Messing Around

Another combined digital couple - I really love using the combined power of drawing, iPhone, brushes and Photoshop with the I ecosystem to produce something new from it's component parts.

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The T-Mobile Royal Wedding - oh if only the real thing had been like this!

Check out this video on YouTube:

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Cartoon Tiger

As I was drawing this I really didn't realise what a cartoon character I was making Tiger Woods. In my defence I did make this drawing from a tiny portrait on a TV screen - in truth I rather like this effect - very 1970s.

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Brushes Painting - a bit of a mess

For some one who spent many hours working with brushes I find myself less and less able to use the package. Some how I no longer can connect with the process. For me it is all too clinical and detached. I know like the touch feel and dirt of making an actual drawing on paper rather than the antiseptic cation via the iPad. I loose patience with myself and my ability to create an image - for me it is just too complicated way of making a drawing. In short I suspect it is me rather than anything else. My how I have changed!

This is a case in point. I have made a number of drawings of this photograph of Jim Broadbent with a varying degree of success however none had the detached feel of this work. Is this a good drawing or something else - well I think that is a lungless question. What I do know is that I didn't derive the same amount of pleasure from it's creation and I think it shows.

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Steve Coogan confirms Alan Partridge - the movie.

Now this promises to be the don't miss movie - Ahaa.

Steve Coogan confirms Alan Partridge movie shoots next year
http://www.totalfilm.com/news/steve-coogan-confirms-alan-partridge-movie-shoots-next-year

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White iPhone 4 Finally Launching

The tech blogs I follow have been banging on about this for a while and I have to ask the question '..so what?...'.

White iPhone 4 Finally Launching This Week
http://www.macrumors.com/2011/04/25/white-iphone-4-finally-launching-this-week/

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Prince of Persia

I find myself spending my time selecting TV programmes to watch just so that I might be able to sketch the actors. This time it was Prince of Persia a enjoyable load of tosh which was paused several times to allow me to make a sketch. Oh the joys of sky +.

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Apple Computer to sue God for ... (newsthump.com)

It was only a matter of time before this shocking turn of events would take place.  My monies on Apple's high powered lawyers. (Ha ha - I think?)

Apple Computer to sue God for trademark infringement
http://newsthump.com/2011/04/22/apple-computer-to-sue-god-for-trademark-infringement/

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Article: Nokia and RIM bleeding smartphone share while Android cleans up

I guess this doesn't add anything to what has already been published other than it is from a none US view point and perhaps is not so iPhone infatuated.  In short volume of units produced will be the driver in the future - this is something that apple can't and probably don't want to compete on.

Nokia and RIM bleeding smartphone share while Android cleans up
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/apr/18/smartphone-market-android-win-nokia-rim-lose?CMP=twt_atn

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Coffe stained art

I really must get this off of my chest. Dropbox has dropped a bollock. They have just updated the software and it is now a lot harder to use - well at least for me. They appear to have changed the work flow which makes it more complicated to transfer images from the iPhone to the iPad - the main reason I have the facility. Why do they have to tinker with the software? Why?

Anyway having got that off of my chest back to the drawing. If I'm truthful it is not a huge likeness of the actress it is meant to be. However, I don't care as I have been experimenting with technique as much as anything. The reason why the eye on the right is a little strange is because I spilt coffee over the drawing not once but twice. What an idiot.

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Android on crack..lol

Just thought that this was fun.

Check out this video on YouTube:

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Apple Sues Samsung, Claims Its... (techcrunch.com)

Apple Sues Samsung, Claims Its Android Devices Are Copycats
http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/18/apple-sues-samsung-claims-its-android-devices-are-copycats/

I guess some one really is worried about the growth of android phones at Apple after all.  However, these things rumble on for years - perhaps the longest legal squabble involving Apple was their battle with the Beatles and the Apple record company which has finally been settled in  2010 - so don't expect any great vanquishing of android phones by Apple any time soon.

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Big brother is watching you

This drawing didn't turn out the way I had hoped. Nonetheless it is still an effective effort. As k progress I think the drawings are getting physically and emotionally darker. I wonder where this will take me?

