So I dropped my phone in the ocean and have lost like 10,000 photos. And now I’ve come to terms with it, I’m realising it’s not such a bad thing. I’m hardly ever, if at all, going to look back through all of that. Also the best pics I took I messaged to people any way and can get them back.
For a while now I’ve been using a $30 phone from Woolies that can do phone calls and barely message but nothing else. It does mean that I’ve lost a lot of pictures of artwork, especially the process shots, and I’ve lost the ability to easily see when I did them on a timeline. So here goes my best bet:
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That tuba painting I did last month I liked the idea of it but wasn’t happy with the execution. I had another go and turned it into more of a self portrait:
I really like adding little bits of collage into my abstract works. I stole this from the synthetic cubism movement where they termed this practice papier collé. It takes the artwork one step further from realism flattening the image plane and giving some variety to the patterns and textures in the piece.
Then decided I should do my partner as well as we met through music and are still playing in an orchestra together on the lowest and highest pitched instruments:
I splurged and bought myself some super chunky graphite blocks from UK (couldn’t find any local). I’ve been watching Tim Biskup make these beautiful pieces with graphite that always seem so unique and done within a flow state. I don’t think any of mine hold a candle to what he’s doing but they were really fun to do. I’m getting abstract modernist vibes maybe biomorphism:
Then while packing away I found this Buffalo Sauron looking fella I did ages ago. I remember my brush pen was running out and I just wanted to exploit that cool dry brush texture. I really like it, and want to figure out if I can do something more with it.
And here’s some of the stuff I’ve been doing for Cypher Brewing Co. recently. They had their 2nd Anniversary celebration and wanted to do a three set of tinnies that connected up to paint a larger picture. I’m slowly expanding the lore of the “Cypher Universe” that I posted about a while ago.
These beer can designs each have a sacred tablet that’s been found in “The Big Wet”, “The Dessert”, and “The Chaos Realm” respectively. They join up to illustrate a wielder of great power within the lands: THE KNOWLEDGE KEEPER. This owl holds the literal key to unlocking the past and shaping the future. There are little hints and bits of information in the art and puzzles that continue this thread.
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Here’s the top three movies I’ve seen this month:
I saw the TV glow is a human-centric-scifi-metaphor. It’s not describing my life experience at all and for a lot of people this will probably make this a difficult watch. I loved it, really got me out of my skin and hit me with a deep existential dread. Which is sort of the theme for each of these three movies. My takeaway of this movie is the complexities around accepting (or not) a gender identity.
Videodrome is a classic Cronenburg tale way ahead of it’s time released in 1983. A prescient warning about our relationship with screens and mass media. This hallucinatory trip into the abyss of the bloke who gave us “The Fly” is something that probably should have never been made, who’s bank rolling these things? Probably one of the weirdest things I’ve ever seen.
I feel like Gummo is a movie you can smell, absolute trash from start to finish, a very uncomfortable watch but very much worth it. Killer soundtrack, constant sensory overload, some pitch black humour that examines some very ugly human traits. This movie did the unbearable spaghetti scene long before killing of a sacred deer.
We’ve inherited a record player set up and vinyl and are slowly working our way through them. It’s been such a nice experience, really different to endless playlists dictated by an algorithm. These are the top three records so far, you can click each picture and it’ll open up the tracks in youtube. The turntable has a pitch shift slider and I can’t get enough of the Little River Band record pitch shifted much slower, incredible lazy arvo vibes.
Books I read this month: