230305_A to D

This Sunday it was back up to the 'four fields' which I think of as the 'four chairs', due to some discarded but serviceable green garden furniture, good to sit on whilst drawing. I used some wax resist (a candle) for the colour versions this time which was great fun as I didn't know quite where the marks were or what their effect on the colour would be, the second one down shows just how far this can mess it up. I will do this again.

A Rolling Unlimited Edition

I have enough work to start a page on Saachi Art, my plan is to always have 18 prints available through the year, as I create new ones that I am happy with I will replace the older ones or ones that I feel have been superseded. This way I can follow the progress of the year and my own development. The relationship with the landscape shifts with the seasons and I hope the works will represent that incremental change.   

The prints will be printed on good quality artist paper and fixed with acid free tape to mounting board, with a LP plastic sleeve and a sticker that links to this very blog. I am aiming for that box fresh excitement of new vinyl from the record store, obviously without the music. Whilst this is not an edition the shelf life of the artworks is limited. 

230128_A & 230129_A

230128_A 

230129_A

Two new drawings from the weekend both local. The first from Cow Hill looking south across the Thames towards Rottondown Hill Plantation late in the day and the second  at lunchtime from Wroxhills Wood looking west across the railway and river to the downs beyond. Green with winter wheat and grey skies, the landscape is looking tired.

Animation and refraction

 

I have been looking at the ways virtual glass refracts and reflects these drawings and have had a look at creating animations from the sequences. Whilst interesting my focus has remained on making the initial drawings. The idea of ridged structures reflecting the hand drawn images was (and is) appealing but is not working correctly as yet. I will post up more of the less failed 'no experiment is failure' failures as and when. The 100% fails are learned from and binned.

Processing the image

I draw a black and white version of the view on location as well as a colour version, the drawings are then photographed and the levels adjusted to maximise legibility. The resulting monochrome image becomes a depth map analogous to the bite on an etching plate. This is a rendered example of just the depth map.

Less Video, more drawings

As a result of making drawn waveforms for my videos I started to draw more from landscape and to look at ways of remastering the images digitally, this example is from September 22 (ColourBite_250922), I will post some of the earlier images here. The process involves drawing a black and white depth map and then drawing a separate colour version, the two are combined in a sort of virtual paper-weight and with the white border is the same size as a LP record cover.

Splatter, 3D and hardware

Having recently finished a video for Vimeo (https://vimeo.com/616793028) about dot distribution and positive and negative 3D space that used old school 3D glasses (and why not?) I came to the conclusion that one of the most interesting bits about the project had been the use of a decidedly old fashioned rack sampler. In my case it is an Akai S2000, I have a more upmarket S3000XL, but the stripped nature of the S2000 has always been more attractive to work with. I love sampling drum machines MPCs but the way that a rack sampler assumes you want to map to a keyboard every time and the detuning that causes makes for many happy accidents. I have a couple of these, one of which has been heavily modded by Circuitbenders (sample grinding pictured) well worth the cost for the sonic madness (https://www.circuitbenders.co.uk/synthmod/S2000.html) and myself. (Gotek and SCSI2SD) and the one pictured which has had a new screen and will have a Gotek fitted in due course. Sequencing is from the Korg SQ64 which is a lot of fun with loads of potential for randomness. I always feel that the S2000 get you closer to the ones and zeros of sound, because whilst the assumption is you might want to record a grand piano it will also cope with short (although not too short) samples and can spit them out fast, plus it always manages to sound clean and punchy. Despite what you may have read it handles wavs no problem, but I have to use an old mac running C6 if I want to transfer samples digitally from more modern instruments.