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Article: iPhone 4 set to rule Flickr in the next few months

It seems that iphoneography is even more popular than I thought.

iPhone 4 set to rule Flickr in the next few months
http://www.ubergizmo.com/2011/04/iphone-set-to-rule-flickr-in-the-next-few-months/

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Talk is over

Well I did it. I presented my work and got polite applause - I have no idea what other people thought - well actually that's not entirely true - it was a strangely rewarding experience and has actually inspired me to work again in photography. Will I ? Not sure but it is certainly something to think about.

I'm on line at:

www.flickr.com/photos/guthlac
http://simonmarchini.posterous.com

www.simonmarchini.co.uk

I hope you enjoy

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RPS East Midland Talk ((tags; RPS, photography,presentation,talk))

Well I finally found the Aura Centre at Newark. Really nice facilities and I'm starting to feel really nervous - just how will the talk go? Only time will tell.

I'm on line at:

www.flickr.com/photos/guthlac
http://simonmarchini.posterous.com

www.simonmarchini.co.uk

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Morpheus

Well I suppose it was always going to happen - yes I watched the original Matrix movie or at least part of it, tonight and I had to make a drawing of Morpheus. I think the treatment I have made in post production on the iPad has made it into a really great sketch.

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Mr Anderson

Last night I finally got around to watching the matrix revolution, an utter waste of money and demonstrates that an awful lot of money cannot save a movie without any real purpose other than to make lots of money. According to Wiki the Matrix Trilogy grossed worldwide $1.6 billion for a total $300 million production cost. Guess I am in the minority.

I am sure there are many people out there who disagree with me and good luck to them. I just found the movie really boring. Thankfully I was watching it on Sky + so was able to fast forward through much of the movie.

Anyway, the reason why I was able to fast forward through the movie was that I had paused the action to make a couple of sketches of Mr Anderson and agent Smith. They were just a bit of fun and I thought nothing more of them. This morning, however, I had a brainwave or brain fart whichever suits you. What if I used brushes to combine the two sketches? Is that possible? Well the final image below shows the result and I think they work together really well. It has a real comic book feel to it and an interesting expansion as to what I can achieve using the iPad. It does open some interesting questions to exactly how these would be classified are the 'real' art or digital or both. I really don't care I just like the result.

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Converting Spacial into Linear

Well I've started to put the presentation together for Sunday's meeting. This spray/mind map-ish diagram is the start of the process. I find that I understand concepts much better like this as I have difficult assimilating information when presented in a liner fashion - especially when presented in long rambling paragraphs. Give me the bullet point any day - guess who wasn't an English major at university.

Anyway what to call the presentation? I first came up with the idea 12 months. This was to show how my photography has changed over the last 12 months. Then having run through this process I realised that this needs slight tweaking . So the current title is:

12 Months: Photographer to Digital Artist

This may well change.

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Trinity

I sat down last night to start to watch the highly disappointing The Matrix Reloaded with one thing in mind - find an image I can draw. Within the first five minutes Trinity was in action and the image I wanted just popped out. This took me about 20 minutes to sketch and by the time I had caught up with the rest of the film I had lost interest. One further thing - I seem to becoming more and more attracted to chiaroscuro as well as creating drawings that wouldn't look out of place in a comic book. I wonder why that is?

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Iron Age, Art and Photography

It's been a bit of a bizarre few days. My new car arrived and I have spent quite bait of time driving around in it. Yesterday, for the first time in my motoring career the windscreen was cracked by a flying object on the motorway - this is real frustrating but it is part of life's rich tapestry well at least that is what I keep telling myself.

On top of this I have started to prepare the presentation I am going make on Sunday about my recent photographic practice - in short iphoneography - I want to get it finished by tomorrow and I have a few ideas which I will firm up and hopefully make into some coherent presentation for Sunday.

The final thing that is floating through my mind is my historical research project. This year I am concentrating on the iron age and how this fits into the project as a whole. There are so many things I could pursue but I have decided to take a little slower this year - after all I am doing this for my own satisfaction and so it doesn't have deadline. Currently I am reading 'The Prehistory of the East Midlands Claylands' - a real page turner ! Actually I is very interesting if a little dry.

On top of this I am making simple sketches such as this of Jim Broadbent. I made a similar sketch a few months ago and the difference is striking. The previous sketch was a good likeness but didn't have the confidence of technique that one has. This one is looser and I think much more interesting for that. I have not striven for an exact likeness but just tried to enjoyed producing the drawing. I think it works.

