Here is the poster and description for the July 7, 2014 life-drawing session from the Toronto Branch website:
Poster illustration by Jeremy Cardarelli. Two Toronto trouble makers go out of the comic pages and into the dungeon at the upcoming Dr.Sketchy's Toronto session. Naughty tattooed hottie Kensie Vicioüs and beefcake batboy Toronto Batman will be posing together in their skimpiest costumes.
Watch out - Kensie heard Toronto Batman has been a very bad bat. She just may have to punish him.
Dr. Sketchy’s Anti-Art School is the little New York art event that became a movement. Started in 2005 by artist Molly Crabapple, the concept is simple. Artist’s draw glamorous burlesque dancers, compete in contests, and win wacky prizes. From it’s humble Brooklyn beginnings, Dr. Sketchy’s now has over 100 branches around the globe, including Los Angeles, London, Rome, Tokyo, and Melbourne. Learn more about Dr. Sketchy's here: http://www.drsketchy.com/
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Dr Sketchy's Anti-Art School Burlesque life-drawing last night was based on comic book figures but truly seemed more BDSM. They were a kinky Batman and Catwoman, let's say. Batman and his masked Madame of Meows posed with fun and hilarity for us. They are actually married and were a great couple to draw! Despite the short poses, mostly 5 min, some 10min, one 15min, and the complexity of two figures interlacing, there were some beautiful drawings in the room. Such talented artists all over!
Here are mine. They're all done on 18" x 24" 80lb Strathmore archival drawing paper with graphite, the regular kind and the water-soluble kind. I am a little uncomfortable posting these, they are so risqué, but I do keep a record of my drawings and paintings on this blog, so chalk it up and on with the show.
The two below are the full drawing that was cropped in #4, and #6 with a solarizing filter (I like this effect on that drawing).
See where I underlined. The SCR="//WWW.
Do you see what's missing?
The videos APPEAR where you've embedded them (in Blogger, for instance) but THEY DON'T PLAY!
TO CORRECT THE BROKEN CODE: add "https:" manually. Like this:
src="https://www.
SPREAD THE WORD! Something like this is as unforgivable as it is unbelievable.
Ellen El alerted me to this article, YouTube Is About To Delete Independent Artists From Its Site in Forbes Magazine, as a possible reason for YouTube's faulty embed codes. However, if true, an intentional act by YouTube without telling subscribers, one surmizes whether there could be some law suits in the offing over it.
Since I always include a direct link - for people who follow me by email - anyone who has been interested in seeing my videos has been able to go to YouTube and watch them there. Meaning I haven't had any complaints - people just figured it was their Internet connection or that YouTube was experiencing technical difficulties at that moment.
I wondered why my video view counts were down and thought I had lost my audience after not posting videos for awhile. It was YouTube itself un-enabling watching videos embedded on other sites.
YouTube is far too large and powerful not to fix this issue. There's a reason they are not permitting us to post watchable videos on our sites. What it is, frankly, despite the Forbes article, I couldn't guess.
I just know that YouTube has been giving out BROKEN CODE for over a year - I found videos without the proper link as far back as May 2013.
Here's a video I posted fairly recently. I'm not even going to add the direct link. See if it is finally watchable from here. And don't ask me what that dumb little link to my YouTube site is that appears at the beginning - it's not something I added or authorized - just click the x to close it. I subtitled this video, so click on CC if you would like to read or get the words translated as they are being spoken (poem fragment starts 25sec in).
How can rain clouds be so dark? Black little thunderclaps roaming the sky.
A Canada Day of intermittent storms, gutter-filling downpours, a misty moody sky, and the air so thick with humidity we know we are living inside one.
One of my favourite kinds of days - torrential rains for 10 minutes, stormy little clouds roving like black pirate ships, and a sun that shines through a wide cloud cover making the sky so white it is visionary.
And then, the clearings of blue. The hot, direct sun on your skin.
Somehow I managed to get one done this week - looking into an image in the tablet looking at me while watching Season 4 of Game of Thrones (finally). I clipped the drawing onto a bar of an upright laundry drier thing and clamped the lamps on and took some photos but like the one shot with 'creative lighting' best. Now... back to the show!
I also used dots to map the proportions before I began drawing with the ink and this method seemed to help with the likeness, on which I can never comment since, really, our eyes aren't constructed to look at ourselves are they - and what we see in a mirror isn't what people see when they look at us.
