This is a better link - sorry for the Mashable corporate nonsense before. Check out this video on YouTube:
Sent from my iPad
Thursday, 31 March 2011
YouTube Video of the Day: Plasticine iPad Is a Work of Art
About Mashable
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via mashable.com
this is one of the most interesting videos I have seen in a while. I wonder how long it will be before it has been ripped off for some lame advert?
Monday, 28 March 2011
Portrait course
Another example of the work I was able to produce from my workshop on Saturday. Having had a couple of days to reflect on the day it just seems better and better. 
Sent from my iPad
iPad 2
Well I just don't know what the fuss was all about. If you are to believe the tec blogs you can't get an iPad for love nor money. Well it took me 10 minutes this morning to buy one. It will be interesting over the next few weeks to compare iPad v1 with v2
Sent from my iPad
Saturday, 26 March 2011
Portrait Course
Well I'm truly knackered. Five and half hours of none stop drawing has taken it's toll. I have spent the morning and part of the afternoon at a Portrait & Drawing workshop at the the Richard Attenborough centre. It was a really encouraging day which culminated in this pastel drawing. As usual the photograph is different to the real thing but it still reflects what I produced. today. I'll go to bed tonight a very tired but happy chappy 
Sent from my iPad
Friday, 25 March 2011
Old man
I'm taking my time over this one - slowly building up the layers of shade and detail and trying to resolve the many issues involved. It's a good start and thankfully it has moved away from looking like Einstein in the nude. Perhaps it has a touch of Rodin? Maybe but I don't think any of Rodin's masterpieces had pieced nipples! 
Sent from my iPad
Thursday, 24 March 2011
Wednesday, 23 March 2011
The worst railway station I have ever been to
I've just come back from Birmingham and for a change I thought I would let the train take the strain. On the whole not such a bad thing apart from the horror that is New Street Station. It is hard to credit that this is the main station for the second largest city in Britain. It is, in short, awful. Now I know that they are supposed to be redeveloping the whole station but really something should be done in interim to improve the passenger comfort actually on the platform itself. For those of you who have never had the delight of alighting at this station let me explain. The platforms are buried at the bottom of the station in a diesel fume darkness. There is little natural light and only very poor artificial lighting. Two simple solutions would suggest them self, first improve the artificial lighting and second employ some fans to try and remove the fumes.
The new station won't be completed until 2014 and it would seem that there is no real will to try and improve this hell hole in the mean time. However, it is worth pointing out that the staff at the station are universally helpful and it is just a shame that they have to work in such an environment. No wonder New Street Station was voted the worst station in Britain. 2014 can't come soon enough.
Simon Marchini
Web: http://WWW.simonmarchini.co.uk
Twitter: http://twitter.com/@simonmarchini
Tuesday, 22 March 2011
Why draw?
As the one or two followers may be aware over the past few weeks I have been using Nicole Kidman's image as an academic exercise to try and explore portrait further. On the whole it has been a bit of a failure apart from the fact I have learnt a great deal so may be it hasn't after all (I. Managed to contradict myself in the same sentence - something of a record even for me!) 
Anyway, Ms Kidman. I thought I would give it one final go and use a version of the camera obscurer technique probably used by artist such as Vermeer. Only I don't have such a machine or couldn't be arsed to build one. So what I ended up doing was drawing over the photograph to leave an impression on the page below which worked really well. However, once I started to work on the drawing I found the whole exercise pointless - almost like painting by numbers. In the end I gave up trying to make a realistic copy and just let go with the oils pastels. I think the result is very interesting. But it did start me asking why I want to draw?
Now this is a very interesting question for me. I can make very professional?? Photographs so making interesting image isn't the reason why I do it. I guess, in part, it is the challenge but this doesn't really answer the question. In the end I really do believe it is something deeper than this - I just need to do it. The genie is out of the bottle and I can't help myself indeed it has become such an obsession that I'm loosing interest in photography. I have no idea whether this will last but at the moment the idea of making a photograph is becoming more and more boring. Strange how life works out.
