Very excited to be in LA and spending time with my brother Jon. #cc via Instagram http://ift.tt/1opqFV5
Very excited to be in LA and spending time with my brother Jon. #cc
A look into my Daily Practice
I began this year with a resolution. I usually don’t do New Years resolutions. I believe that if you want to change something, you should just do it and not wait for a certain date to begin.
But this year I began with a goal, one that have not been able to keep up with. But the goal was to draw every day. I kept up with it for a week. Once I started up on campus, my daily sketch dropped away.
But I have been trying to weave daily practice back into my routine. There are two of them below.
I think drawing is an important part of looking at the world around you. And the only way to improve a skill is to use it constantly. And drawing is a skill I want to get better at. Lately I have been drawing with a pen rather than a pencil. I do this to break out of the usual habits. I usually sketch in pencil. But that always looks the same. How do I change that? How do I come to the same page with fresh eyes? My answer is using a different tool. It has been a change too. Not being able to erase, having a limited range value to draw with has made me think more before setting the pen to the page. Which is good.
Now the hard part is to keep doing it everyday.
“World War II on a Paradise Island” – Can you say South Pacific Research?
Found this online:
Rare color photographs of a moment lost in time, faraway from home in a tainted paradise. Buried in the bowels of the LIFE archives, I stumbled upon this unique glimpse into the island life of American soldiers stationed on the Tawara Atoll, located in the Gilbert Islands of the Pacific Ocean. Captured by photojournalist J. R. Eyerman in 1944, the year before the war’s end.
via Messy Nessy Chic.
It is an amazing glimpse into WWII life that would be perfect visual research for a production of South Pacific.
The Archetypes Burst In, Illustrated | Cosmo Wenman
I am back from the latest USITT conference. I still need to write up that experience. But in the meantime, A person I follow on twitter, Cosmo Wenman, posted this great link about bronze casting off of 3d prints.
He sent a link to part of recent presentation of his called “The Archetypes Burst In, Illustrated”. Really cool stuff.
My print is about 1:14 into the movie. One of the exciting things about this technology is that is essentially just a tool for creativity. Everyone that sees it sees possibilities.
Four guidelines from Scott McCloud
Great talk by Scot McCloud, who is comics artist and author. Watch his talk below:
And what Garr Reynolds pulls out from the talk is exactly what resonated with me:
What Scott is saying is that there are many ways to pursue a vision based on what can/may be. People are doing this in science, the arts, politics, personal endeavors, etc. What it all comes down to, says scott, is this:
Learn from everyone
Follow no one
Watch for patterns
Work like hell
These four guidelines will take you far indeed as you create your own life story. via Presentation Zen: Scott McCloud: Presenting comics in a new (media) world.
Four guidelines to follow.
A Story of the West Side before Lincoln Center
Great research for anything happening in NYC in the fifties or of course for West Side Story.
“New York stands on the threshold of a brave, new era in the performing arts,” lead a New York Times article in April 1956. “An integrated center to serve the theatre, opera and operetta, music and dance is well into the planning stage.” To build that integrated center, of course, meant doing a little urban renewal: bulldozing the tenements, shops, and light industrial spaces spread out across coveted acreage in the neighborhoods of Lincoln Square and San Juan Hill.
via Ephemeral New York.
The photos are from the New York City Parks Department Archives.
The Beauty Project
Here is what I am working on right now :
It is what my department is working on right now, and it is dedicated to the exploration and creation of artworks that illustrate how cultures and subcultures approach the concept of beauty.
Sketchbooks, shoe polish and determination.
finishing a sketchbook is like finishing a container of shoe polish. When you start, you never can see how some little swipes her and there can ever get you to the end. And the turtle’s pace of drawing, writing and scribbling on each page can be maddeningly slow. But it can happen. I make this connection because I have finally done both, finished a container of shoe polish, and finished a sketchbook. Mostly my sketchbooks are partially filled before they are set aside for a new one.
Each bought with a reason or purpose:
“oh i will fill this one with only my production sketches. This time i will really sketch out this design and fill up this book.”
“Oooo, a new Moleskine, this is sweet! This elastically thing is awesome, you know if I just thought my sketchbook was aethestically pleasing then I would write in it more.”
