
Sunday, January 14, 2007 B
"Artist Cards #2, #3 and #4"
1:36pm
Just before we entered the theater yesterday to watch "Freedom Writers", we took a brief look at the library's temporary location in Old Town. I walked up to one bookcase and pulled out a thick paperback called The Nietzsche Reader. Right away, the book fell open to a passage about art and the comfort it gives humanity. I read:
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Our ultimate gratitude to art. If we had not welcomed the arts and invented this kind of cult of the untrue, then the realization of general untruth and mendaciousness that now comes to us through sciencethe realization that delusion and error are conditions of human knowledge and sensationwould be utterly unbearable. Honesty would lead to nausea and suicide. But now there is a counterforce against our honesty that helps us to avoid such consequences: art as the good will to appearance. We do not always keep our eyes from rounding off something and, as it were, finishing the poem: and then it is no longer eternal imperfection that we carry across the river of becomingthen we have the sense of carrying a goddess, and feel proud and childlike as we perform this service. As an artistic phenomenon existence is still bearable for us, and art furnishes us with eyes and hands and above all the good conscience to be able to turn ourselves into such a phenomenon. At times we need a rest from ourselves by looking upon, by looking down upon, ourselves and, from an artistic distance, laughing over ourselves or weeping over ourselves; we must discover the hero no less than the fool in our passion for knowledge, we must occasionally find pleasure in our folly, or we cannot continue to find pleasure in our wisdom! Precisely because we are at bottom grave and serious human beingsreally more weights than human beingsnothing does us as much good as a fool's cap: we need it in relation to ourselveswe need all exuberant, floating, dancing, mocking, childish, and blissful art lest we lose the freedom above things that our ideal demands of us. It would mean a relapse for us, with our irritable honesty, to get involved entirely in morality and, for the sake of the over-severe demands we make on ourselves in these matters, to become virtuous monsters and scarecrows. We should be able also to stand above moralityand not only to stand with the anxious stiffness of a man who is afraid of slipping and falling at any moment, but also to float above it and play! How then could we possibly dispense with art, and with the fool? And as long as you are in any way ashamed before yourselves, you do not yet belong with us!
quoted from The Gay Science, page 218
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"All exuberant, floating, dancing, mocking, childish, and blissful art", yes I delight in such and creating such. Here are some more exuberant attempts at art cards:

It's 'original', grin!

The runner seems confined within the small picture space, the nay sayer doesn't help!

Yes, this is a bit bigger than 2.5 x 3.5...
I'd drawn out the rectangles carefully on the sheet of bristol board, but I'd measured wrong on the center pieces. Thus this one is 2.5 x 3.9!! Because I am being honest with my digital representations, that they match the original, I haven't shrunk it down to size. If I ever make the 'limited edition' prints out of it, though, then I will shrink it.

There you see it as 2.5 x 3.5 (porportionately, anyway...)
I will soon create a gallery for them, but not now. Now I crave a nap, and so a nap is what I've have! See you later.

Wednesday, January 17, 2007 A
"Silver Dollar Pancakes"
7:12am
Julia before she brings me pancakes, tells me they are 'Silver Dollar' pancakes. She asks, "Do you know why I call them that?"
"Because they are small and round?" I suggest.
"Yes, and because they are 'legally tender"!
Heavens, I can't imagine an ILLEGALLY tender pancake! (And yes, the pancakes are small, round, tender and very tasty!)

Wednesday, January 17, 2007 B
"Breaking the Colorful Ice"
10:23pm
It's been unseasonably cold around here. Co-workers even reported freezing pipes. This just doesn't happen in Yuma. Maybe in Tucson, with its higher elevation, but never semi-tropical Yuma. Hell has frozen over? Not quite. But it started to warm up today, for which I'm glad. I'm running out of thick flannel shirts to wear.
Meanwhile, in our nicely heated home, I sat cross legged before the computer, puzzled at what to do with the second intuitive art gallery. I finally got the first gallery organized, with the most visually striking images first. But I kept re-arranging images in the second gallery, utterly uncertain. Julia suggested that some of the simple sketches might be more worthy of a more prominent showing if I colored them. So I took one I liked, and had at it with the color:
Before:

After:


For the background, I first took two shades of blue, and rendered 'clouds', and then I did something else to it, was it the 'fresco' filter? I thought it seemed to have a filmy icy effect. Then I made successively smaller masks, gradually darkening the background by 5 percent on each mask. Then I took the original sketch, which had been a line drawing, and inverted it. I created a mask of the black background and inverted that so I would just have the lady and the words, copying it to place on the new background. Next, I chose the orangish tones for her based on the color inversion results of the background, so she would be distinct, but also complimentary to the background:
To demonstrate:

And then, yes, I moved her to the top of the gallery!

Friday, January 19, 2007
"A Work of 'Art'"
8:49pm

Art Buchwald 1925-2007
(drawn from a photo taken at his 80th birthday celebration)
The news was all in the papers, Art Buchwald had died. I hadn't paid much attention to this Pulitzer prize winning journalist who has written more than thirty books. THIRTY books! You think I'd have paid more attention. Anyway, I paid attention to the column he wrote that he wished distributed following his death. What was he thinking about so close to death? What regrets had he had? "For some reason my mind keeps turning to food. I know I have not eaten all the eclairs I always wanted."
Eclairs! Facing death, he was not saying, "Oh, I should have eaten more steel cut oatmeal," he was wishing for more eclairs.
Chowhound that I am, I so readily identify. Seeking other quotes for which he is known, I found the following:
“Whether it's the best of times or the worst of times, it's the only time we've got.”
So true!

Saturday, January 20, 2007 A
"Let's Eat"
7:27am

Anticipation of Good Feed - You Know You Really Want To...
The 'about to die' have spoken, and they want more eclairs. Me, I shall choose chocolate chip cookies from Anthony's Deli. You eat these, you don't want supermarket fare anymore. Maybe the supermarket cookies, in their colorful packages with the brand names and the elves on them or the farm or whatever are cheaper. But once you taste the better quality...
...well, at least a chowhound like me feels that way!
I hope to color this soon. Maybe even today!

Saturday, January 20, 2007 B
"Let's Eat Two"
1:30pm

Anticipation of Good Feed - You Know You Really Want To...
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