Sent from my iPad
Friday, 18 March 2011
Thursday, 17 March 2011
Hans Holbein the younger
I knew that there were suggestions that Holbein had used some form of optical assistant for his drawings & paintings but I wasn't aware that there was clear evidence. Yet, whilst watching the latest (?) episode of Civilisation a close up was shown of a drawing Holbein made of Thomas Moore. Here you can clearly see a series of dots that form the outline of the features of Moore. Holbein appears to have used these as a guide to help him make a likeness of Moore. This was followed by a series of other drawings which showed the same thing. Undoubtedly nothing new to the world but new to me. 
Sent from my iPad
Tuesday, 15 March 2011
Finished first sketch
Well I finished the first attempt. Not too bad but there are a number if things I need to sort out - the mouth for example. More sketches and hopefully b the end of the well something interesting. 
Sent from my iPad
Walking in the shadow of a giant
Well I've decide to work on something thing different and who better to emulate than Michelangelo. I've been fascinated by the David sculpture for a very long time and was some surprised to find that there is a full scale casting of it in the V&A. So I have decided to pay them a visit and pay homage to perhaps one of the greatest art works ever created. Now I know this is a copy but nonetheless it will still capture some of the majesty of the real thing and London is much more accessible. 
So as a start of the process I am making a series of drawings of the head starting with this. I hope I don't cock it up and am able to make a reasonable drawing - only time will tell. If only I had one very small measure of Michelangelo's genius I would feel more confident in what I am about to do. Well let's hope.
Sent from my iPad
iPad 2 already installed in Ford F150
Not sure why you would want this but clearly some people do - here is an iPad 2 installed into one of those awful F150 Ford pick up trucks. The video is very annoying and I'm sure they may be glossing over one or two issues but nonetheless you have to marvel at the ingenuity of man.
iPad 2 already installed in Ford F-150 truck
www.tuaw.com/2011/03/14/ipad-2-already-instal...
Sent from my iPad
Monday, 14 March 2011
Rugby and Onion Rings (Tags: Rugby,Upset Stomach, Onion Rings))
Interesting weekend. Saturday was all sports photography, late supper and upset stomach. Sunday was recovery. I spent Saturday re-equating myself with my long lenses - my they are heavy! Still it was fun trying to make some interesting photographs at a local rugby match. In the evening I went round to a friends for a meal and must have eaten something that didn't agree - I think it was the onion rings although I have conclusive proof of this.
The good thing is that I am starting to feel a lot better than I have for a while with all my health scares and so a minor stomach upset is not going to put down. The winter is hopefully over and I am looking for to a more stable spring. Lets hope so.
Simon Marchini
Web: http://WWW.simonmarchini.co.uk
Twitter: http://twitter.com/@simonmarchini
Saturday, 12 March 2011
Nicole Kidman and Zire
First an apology. What a complete arse I am. There I said it. I am a real bumpkin. Yesterday I wrote, if that is the correct way to describe my ramblings in this blog, about the app/magazine Zire when actually I meant Zite. If you have been following this blog for any length of time, and you deserve a medal if you amongst such a self selecting group, you will know that that I rawly check what I write. Why do I no do this you would be quite right in asking? Well the truth is I'm lazy mixed with word blindness which means that even when I do check my work I usually miss quite obvious blunders - there probably are some grammatical and typological errors in this post but I only ever notice them after they have been written by which time I have moved on and you will have read them anyway so I can safely ignore such mistakes. Laziness you see is I'm very good at even if it means I come across s a bit of a buffer. 
Anyway enough grovelling onto the afore mention antipodean actress Nicole Kidman. Well I'm at it again and I'm making a big effort to make a likeness of the beauty and here in is my problem. I have great difficulty making any such likeness of photographs of beautiful women. When it comes to real beautiful people I seem t able to produce an acceptable likeness but photos less so. So the image of Ms Kidman is once again to be subject to such torture or perhaps it is me who will be the tortured soul in all this rather than a piece of paper with some ink printed on it. So I'm doing a bit more self flagellation oh the joys of trying to master the craft of drawing.
Sent from my iPad
Friday, 11 March 2011
Thursday, 10 March 2011
More on Zire
Well I've spent much of today trying to make the new app Zire work for me and the more you work at it the better it gets. However, this is the problem - why should you have to put so much time and effort in just to make the thing produce something half decent. I have just gone back to Flipbook and everything was there ready for me to read - no need to keep rating articles the sources are there just as you want them. So the more I have used Zire the better it has got yet the same old problems are still apparent - far too US centric even after a day of hard work. It really shouldn't be like that
Sent from my iPad
Body Painting (megaodd.com)
Some wonderful and not so wonderful examples of body painting.
Body Painting
megaodd.com/art/body-painting/
Sent from my iPad
Thomas Moran (linesandcolors.com)
Wonderful selection of landscape paintings
Thomas Moran
www.linesandcolors.com/2011/03/06/thomas-mora...
Sent from my iPad
How Many Nipples Are There In ... (londonist.com)
This is some of the most important art history research ever published!
How Many Nipples Are There In The National Gallery?
londonist.com/2011/03/how-many-nipples-are-th...
Sent from Zite personalized magazine iPad app. Available for free in the App Store.
Sent from my iPad
Zite v Flipboard - some more thoughts
Well I've used both this morning over breakfast in a very unscientific experiment and at the moment Flipboard is the winner. For those of you who don't know flip board allows you to add content from a number of sources such as the Guardian or Mashable and Google reader. You can select one of these and it presents them in a well designed format that allows to read the articles within Flipboard. Zite on the other hand uses your google reader and twitter feeds to find news source on Google that match what you are reading in these two sources. You don't get the actually source document but rather other sources that are covering the same subject, such as say the iPad 2.
There are a number of problems with the Zite approach at the moment. The first is performance. Things seem to have improved over the past few hours since I set Zite up - which could suggest an element of user error. This being said it still does take a while to prepare the content. The second problem is that the content is almost all North American. Whilst in some subjects this isn't a problem, such as tech news, in others it is next to useless, sports is a case in point. These no doubt will be accessed as the system beds in but the next is a biggy. Why provide reports on topics from other providers and not the one that you have selected? This does have a certain curiosity factor, for example it was interesting to see that the conservative party in the Canadian parliament are also called the Tories but why did Zite present this to me when I certainly wouldn't have got this from the providers I have selected either on Twitter or Google? Of course the final thing that is questionable about Zite is the way that they will pay for all this. They make no bones about using the information they are gathering on your news reading habits to target advertising at you, again this is not new as Google does just the same thing. If you are concerned about such matters then you need to avoid Zite.
So after a morning's unsophisticated sampling what are my first impressions? Well Zite is an interesting idea that has some way to go. Given that the service has only been running for a few days then this is not such a bad thing. It does give them room to develop their product which I'm sure they will. Of course the more interesting question just know is this - how will Flipboard respond? They are the mature (?) service and so will have to produce new features/approaches to ensure that Zite doesn't take Market share once they have sorted their teething problems out. An interesting battle to observe over the next few months.
Sent from my iPad
Power back on
Well the power came back on at about 04:30 hrs. K wonder what will happen tonight - will it go off again at 21:00hrs?
Sent from my iPad
Zite magazine App
Well I've just downloaded the Zite app which is supposed to offer you customised news feeds based on your Google reader and Twitter accounts. This is seen as competition for Flipboard which provides a similar service. The USP of Zite is that it customises itself to meet you needs and so produces a unique product tailored just to your needs.
However there are two faults that I have found. The first one is that the company assumes that only American's use the app. This is surprising as the app is written by Canadian university graduates but can be forgiven for now as this is a new service. The biggest fault however is that it is so slow or just crashes. Again this is a start up company so you should expect to have problems but, and this is a big but, when compared to Flipboard the experience is down right appalling. I have spent 15 minutes trying to set it up only to find it continually crash or to spend all it's time 'loading'. Not a very good start.
The idea is good but it would seem that they should spend more time working things out before the launch and also perhaps realise that there is a world outside the North American continent.
Ps - I've just gone back to Zite and it is still not working correctly - tilt!
Sent from my iPad
Wednesday, 9 March 2011
Cat and mouse
Now it's now it's off. The power came back on for a couple minutes then it went off again. I really sympathise with the mouse being toyed with by the malevolent cat. When this end?!!
I'm on line at:
www.flickr.com/photos/guthlac
http://simonmarchini.posterous.com
I hope you enjoy
Engineers on site
Latest up date is that the engineers are scratching their heads and wondering how to turn the power back on. I do hope they come up with an answer soon otherwise it will a second night without my PTI fix. How will cope ?
I'm on line at:
www.flickr.com/photos/guthlac
http://simonmarchini.posterous.com
I hope you enjoy
Another Power Cut
Well it's nine o clock at night so it must be time for a power cut! The difference this time is that it is very localised to 19 house around me - now if you are paranoid you might think that some was out to get me.
Let's hope things are sorted out quicker than last time.
I'm on line at:
www.flickr.com/photos/guthlac
http://simonmarchini.posterous.com
I hope you enjoy
Experimenting with abstraction
After feeling sorry for myself I have started to experiment further with the drawings I made during the power cut. Last week at one of my art classes I had a terrible time with abstraction. This is not because I don't get abstraction but rather that I felt that this was not the right place nor method of trying to introduce this to the class - this didn't go do well. Anyway, I'm interested in abstractions in my digital work and so here is the latest attempt.
Simon Marchini
Web: http://WWW.simonmarchini.co.uk
Twitter: http://twitter.com/@simonmarchini
Power Cut Drawing
Whilst I was bemoaning my lot during the power cut I made these two drawings by only the light of a camping bulb. I have decided to call these the supply drawings. Looking at these in the light of day I like them as they are just slightly expressionistic - well sort of ish. 
Sent from my iPad
02:25hrs
The power finally came back on at 02:25. All around parts of the system was restored and perhaps the most frustrating thing was that the road 20 metres away came back on just after midnight. Still everything has been restored so we can get back to our life. Sent from my iPad
Tuesday, 8 March 2011
Power cut update
Well according to the Central Network there 502 customers effected by the power cut which represents 90% of faults on their system. The thing that is so frustrating is that in the near distance there are street lights and house lights on. Grrgh.
I'm on line at:
www.flickr.com/photos/guthlac
http://simonmarchini.posterous.com
I hope you enjoy
Power cut
Deep joy we've just suffered a power cut! I am reduced to blogging and surfing on the iPhone at 3G speeds. Oh the injustice of it all.
I'm on line at:
www.flickr.com/photos/guthlac
http://simonmarchini.posterous.com
I hope you enjoy
Trying to make sense of all these isms
The more galleries and art I see the more my head has been befuddled by the different groups, styles and titles, Cubism or post expressionism or pointillism etc ( as you can see I have been looking at at lot of late 19th and early 20th century art recently). Now the hard systems part of my make up has had enough of all this and so I have sat down this evening to try and draw up some rudimentary chart which fits all these together and I have succeed in as far as any chart can really capture something as nebulous as influences and loose alliances. Of course the truth is that you have to spend years studying art history to really understand all the differences and to be quite honest I'm not interested in that. No what I want is some straightforward chart to help me through the maze and I think I have achieved that - sort off. Sent from my iPad
The female face
I've been trying to understand the female face over the past few days- this is not some sort of mars and Venus experiment but rather to better understand how to improve my drawings. The problem for me has been trying to draw Nicole Kidman from the front. She has a a very pronounced jaw line which every time I tried to capture resulted in her face becoming very masculine. Now Ms Kidman may be many things but masculine is not one of them. So why were my drawings producing such results? 
In an effort to answer this I traced Ms Kidman's outline in brushes and examined the result. The most striking thing for me was to notice the relationship between the jaw line and the eyes. In many of my drawings the eyes were too hard and perhaps not big enough. The result of this was to make the jaw line more pronounced Nd therefore more masculine. Well that is my analysis at the moment and I will only tell if this is true by applying the lessons and seeing what come out.
One final thing is this drawing. It is a very simple traced outline of Ms Kidman's face which I have shaded and turned into an original image which doesn't look much like the original. So is this plagiarism or is it an original art work? I think it is the latter, I would say that wouldn't I, but the reason for this is that whilst has the outline of well known face the resultant work bares nor resemblance to the original photo. In short I have tried to make a likeness of the person rather than the photo of the person. Not sure what this all means but it is my excuse and I'm stick in to it.
Sent from my iPad
Leicester City Council - Communion
via leicester.gov.uk
A wonderful little exhibition interesting pastel work, something I'm interested in at the moment. Small, compact and will leave you with an urge to work with pastels or is that just me? Probably.
Sunday, 6 March 2011
Oh dear
This actually looks better than the real drawing but it just didn't work. More swearing and stamping of feet on h part. However, there is only one thing to do is start all over again. Oh dear. 
Sent from my iPad
Saturday, 5 March 2011
Long way to go
This is the start of yet another drawing of Nicole Kidman. I have to keep reminding myself why I am persisting with drawing just one person all week. Well I think the reason is that I want to produce the best drawing I can in a week and I have got it in my head that the longer I look at some one's picture the better the chance I have to make this drawing. The problem with this is that the best likeness I produced was rig at the start of the process so I'm not sure where all this is going. Anyway, here's the start of a drawing that doesn't look like Kidman's been too photoshoped. Wonder how this will turn out? 
Sent from my iPad
What a wonderfully bad TV movie part 1
Just watched part 1 of the TV movies Apocalypse made in 2005. The date is important because FEMA and the general Federal Govt was still seen as fit for purpose before Katrina showed otherwise. Anyway, this isn't why the movies is so so bad. It's the Wooden acting, shockingly bad CGI and a script with more holes in it than a string vest that combine to make this rubbish beyond belief. However, because of all these corny problems I love the movie - I don't know why but I am a sucker for such trash. Well I can't weight for part 2. As if to complement this the following movie is Megafault a truly awful film which I believe was Brittany Murphy's swan song ( I do hope I'm wrong about that). Now this is a real turkey - can't wait. Sent from my iPad
CONAN iPad 2-FU Apple
Check out this video on YouTube:
This just sums up Apple's attitude.
Sent from my iPad
Inspired by Ms N Kidman
This started off with thing in mind and then moved away from that. To start off with I was trying to make a drawing of Nicole Kidman but as things went on I decided to drop this in favour of a drawing inspired by Nicole Kidman. I suppose in part is a lack of technical expertise but also in part a realisation that was I was producing had merit in it's own right. Now what that merit might be is for others to comment on. I enjoyed creating this and I think it is interesting and that is all that matters to me. 
Sent from my iPad
Friday, 4 March 2011
Textuality is getting worse!!
Blackberry, Tevo, HBO, Lexus, Apple and so it goes on and on. I really think Textuality should be shown QVC!
Sent from my iPad
Textuality - product placement gone made
Watching the Canadian movie Textuality and I have lost count of all the product placement there - starting with opening credits which were a Blackberry advert. The movie also is pretty lame as well.
Sent from my iPad
Thursday, 3 March 2011
Art Collection
Check out this website I found at simonmarchini.co.uk
I've just added an Art Work section to my website. I know the work can be found at Flickr and in my blog but I thought it might look better in one place displayed a little more sympathetically. I think it works.
Releasing the frustration
After I made the last drawing that went so spectacularly wrong I drew this cartoon sketch which low and behold produced a better likeness in 5 minutes than I managed in over an hour of work and toil. Now there are many reasons for this, perhaps the most important is that I knew the face I was trying to capture so very well that when it came to the cartoon I was able to draw it with better accuracy. 
Anyway, I like this and I'm particularly taken by the deep blue eyes. Now I know that Kidman's eyes are a much lighter blue but this blue seems to work better with the drawing.
Sent from my iPad
Utter Frustration
Reworking the drawing in a digital format has lowered my frustration with this. I spent almost two hours trying to get this right and in the end I failed miserably. My aim was to make a really good likeness from a small photograph of the actress Nicole Kidman - boy did I fail! However, once I moved it into a digital domain I was able to recover something really quite interesting. Out of frustration perhaps something good has come - I just wish I could have produced what I set out to do. 
