Iris Against Wall

Watercolor pencils 11x16 Strathmore Cold Press 400 Series Heavy Weight

Watercolor pencils are rather difficult to control when it comes to the chroma (the green leaves). I tried to add some red and gray over the green to tone it down but it is still too intense and I fear going further would deaden it.

Still, for some reason I like this one though it is not technically where I would like to be on it. The reddish purple is not reading in the photo but it is a subtle color that I really like on the iris.

I'd like to do this in oils.


This is same paper and water color pencils.

"Sitting on couch: Whats Before Me"
Not a great piece ... the chroma is still not right but that is water color pencils for ya. Good practice however. Piano, egg collection, antiques, kids, art books, crystal, art, plastic bag wadded up, coffee, wine, and doing art sitting on my arse -- my life.

Be "Expelled" today...

http://www.expelledthemovie.com/home.php

I just saw Ben Stein's "Expelled" documentary that reveals how political correctness is building a wall of silence around the whole academic community. Academic freedom even free speech is being suppressed through intimidation, loss of tenure, and black balling professors and researchers at the mention of ID who simply want the freedom to research findings that seem to be taking scientific knowledge in a new direction. The argument is "we don't have time for this." Apparently a whole lot of professionals are willing to risk their careers and seem to desire to spend time studing this concept.

This is equivalent to banning and burning books in America.

No matter which side of the argument regarding Darwin's origins and intelligent design you are on, I urge everyone to see the documentary. I hope you will ask the same simple questions Ben has asked in his movie and judge for yourself.

If people insist on the argument that "intelligent design" is only a nonsensical religious or philosophical argument rather then a legitimate scientific subject of research, then I say these people have not read what some pretty brilliant molecular scientists have found through the eyepiece of their microscopes nor have they been made aware of what some outstanding astrologers have discovered as they look into the universe eyeballing areas never seen before using the Hubble telescope and the astonishing information that has been uncovered about our very unique planet and the universe.

That should make you curious shouldn't it?

This research convinced a very smart Jew - Ben - to risk his career and reputation to go against the tide. It is in fact, the findings coming from new research that is being suppressed because "these findings are inconvenient information" that may point science away from Darwin's theory of origin. It is casting a new light to bear on the conventional wisdom that has been embraced setting aside Darwin's chaotic theory of life's origins and replacing them with the idea that it is impossible for this high form of design to have evolved into such ir-reducible complexity of design. (This is about origins and not evolution ... changes in species.)

The odds are three trillion to one that a single cell could have been put together any more than all the parts of an automobile could also have organized itself and put itself together correctly in order. It is simply not possible.

Now. Shall we figure out the designs?

As Stein shows in his documentary, scientists cannot talk about their findings without fear of being censured and losing financial support. In the film, Stein presents just one little bit of the research and if that doesn't "wow" the viewer, I would wonder if any gray matter were up there.

Why not just look at the findings?

No one can deny that this is a controversial debate and has a religious component to it but should that stop the investigation? However, let the evidence take science where it leads?

Scientists can't bring themselves label their findings as "the discovery of an intelligent design." Apparently it is too politically incorrect to say call it "the discovery of an intelligent designer?" They won't call it "the handy work of God" because they simply don't know what they have found yet.

Refusing to even entertain that evidence is simply many smart minds with doctorates that have become sealed with intellectual glue.

Suppression of new ideas is nothing new?

When Charles Darwin's hypothesis led away from "conventional thinking" of the day regarding life's origin, a great effort was made to suppress his ideas when religious people of faith aghast at Darwin's ideas attempted to quash these ideas and ban them from the schools. The academics types however, were gleeful and hoped for secularizing both science, education, and government had finally a catalysist. Should it not then be surprising that the same thing might happen in reverse when today's scientific community's "conventional wisdom" is a bit challenged. Now it is people of faith who are gleeful while the scientific community are aghast and trying to quash these ideas?

What are they afraid of?

Ben Stein's "Expelled" is trying to drill a small hole in that very solid academic wall of suppression and intimidation. All he wants is academic freedom to allow the research to go forward freely where ever it takes these scientists.

I'm not a smart person but even I can see and understand this science. With this revelation, isn't the whole world being called into accountability.

How wonderful of the Lord to do that!

It's that pesky DNA and all those 150 different proteins ... those essential tiny entities necessary for building a single living organism ... that's got smart men rethinking Darwin's theories of origins, and it's not creationism or religious fanatics pushing the debate now. These are extraordinary extremely brilliant scientists with credentials out the wazoo.

