Creativity Bootcamp & Finding your Dominant Eye

This is a new project for me, pulling together a series of art oriented warmup exercises and drills that help focus on seeing as well as practising a few skills. I’m starting by help you find your dominant eye.

What the? ... is going on at skylum!

I must admit I have read and watched the hype about Luminar NEO. I really can't believe it isn't backward compatible with either Luminar 4 or Luminar AI. Then there is also the constant hype to preorder it. Finally I don't see much in the way of features I would want to use, perhaps with the exception of layers (but they look more like selective filters to me. So I was committed to using Lumiar AI "as is" (ie no more updates)

Then there was a notification that Luminar AI had an update. Great they haven't forgotten their customers.

 Ok it doesn't do much (som extra camera compatibility, fix a big problem with Some Cannon R models and a sky replace feature update (I haven't used the sky replacement in anger yet) Ok not a lot to see. Wrong every time I start I get a pop-up nagged about buying into the Luminar NEO vapourware before its released.

 

You are going to annihilate a lot of your customers Skylum.

A wonderful end to the day

Yet Another Facebook Fail

 

I don't use facebook much at all. I was promped to use it when instagram continually cropped my lastest inktober post to square!

So I decised to post it to facebook. Well that didn't get far. Despit getting a code to my phone it wasn't recognised. 

Three codes, three times!

Is this really facebook? No matter facebook be gone. 

Artistic Spirit

 

I had some fun today creating a still life for my 365 Photo Project and a re;ated sketch for todays Inktense Topic Spirit.

The absente was drunk long ago, its lime juice in the glass to represent that milky green. The photo was run through Luminar Ai (with just a slight tweak to the right of the Enhance Accent slider) The background is a Corel Painter simple photo clone. The sketch on the right was made with Faber-Castell Connector Pens and Gel Pen. 

Having fun creating art is good therapy and great for your health. A lock down antidote.

The creeping cost of upgrades

I have notice with a sadness that the former champions of perpetual license (ie you buy the software) in the graphic/art/ photography areas, where doing well because they picked up a lot of extra buyers running away from Adobe’s Subscription model. Particular at the start up adobe did ot upgrade much. The champions were upgrading often and charging a smallish amount (20-30%) for the upgrade, and this also went down well with users.

Things have changed a lot of the last two years. Adobe have reduced subscription options (particularly for a single piece of software or group of complimentary tools) and increased subscription for the full creative ? to a ludicrous level (if you aren’t using it for a profitable business). This is clearly gouging a customer base. Not nice and another way or suggesting they are cutting of your nose to spite your face.

Unfortunately the price of upgrades are creeping up to 70-80% of the first license. If the software has been upgraded significantly that may be ok. A couple of suppliers prompting upgrades aren’t yet advertising an upgrade price, if one is even to be offered. Perhaps waiting 2-3 upgrade cycles is still ok. However it is rapidly reaching the case where if you are a loyal software user the amount you pay annually is not a lot different between perpetual licensee and subscriptions.  Both teams are gouging their user base. Possibly there is a little churning of software sold to the same number of users. In both cases we the users are the losers.

The case of Luminar Neo, is a particularly blantant attempt. It is probably a market driven ploy trying to prompt hype aboput all new, limit time/number pre-purchase seats, etc, etc but I personally just see something that isn’t legacy compatible and does not offer a  bigger step forward as is being over-hyped. I have Luminar AI and love it (not as my main photo editor that’s still ON1) but because some of the AI features are really useful and time saving. I feel I share a lot this think with Peter Forsgård . Until there is a trial version I can try I will not commit to spending anything on what is still vapourware.

Lowdown on Lockdown

 

The promised easing of lockdown conditions, didn't materialized (ok they are pshed forward a few days). It was however a great day to get out and have a picnic of one household and sepearted groups.It Jells park it wasn';t even possible to park so we (my wife & I) had to go a little further.

Everything is nice and green (alternative pring sun and rain) is doing wonders but the grass is getting tall. A great opportunity to get down low..

So why am I bothering?

I am so over this. Another nice day and I opened up in my studio to do some painting. I turned on the compuyer (only recently recovered from a lengthy period of "Death by UpGrade") to listen to some music.  I left the spunnerv run and did a bit of sketching.

