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IMDB for the whole world
My friend the artist El Rey — who regular readers will recognize from many previous posts, including the time when my attempt to get his squid painting turned into a stamp was busted by The Man — has just started a blog! It’s devoted to his thoughts on art, which are very cool and down to earth. In his first few posts, he tackles the question of color in paintings:
I still haven’t sat down and fully thought out my views on color, but I know I care about ‘em maybe disporportionately. If a picture has the properties of, say, subject matter, line/draftsmanship, color, and manner of execution, I’d say color gets half of my attention and the rest is divided up, with subject matter ahead of the others.
It’s kinda similar to when I was just starting out in music and I got my first distortion pedal and guitar amp; the different noises I could make interested me more, really, than what notes I played. I got a Nord Lead 2 Rack synthesizer in a gear trade and I haven’t used it much to actually play notes. More often than not, I just set a little serviceable gibberish loop going and tweak the knobs, rolling around in the delicious sounds exuberantly like a dog in something stinky. Color can be like that for me.
He also points to some way nifty outside resources that have informed his style, such as the Speedball pen technique that produced the exquisitely hand-lettered fonts on movie posters in days of yore. (That picture above is from a Speedball technique manual.) He points to this really jawdropping video of a current Speedball master tossing off note-perfect font letters by hand.
If you dig El Rey’s writing, check out his online art gallery, and his new t-shirt store — SurlySquid.com!
I'm Clive Thompson, a writer on science, technology, and culture. This blog collects bits of offbeat research I'm running into, and musings thereon.
Currently, I'm a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine and a columnist for Wired magazine. I also write for Fast Company and Wired magazine's web site, among other places. Email or AOL IM me (pomeranian99) to say hi or send in something strange!
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» visit the Collision Detection archives
September 26, 2008 » 01:57 PM
From an interview with ethnobotanist and anthropologist Wade Davis:
One of the cultures you celebrate in Light at the Edge of the World is the Inuit. What do you most admire about them?
Davis: The Inuit didn’t fear the cold; they took advantage of it. During the 1950s the Canadian government forced the Inuit into settlements. A family from Arctic Bay told me this fantastic story of their grandfather who refused to go. The family, fearful for his life, took away all of his tools and all of his implements, thinking that would force him into the settlement. But instead, he just slipped out of an igloo on a cold Arctic night, pulled down his caribou and sealskin trousers, and defecated into his hand. As the feces began to freeze, he shaped it into the form of an implement. And when the blade started to take shape, he put a spray of saliva along the leading edge to sharpen it. That’s when what they call the “shit knife” took form. He used it to butcher a dog. Skinned the dog with it. Improvised a sled with the dog’s rib cage, and then, using the skin, he harnessed up an adjacent living dog. He put the shit knife in his belt and disappeared into the night.
September 25, 2008 » 11:21 AM
“Video from a camp north of Toronto in December 2005 shows a car spinning around in a nearby, snow-covered parking lot. Prosecutors characterized that as special driver training but the defense, and many outsiders, said it was nothing more than “cutting doughnuts,” a favorite winter pastime of young Canadian motorists.” - A key piece of evidence submitted in the trial of a gang of alleged young Canadian terrorists.
September 24, 2008 » 11:21 PM
“Life imitates art imitating life: just thought a gnat crawling across my monitor was part of a Flash-based ad. I clicked it.” - A Tweet from Bill Braine.
September 24, 2008 » 02:37 PM
“Funniest FB friend request ever: “Twitter friend hoping to get to second base (Facebook!) ;-).”” - A recent Tweet by Pistachio
September 24, 2008 » 12:28 PM
Chinese powdered-milk crisis creates a new market: The return of the wet nurse
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