The evidence is this: it takes over 250 different kinds of proteins, all cooperating together ... doing their unique tasks precisely at the right time in a perfect order to create one cell. Now ponder that. Over 250 separate proteins must line up perfectly in a certain order ... all 250 of those little critters ... did you get that? They must assemble themselves very much like one would assemble a car on an assembly line ... just as an engineer would have designed an automobile and made specific plans to put together.

For that to happen to create just one cell by accident is 2 trillion to one odds. Okay if you did make one, how would you make another? Hum....

One molecular scientist made this statement,"we need the engineering department to help us understand cell structure. The thing looks like a combustion engine."

Logically, a cell is clearly built by a design that has to have had a plan ... and the most intelligent conclusion is that the origin of life could not have occurred by accident. There goes the Darwin's Origins theory of a self evolving living cell. (We are speaking of origin not evolution.)

Instead of less debate there should be more... lots more questions and research. So why not look for more logical intelligent design in research? No. We're going to deny that idea? How absurd.

Scientists are not saying "God's is the designer" ...they can't do that. Therefore, they are saying ... let's leave the god thing open and just call it intelligent designing. The debate is coming from the obvious evidence of intelligent design present in both the biological sciences and the planetary sciences.

Truth shall eventually prevail. Religious people and academics can't stop it. This debate continues to refuse to go away because molecular scientists around the globe are not going to shut up. These scientists cannot deny what they recognize under their microscopes for they are seeing "complex designed structures" in the simplest forms of life. They can no more be quiet about this than could Christopher Columbus.

Please go see this film. It makes a compelling point and it shows all sides of the argument and then you can decide if we need to burn books and destroy a lot of very brilliant careers in science.

If you want to actually see the research, I will direct you to two DVD's and I guarantee you will never ever believe in Darwin's theories of origin again. I will never accept that science because the evidence is so clear.

I challenge you to read this article from a Japanese researcher (hardly a Christian influence there); here is a one paragraph from this article:
"Prof. Namba first saw an electron micrograph of the bacterial flagellum and its motor when he was a graduate student.

He was surprised to see such complex and sophisticated structure exist in living organisms. It impressed him deep enough to switch his research from muscle to flagella after a while.

“Looking at the shape of the flagellar basal body, it is obviously designed to rotate. Looking at a picture of the flagellar motor on the wall every day, I feel up towards revealing the mystery by any means.” The design concepts of protein molecules to realize various functional mechanisms by their three-dimensional architecture are quite different from those we design by our engineering technique with bulk materials.

Folding of single polymer chain into some three-dimensional structures gives a huge amount of freedom and flexibility in both function and structure. Individual atoms are used as functional parts, and this is the essential feature that makes biological macromolecules distinct from artificial machines at present. The design concepts have to be well understood and learned for future nanotechnology applications.

So far, for the flagellar motor, the deeper our insights get into the mechanism, the deeper the mystery becomes. Now the mystery of conformational switching of the filament has been solved, and in terms of the number of protein molecules, the filament makes up 99% of the entire flagellum, it does not mean 99% of the mystery is solved. It is the motor mechanism that is even more difficult to understand."


http://www.nanonet.go.jp/english/mailmag/2004/011a.html

Or google: flagellum

Merlin Revisited

Oh I hate this assignment BECAUSE I am so totally inept. It just reminds me of how average I am and I don't like being reminded of that fact.

This is first of all, a "little boys" assignment. I hate dragons that are right there with snakes .... and everything I do looks like a stupid cartoon. Ugh.

Line Drawing of Times Square

While in New York, I drew this from my hotel window. Times Square NYC. Felt tip pen, 9x12 sketchbook 400 series Strathmore.

Machine Made versus Hand Made

This is a close-up detail of an appliqued coverlet commissioned in 1937 ... to be made as a matching pair of twin bed appliqued coverlets which is quite an ambitious project that takes months to complete. These are heirloom quality by today's standards because they have handmade 12-to-the-inch stitches and the precision of the parallel quilting is wonderful and difficult. They have intrinsically value, at least to me. No one does this any more by hand that I know of.

A seamstress today could recreate this same art work with a machine and it would be made with even smaller stitches with more perfection, and completed in a fraction of the time with relatively little skill requirement on the part of the seamstress but would it have the same intrinsic value as these handmade ones?

I rather doubt it. Why is that, if the machine made ones are more perfect with even smaller stitches?

It must be the human factor of imperfection.

