Sunday morning self-portrait

Sunday morning self-portrait. June 1, 2014 ©Brenda Clews. So far, I don't like this sketch. That may change: sometimes it doesn't. I thought a portion of the face might be interesting and so used an oval mirror and included the glasses lens so the eye is a bit over-sized. Probably I look a bit better than this - if one took a photo - but I want to be ruthless with myself. Still, while I wasn't into drawing this morning, I did manage something, and should keep this up since it is currently the only drawing I do and a few hours once a week is better than nothing. I hope to go to a drop-in life-drawing session next week. 11" x 8.5", Lamy fountain pen with Noodler's Black Ink, Pentalic 130lb archival paper.

I am still without a computer, so this was photographed with an iPhone and uploaded to a specific album in Picasa with an app I had to buy (Web Albums - A Picasa Photo viewer & etc by Pixite LLC), and then posted to my blog via my small iPad mini with another app I had to buy that would allow me to post from a Picasa album (Blogsy). It's sort of nuts, but Google only allows you to upload photos to G+ and  not to a Picasa album of your choice, and their Blogger app only gives you the option to upload directly from your device and not import from an album in Picasa. Justifying these small expenses since I now have a stream-lined portable system that fits easily in my purse to go anywhere, anytime.

NO idea how to re-size the images, though! Don't see an html option in Blogger. I'll try opening Blogger in a web page and see if I can do it that way - if they're smaller, you'll know it worked!

Well, that's not a lot of fun - you can add your photos from Picasa into your blog post in the Chrome app. Dang. So that was wasted money on Blogsy. But I did not find any way to upload from your device to a specific Picasa album - not even in Chrome - so the Pixite app is useful. I also found Puffin Web Browser which is even better since it can access Flash on the web - Steve Jobs had a thing about Flash and so all device iOS systems do without (though I still can't upload to a specific album through Puffin, so the Pixite one is good).

Later that evening I did another sketch in semi-darkness from an indistinct image of myself in my iPad Mini screen. A lot of it was done without looking at the paper. 

Posted with Blogsy

I'll be without a computer for about a week - but of course will be on-line via 'devices' - a cell phone, a tablet. I'm trading in my 6 year old iMac and a laptop. I'm presently in the process of stripping them. The format option in Disk Utility simply is not working, so I am deleting everything manually -which is hard. Even though I have everything backed up, I am manually deleting files, deleting years.

And something I have been wanting to do for 10 years and finally did today: I submitted four poems to a journal.

A day of endings and beginnings, then. And beautiful Summer has at last arrived in Toronto - finally!

Have a lovely week!
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Another Sunday Morning Self-Portrait

Between first and second cup of coffee this morning. Another self-portrait done looking into a turned-off computer screen, so not a real mirror, lol. Last Sunday I did one, and now this Sunday - maybe it's a Sunday Morning thing. Anyway, I never seem to make it out to life-drawing sessions, and I will sit still for myself. (c) Brenda Clews. It's on 130lb archival paper, 15" x 11", Lamy fountain pen with Noodler's Black Ink.

I photographed this in direct sun, which I find best for white balance, and then I darkened the lines a bit - and yet I am not seeing the same full scope of the detail in the drawing as I did in last week's self-portrait that was scanned. This one is too large for my scanner.

detail

full-size

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A Victoria Day self-portrait

With a Lamy fountain pen that was scratchy and then would ink but was mostly a lovely scratchy.

A Victoria Day self-portrait done while enjoying a cup of strong coffee. Since I never seem to make it out to life-drawings sessions, I thought I should simply draw the shadow in the computer screen (which was the 'mirror' for this one - rather indistinct and very grey). I don't mind if I don't resemble myself. :)} (Eyes a bit larger than they should be because I had reading glasses on and didn't put the frames in.)

©Brenda Clews, 2014, 11" x 8.5", Noodler's black ink, Lamy fountain pen, archival 130lb Pentalic paper.

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'Clay Lady' (1:29min) is too risqué? Issue with YouTube's rules? Oh, my.

A figurative clay sculpture without any discernable 'details' is considered too risqué? YouTube wants to classify this videopoem as 'adult content'??? She might as well have been wearing a body stocking for all the detail there is. I seem to be running into a few problems with YouTube and mysterious 'violations' of their policies. Since when is figurative art considered porn? Am I supposed to clothe a fairly indistinct clay sculpture (in terms of details of anatomy and the forbidden parts - heck, she doesn't even have nipples) and that is mostly torso? I've been laughing all morning. They threatened to pull it from public viewing but it's still there, for now at least. Though they do appear to have frozen the view counts, something I have requested a review of.

direct link: Clay Lady - short time-lapse

A multi-media production, with subtitles. -- I did the sculpture at the Toronto School of Art. The background is part of my painting, 'Split Mask.' A section of my poem, 'Clay Lady,' is a voiceover with subtitles in the latter half of the video. I shot the video, turned it into .jpgs with SnapMotion, and edited it as stop motion. That's my voice, and I created the music with a cheap keyboard in GarageBand - a musical tone poem. Brenda Clews ©2014. http://brendaclews.com

Perhaps YouTube should offer a fig leaf cover-up in their video enhancement options for rogue artists like me so we can cover up the shame.

I guarantee that Clay Lady does not seek to incite or sell sex.

I refuse to categorize this multimedia art video as 'Adult Content.' And not only that, two more videopoems with similar footage are in production.



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(same) tree outside my window

Noodler's Black Ink and a dip pen, and tubes of decades old watercolour that I found in the bottom of a drawer. (Same) tree outside my window, ©Brenda Clews, 2014, 10" x 8.5", 130lb archival paper.
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A lovely Mother's Day

Lol! A lovely Mother's Day - a video call with my daughter for an hour, and my son kindly raked and cleaned up my patio and then we went to Lizzie Violet's Cabaret Noir - the best!

That's me reading a complexly constructed piece that will become the opening in a voiceover prose poem in a videopoem - I compacted three different pieces of writing (that I dragged out of the tangles in my mind) over months to create an intricate piece that was edited and re-written a few times and yet it was thought to be stream-of-consciousness writing... which struck me as quite funny (it had been a lot of literal fret-work). But, I suppose, the thing is to make the final version look effortless and a bit bumpy, as if it had been dashed off in a moment of inspiration.

Or maybe it was reading from a Moleskine journal - the place where you usually write the first draft as it comes out. I had written all over the place in a number of different apps and programs on my computer and tablet and actually hand wrote the final edited version from all the computer ones!

I need to write a few more pages before it will work with the clip that I have already edited. If the body of the piece takes as long as the beginning did, it could be many months before it's done!
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