Sent from my iPad
My thoughts on the new iPad
So having slept on the new iPad what do I think? Before I answer that I think I should set out my criteria for judging. The first is I don't know what the new iPad feels like when you use it so any comments I might make with regard to this should be treated with extreme caution. However the second is that I have lived with an iPad for nearly a year now and so have got a real feel for true impact of an iPad is in your life.
So what do I think? Well in truth this seems like a holding product. Apple had to do something to keep the hype fresh but they seemed to have done the minimum. Perhaps the best example of this is that the most interesting development isn't the iPad itself but rather the option extra of the new cover. This looks really funky but how useful it will be in real life only time will tell.
There is nothing in the new iPad that would enhance my use of the iPad. I don't play graphics heavy games on the iPad so the enhanced chip speed and graphic capabilities would be of limited appeal. I don't video conference with other apple users so the backward looking camera wouldn't help. I would consider editing video on the iPad, that is what my heavy duty PC is for. I have a friend who's son might be interested in the GarageBand app but I don't so this doesn't really. So in short other than the kick of having the latest iPad, admittedly vain but nonetheless attractive, I can't see that there is any reason for me to upgrade from iPad 1. This doesn't mean that I think the iPad 2 isn't worth buying if you don't already have an iPad - I wouldn't be parted from my iPad as it has totally changed the way that I interact with the internet and computing generally (This is a fine example - in the past I only posted from my PC now I rarely do). It is just that there would be very little to attract me to upgrade that is, of course, until I get my hands on one! I am really sad.
Sent from my iPad
Wednesday, 2 March 2011
Apple (United Kingdom) - iPad - It's thinner, lighter and faster than ever.
via apple.com
so it has been launched. The first impression is that it is much hype and not any real changes which is to be expected as the first iPad was pretty good. The one thing that I really like the look of is the new case which no doubt does not work with the iPad 1. Anyway, only time will tell just how good this is. Just don't believe the hype which Apple are very good at.
The one that got away
Well this is based on Nicole Kidman and I suppose from a distance it may be a bit of likeness and I must say I am disappointed in that. However, the drawing was such a small scale that I don't think I have the correct control, too big and cumbersome hands I'm afraid, to really produce the fine detail needed to move from almost to actual likeness. This being said I really like the drawing because whilst she isn't Kidman she is and altogether more striking women who certainly means business. 
Sent from my iPad
Is today iPad 2 day?
Who knows but it probably is. We'll have to see what comes out from Apple over the day - perhaps Steven Fry might be able to answer this.
Sent from my iPad
Jonathan Miller
One of the joys I get at the moment is to make simple pen and ink sketches of face I see on TV. I usually record several things on the sky plus during the day and watch then at a latter time. When I see an interesting face I will freeze the frame and then sketch it. Jonathan Miller is the latest. 
Sent from my iPad
Tuesday, 1 March 2011
Nicole Kidman no 2
Next attempt and not bad - however must learn not to press too hard when making the first prep lines and marks!
Sent from my iPad
Ink pad - now this could be fun!
Just bought the app Inkpad and already it looks like it is going to be great fun. It's a vector map app from the creator of Brushes, another must have app for the iPad. I hope it proves to be the great hit I think it will.
Sent from my iPad
Nicole Kidman
Strange how things work out. Yesterday I was planning to spend the week working on new drawings of the model in the portrait course. Then the obvious struck me - she may see the results and they might not be very flattering as I was basing them one three quick sketches - I wouldn't be happy with that. Anyway, I'm sure I'll be making more drawings of the model over the next few weeks so by the end I'm sure I'll be sick and tired working with her features, beautiful as they no doubtfully are.
So what top do? Well I was wondering through the images of my contacts on Flickr and I found one of a drawing of Nicole Kidman. Suddenly I was inspired to work on her for a while. This is the first result of this flash of inspiration. I like it and just hope it leads to some eve more interesting drawings over the next few days.
Sent from my iPad
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