new bicycle pictures

Iron Horse Maverick 5.0

pretty nice ride...

balloon fest

kinda lame, not quiet what i was expecting. too much money to get in and to little inside to see. the picture with the river and the buildings is actually the simon pearce restaurant where my pottery is sold and food is eaten off....

putney vt / westhill

these were taken @ a root66raceseries event on sunday the 24th in putney vt, on the westhill trails. i was unable to race due to technical difficulties (see other blog). i tried to take some action shots. you know just for fun see if i could capture it right. the first things i learned and remembered about my digital camera is the delayed response cause by auto focusing and auto exposure(ing?) so, after fiddling a bit i was able to get a bit better with my timing. i shot after adjusting the lightconidtions option and the flash settings, as well as the apperature settings. the trick was to shoot the rider as they pass by, getting them illuminated and in focus. the problem with flashes and illumination is that it can act like a spot light in the dark woods. what you need is a slower aperature setting, not too slow or everything will be blurry. the key is in exposing the film at the right time so you catch the rider in the middle of the composition, but to get him to be in focus (slow apperature remember) you have to physically pivot with the rider as they pass. the result is getting them in focus and everything else looks blurred. at first i wasnt very good at this, but by the end (10shots?) i was ok. somthing i'd have to work at. next time i'd try it on my slr camera, i think that i could get alot better with that. i really dislike the delayed camera response.

some sketches done this week inspired by locations i encounter daily.

cascades on ascutney

awesome colors. so green and vibrant! the tree bark picture was cool. purple and violet and green. neato. i was thinking the other day about art. how i dont draw every day with pen and paper, but i draw with my mind all the time. i love to. just to look at some thing and think, ok if i were to draw this, i would make a line here, here and here. you know, i like to study the composition of my environment. it's fun.
i drew real things today. i think i'll add some color either tonite or sometime soon. and i'll post later.

ps- i'd have taken more photos while hiking but my batteries ran out. and little mikey foolishly left the spare batteries in the car. yep...

16th

I wandered:

I made:

bike mag

saw this photo in a bicycling magazine today. i scanned it and altered the colours. i think it looks cooler now. anyways. this picture kicks ass. i'm thinkin about getting my SLR 35 mm camera out and shootin like i used to, payin money to get film developed.

new scanner

got a printer scanner all-in-one thingy for my birthday. it's fancy. i like. so i scanned some sketches in my notebook / sketchbook. i forgot how much i like cheap lined notebooks. they're great for just scketching out ideas. i'm afraid to test things out with nice paper and nice watercolor skectchbooks. white space is intiminating sometimes. anyways here's some stuff -

UNH library

while waiting for a lousy job "interview" i drew this hangin around campus. It was fun, felt like a student again. also nice to see people with intellect and style. much lacking here at home where nascar or camflauge hats and work boots with shorts are 'cool'.

this pic was of some bushes outside the library. i think they were geraniums. but it's early spring so everything's kind of dead looking...

correction etc

so i guess "impressionists" were really just categorized as artists who deviated from the french classic salon artwork for the bourgeoisie. they rejected all that crap for a better way of painting. good move in my opinion. why they chose what they did i have yet to learn. the other day's pondering was based on a few sentences i found in my old art history text book. while only reading a few pages from a book specifically on the impressionists i learn the above bit of trivia.

random, but i think i may have BDD, body dysmorphic disorder? creepy...

future visions

so here's my thought of the day: i was first thinking about the trend in movies lately. they all seem to be fantasy, super heroish, or straight horror. why? here's my logic. i believe the our society is dealing with the beginning of social and political turmoil and the start of the downfall of a 'great' nation, america. we in response look for a superhero to help of conquer the evil that lurks, we look into the face of extreme horror to lighten, by comparison, our own reality of horror, and of course, my favorite, an escape from reality altogether. We indulge in the fantasy of other worlds or into fairy-tale version of the world we live in and the possibility that we can enter this other world. In terms of the art world, this has happened before. much of the impressionist movement began in such a way. Dealing with changes in world leaders, with warfare and basically a total reshaping of europe, many painters found themselves absorbed with nature and with our experience of it. I wonder if, today as we enter our new 'green-age', we will return to the absorption into nature. An easy escape from political and social turmoil would be to look into the world as the world, simply as nature, as our true environment our true reality rather than some social construction. I think this is why i paint or sketch nature. it's my way of dealing with the world. it's with a sigh and a turn of my cheek that i face nature as man's companion. the ephemeral atmospheric conditions of our day to day holds all the emotions we can experience. apprehension, fear, giddiness, love, joy, sadness can all be found with confrontation and contemplation within nature. it is just as wholesome as life itself and we can witness it all in one day! I hope the future of art lies not in video and film but in the older tradition of painting and hopefully on nature's grace. do you think that the public can be held in awe by just one image alone, rather than all the excitement and changing images of film? i believe they can if the piece is strong enough to express and communicate to people of certain comprehension. I can only hope i'll be involved in the evolution of expression and of art itself, whatever it may be.

things

here's some things i did today. i dont really like them. the road to ascutney one is exactly like a thousand other ones i've already made. ironiclly this one is a real place... the other one of the colonial apartments arcoss the street from me is ok. just seems childish and like a childrens book illustration. i wish i had my oil paints. wish i had access to all the materials and machines back at school. I feel like if i could really paint again then i'd somehow be happier, but i dont think my life is that simple. although i wish it were. the one thing i hate about watercolors is that you have to work quickly and theres no time to rework anything or add anything afterwords. anyways, i dont know why i waste my time doing these things, i suppose it's because i dont know what else to do with the time i've been given to live. i feel cold and lonley today.

road to ascutney

colonial apartments

the road to tarascon

my parents sent a postcard to me a few months ago from the Met in nyc. it was a van gogh drawing titled 'the road to tarascon' completed in pen and graphite. its a little blurry, sorry.

well, i was inspired to draw my own version. so here it is in ink.

I decided to add watercolor to it just to liven it up a bit....so here it is.

I think van gogh would have chosen similar colors. i like it. it now hang framed in my bedroom.

a side note- i drove 30 min today to the art supply store to get some more watercolor paper and some waterproof / watercolor tape only to find that it was closed. i often forget that most stores are closed on sundays. err...frustration.