“You know if this was a size that fit in my everyday bag I would use it more.”
“If it fit into a pocket I would use it more.”
It only was finished because I persistently used it. And it only took about two years. My hope the current one will fill sooner.
I wonder how much other people fight with the same issues. There is probably a desire to be creative in lots of people, and what separates the desire from the doing?
Thinking about Theater in Terms of Negotiated Agency
As I was skimming thru the Internet I came across this blog post and thought it was very interesting. Of course because of who I am, I looked at what she was saying thru the lens of theater. It is by Nina Simon, who runs the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History.
She quotes the creator of Sim City who said: “Game players have a negotiated agency that is determined by how the game is designed.” The term negotiated agency means a set of rules that decides how much freedom of choice they have to engage the game. Which immediately brought to mind the idea of theatrical conventions and the ‘rules of the game’ for theater performances. She goes on to say:
In other words, the more constrained the game environment, the less agency the player has. The more open, the more agency. Think about the difference between Pacman and Grand Theft Auto. Both games have a “gamespace” in which they are played. Both games have rules. But Grand Theft Auto invites the player to determine their own way of using the space and engaging with the rules. The player’s agency is not total, but it is significant.
A lot of games now give a lot of leeway or freedom for the player (audience of the game) to choose their way. As a result, younger generations are expecting a different set of rules to engage experiences. This is also reinforced by the rest of the world people are living in now. Think about the entertainment options that are available now as opposed to the 30-some years ago. By that I mean the younger generations have had a lot more interactive experiences on the web actively choosing and searching for their entertainment, as opposed to having the 4 broadcast TV channels I grew up with. There is a different attitude, of being connected to friends thru social networks and sharing their real life experiences with the online community. All of that contributes to younger generations expecting a different way of interacting with the world. Makers of theater today have to understand this when creating work. If you want to engage a diverse audience, this includes younger members, how can you revisit traditional notions of negotiated agency(conventions of theater) to spark the interest of that younger audience? Can that new negotiated agency create a form of theater that would be different than other entertainment? And would that form of theater bring in an audience that can get a passive audience experience through other modes of entertainment? Time will tell. Or perhaps I need to get out there and make something like that…
Questioning and self-critique
There are some people out there that I consider acquaintances, even though I have never met them in person. One of those people is Lisa Lazar. She is scenic artist at Berkley Repertory Theater and i know her thru the Scenic Artists email list on Yahoo. She has a blog that she sometimes posts about her scenic painting, and also gardening, beekeeping and photography. She is one of those intensely cool artsy people that I wished lived nearby. A recent post of her’s struck a chord with me. Hows Robb?: How I Suck The Joy Out Of Everything. In it she talks about seeing the imperfections is a sweater she has knitted and subsequently loses all sense of accomplishment and satisfaction in what she has created. She traces it back to criticism from growing up:
I grew up in a very unhappy family. My mother was violently abusive, and my parents lost no opportunity to let me know that they considered me an utter failure, someone who would never amount to anything. I was a shy, clumsy child, and my family took never failed to miss an opportunity to taunt me for my failings. To this day, I hear their voices in my head.
This sparked two thoughts in me. One, I hear nagging doubts in my head all the time, and everything I do on stage, I always see what could be improved. I would be surprised if there was someone out there that doesn’t have any doubt about what they do. Questioning your own work and looking for improvement isn’t a bad thing. It is what keeps you striving for improvement and searching for more. But that of course can be taken to an extreme. If you look at her sweater that she made:
Isn’t it beautiful? That would be an amazing gift to receive! The questioning voices she hears about her own work and adequacy make me so sad. She has been given an unfair and unjust burden for the rest of her life.
This is the second train of thought that came to me. Parenting is such an awesome (in the definition of “Extremely daunting; inspiring great admiration, apprehension, or fear.”) responsibility. I feel parents can’t just tell their children that everything single thing they do is perfect and world class, there has to be a bit of reality mixed in with the support and praise. But the love is always unconditional. This is something I need to be aware of with my kids. I think I am, but it can’t hurt to be reminded every once in a while.