I've Gone Dotty!

Early on I realized that trying to paint normally as one would with a brush wouldn't work well on vinyl. It ended up looking blotchy or too thick. In the back of my head, my high school art teacher's favorite project helped me figure it out. Dots.

I've described my work kind of like a reverse newspaper photo, with the density of the dots of paint creating the illusion. What was this project Mrs. Kahn loved so much that gave me the idea? Using only dots to create drawings with a very fine point rapidograph pen. I was in her elective class 3 years and each year we'd do these things and have a book printed of the whole classes' work. They were insane.


The idea stuck in my head from such a repetitive action so much so that after high school I actually was planning on trying one with colored ink. Yeesh. But, the theory is really useful. With enough care, volume can be created with smooth surfaces, and edges can be defined without solid lines. Indeed, the best lesson for me from the whole thing was that using lines to create shapes truly flattens objects, breaking the illusion of real substance.

This, along with my lessons from sculpture, are why I start in the middle of shapes and shade outward, bringing the volume out of the dark into the light.

It's also why I have to paint to music with a beat to it to drive my wrist's repeated dabbing.

Peace.

Whatever Happened To "Women And Children First"?

I don't think I've ever mentioned local politics on this blog before. I feel a responsibility to do so today.

This Clapton is for my mother-in-law's boss in Florence Unified School District in the far east part of the Phoenix metro area. It's going to be a birthday gift for her husband.

Along with my mother-in-law, my father-in-law works for that same school district. My wife works in Arizona public education as well.

Arizona, like the rest of the country, is financially in trouble. We are looking at a $1.5 billion deficit this year and much larger one the next. The first budget proposal publicly presented, developed in close-door meetings apparently by just 4 members of the state legislature, lays the entire burden of that deficit on public education. All of it.

If approved, this budget would devastate our state's public education system, which is already around the 48th or 9th lowest funded system in the country. Can't go much lower than that. Kindergarten would no longer be full day, school for all K-12 students would be 4 days a week and programs would be either eliminated or slashed. Amazingly, on top of that, it would cut way back on child care. So not only would the kids be getting educated less and the parents would have to figure out what to do with them, but they'd also have to pay more for whatever they did figure out what to do with them.

This is like making the women and children on a sinking ship go below deck to work on the problem without tools while the men row away in the life rafts. Come ON!

Dr. Gary Nine, the superintendant for FUSD, couldn't believe it when he found out about this proposal. He's taking a stand: http://www.respectforregularfolks.com/index.php/home.

This past Sunday, my family took a stand with him. Please go to the above link and read his letter. Understand the situation and this horrendous proposal's consequences.

Then help do something about it.

Peace.

SOLD - Eric Clapton 01/26/09

Like Blogger, Only Different

Evan Williams, the creator of Blogger, the host of this blog, went on to also create Twitter. I just joined. That's right, I'm a-tweetin'.

I was anxious at first, like back then. It's another new thing. New language, conventions, tricks, etiquette. New people. Or, well, so far, old people more instantly. Which is helping me feel at ease already. See, the cool thing about Twitter is that it's more interactive than blogging. Called micro-blogging, it's basically the same thing, but with a couple really cool differences.

ProBlogger's Rowse compared it to a dinner party conversation. You can whisper (send direct messages), chat with one person more openly so people can listen in (send @ messages), or you can just talk and see who's listening (send straight updates). The last one is the closest to regular blogging and is the basis for the site. You can use up to 140 characters to say what you're doing, ask a question, share a link, yell at the world, whatever. People who follow you will see those updates. They can then respond either by starting a conversation using @ messages or by sending you basically an instant message.

Then if a bunch of people are on at the same time, group conversations can develop. Technologically, a neat thing about Twitter is that you can receive and send tweets from a cell phone. So people can be anywhere doing anything and still be involved. It's like text messaging, but more public. Of course you can keep your updates private too, so only people you know can see them.

Part of Twitter's importance lies in its ability to integrate with other social networking sites. Facebook, blogs, and others can be tied to a Twitter profile, both sending and receiving updates. I haven't even begun to explore how it all can work together, but it will be cool. The fluidity of the update timeline and the amount of people following people means a much faster and wider spreading of information.

Also, you can search the tweet timeline. So you can catch up with someone's updates, follow past conversations, or look for other people interested in what you are too. Or you can find out if anybody's tweeting about you (or me, in this case).

It's a little overwhelming, and I'm not sure how it'll work into what I do online to promote my art or how I'm going to figure out how much time to devote to it. For now, it's wide open though, and I'm excited to reach out to people in a new way and hopefully bring them into the fold here.

One thing, it's gonna force me to be more concise. 140 characters! Can he do it?

Peace.

SOLD - Eric Clapton 11/21/08

Howlin' At The Trees

Here's a pic of the piece I painted yesterday. I also updated a whole bunch of images on my secondary site which I'll be using to sell through PayPal. They're in the "For Sale" section. Check 'em out and let me know what you think!

I also did another portrait of Johnny Cash flipping everyone off for Gasoline Gallery, which has sold several of those. I have a pic of another Johnny Cash I did on my MySpace profile page.

Here's a random piece of advice I picked up today: don't trim up evergreen trees like pine trees in the heat of the Arizona summer. Apparently it puts them into shock.

Just thought I'd share that with you as I try to get a large branch that broke off cleaned up and to get you to:

CHECK OUT MY WEBSITE AT: WWW.VINYLART.INFO

I'll post more pics here too, if you want to see more.