As long as I have a drawing surface with me (e.g., a sketchbook or a smart phone with a drawing app), I can observe people around without getting bored during idle times.
2023-10-06
2023-10-03
A tree in the wind
[The post title has nothing to do with the content below, but it was suggested by GitHub co-pilot and I decided to keep it for fun.]
In addition to convenience/portability, another advantage of using a mobile phone as the drawing surface is discretion: I can draw in public without attracting much attention as people will think that I am just another cell-phone user, which is not the case with a tablet or a canvas.
Does anyone still remember physical paper submissions?
I heard some PhD students making fun of the SIGGRAPH dual/conference track format of (at most) 7 pages of texts and figures plus 2 pages of figures only, thinking it is something “new”.
They are too young to realize this is not new at all, and probably very old.
Before I even started my PhD program, the proceedings (1) were physically printed and (2) had separate color pages to reduce costs.
So it was common for people to put all their color figures at separate pages in the end of the paper.
I also remember that the first few times I submitted papers to SIGGRAPH, I had to mail in 6 copies of printed papers and VHS tapes for videos early enough so that they would arrive at the conference office before the deadline (while also late enough to maximize the time I can work on the submissions).
Imagine the horrors of debugging ink-jet printers and video production software/hardware in the 1990s.
I heard the story (not confirmed) that Dennis Zorin (when he was a PhD student) and (his then adviser) Peter Shroeder had a Fedex guy waiting in their office while finalizing their submission(s).
I even hand carried all the physical materials from MSR Asia’s submission to SIGGRAPH 2006 in a large suitcase (like a smuggler) and flew from Beijing to Redmond to reduce the total shipping time.
Nowadays, we can submit everything electronically at the last minute prior to the deadline, with network bandwidth/latency/reliability being the only bottleneck.
2023-09-27
2023-09-26
Road accident
This is an imaginative drawing inspired by a real event.
I tried to finish it within the time constraint at the end of a long day so I did not spend much time on the less important details, such as the dent at the front of the car that would add more dramatic effect.
2023-09-18
Wingless fly
Ever since I was a kid I liked to catch a fly live, carefully remove its wings, and observe it crawling around.
For this one, I use Adobe Firefly to generate the background compost image consisting of banana peels, mandarin peels, and egg shells, and then draw and animate the fly on top of it.
2023-09-17
The art thief
This is a compact and yet engaging book about the most prolific and efficient art thief in history.
To understand such an extraordinary individual, his deeds, and the shocking ending, it is important to know his “state machine” – how he perceives the world, his relationships, incentives, and actions.
To reconstruct this state machine, the author interviewed the thief in person and also talked to people who knew him, including his small circle of friends and family, his victims (e.g., museums, antique stores, and auction houses staff), psychoanalysts, and law enforcement officers.
The book also describes the history of art market and theft (e.g., Picasso commissioned a theft from Louvre early on and then became the most stolen artist later), and the author’s own journey in writing this book.
Highly recommend, especially for those who are interested in art, psychology, and crime.
I probably will see things differently during my future museum visits.
Instead of stealing artworks and put them in an attic for personal peruse, I dream about the opposite: sneak artworks created by people I know into museums so that they can be appreciated by more people and better preserved by art professionals.
2023-09-15
Met invitation envelope
I don’t know why a museum in NY would want to invite someone living in CA to be a member – maybe there are CA folks who spend weekends in NY?
But the photo on the envelope did give me some visual idea about how things might move there.
2023-09-12
Morris Hirshfield
I learned from this exhibition that Morris Hirshfield was a self-taught artist who started painting at the age of 65, with a unique style of non-traditional proportion/perspective and strong emphasis on textures and patterns.
In the same exhibition are works by several other self-taught artists who also have unique styles and some also started very late (like “Grandma Moses” at age 78).
On one hand, it is never too late (or too non-conventional) to start something new.
On the other hand, the start is likely more gradual than sudden, with a long period of incubation.
In Hirshfield’s case, his career in the garment industry has an obvious impact in how he applied patterns in his paintings.