The best digital images ... no matter how spectacular ... just do not move me as a handmade one does. They are just too perfect. I have the same reaction to retouched photos of famous people or models on magazine covers. It is all so phony and plastic.

Honestly, I would not buy a digital image, frame it, and hang it in my home. I'm not being a snob. It just doesn't say "human workmanship" to me and so it has less intrinsic value. I would value an oil portrait over a photo portrait. Why is that? The photo has to be more accurate.

I've thought about this a lot lately and wondered if I am just resisting change. I don't think so. The too perfect images feel inhuman.

When I have had to create digital images in the past it seemed always a fight to make the image the way I wanted, and there is always the temptation to do things the way the computer wants to do it. Usually it seems that the computer wins because it's tools always render more perfectly than I and that is not satisfying to me as an artist.

To be sure there is a market for digital art, and it will probably grow but it is not for me.

I say, why not just pick up a brush and paint the image? My image will represent the time I have invested to develop my skills, and my imperfections in the painting will be identifiable that it was indeed handmade.

Current Art Work - In Progress

WIP 8x10 oil sketch on canvas board. I hope to do this for mself on on large canvas as soon as I work all the kinks out.  

The picture (face soon to be added when it is dryer) is of son, Darren when he was a little kid and the silver baby cup a family heirloom (Poppie's), and the teddy bear is just there to introduce the magic of "make-believe" associated with childhood; the red background is there to give the feeling of childhood should be like ... full of energy and joy.  I think Darren's childhood was like that.

Here is aWC pencil sketch of Darren, now a fully grown man from a snap shot.  Watercolor pencil 5x8 Heavy WC paper.

Brenden from photo. Watercolor pencil 5x8.


Still working on eggs .... the setup needs something I think.  I wanted to project the simplicity and perfection of form; how something so small and insignificant could bring such great culinary delights to the planet; how it is so strong as a binder for "egg tempera" (it makes a paint film that is strong as iron) and an essential ingredient in many art masterpieces that the world cherishes; how it is used in the drug industry to make life saving antibiotics; how it can produce the little chick who feeds literally the whole world. Something to think about.   I need to find a way to create a visual image...  "In Praise of the Egg." 

OKC Museum of Art - Paris 1900 Exhibit

Here is a drawing (below) as a study I did after a beautiful litho poster (at left) by one of the great artists of this time. To appreciate these giant posters and the artists who created them, one needs, really, to have done some lithography. 

An image is drawn upon giant five inch thick stone slabs ... yes stone slabs ... that have been polished silky smooth. (These are very special stones quarried and sawn into flat slabs upon which images are printing.)  The surface is "opened" with acid and the artist then draws the image on with either wax litho pencils or painted with a thick masking litho ink to make a resist; then the stone is closed causing the background to resist ink and remain "white" or "closed" during printing ... meaning that it repels ink and keeps the area from taking ink. The drawn area is inked with and the edition is pulled.  Paper is dried and re-moistened and the next color pass is made. Therefore every color requires a different stone slab very similar to modern 4-color separations. (My prints were only done in black ink so I can just imagine.)

The stone and paper are run thru a printing press for each color. To make an edition is no small task for all of the color must register perfectly in every color pass and be printed evenly throughout the run.   It's a big difficult chore.  

This Paris 1900 Exhibit is, unfortunately over but you can find current exhibits at this link:
http://www.okcmoa.com/exhibitions/currentexhibitions

I enjoyed the exhibit. Having done lithographs, I appreciated what went into those monumental posters. I love art nouveau and the decorative work from that period.

Here are more drawing from my sketch book (I always do this because it helps my recall) of the other art work on exhibit that I .  

Mother

This is my beloved mother...a sketch done without her knowing while she was watching TV at my home. I didn't capture her essence for she is truly a matriarch and a lady in every way and I don't think this sketch does her justice and I will try again another time.

Edith is the kind of loving mother all children desperately need and want. She is full of love and affection and dubbed the "hugger" at church. She is modest, has no tattoos, or body piercing except for her earrings, is disciplined, and yet she is the most "with it," knowledgeable ... the most beautiful woman inside and out ... without a trace of vanity .... that I have ever known. Yet she is a very feisty woman, not perfect but pretty close. There is a spiritual depth and steadiness in her that draws people by the droves to her for advice even at the age of 88.

Is this a fading image of motherhood and feminine beauty?

I wonder what tomorrow's mother will be like? Somehow modesty and virtue is so out of vogue to the majority of young women (if the images on television are a correct reflection, and if what I see by personal experience in my own little world is any measure) how on earth will our children grow to have any character or spirituality. Mothers are not suppose to be your drinkin' buddies.