Two hours later, it finally "recovered" but will not recognise Wifi. So I shifted the computer to my office, where I can make a direct ethernet onnection to my router. Another hour plus of repair, but I can access the internet.

Another day gone! You guessed it I moved it back to the studio and more waiting and no go.

Spring ?

 

Even more Interuptions

Social Media in general has become a obessed with interupting you amd keeping your attention (primarily so they can sell more "eyeballs" to advertisers). The time you spend can be worthwhile occassionally but not when you mindlessly have to scroll through hundereds of images, video or headlines. This is primarily a waste of your time yet the notification bell keeps tinging.Some phone let you change the tune but it does take a lot of self control not to pick up your phone or open a new browser window. It is made more complex when you have had enough and want to uninstall, it mostly has to be done individually by notification service by app or service, and it was easy to unsubcribe from say theei newsletter but the notifications where then defaulted back on. My current feeling is less than 1% of these notification actually need my attention so I now inore then all, and often missed phone calls!

Notificitaion * 99% => Interuptions

One respite was flickr it had a beautiful recent activity page which (automatically) curated a selection of your friends and those you followed and was the landing place when you logged in. There was no need for the endless scroll just to find something worthwhile to view and study for a while, not swipe up of down to get over it to the next 2 second glimpse in a length search.

Well that was until now ... ...

"Now that most of the Flickr community has had the chance to experience the new Notification Center, it's almost time to close the book on the Recent Activity page."

Flickr do offer a range of decent setting for notfications so it is worth visiting that page now and pruning back the default notification setting before they become to annoying.

A Cautionary Tale

Let us imagine a story where you have the opportunity to put a notice or a picture on your local community notice board.

There are a few rules that you have never heard of and are keep secret. There is a time limit of around 20 minutes. There is a view threshold of 20 clicks/views. If they haven’t meet these conditions your notice/picture is papered over from public view by ads and only shown to friend within a new 2 hour time window and only if they have recently viewed your stuff. After that it falls into the discard bin.

Well this story is not a lot different to the Instagram's and Facebook's secretive algorithms.

The result is “celebrity” wannabees and a bland sameness.

Where is you tube heading?

Well the YouTube studio blog update says they are going dark (that’s the option to use dark mode) but sadly this may be a good metaphor for the way the informational content of their offerings are heading.

Once upon a time (well a while ago now) YouTube was a great place to look up "how to" do stuff. Especially those fiddly little things about home maintenance and the things in the user manuals (does anyone other than me still read them?). A five to ten minute video that went through a process step by step was wonderful at allowing a lot to get done.

Things have changed! Viewng YouTubes now has more than likely incorporated ads which often interrupt the process (ok a good step for google to extract money from advertisers) but hopeless for our concentration (look up the dangers inherent in context switching - if you think these interuptions can be ignored). This smell of cash has unfortunately also attracted a lot of players seeking to game the situation with SEO and hacks to find and copy-cat popular video and repackage their message, but with flashy click-bait titles and less helpful information,. All to often they are unresearched and have misleading information presented in fashionable colours and well curated backgrounds. I can’t see any genuine attempts by google at fact checking. It is all about becoming a celebrity and “owning” the hashtag. Because this get more views and perhaps longer attention they become promoted in YouTube suggestions,

The true information gold is sinking to the bottom, and difficult to discover.

Why I am moderating all comments & deleting so many?

There are just so many bogus commenters around at the moment both here and on YouTube. Most of them are promoting software that I have mentioned and have links to “cracks" ways to download and run the software for free, but that always leaves the way open for different forms of malware. A few are pointless rants, leading to even more dubious places.

So I have turned on comment moderation here and on YouTube. I do read through and comments and definitely carefully visit sites linked in the comments. It is tedious for me but I don't want to leave you my readers venerable to any innocent looking  cyber-naughties.

I  would however really welcome genuine comments and recommendation of things you like or wish to draw my attention too. Just be patient it may take a week or two for me to keep.

Just a moment ... ...

 

If you have been wondering why my blog has fallen silent of late. There are two reasons, some health issues (I'm well on the mend now) and arghhh I've had enough of Windows upgrade! I'm and not looking forward to Windows 11!