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Melton portraiture class

Each Monday I drive over to Melton for a portrait course. A few weeks ago I published my first drawing and this is my latest. I think I can detect significant improvement - let's hope it continues.

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Windows App Store?

Seems that the concept of the micro program (app) store is really catching on.  Perhaps someone will launch an app that is native across all platforms and so we can start to forget the nonsense of which OS is better.  Perhaps.

Windows App Store? I Swear I’ve Seen This Before…
http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/11/windows-app-store/

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iPad to rule the roost until 2015

This article seems about right to me.  I suspect that move away from Apple in the iPad Market will be much less marked as in the phone Market where I believe the glory days of the iPhone are behind it smoothed by the weight of the android onslaught.  The iPad is different,  it is bigger and it becomes far more personal as it takes over much of your relationship with the wired world without.  Also Apple appear to want to maintain their Market share as the prices are kept low by comparison to the product they are producing.  If I were  cynical I would suspect that this was Apple's plan all along - use the phone as a way to create a Market and then capitalise on this Market with a killer product such as the iPad -  this is far too cynical I know but it does fit the facts.

The real killer app in all this is iTunes - the iPad is good but without the limitless creativity of the App Store then the iPad and iPhone would be pretty but not very useful.  However, what the he'll do I know!

iPad News: Gartner Says Apple Will Rule Tablet Market Until 2015
http://www.ipad.net/httpwww-ipad-netipad-news-gart%e2%80%a6ket-until-2015-html.html

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Skull

A couple of weeks ago I attended a day long workshop about portraiture. The tutor mentioned that one of the best ways to really start to understand the human face was to draw and redraw the human skull. Well I have now got a skull, other than my own obviously, and this is my first attempt at drawing it. You know what the tutor was right - just by making this drWing I have learnt so much. Long may that be the case.

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Funny Short from Funny or Die website

Hopefully this will embed correctly... When Harry met Sally 2

When Harry Met Sally 2 with Billy Crystal & Helen Mirren from Billy'>http://www.funnyordie.com/billy_crystal">Billy Crystal

 

Simon Marchini 

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Good Queen Bess

My afternoon session at Stowe was much more productive. In the morning I had spent my time capturing a sculpture on a secluded temple and in the process creating one of the most unsettling image I have ever created. In the afternoon I spent time with Queen Bess. Now for people of my age the face of Queen Elizabeth the First will always be the actress Glendale Jackson but of course when the sculpture at Stowe was made this wasn't the case. The reason why I mention this is that when I was sitting there looking at the sculpture someone came past and said that it didn't look much like the image that they knew. We don't really truly know what Elizabeth actually looked like, her surviving portraits were more symbolic than realistic.

So does drawing look like Queen Bess? Who knows but it certainly looks like the sculpture I was trying to draw from the angle I was sitting. So the day at Stowe was worth the effort and money it cost to get there. I will no doubt be returning again and again during the summer to capture more and more of the features of this strange and wonderful place. It would be tempting to describe the gardens as Disneyesque in their total divorce from reality only the temples, statues and landscaping where on a much grander scale and were built to last. It is unlikely that Disney World will still be standing in 200 plus years time as most of the works at Stowe are.

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Outbreak of irrationalism

Well I guess I am progressing as an artist. I was overcome with a highly irrational urge last night to destroy this drawing I had made during the day at Stowe. I just started to hate it with a passion, the face seemed to me to so unappealing, almost mocking - perhaps even evil. So I ripped it up which means this photograph is all I have left of the work. I still feel uneasy when looking at it but some how a digital image doesn't have the same power as an actual drawing. This alone tells a fascinating story in itself.

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Article: What Will the Smartphone Market Look Like in 2015?

Another interesting vision into the future.  How accurate will it be?    Well it is worth noting, as the article does, that a bright future was pedi ted for Symbian OS only for this to be proven wrong by events - the tie up between Microsoft and Nokia.  The only really questionable item in the report is why it should be 'shocking' that the iOS Market share will fall.  The iPhone run has been fantastic whilst it lasted but you just can't compete with volume to drive innovation and this is what will happen with Android phones.  Apple will always have razzmatazz but very quickly the new ideas will be appearing on the Android group of phones.

