Tuesday 29 January 2013

St. Peter's, DS Playback Test

I'm fast approaching my 500th saved painting done using the Colors! painting app. so I'm looking at celebrating this personal mile stone with a closer look at the program, and what it has meant to me over the past four and a half years. Most of my time has been spent doing plain-air landscape sketches - usually with some later refinement. Below is one of the paintings I did during my time at St. Peter's church (more on that in my next update). I'm just posting to test the embedded playback feature and make sure I've got the background colour right. Press the 'play' button (obviously) and click the fast forward arrows to alternate between three playback speeds.

 

Saturday 26 January 2013

Old Gods

A slight change of plan. I wanted to continue with my St. Peters church explorations from last year, but my scanner has died. I've ordered a new one, but in the mean time here's another speedie...


 

Tuesday 22 January 2013

Reference Dump Snapshots (St. Peter's Starter Course)

Let's be clear about one thing here: I am not a photographer, in the true sense of the word.

I take a few pictures here and there - mostly as wine for my reference cellar - which translates as sporadic snapshots taken on a simplistic pocket camera to capture whatever draws my attention, so I can later dump them in a growing web of folders, and sub folders, that were initially created as an aid, but now seem to be more of a pot-luck cesspit of forgotten ideas and nuances I once (for a brief moment) had interesting ideas about.

I lack all but the most basic photographic equipment, and even with a basic camera in my hands, I don't really have the urge or protracted interest to work out what all the different settings do. I just want to take a few pictures and be done with it. Sometimes I do try to at least maneuver myself into a spot that makes for a good composition but, to be honest, I'm usually just gunning for a shot that captures best what I found interesting.

If there's any discomfort involved, I'm shifting foot... screw composition!

Still, I have a very deep respect for photographers - both amature and professional - and the only reason I am posting this little batch is to try and set the mood for the next few posts, because they will be completely about a certain local church. Or, to put it another way: Here's a quick photographic montage of a very memorable day I had back in early December, of last year, that started with the simple idea of visiting a singular setting, and exploring it in as many ways as I could.

Anyway, the end result was a wonderful half day of sketch-bookery (?), Nintendo DS Shenanigans, Photoshop tomfoolery, a bunch of quick-fire snap-ograph-oonery, and a bunch of personal little notes I wrote in a journal I was asked to start writing because it was that special (human pattern seeking) calendar day: 12,12,12!

Oh, and check the hoar frost: That's what all this is actually about.














Monday 21 January 2013

Page I

I finally dug out the pencils and spent the afternoon christening one of the empty sketchbooks that lie in my cupboard. I tend to impulse buy sketchbooks every now and then so I've now got seven of the swines... plus four or five old ones that I never finished. Let's see if I can fill at least a few during 2013.

Saturday 5 January 2013

DS Dump: Miscellaneous Scribbles II









DS Dump: Miscellaneous Scribbles I










DS Autumn & Winter Sunsets (+1 Sunrise)

Wishing any browsers a happy and productive 2013. Here's a bunch of recent Nintendo DS sunsets, along with a single sunrise (I am not a morning person, haha).




This year I plan to cut back on any project work and focus on my own explorations. Time is a precious commodity and I've been promising myself a heavy dose of sketchbook scribbling for as long as I can remember. Sometime within the next few weeks I plan to give this blog more attention, and get it back on track for 2013. After all, what's a 'sketch-blog' without regular pencil sketch uploads? False representation, I guess.