Well, I don’t know if I remember telephone booths, but I do remember pay phones (and wonder where they all went and why, to be honest, I mean now you lose your cell phone you’re screwed…). Anyway this uhh, artifact was sitting on the curb waiting for who knows what in Orange VA if memory serves several years back. A relic of the lengthy era when people believed in and paid respect to privacy.
I am still grinding through the monochrome archive; about halfway through it now. I am also converting a lot of good color photos to monochrome as I go, so it’s slower going altogether, and I’m reworking quite a few already converted ones too- reasons varying from a poor original conversion to having vastly better software for conversions now (I use Silver Efex Pro 3 now). All while well, trying to get back into fiction writing and learning to draw in graphite…I should have some new alcohol ink abstracts soon enough as well, but for all the things I missed out on in life, nobody’s managed to steal artmaking from me yet. I keep realizing writing fiction does something intangible that makes my life ten times less miserable, but what it is I can’t say. All I know is I have far less mental health symptoms flaring up when I’m doing it (in fact, in the middle of doing it, it’s like a lot just lifts temporarily, as well as for a duration of some hours afterwards. I’ve never figured that one out, nor have the doctors).
And for what it’s worth I’m making progress in non-photographic visual arts slowly but surely. I was playing with Adobe Fresco (free version comes with my CC photography plan) and realized it’s relatively streamlined and easy to figure out. I also noticed drawing practice made the inexpensive Wacom One tablet, when propped up on an angled tabletop drawing board, a lot easier for me. Additionally, I worked a little further into The Art and Science of Drawing, and (I’m not getting paid to say this anymore than I’m paid from the annoying ads on this free site) sure enough, it’s chock full of insights and advice I couldn’t figure out on my own over the years, or read anywhere else; I’m around page 50 or so and Brent Eviston, who teaches drawing in person and has poured his experience into the text, has made a simply excellent book. I’m very confident I’m going to be able to learn to draw if I apply myself daily now; in the past I was totally convinced of the opposite. I’d recommend it if you want to learn to draw.
I have also noticed I’m at 60% or so of storage on this site again, so I may have to delete posts soon enough. I’m hoping I have the new site up before that needs to happen. I probably won’t be blogging casually there, though; I’d sooner do that here.
It is Spring again; I’m going to try and be out more with the camera, and let that be that. New stuff may be slow to arrive on site because I’m in a workflow fix with the old stuff being (finally) organized. So there’s that, but I do have to do new work to stay tolerably sane, so I’m not completely stopping, either.
I think that about covers it for today.
Drifter Imagery 