What Will the Smartphone Market Look Like in 2015?
http://mashable.com/2011/04/07/what-will-the-smartphone-market-look-like-in-2015/

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Oops...it's Clive Anderson

So there I was just minding my own business happily making a sketch based very loosely on a photograph I found in a book when who should pop out of the drawing but Clive Anderson. I am sure you could read many things into this but honestly it was just a lucky happens chance.

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inmaserranito's Photostream (Tags: Flickr, Drawing, Sketches))

via flickr.com

This is a wonderful series of sketches I have just found on Flickr - enjoy

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Platform war gets ugly - ouch the Apple tech blogs get touchy

A couple of days ago Businessinsider (see entry on 3rd April) stated that the Android operating system phone had taken over from iPhone in the smartphone Market - this has caused a storm amongst the Mac tech blogs.  In short it would seem that anything that down plays Apple's current dominance  in the smart phone/tablet market must be attacked.  Now the Mac bloggers do have a point to a degree but I think the Businessinsider entry is still valid.  If you have an operating system that is gaining the largest share of a particular Market then you would be wise to look to develop for it.  At the moment Apple's iTunes is really the killer app on the iOS ecosystem.  It allows micro payments that are very easy for the user to use - it also has the advantage of being a well established system so it has a large amount of Market penetration.  This will not always be the case and by the end of this year the Google version will no doubt be providing a similar level of service.  In short Apple's run will have come to an end.  Does this matter?

Well to me no.  I love my iPad and my iPhone.  This doesn't mean that I think that apple is wonderful, far from it, it just means I think that their non PC technology meets my needs.  It doesn't mean that they always will and if that day comes I will happily move to a new platform.  However, I am sure that Apple must be aware of this otherwise why didn't the latest iPad have the usual Apple 'premium'.  For those of us with long enough memories this is starting to feel oh so familiar.  Apple introduce new technology which takes the rest time to catch up with but when they do Apple becomes a small player in a bigger world.  I do hope that Apple does continue to innovate  and the day that I consider moving away does not come but never say never.

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Platform war gets ugly as surveys ignore the big picture
http://www.9to5mac.com/59242/platform-war-gets-ugly-as-surveys-ignore-the-big-picture/

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Father #2

This is the next stage of the drawing - still a long way to go.

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Drawing my father

I am starting a major drawing based on a photograph of my late father. I have a lot of mixed emotions about this and so am going to take my time. I am using the iPad/iPhone to help me get a better view of how the work is progressing. I'm not sure whether this will work but it does provide an independent view of the work which I am hoping will help. We'll see.

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Adele

I realise that this is the definition of 'uncool' but I heard the profile of Adele on Radio 4 yesterday and I was blown away.  I see according to Amazon she has been at number 1? for a while now and long may this continue.

 

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For all you conspiracy theorist out there

So it is true...we are not alone...a picture cannot lie!

Shared by Craig Engler on Twitter

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Picture: There's Room at the Bar

Another fine example of what can be created without kilos of kit and £1000's spent.

There's Room at the Bar

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Article: The Art of iPhoneography: A Guide to Mobile Creativity [Paperback]

I guess you are entering the main stream when a book has been written about a branch of photography you have sort of pioneered.  It looks like iphoneography is now going mainstream.

The Art of iPhoneography: A Guide to Mobile Creativity [Paperback]
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1600599230/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_1hmMnb18KJQ7G

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Women in Love

This inspired by the BBC adaptation of DH Lawrence's novel Women in Love.

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Android Is Destroying Everyone... (businessinsider.com)

This is a well thought out article about how the smart phone Market is developing and how this will effect the iPhone and Apple.  The only thing that was taken into account is the micro charging effect of iTunes.  Once google has sorted a similar system out for the android op system then this is the time that Apple will really have a serious challenge on their hands.  This does raise the question why Apple don't appear to be launching the iPhone 5 in June?  Could  the new iPhone eventually arrive into a different Market?  A Market that in just 6 months will sing even more against Apple?  I just don't know but it certainly looks like the iPhone has had it's hit point as far as.Market share is concerned.  This is a shame as I really love my old 3G iPhone.

Of course this is about smart phones but I wonder how long it will be before this also applies to tablets?  So enjoy the Market capitalisation values Apple it probably won't last for much longer.

Android Is Destroying Everyone, Especially RIM -- iPhone Dead In Water
http://www.businessinsider.com/android-iphone-market-share-2011-4

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