Saturday, April 5, 2008 A

"Good Fish and Good Company"
5:22am

We had a lovely visit with friends last night, such good conversation and tasty food as an accompaniment. I remembered to bring the camera. Before our friends arrived, I snapped some of the fish deco:

We sampled the crab and salmon cakes, then Julia and I split a halibut with spinach ravioli. Everything was especially tasty. When we finished our meal, Julia reminded me that I'd brought my camera. So I made a few tries. I hope to make a drawing that takes the best face from each of the various photos and blends them. Nick had a little better luck than I did:

Meanwhile, as practice, I drew Nick:

It's hard to draw from a flash picture. Without shadows, it is difficult to ascertain the forms. For my drawing, I imagined a light source from the upper left and how the shadows would be.

Saturday, April 5, 2008 B

"Sea Lions"
3:20pm

I'd hoped to see the Budweiser Clydesdale horses at the Fair today. I thought I followed the graying man's directions, but I never did cross paths with them, even though he said they'd make their way through out all open areas. But I did see the sea lions.

For an extra fee, we could have had one kiss us. But I was content just to take their photos as they played and rested:

He (or she?) looks so cute just resting there. But I couldn't tell anything about what sort of body s/he has. So I went to Wikipedia and learned these mammals have four flippers:


Drawn from their illustrative photo...

Sadly, I also learned:
"The government of Japan has set a quota of 116 kills per year in Hokkaido,[citation needed] as sea lions are seen as a threat to commercial fisheries. International environmentalists and local fishery advocates continue to debate the issue.

The Norwegian government has set a quota of 200 kills per year.[citation needed]"

The Wiki article has been tagged with 'citation needed'. So I did a Google search and learned:

U.S. to let states kill sea lions to save salmon
"The National Marine Fisheries Service granted permission to the states to target as many as 85 sea lions a year near the Bonneville Dam on the Columbia River. Oregon's Department of Fish and Wildlife said removal will start after April 1."

'Removal'!, that's what they're calling it. Don't kill the sea lions, just quit fishing the wild salmon! I'm only going to eat farm grown salmon.

In other animal news, I've learned that at least the San Franscisco Art Institute permanently closed the animal snuff video exhibit. While I think the Institute's claims of 'violent death threats' rather suspiciously bogus, I'm glad they at least got the message.

Sunday, April 6, 2008 A

"House of Life"
6:26am

In ancient Egyptian, from the 'New Kingdom' onwards, they called "what amounted to the school and library" the "House of Life"

"May you become a scribe and frequent the House-of-Life. Become like a chest of writings.[...]"
"The Instruction of Amunnakhte", _The Literature of Ancient Egypt_, edited by William Kelly Simpson, pages 221-222

This fits the Friday Illo theme of "SAVE" quite well. Institutions of learning, such as schools and museums, SAVE knowledge in a secure place, so that this saved knowledge can be studied, and thereby saved by the students, who then with that knowledge 'become like a chest of writings'.

(Ideally, this is so. When institutions become corrupt, they fail at being 'Houses of Life', and become instead 'Houses of Death'. Of course I am referring to that animal snuff video exhibit.)

Sunday, April 6, 2008 B

"A Very Satisfying Day"
4:05pm

I've been slowly working on gallery of ancient images of Set. I received permission to use a superior photo for Set gives life to Horus. I got the New Kingdom amulet up. Earlier, while I was looking for a passage regarding the "House of Life" as a place of learning, I found an appropriate passage which really strengthens the "Horus and Set Reconciled page. Not only that, I found out the when and where of the papyrus showing Set stabbing the Apep which had been mystifying. I didn't find the where and when of the Set glyph, but found another glyph very similar to the unidentified one. Furthermore, I found another relief very similar to the 12th Dynasty relief from the pyramid temple.

It is really exciting to have my knowledge of these things become more cohesive. Also, I couldn't look at the lovely linear aspects of that 18th Dynasty relief and not have a go at it myself:


On a limestone block of a destroyed monument of Thutmose II, in the Open Air Museum, 18th Dyn.
photo KMT/Forbes - KMT magazine
VOLUME 15, NO. 4, Winter 2004-05

It's been a very satisfying day!

Tuesday, April 8, 2008

"House of Colorful Life"
11:05pm

This is fairly much as the original. One thing I did is use the digital techniques of making it grayscale to show the tonal weaknesses. But instead of fixing it on the scan, I fixed the original and then rescanned it.

Ooh, I would say more, but sleep calls me...

(Note of April 9, 2008)
Last night I'd carefully enlarged the vertical to make it fit 8x10. But this picture doesn't look right that way. After playing with it a bit, I've decided it looks best in the crop above, that harmonizes with the long horizontal of the building. This will fit into a matt on an 10x14 frame. Yes, that means a custom frame, but I think I've seen some built-it-yourself frames.

Here's a small version of what would work as a 11x14 print:


The darker lines help emphasize the horizontal, and also should one wish to have a 10x14 frame, their borders serve as cutting lines!

Wednesday, April 9, 2008

"Courbet and I"
8:15pm

It's not often that I look in the mirror and am pleased. But this afternoon, I caught a bit of a Mona Lisa smile and thought I'd like to draw that. But when I got home, the small round mirror wasn't giving me that.

So I thought I'd try something else. I found the article I read while Julia was having her hair done very interesting. Gustave Courbet is a fascinating artist, as he followed his own vision, radical for his time. There was a small photo in the article that looked intriguing, so I thought I'd hunt for larger versions of it. The Smithsonian's web version doesn't include that photo, so I found another, and began sketching:


This one found at Wikipedia, credit to Nadar

But no matter how I tried to magnify the photo, I couldn't make clear the placement of his hand against his face. So I thought I'd grab that mirror and see how my hand looks when it assumes that shape against the face. I found the mirror result mildly interesting, so I quit the Courbet effort and had at my face:


The mouth and eye is like that because the hand pressure pulls on the flesh, pulling up the mouth...

After I finished drawing me, I went back to Courbet:


I probably could do much better if I went more slowly and carefully...

...but, alas, I am such an impatient person!

Friday, April 11, 2008 A

"Computer and I"
6:48am

I conducted a small test of my email. I used the MSN email to send a large file to my alternative Yahoo address, which hardly ever gets email, and to Julia, who keeps hers nearly empty. She was able to receive the photo on her computer. I was not. So I tried something. I went to her computer and tried my Yahoo alternative address, and photo was downloadable. THEN, I tried my regular Yahoo email, with its 5000 something messages. I was able to get the 800K photo, and I was even able to download the 8000K Powerpoint page, with its lovely scenes. Thus, I've discovered the inability to download files via Yahoo isn't Yahoo's fault nor even my excessive email load.

The fault lies with my computer, for it tells me it can't find the program, etc. It is the darned corrupted Jit compiler that is the fault. The computer says to 'rerun set up' when I start it up, but of course I never found any info online regarding that. So last night we tried various things. The booklet that came with the computer advises to do 'system restore' to an earlier point.

Alas, "system restore" did not work, and I may have to find the recovery disks I made four years ago when we got this computer. Meanwhile, Julia has been searching the Microsoft pages to find an easier cure.

Ah, but not all is dispair. I've learned of a wonderfully imaginative artist Vladimir Kush. Oh, to be able to paint like that!

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