The start of an interesting relationship

I have no idea where this painting will take me but I'm starting to like the face. Another thing that has just struck me, the keystroke sound on the iPad is supposed to be the sound of an old typewriter made although I'm not sure whether it was an electric, probably or a good old stream driven manual. Certainly not the sound my old manual typewriter made as that was a much heavier thud as my fingers crashed into the keys. Happy days.

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Copyright

I know this is a sign of my age and, perhaps, my previous life, but I really feel very awkward using copyright material in such a way as to possibly be illegal.  I have spoken to teenagers about this and they appear to have no great concept of copyright - if it can be used then use it - seems to be their mantra.  It would be very easy to see this as a modern fault but I doubt when I was a teenager I wouldn't have really bothered about such matters.  Of course when I was a teenager copyright infringement usually meant making a copy onto a casette from an LP - not that easy and the quality was always dubious.  Nowadays that is not the case and it so so easy to rip millions of tracks and never pay a penny for the privilege.  It doesn't make it right and it is something I just won't do.

The reason for this examination of the ethics of modern life is that I have made another very simple video of my drawings and paintings I made using the Brushes app on my iPad.   I was going to publish this to Facebook with very restricted viewing which I thought would be ok as it was just to my close friends.  Everything was going ok until the get of jail warning dialog box appeared.  By this I mean, get out of jail for Facebook rather than me.  Did the material comply with the copyright law?  Well I suppose it was at the very margins of legality and so I chickened out and decided not to publish.  I suspect most people would have not given this a second thought and just published anyway but I just couldn't.

So because of my conscience I have deprived my close friends  the pleasure(?) of seeing this video.  I'm sure that Rick Davies and Roger Hodson would be pleased but as I write this other people would not be so caring.  Ironically the name of the song I was going to use was called Give a little bit - which is what I would to do to use the track.

Simon Marchini 

Web: http://WWW.simonmarchini.co.uk

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Girl on the beach

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Inspired by Leibowitz

Yesterday I posted an image under this title but almost as soon as I had done this I deleted the image from Flickr - it just didn't seem right. After sleeping on it and then playing around with the image this morning I produced something much more powerful. It is based on a photo Leibowitz took of herself whilst she was pregnant but the more I look at this the more I keep thinking - Jenny Saville - not only the subject matter but the powerful use of shades of red.

I also appear to have given the face a masculine feel to it which might hark back to the contraception campaign image from the 70's. However, as I was searching for that image I also realised that there was a transexual who recently was a bit of a media darling as he was pregnant and this made me realise that I was also aware of that as well.

In short inspiration comes from all sorts of places and at times it is very difficult to attribute one source over any other. One final thought. This is a digital painting and has a luminosity as a result of that - I'm not sure ti would have the same impact if it wasn't back lit.

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Learning to paint

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Inspired by Leibovitz

These two paintings are based on photos created by Annie Leibovitz. Now Leibovitz has a great eye for an image but it is debatable whether she is one of the greats of photography. As for these two paintings I am trying to explore a much looser style where tone and colour have a much greater importance than total accuracy. I'm pleased with the results.

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Lakeside Art Centre, Nottingham

Simon Marchini 

Web: http://WWW.simonmarchini.co.uk

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Nobody at all

One of the joys of painting on the iPad is that you can just sit down and dawn until some interesting face appears without all the mess. I think I'll call this man Erasmus.

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iPad thumb and finger

The things you doodle whilst watching a repeat of House...

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Flooding at Ratcliffe POwer Station

We really have had an awful lot of rain over the past few days.   I captured this image on the way back from Nottingham this afternoon.  I suppose some of the water here may just have been the same water I had stood in last Saturday or more likely not. 

Simon Marchini 

Web: http://WWW.simonmarchini.co.uk

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Still flooding

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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The flood waters are going down

Whilst other parts of the country are still suffering from flooding at least around here the water is going down.  This photo was captured on Saturday and both rivers are at least 2 metres above their normal level.

Simon Marchini 

Web: http://WWW.simonmarchini.co.uk

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A bit black dog - Pope Innocent the Fry

One of those days today - nothing for it but sit back and just relax. What better way than to make a drawing from something off the tele - in this case Stephen Fry posing as pope Innocent the third. I used pens for this so there was no real opportunity to correct anything. This makes you think about every mark you make.

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A well known musician

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Hare Doodle

I don't what it is about hares but I find them fascinating - perhaps it has something to do with my interest in pre historic british culture.  Anyway, I knocked this little doodle up this morning just for the heck of it. 

Simon Marchini 

Web: http://WWW.simonmarchini.co.uk

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The Night Shift

One last photo before bed...it has been an exhausting day.

Simon Marchini 

Web: http://WWW.simonmarchini.co.uk

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Cold Feet

There reaches a point in one's life when you realise that you are, perhaps, not quite as young as you once thought.  Well I might just have reached on of these points this morning.  Let me set the scene.  I live above the main flood plain for Leicester which floods from time to time.  So as I'm on a bit of a photo bender at the moment I thought wouldn't it be a great idea to record the flooding.

So far so good.   However, as I was wading through the cold water I suddenly realised that one of my socks in my wellies had come off and I was in fact walking through the water in a bare foot as wellies have virtually no insulating properties.  Now in the past I would have shrugged this off but today I suddenly felt a cold shudder running through my body.  For the first time I thought to myself... "..why the hell am I doing this?..."   In the past I have happily stood at the bottom of a dock slowly sinking into the mud to take photos of eider duck in the middle of one of the coldest January's in recent history and I didn't feel the cold.  Today I did.  I didn't stop but after this every step made me feel colder and colder.   Oh the joys of getting old!

Simon Marchini 

Web: http://WWW.simonmarchini.co.uk

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Battling with the technology

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Inspired by the tele

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I was feeling complicated

Just trying different things when using Brushes - I'm still having difficulty getting a real likeness whilst using Brushes - so this is just a man.

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