I have been seriously battling against Windows 10 updates since October last year, even longer if you count my little toshiba netbook (now happily being an occassionally used Linux machine that has stepped up to replace others that have fallen). During this time three (and a half) computers have stubbornly refused to reboot after upgrades and I have wasted too many days trying to reload windows (using both thw offical windows  tools (which end up in deep loops of incomplete installs) and using Ventoy on a bootable standalone USB to install from various ISO files. Trying to install official Microsoft version of windows just lead back to stairng for hours at the Just a moment screen followed eventual with a blank screen and a computer which would boot.

I even tried out the available beta version of Windows 11, it ended quickly on all computer saying the computer was not suitable (no reason given) but I assume thay are in the too old category.

A real savioue was a version of Linux Lite (warning this site was pop up ads which I find annoying), a cut down version of Ubantu that can be run from the USB drive. Using it I discovered that all the computers had been repartiontioned to have a tiny inital partion (too small to load a viable version of windows onto. I then swap the haddrive on my main computer over to a resude harddrive that I had freshly reformated. That the half computer that died above. It look promising for a windows reinstall but soon arrived that the endless Just a moment loops. CHecking drive from the standalone linux lite USB It too was repartioned. Whate the?

Whilst there are hundereds of items showing up under the "failed windows upgrade"serach (you should be totally ashamed microsoft) I could not find any reliable dicussion of this repartioning on any forums. So I got brave and used the Partioning tool in Linuz light to investigate, sure enough I found windows.old and my user data in the second partion. Not so useful as I already had backs on external drives. Then I merged the first two partions and did a windows reset. My laptop had to run through a lot of installing and upgrading including more Just a moment times BUT eventually it was able to reboot itself. Some light at the end of the tunnel at last!

An updated Studio :: Painted & Decluttered

I'm still hobbling around a bit after a fall last month, nut these seemed the perfect time to repaint the bedroom I an using as my studio (its been accumulating junk for 25 years first as my office and them as a craft/junk room and eventually my studio)/ there was a lot to clean out (it was the council's hard rubbish collection) and the biggest ting I wanted to do was repaint, specifically to a neutral colour. I didn't mind the burgandy but it played havoc when trying to match colours and calibrate my computer screen.

I had decided on the Neutral Grey that photographers often call (18% grey card) to check colur cast and also exposure time. My theory is that this will help me with colour mixing. Very fortuiosly I visited Bunnings and got 4 litres of a nice neutral grey as close to the photographic refernce card as I could judge.

The clustered was both easier and harder to deal with. The guidig principal though is I only bring back the things I will be using and for which there is a defined place to store them. So that is dominately blank canvases, paper and sketch books. I also have watercolour and acrylic paints, brushes and accessories, pens, pencils and pastels. There are open book shelves, a slick stainless steel set of draws and a file cabent to hold all these tings. 

I also kept the old desk a a work area and place to "stack" my computer and I am intending to mount an old large flat screen tv on the wall as my main computer monitor. Still a bit of work to do here.

More ways to make movies without a movie camera

 I’m actually not a huge fan of the current social media offering. However they can be a great way to interact with others and in fact find a wider audience for your works. From my involvement in the Watercolour Society of Victoria. I have discovered what really counts is a sense of community, knowing and caring about others. Following what they are creating or struggling with.

An interesting video with a few good pictures and relevant story are sure to make a good impression. They are highly likely to stop the viewer scrolling through static thumbnails and endless selfies.

So I hope this little set of examples inspires you to create a video about yourself art making and showing your art.

Chasing Cleaner Colours

Something I have noticed looking at re-procesing some older digital images (a lot just jpeg versions) was the "greying" of colours and often loss of contrast compared with what I am used to these days. Some of the issue has to do with better equipment, not just the cameras but also better (and calibrated) monitors and printer, but a lot comes from the capture of RAW formats. Also I have moved from mainly processing in lightroom (which tends to render RAW images "flat") onto using On1 Photo RAW, Aurora & Lunminar which render with slightly higher dynamic range, and now higher colour depth.

Scanning versus Photographing Art

This year I have helped coordinate a group of watercolour artist (the "Wednesday Wanders" to continue painting, together on-line rather than physically en-plein air during our extended lock down. It wasn't the same but it was fun and we have been asked to submit some of our works for publication. I have long suspected that for watercolours at least photogrphy was better, particularly for luminosity of colour in the more delicate watercolour washes.

