All Over the Place
Weekly Wrap:
Last Friday I saw an acquaintance—who happens to be a mega talented singer Jennah Vox—put out a call on Instagram, $30 for someone who could use photoshop to sub a photo on a flyer for a music event where they will be performing later this month. I would have happily done this simple task for free but it is also nice that there exists humans who believe that artist should get paid for their time and labor—even if minimal. It also made me realize that as artist we collect a lot skills that we might take for granted. I think I often presume that anyone can do xyz and forget that I have actually dedicated a lot of time to learning the skills I do have. Everyone do yourself a favor and check out Jennah’s voice on Apple Music (Jennah Vox), Spotify, Youtube
Yesterday I visited BLUM gallery in Culver City and swung by Arcana books where I picked up a new art catalog on Barkley Hendricks—next week I hope to put more thoughts down on both the shows at BLUM, awesome Arcana, and also the new art catalog.
Also this week I made some progress on the underpainting I shared last week:
Product Review:
2 weeks with my new iPad Pro nano etched screen, Magic Keyboard and pencil.
I don’t know where to start but it is 💗 I have a new device bff. The nano etched screen is great. I can’t stand the glassy, glossy screens—it even bugs me on my macbook. I hate the reflections, they hurt my eyes, and I also dislike the feeling of the glassy screen beneath my finger and beneath the pencil. In the past I’ve used a few different brands of textured “paperlike” screens and whereas they felt better to draw with they made the screen fuzzy so reading was out and watching videos okay but not great and then there were some minor issues that having and extra surface makes things a tinge less accurate. So nano etched has solved it all! I get to have the beautiful apple screen with all the light and sharpness and none of the glare. The screen doesn’t feel very textured but it is not slippery like the glassy one. Drawing and writing are pretty great! And speaking of drawing, I can now use some brushes that on my 2017 model had minute long delays that made them basically impossible to use. Two more reason I planned to update were hover preview and hdmi connection, these are both also available on the 2022 pro. Being able to see exactly where, and in some cases the shape of the mark I’m going to make is huge. And I also wanted the ability to connect to a larger screen—this has worked for drawing apps but when I tried to use it with video the sound was delayed by quite a bit. I’ve spent no time hunting that issue down so it maybe entirely fixable or was just a hiccup that one day. I noticed recently that a couple of apps have been updated to use the new pen features squeeze and barrel roll—so that’s exciting as they seemed only to be available to native apple apps when iPad 2024 was first released, hopefully more will roll out soon.
Last month I signed up for a Criterion Channel subscription and have really enjoyed watching movies on my little 11 inch screen—again the lack of reflection is so dreamy! And the screen just looks great!
There is so much more too! Like how I am writing this newsletter using the Magic Keyboard and it is kinda magic! And how the great image of my painting progress was just now snapped with my new bff 👯 And a bonus: here is a little illustration I did in Clip Studio with new ipad friend:
Open Call:
Deadline: July 31, 2024
Fee: 1st entry free, $5 per subsequent entries
This looks like an interesting art prize. It is non-physical (so there is no shipping/delivery logistics and expense to contend with) occurring entirely digitally and online. You can enter one artwork for free (yay!) and use up to three images to show the work. It is $5 for each additional work entered. Here is where things get interesting, for a fee of $10 you can elect to receive jurors feedback on your work. I’m not a big fan of pay to enter calls and am pretty choosy about those I pay a fee to enter. One large complaint I have of them is that the cost of operating things seem to always fall on the artist who likely will receive nothing from their entry fees—including feedback. As difficult as it may be for those operating an art call I would like a world in which when an artist pays $40+ to enter they at least received something in return like feedback on their work. So this model of paying $10 to get that feedback is refreshing to see!