Thinning the Herd

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During my period of less tweeting and more action I went through my blog reader and culled out the following:

  • blogs that seemed like adverts
  • blogs that only focus on the pretty
  • blogs that were product focused
  • blogs that were focused on making the person out to me something they aren’t
  • anything that didn’t inspire/interest me

I focused on blogs that I go back to and read again and again. Blogs with good instructional content. Blogs with great photos and discussion. Blogs about the messy part of art. Blogs about the hard parts of art. Blogs about exploration; of the world and mind.

I was left with a handful of good blogs, blogs I read every time they post, blogs that if they don’t post I wonder where they’ve been, and when they do post I think, “YES!”

There’s a ton of info out there to filter through and sometimes it’s overload.

I’m trying to filter it the easy way- using the tools I’ve got.

What do you do to filter the cacophony of info?

observations on making videos

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I’ve been messing around with my video camera, my iPoo, and the boom mic stands that I use to hold them. I picked up a couple of official iPoo* tripod holders and for less than $5 each they are a little better than my clamp method, and cheaper, but don’t have that kludge** factor. They are a little less strong/ sturdy than my holder, but I can see how they can easily be made a lot stronger, so should I need to, I can adapt them.

I took an evening and a 1 minute clip and decided to figure out the RIGHT settings to manage quality, speed of render, speed of upload(aka file size) for videos I plan on uploading to YouTube with my software. At one point I got super frustrated with the included help and the official online help and delved into google. Go figure, I should have done that in the beginning. I found a helpful YouTube channel explaining which settings to use to get rid of the letterboxing (don’t use the obvious settings, duh!) Rendering is still not at the speed of my iPoo but it does do a much higher quality video AND I can do longer videos plus I can use a variety of different music, do a voice over if I want, and add effects.

I found some music to use with my videos as well, stuff I haven’t heard a million times before and fits my style. I’m really happy with that. I need to put it on my iPoo so I can use it consistently across the board. I am trying to stay away from stuff that has copyright or isn't made for use.

I’m trying to keep my videos to particular lengths- sketching or drawing videos with no instructional content are under 3 minutes, Q&A videos are under 5, instructional videos can go as long as they need to go. i’m considering some review videos on favorite products.

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Sketch the Food Court

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I went to the food court a week ago and did some sketching with my friend Jane. I decided to shoot some video while I was there. The mall cops didn't know what to do, I was waiting for them to ask me to leave, or not shoot video.


 

Saying NO

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Sometimes as an artist you have to say no. I've been approached to do a couple of murals. I accepted one and declined the other. Why? The pay was good, materials were to be bought from me, the issue was the content. I know my style, methods and my capabilities. Could I have done the mural in question? Yeah. Could I have done it without a ton of headache? No.

At some point there is a point where there is no return on the investment. Sure I could have gotten a bunch of art materials, been paid an hourly wage plus some cash.

But as I researched the content for the mural to create that first sketch I realized I didn't know a lot about the intended subject nor could I get into the subject. The more I reseached the more I realized the less I liked it. So today I declined the offer.

I hate to say no to an offer like that, it's money that comes in from ART and well that feels good, but the road to the goal has to feel good too, otherwise it's just not worth it