.VS.  

So this was an opportunity to do a reasonable "authentic"* comparisons. I have a "cheap" oldish HP Photosmart ink-jet printer, with a built in Scanner on top. I assume this is the style most home-based printers will be. It has served me well (mainly to scan sketches for cartooning but also worked for  documents, printed matter etc). It's proved  more than adequate but I don't want to claim its perfect. On the other hand I'm using my older olympus on a Copy Stand I made long ago using an old enlarger base. 

Lifting the lid of the scanner, positioning the painting and starting the appropriate software actually took me two minutes! The scan took a further 35 seconds and a slight delay before it was saved (or a longer delay if I changed the name of the file being saved). changing the painting to a new one was only around a minute and another 25 seconds so a minute round trip. By comparison the copy stand took about 3 minutes to find and attach the camera. However aligning the painting and taking the pictures was less than 5 seconds and I could change over painting and photograph each with that 5 seconds.

* I know you can do a pseudo-test that can prove almost anything on social media. You Tube) is full of half baked and conflicting views so I figure it is important to not add to the confusion. I'll let you check for which capure you like best (I like the photos) but I trust what I have written here is easy to follow and you can test out each step yourself, So please go and do some similar testing convince yourself.

Experimenting with IGTV

 I'm afraid IGTV never really appealed to me. Not sure if it was the vertical format or the type of video maker it was trying to gain access to. was it YouTube for the chronic selfie take who hasn't worked out how to turn the phone through 90 degrees and use the better lens on the back of the phone. Perhaps I'm being a bit cynical!

Anway no time better than now to experiment with the format.

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A post shared by Norm Hanson (@normhansonart)

Man the embed code is longer than the video! 

I took two short clips with my phone. then I used Canva (an on-line design tool) which can handle video and offered a neat way to append the clips together and add some text. I exported it as .mp4 and it seemed fine until I listened to the audio. So I recorded a simple voice-over on the phone. Uploading to Instagram was the real challenge but I eventually discovered it was simple if I did it from my computer via the web connection to Instagram. It didn't take so long and would I be inclined to do it again, Maybe?

Perhaps not as much fun as using mmhmm. Looks like my challenge to other artist continues.

'Make a video of yourself marking your art"

A lockdown diversion - making a video

 As this "7-day" lockdown in Melbourne began (a few weeks ago now) I thought it would be a good idea to try making a video of myself making my art. Fate intervened and I had a series of technology breakdowns so this got postponed. Yet the aim expanded, Trying to find as many ways as possible to create a video showing me making art or perhaps the processes and media I use.

This is the first cab off the rank. Without my camera I looked to the streaming technology we have all become familiar with, video conferencing aka zoom. Now zoom lets you use virtual cameras (software that looks to zoom as if it is a video input, like a webcam). However, a virtual camera can be a lot more dependent on the software itself and what inputs you can access. I have been using manycam for some time and my youtube "quicktips" are all recorded using it. The open-source OBS (Open Broadcaster System) has been hugely popular in the on-line gaming community for some time.

The pandemic and multiple lockdowns have seen the massive expansion of what virtual cameras are capable of doing. I have been enrolled on the beta test of the windows version of a niffy "little" application called mmhmm. It has just been upgraded to its first "official" release. Here is what I recorded using this latest release.

The video of the painting process was recorded as a .mp4 first up straight from my webcamera with mmhhmm in full-screen mode. Whilst the apple version of mmhmm gives you the option of a faster playback, it doesn't allow this on the current windows version. So I resorted to my normal video editor (Corel's Video Studio) to speed up the video to 10x speed. I also added the CCmusic by Bensound "Sunny", and saved the results as a new video again in .mp4 format. Back into mmhmm with a new room (backround) based on a photo of my palette and open sketch book) and I recorded myself speaking whilst displaying the text cards and other "effects" as I was talking, I also ran the newly created painting video within that session and saved the whole as my final video again in .mp4 format. Finally I uploaded this to YouTube. It actually didn't take long and was fun. 

So I'm going to challenge other artists to also "make a video of yourself making your art".