ionosphere

Posts Tagged ‘Drawing on location’

It has been so hot here that the prospect of Plein Air painting is somewhat repulsive. Perhaps a drawing done on the spot with color notes and lots of photo reference is the way to go.  Right now I’m setting up at the drawing board next to the computers. The Weather Alert radio upstairs just turned itself on automat­i­cally with some warning or advisory. It was in a cabinet in the dining room staying quiet. I’d just taken it back out again. I know now that we have another day of excessive heat expected here on Saturday. Oh joy.

I’m surrounding myself with these OTT Light bulbs. They give you brilliant illumi­nation but they are CFLs and will save a lot over a period of time and they are daylight balanced. You can find a nice display of OTT lighting at any JoAnn Fabric Store and I’ve even seen them at Michaels Arts and Crafts. They are also available here online and have a nice variety of shapes and forms that they come in to suit people’s different needs.

Color-wise they are much more effective than the old Luxo Lamps that I was used to working with. They relied on a round fluorescent tube and in the center was a spot for the incan­descent bulb. While this gave you more balanced lighting than fluorescent or incan­descent bulbs alone… it still did not come close to daylight. These OTT bulbs seem to make a big difference. You ought to check them out. These bulbs do reduce eyestrain quite a bit.  I’ve got to get on into painting here now.  so … I’ll keep writing  …more later

Another year passes and the Fourth of July remains symbolic.

Greetings to all from Holland, Pennsylvania as another July 4^th marks the anniversary of freedom from British rule. I’ve been diluting the water­color pigments and marking the cotton paper. Been looking around Bucks County for a good old fashioned Chicken Coop.

Sue found me one out Newtown-Richboro Road at Solly Brothers. Trouble is that it is hard to gather reference through the chicken wire that these rascals are behind. Spot metering and focusing is difficult when the virtual layer exists and the infrared system sees that instead of the intended target. But I will locate some more acces­sible Chickens around here. I’ve seen them on the road down to the Buxmont Veterinary Hospital… I’ll keep looking. I’d like to draw some Roosters.

My personal calendar turns over on Sunday as I reach the 53 year mark. What can I tell you? Beats the alter­native I suppose. I sure don’t like the images that I’ve seen of me lately. I suppose that it’s a good thing that I’m usually behind the camera. Speaking of behind the camera… I see my childhood friend Rob Vaughn is the anchor on the Lehigh Valley’s Channel 69 10:00 PM News carried on WFMZ. I’d seen Rob on a special report or two in the past when they picked up their stories on another channel. I was very glad to see that he’s doing well. His Dad — Bob Vaughn’s voice still echoes in my memory “WCBS news time is… ” Seems like I always had WCBS on in the car when I drove… especially at night. While growing up Rob and I used to use telescopes to practice the primitive art of Astronomy. My synapses do barf up old info from time to time. Rob had a Tasco telescope and I had a Monolux Refractor. I still remember Rob’s mom Ruby, brother Michael and sister Pam. It was just real good to see Rob on television here. Good work Rob.

I hope that everyone has a great Fourth of July Holiday -
please leave the fireworks to the pros…

For the past few weeks prior to Christmas — I’d been working on five drawings of the grand­children of Mr. Robert Leffler, my father-in-law out in Tucson, Arizona. We’d even gotten in touch with La Paloma Art Gallery in Tucson so that mats would be cut and waiting when we got there. You just can’t transport art properly on the airlines. If we’d framed them the glass would need replacing at the very least. Stuff gets tossed around. Sue bought two heavy plastic frames and and we nested and taped them together with the drawings carefully placed in a tracing pad between the two. From there, they would be my carry-on luggage along with my camera, extra memory cards and a battery charger.

Initially we were set to fly on the afternoon of Christmas Day. Turned out that our flight from PHL on US Airways was canceled due to a shortage of flight crew. So Sue went to work resched­uling from this to that… and back again. It wasn’t too much fun. We got up at about 2:45 AM and I brewed the coffee. We left in the dark. It was rainy. The night before I’d finally cleared a snow drift and plow in with the VW Beetle and the driver’s side window regulator broke in the pouring rain. Murphy’s Law. So — Trash bags were taped over the window and the rain stayed out. Thank goodness we were taking the van to the airport. We parked and dragged all the luggage into the United terminal at PHL. Two connecting flights and we were finally in Tucson.

The entire reason for our going West was to attend and document Mr. Leffler’s 80^th Birthday Celebration that was held on the afternoon of Saturday, December 27, 2009. Good thing that I had the art and the camera because our luggage was nowhere to be seen. The morning of the party — Sue, the girls, Lauren and myself all had to go shopping at 7:30 AM or so — otherwise… I’d have been in the same t-shirt and jeans that I traveled in. As would all of the group that departed from Philly. So — We had clothes. Late Sunday night, the day after the party, they found our bags and brought them to the house in Tucson. You pay $20 each for 4 bags from point A to point B and they lose them. Will we be compen­sated by the airlines for the loss of the bags and needing to go buy clothes? Who knows?

The first thing that I did on return was to jump onto the computer here to “process” the Olympus Raw Format “ORF” files in Photoshop CS3 Extended and convert them into uncom­pressed Tiff Images (2.26 Gigabytes). Then I made full size Jpegs, half size Jpegs and quarter size Jpegs and burned all materials onto a data DVD and onto 3 CD-Roms for distri­b­ution and safekeeping. As of yesterday afternoon all were ready to ship. That’s good. In case the extended family is inter­ested in them — I’ll pop them into a NextGen Gallery and post them here very soon. For now I have to work on a website.

The VW Beetle is now in the shop to fix that broken window that I mentioned and the parts won’t be in until Friday. So I’ll be right here working I suppose. Lots to do. Got to go change over the laundry and get another load of wash in. I’ll be back and corre­sponding again soon — but nose to the grind­stone on that website for now.

Sue and I spent the day in Tyler Park drawing in our sketch­books

just about the end of May. It was a great day and quite warm as I recall. I took a bunch of pictures that day — some of which I’d really like to go back and draw and paint from. I’m putting together a NextGen Gallery of those images and I think that they’ll work with the CoolIris viewer.