It seems to me, the American television-Hollywierd image of woman has become so sexualized, immoral, self-absorbed, self-sufficient and very anti-male ... can one not wonder what the next crop of kids will be like?

Isn't this the growing image of today's modern tattooed mother? Look at the image below. Call me a tattooaphobic, I don't care.

Could the ugly tattoo become an accurate and fitting reflection of today's society in history?

I have been in the image business throughout my career. Images are powerful. Businesses spend millions of dollars to create a positive image because they know that the wrong image will drive customers away.

People amuse me LOL. Strong and nasty comments cannot be made funny and positive by merely putting "LOL" after the period; neither will a cute-see image tattooed on an ankle be acceptable because it's cute, or religious neither is it a badge of masculinity. All tattoos scream "in your face rebellion" at me, and it will take a lot to change that negative impression.

For example, this must be a "proud mamma." It's "kitsch" not art and it's taste-less...right there with dime store paintings on black velvet.

Now there are several in my family who have opted to have tattoos...they may not like my honesty. I was hesitant about writing about this for that reason. I love my family dearly and I am thankful that I know all them, I love them unconditionally; however, I am profoundly sad that they made that choice for I fear that it's going to take my generation or more, to die off before it is an acceptable practice in polite upwardly mobile society. I guess that is what makes me so frustrated ... it is because I know how wonderful they are that I hate what that permanent mark might do negatively against them in society especially when they try to get better jobs, etc.

Appearances create image and images speak powerful non-verbal messages. The argument for tattoos and against marriage; it's just ink and it's just paper on a contract. Not good arguments. The Beatle's long shaggy hair...it's just hair they protested...they were right... wasn't permanent and that fad has disappeared along with disco and bell bottoms and I don't think male ponytails are much accepted yet.





Could it be that one girl never had a real mother.

Double Your Pleasure Double Your Bubble...

This post is inspired by a discussion on Ceninni Forum about favorite bubble gums like Bazooka and Double Bubble Gum...remember those?

As a gum chewing connoisseur...my personal bubble gum favorite is a combination of Wrigley's "green package" Double Mint Gum and Trident Pink Bubblegum.

The green makes the Trident gum more pliable and the bubblegum makes the green more elastic to make a bubble.






Combine these two and you have a perfect bubble gum that won't loose it's flavor on the bedpost over night and won't turn to lead in your mouth...a trait that Bazooka and Double Bubble produce making one's jaw very sore and impossible to produce a bubble of any real size after the sweet taste is gone.

Now this is a real big secret so please do not pass this on.

Decompressing - Art Boot Camp

SEE SLIDE SHOW
http://s260.photobucket.com/albums/ii3/padurrett/Art%20Boot%20Camp/?action=view¤t=9379f891.pbr













Haverhill, MA - Boot Camp and the Peddler's Daughter Pub...what an experience. Rob Howard and Kurt conducted the camp and concocted still-life setups that would challenge and provide the images to teach a very focused curriculum.

Decompressing, that is what I am doing for the rest of the week. Life presses in as I attended a funeral, planned my daughter's birthday dinner party, dealt with car trouble, and attended a family party for my nephew and his wife who are departing for Washington state to live. All of these activities keeping me from my studio. (A little frustration.)

I came home from Art Boot Camp completely exhausted from four days of painting as fast as I ever have and all these above activities. For all the money I spent on camp no masterpieces were created but I learned so much my brain is hurting: why toning a canvas makes it so much easier to block in the values; how to create strings of values; received an overview of the Munsell Color System - simplified; explored the value and range of a limited palette; an analysis of the composition of light and shadow - clarifying the difference between a "bump" and a prenumbra; and driving home the key to realistic painting -- edges and values.

Grisailles, Glazes and Dappled Light...oh my.

The comradeship of serious artists and the quaintness of a former shoe manufacturing New England town built along side the blackish Merrimac River and the delicious food found in the abundant pubs make the experience truly memorable. (Haverhillians do not sweeten their quite strong tea....oh what they are missing to punch up that very strong tea with a bit of sweet!)

A few random pictures from camp:






















The apple was done in graiselle and then glazed.














This was a monchromatic studies to understand
the range of chroma/value according to the
Munsell Color System.





















These studies were done on one canvas.



























The great thing about camp is that the artists who come here are not only very talented but serious about developing their ability to the maximum. The networking and friendships that are developing as a result of this association is very rewarding in itself.