Inktober is Over

Unlike in previous years, I submit my artwork to every day’s prompt during Inktober. A few might have been late at night, but all were submitted on the day in question. I had decided to have fun doing inkwork rather than stress myself about the ideas or the quality of the inkwork. I’m still getting over some unusual problems related to my corneal graft, particularly with close things that are on my right-hand side. Don't worry; my vision is improving, and this demonstrates I can do stuff like drawing and inking.

The final Inktober prompt was “award”.  So an award, such as a certificate or something for my favourite pen, was the obvious item to draw. I sketched this out, and it was pretty boring. I suppose I could spend a lot of time doing fancy cross-hatched edges and Lettering. Then it struck me I should have an awards ceremony, like a gold Oscar or Logie. A Greek goddess holding my favourite pen, which is still the Faber Castell Pitt Artist Pen range. They impressed me with their reliability, and they run smoothly for Indian Ink, giving a solid black line. They’re not the cheapest pens, but they seem to last, and I do find their line work suits my style. I have a few fixed-width fineliners, I dominantly use the thicker ones eg. 0.7 (M). My real favourites are the brush pen (B) and soft brush (SB) both of which give great flexibility in linework, the line width and expressive curves.

So it wasn’t hard to make a decision that the award should be part of the awards ceremony with a Statuette of a Greek Goddess holding the winning pen.

BTW I did have fun participating in Inktober this year and feel quite proud that I submitted something every day and finished the whole month.

Make your own Colour Wheel Dot Card

This is something every water-colourist should do. Make yourself a dot card of your favourite colours, Better still make it a colour wheel, then slip it into an old DVD case, add a small sketchbook, a pencil or pen, a water brush and your have a very compact and portable plein-air kit.

The school fare was most enjoyable on a warm balmy night and the fish (freshly caught) & chips especially delicious

Not the only one

With all the whoha! about the purchase of instagram by Facebook, you might get the impression that it is the only photo sharing option for mobile phones. That is not true there are plenty other and many of them give you even more features & options. Instagram is however clearly popular, and especially so on iPhones (there is an android version, see grey button here). The beauty of the system is its simplicity, once you have taken your photo you choose and “filters” to modify it (rather than having to learn new editing tools, you scroll across a set of pictures,with strange names, and pick the images that looks like the edit you want to do), you can add a caption and then finally you “share it”, either by email or to one of Twitter, Flickr or Facebook.

Maybe I’m wanting to be too creative but unlike flickr (which still shows heaps of originality and clever use of photographic methods). the instagram site is very much a “me-too” copy copy place where everything looks the same and the fashion for the latest look and filter last just a day or so. I did download Instagram and tested it out but soon removed it to make room for different photo apps on my wildfire, which isn’t over endowed with spare memory.. Obviously a lot of people want to be part of the hottest newest thing, but please don’t stop there. Here are a few more web & phone apps that might just make you mobile phone photos just as nice or even nicer and be equally as simple to use as instagram.

The best place to start , now that there is no longer any place to Picnik. is Aviary. Aviary is well established as a series of web base photo editing tools. Its big power is that Aviary editors are embeddable, and can be added to any website or mobile app with just a few lines of code. Flickr have switched their popular picnic action over to Aviary without a hitch. Its auto Enhance filter is truely amazing and will add punch to almost any mobile phone snap. It also supports facebook uploads and direct edits. The downside is there is currently no instagram like app to download to your phone, but plenty of other apps have aviary editing functionality already, expect more.

Yes i am actually recommending a photoshop application!. This one is free on android phones and is just as easy to use as Instagram, ok it doesn’t have as many filters, but its simple editing tools (crop,,exposure, tint, contrast, saturation & brightness) are really nice finger controlled sliders. There are some fancier features, like soft focus, special “effect” filters and borders. The sharing is just via email Facebook & TwitPic, and the ability to upload to a personal photo library at Photoshop.com.

If you want to play on the more fun and perhaps cheesy side then have a look at these.

Photofunia, is an app from a popular web based service that allows you to do some amazing photo montages, with particular emphasis on the funny face approach, getting your head on a billboard, stamp or art work. It magically finds any face and seamlessly inserts it is many many, templates. This is a FUN app, but it does take time to upload your photo to be processed on-line.

These last couple of apps actually do the special effect “live” so you can see the effect on the screen before you create the final effect when you press the shutter.

Camera Fun Free, there is also Pro version, was probably one early “live” photo phone applications, and I certainly have had a lot of fun with mine. An Alternative is  Cartoon Camera, there is also an ad free Pro version, which is perhaps a little cooler (it describes itself this way) and more cartoonish, drawing and sketching like.

It was a beautiful sunny afternoon and I had just dropped a grape into my iced soda, when It became "alive" and dances in the moment. I was so fascinating to watch I grabbed my new little Canon EOS 1100D, which takes HD movies by the way. My main difficulty is the movies it takes are in .MOV format and not having an Apple Mac I find the movies a little hard to view (the free Quicktime, which is always very slow to load and seems to  leave the movie clips very jerky, Lightroom and Picasa are worse). However I have discovered, by accident, that the Windows Live Movie Maker does a good job, but you need to wait while it "prepares" the video (I assume this is some sort of necessary CODEC conversion). Saving the movie (in .WMV format) lets me use Picasa, my DVD creator and even upload to You Tube.

I'm not suggesting I am a fan of one format over another, its just that .MOV format can be a bit of a hassle if you have a modern PC.

Gotta Share

At the onstage introduction of Twirlr, yet another new social-sharing platform, someone forgets to silence their cell phone. And then ... this happens.

Its by improv everywhere and was spotted on TED
if your looking for the link to twirlr it doesn’t exist

Even More Photo Fun

There are plenty of web site that now offer on-line photo editing and manipluation, like picnik, and even better ones that offer fun effects, frames, collages, photomontage and faux magazine covers, like FunPhotoBox, Write on it, Mag My Pic, Loonapix & PhotoFunia and not to forget fd's Flickr Toys & Dumpr. Many now prepare the embeddable HTML code for your blog, facebook page etc. So why no go and have some fun with your photos.

More Lunacy

More Lunacy, originally uploaded by imageo.

You don't have to just print your digital photos, in this age of google there are dozens of site like Dumpr, I used their rubiks cude tool, that offer nifty little applets and widgets to do fun things with your photos online.

PhotoProject :: Doh!

Web-sites that let you upload and have fun with your photos are great, but few and far between. There should be more! I get a technews from the melbourne age (via email) one of the links was called make fun of yourself, which covers a few fun places to enhance your portrait photos. I liked the simpsonize yourself site, but I'm not sure very much actual face recognition software was used in my portrait. If you are keen, there is also a virtual makeover. Both are just a cleverly different way to advertise but still they are fun!