In a world full of selfies, I take very few selfies. In a world full of photos taken with our smart phones, I'm the one with my sketchbook open, pen in hand. Andy & I have some spectacular vacation photos. Our trip to Alaska in 2018 was incredibly fun and exciting. I took about 1,200 photos compared to his 5,000(?). Not a single one has been printed. My sketchbook, however, has all sorts of drawings, colors, impressions. I open it and my memories come back like I'm in the Jeep, on the road. Here's another article why it's better to BE in a space instead of taking yet another photo.... Or, let me invite you to draw? Or, the less scary way, let me invite you to sketch? Get your free copy of What to Gift a Drawing Artist by clicking on this paragraph. It's full of the simple supplies, and where to get them, to get you started to sketch. The original article is below my signature. Smiles, with paint on my hands, Angeline https://globalnews.ca/news/4815751/commentary-photos-memories/ COMMENTARY: Our obsession with taking photos is changing how we remember the past Listen Last year I visited the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, Russia — one of the best art museums in the world. I was expecting to serenely experience its masterpieces, but my view was blocked by a wall of smartphones taking pictures of the paintings. And where I could find a bit of empty space, there were people taking selfies to create lasting memories of their visit. For many people, taking hundreds, if not thousands, of pictures is now a crucial part of going on holiday — documenting every last detail and posting it on social media. But how does that affect our actual memories of the past — and how we view ourselves? As an expert on memory, I was curious. Unfortunately, psychological research on the topic is so far scant. But we do know a few things. We use smartphones and new technologies as memory repositories. This is nothing new — humans have always used external devices as an aid when acquiring knowledge and remembering. Writing certainly serves this function. Historical records are collective external memories. Testimonies of migrations, settlement or battles help entire nations trace a lineage, a past and an identity. In the life of an individual, written diaries serve a similar function. Memory effects Nowadays we tend to commit very little to memory – we entrust a huge amount to the cloud. Not only is it almost unheard of to recite poems, even the most personal events are generally recorded on our cellphones. Rather than remembering what we ate at someone’s wedding, we scroll back to look at all the images we took of the food. This has serious consequences. Taking photos of an event, rather than being immersed in it, has been shown to lead to poorer recall of the actual event — we get distracted in the process. Relying on photos to remember has a similar effect. Memory needs to be exercised on a regular basis in order to function well. There are many studies documenting the importance of memory retrieval practice -- for example in university students. Memory is and will remain essential for learning. There is indeed some evidence showing that committing almost all knowledge and memories to the cloud might hinder the ability to remember. However, there is a silver lining. Even if some studies claim that all this makes us more stupid, what happens is actually shifting skills from purely being able to remember to being able to manage the way we remember more efficiently. This is called metacognition, and it is an overarching skill that is also essential for students — for example when planning what and how to study. There is also substantial and reliable evidence that external memories, selfies included, can help individuals with memory impairments. But while photos can in some instances help people to remember, the quality of the memories may be limited. We may remember what something looked like more clearly, but this could be at the expense of other types of information. One study showed that while photos could help people remember what they saw during some event, they reduced their memory of what was said. Identity distortions? There are some rather profound risks when it comes to personal memory. Our identity is a product of our life experiences, which can be easily accessed through our memories of the past. So, does constant photographic documentation of life experiences alter how we see ourselves? There is no substantial empirical evidence on this yet, but I would speculate that it does. Too many images are likely to make us remember the past in a fixed way — blocking other memories. While it is not uncommon for early childhood memories to be based on photos rather than the actual events, these are not always true memories. Another issue is the fact that research has uncovered a lack of spontaneity in selfiesand many other photos. They are planned, the poses are not natural and at times the image of the person is distorted. They also reflect a narcissistic tendency which shapes the face in unnatural mimics — artificial big smiles, sensual pouts, funny faces or offensive gestures. Watch: selfies and the psyche The connection between social media and plastic surgery Importantly, selfies and many other photos are also public displays of specific attitudes, intentions and stances. In other words, they do not really reflect who we are, they reflect what we want to show to others about ourselves at the moment. If we rely heavily on photos when remembering our past, we may create a distorted self identity based on the image we wanted to promote to others. That said, our natural memory isn’t actually perfectly accurate. Research shows that we often create false memories about the past. We do this in order to maintain the identity that we want to have over time — and avoid conflicting narratives about who we are. So if you have always been rather soft and kind — but through some significant life experience decide you are tough — you may dig up memories of being aggressive in the past or even completely make them up. Having multiple daily memory reports on the phone of how we were in the past might therefore render our memory less malleable and less adaptable to the changes brought about by life — making our identity more stable and fixed. But this can create problems if our present identity becomes different from our fixed, past one. That is an uncomfortable experience and exactly what the “normal” functioning of memory is aimed to avoid — it is malleable so that we can have a non-contradictory narrative about ourselves. We want to think of ourselves as having a certain unchanging “core”. If we feel unable to change how we see ourselves over time, this could seriously affect our sense of agency and mental health. So our obsession with taking photos may be causing both memory loss and uncomfortable identity discrepancies. COMMENTARY: How a decades-long hunt for a song led to a quick lesson in human memory It is interesting to think about how technology changes the way we behave and function. As long as we are aware of the risks, we can probably mitigate harmful effects. The possibility that actually sends shivers to my spine is that we lose all those precious pictures because of some widespread malfunctioning of our smartphones. So the next time you’re at a museum, do take a moment to look up and experience it all. Just in case those photos go missing. |
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