Sunday 24 April 2016

Indian food & Art event...



Spent a great evening today with friends. We shared an Indian takeaway and afterwards chatted about music, social media, visual art & photography. The possibility of a board game had been in the offing but the conversation was too good and we'd eaten an extra helping or two plus homemade banana bread for afters (recipe here!). Soo's orange sofas were just too comfy to stir from.


Yup, Mike looking bemused at the stack of Indian dishes! There were only the four of us but Soo, who's broken her ankle, had ordered some extra courses plus pilau rice to freeze so she didn't have to worry about cooking whilst hopping. We managed to taste quite a lot...poppadoms and raita...mmm...

A sax player, a photographer/trumpet player, a collage maker extraordinaire and an illustrator. Usually when arty heads get together something new is created. This evening one of us came up with the idea of organising an event to promote our work. Artists can be notoriously bad at promoting themselves, and that's NOT a generalisation! We can be so focussed on the content of our work that we don't put the time into selling. Perhaps some are better than others at juggling both.

We're not aiming for a huge event, we're aiming for small. Although we each value ourselves as artists, after discussion it was agreed to keep it exclusive, invite only. There's a potential to build on this, get feedback from the event and perhaps help it evolve and travel to other venues. It's early days but I'll keep you posted.

I don't always give a title to the artworks I make and the image at the top of the page isn't named. It's an image I drew last year and I come back to again and again, making variations on the 'split' theme. Currently I'm working on an acrylic-on-canvas version - it'll be interesting using paints again after years of line drawing. I chose acrylics to do this as it's more opaque and I felt watercolours or oils would look too transparent although that in itself might create another dimension of this image. So far I've sketched the basic outlines in pencil onto a primed canvas. Watch this space :)

If you're interested in seeing some of my recent artwork check out my Bloowabbit page on facebook, link below.

Links:


Copyright © 2016 by Roisin O'Hagan/bloowabbit
All rights reserved. The artworks/illustrations or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the artist except for specific permission granted with a free downloadable.

Thursday 21 April 2016

Hello! & Painting with Light...



Helloooooooooooooo!!! Welcome to the bloowabbit blog...

So I've just joined Blogger after dismantling my previous blog on a site that was charging more fees than desirable. This site is free and is recommended to me so, ready to listen to advice (whether I use it or not), this is where I'll be blogging...and I've also signed up to a blogging support group in case I get stuck. Always good to have a few experienced pals in the background.

I'm a visual artist so my blogs will predominately relate to art. Drawing, inking, colouring, painting, hauls, favourite artists and so forth. Everyday life may well creep into what I write as it colours and influences my artwork.



image from www.adafruit.com

At the beginning of the week I went to a 'Painting with Light' workshop hosted by ADF (Arts & Disability Forum) and facilitated by Robin Price from DAS (Digital Arts Studio). Knew it was related to photography yet embarrassedly brought my pretty crap digital camera that wasn't an SLR and didn't have much flexibility of use. Thankfully Robin brought spares with him and I got to snap some slow shutter stills which he turned into gifs using gifsicle. 

The focus of the day's workshop was a Simple Adafruit Light Painter, a handmade LED light stick with a voltage converter, card reader and battery attached (there's a little more to it but step by step instructions can be found at https://learn.adafruit.com/neopixel-painter ). Robin downloaded a pixelated version of an image which was translated by the painting stick into a series of flashing LEDs which in turn was picked up by our cameras set on slow shutter as Robin moved with it in front of us. The results were photographs of the original image superimposed onto the room in which we sat, though it could have easily been superimposed on the street outside. Text can be used also. This is different from projection and works best without surrounding light interference. By holding the stick at different angles or moving in a different way a range of manipulated images can be photographed.

There was some electronic technical data that went right over my head. But I came away from the workshop understanding the processes of different types of light painting, learned about artists in this field and had a notebook full of related links to check out over the coming week. I also got chatting to another attendee about her Canon 60D which I had been looking at on ebay before Christmas with a view to videoing my artwork and possibly vlogging (though perhaps I should focus on successfully blogging first!).

Links:
www.adf.ie
https://digitalartsstudios.com/
http://robinprice.net/about/
https://blog.adafruit.com/2014/12/29/build-an-arduino-light-painter-arduino/


Copyright © 2016 by Roisin O'Hagan/bloowabbit
All rights reserved. The artworks/illustrations or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the artist except for specific permission granted with a free downloadable.