Is there a decent resemblance? I have no idea. I struggled with the drawing, and used lots of different media, including, finally, a ball point pen. Also, I am, once again, without a computer and so it is difficult to see if the photograph is accurate against the original - I think so, but will have to await a better screen to know for sure.
It was a terrific and inspiring afternoon of poetry! Many thanks to our features, Clara Blackwood, Michael Fraser, and Kate Marshall Flaherty, and to all the open mics, Norman, Christian, Ellen, Catherine, Areta, Ghada, and Andrew, and to everyone who came out! And to Urban Gallery for the space, mineral water and warmth - thanks especially to Calvin Hambrook, who made it all possible.
The photographs were part of 'I See,' an exhibition at Urban Gallery by Anna Keenan and Lucy Snyder.
The Spring Poetry Salon was hosted by Brenda Clews at Urban Gallery, 400 Queen St E, Toronto and held on Saturday afternoon, May 31, 2014.
Clara Blackwood featured at the Spring Poetry Salon @ Urban Gallery May 31, 2014. I really enjoyed her poetry, which ranges from mystical poems about strange happenings in an apartment building to psychic mediums to on-line dating to the Icelandic ash cloud when she visited Scotland and stayed in a haunted mansion. In her book, Forecast, the poet is a seer, a medium, and reads the hidden forces of the world like a Tarot reader. Her poetry is lyrical with many layers. Many thanks for coming out and sharing your poetry, Clara!
CLARA BLACKWOOD is a poet, visual artist and tarot reader. Her first poetry collection, Subway Medusa (2007), was the inaugural book in Guernica Editions' First Poets Series, which features first books by poets thirty-five and under. Her poetry has appeared in Canadian and International journals. Forecast, her second book of poetry, was published by Guernica Editions in March 2014. She lives in Toronto.
The photographs were part of 'I See,' an exhibition at Urban Gallery by Anna Keenan and Lucy Snyder.
The Spring Poetry Salon was hosted by Brenda Clews at Urban Gallery, 400 Queen St East, Toronto. Clara's reading was videoed and edited by Brenda Clews.
Kate Marshall Flaherty featured at the Spring Poetry Salon @ Urban Gallery May 31, 2014. I really enjoyed her poetry, especially the way she approaches difficult subjects with honesty and a transcendent grace. Her poetry is full of feeling, rich with living and loving, lyrical. Many thanks for coming out and sharing your poetry, Kate!
KATE MARSHALL FLAHERTY is published in journals such as Descant, CV2, Freefall, and Windsor Review. She was short-listed for Nimrod's Pablo Neruda Poetry Prize, the Malahat Review Long Poem and Descant's Best Canadian Poem. "Reaching V," a book of poems, was published by Guernica Editions in 2014. She lives in Toronto with her husband and three spirited children, where she guides yoga/retreats/writing workshops. Poetry is her lifeline.
Michael Fraser featured at the Spring Poetry Salon @ Urban Gallery May 31, 2014. I really enjoyed his poetry, from the more lyrical pieces on childhood and middle age and family, and lovers, to the series he is writing on Black historical figures - he read some poems on Black experience during the American Civil War. Many thanks for coming out and sharing, Michael!
MICHAEL FRASER is a high school teacher, poet, and writer who has been published in anthologies and journals including Literary Review of Canada, The Paris Atlantic, and Caribbean Writer. His first poetry collection, "The Serenity of Stone," won the 2007 Canadian Aid Literary Award manuscript contest and was published in 2008 by Bookland Press. He also won Arc's 2012 Readers' Choice Poem of the Year, and his poem, "Going to Cape," is included in The Best Canadian Poetry in English, 2013. Michael is the creator and director of the Plasticine Poetry Series.
Christian Christian opens his reading with some thoughts on the use of the term, 'beautiful,' and then reads his biking poem, 'The Race,' on open mic at the Spring Poetry Salon @ Urban Gallery May 31, 2014. I enjoyed his poetry and reading. Many thanks, Christian!
Ghada Khoraych reads (for the first time ever) on open mic at the Spring Poetry Salon @ Urban Gallery May 31, 2014. Another beautiful talent in this vibrant city. Many thanks, Gada!
My little open mic at the recent Spring Poetry Salon that I hosted at Urban Gallery. I have uploaded 7 open mic and feature readings but have shared them on the Facebook pages of those people or by private email. As soon as I get all of the Features videos done, I'll make a blog post with all the photos and videos.
I still plan on doing a video review of the featured poets when I'm finished editing and uploading all the clips.
The writing in the drawing of the last post is part of the writing I read from in this open mic clip (though I didn't include it in my reading that day).
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