Cows designing at night

Seems like some of the best design, music, painting, illustration...art in general is produced late in the evening.

Even the cows aren't afraid to jump over the moon at night.

Design is about cleaning up after yourself

Design, painting, illustration, and writing  is all about making a mess of a first draft, then cleaning it up later.

Apples

Spring is here. So last weekend I did some googling to see how I should trim my apple trees. After some clipping and chopping I think my orchard is ready for the summer. (All three small trees).

While I was at it, I took care of my vineyard (two vines).

Last year one of my grapevines did really well. (It produced about four bunches of grapes.) One Saturday afternoon I picked a sample to see if they were ready. Ellen and I both agreed that they needed a few more days. A couple more days passed and I checked again. Every single grape was gone. Critters...

I don't mind sharing, but hopefully this fall I'll be like this guy with some apples to inspect.

Baseball Season

I hear that some folks are playing preseason baseball in Florida.

When I was a young lad, I played baseball for two seasons on a pony league team. I think it was the summer after my seventh and eighth grade years.

I played in the right field (when I played), long before I knew why some kids were always put in the right field. I remember standing in the field, trying to say the chants that all real baseball players new how to say. Something like, "Come-batta-batta-batta." Seemed pretty silly to me.

When I wasn't sitting on the bench, or in the right field (trying to pay attention), I occasionally got a chance to bat. My batting average was consistent, and easy to remember...zero, 0, also know as .000.

Fortunately I learned to do other things with my life. But I do wish I could be in Florida for spring training. (I would skip the baseball.)

Walking a dog.

Walking a dog. I hear it’s good to do. If you have a dog.

We don’t have a dog. But we have been dog-sitters before. And at those times, I walked a dog.

Actually, my family had a dog when I was a kid. And sometimes we would take her for a walk. She was a beagle. She constantly wanted to tear off after every little distraction she saw. Not at all like the dog pictured here. The pup pictured here looks thrilled to be out and about, though it does not appear that the guy in the coat feels the same way.

Sipping coffee*

Drinking a cup of coffee. The screw-top lid not quite secure. A bit dribbles quickly down my chin and into my open collar. My cologne for the day.

 *Author's note. The cups in this picture do not have lids. I learned to make short hair dots on the sides of their heads from Joe Glorioso. Thanks Joe.

Gh Trucking

I suppose I could try a different career. Driving a moving truck for example. But that would mean lifting boxes and furniture. And probably a bit of packing up of other people's stuff.

I don't like to lift heaving things. Except maybe when I lift myself up from my chair to go home from work. But I was impressed when I saw some guys installing a new washing machine. They had these strap contraptions that went over their shoulders and down under the machine. They then just had to stand up from a slight crouching position and walk it into place. Cool invention.

Another thing I like is those disk things you can get at a hardware store. You put them under the legs of heavy furniture. Then, all you have to do is slide the piece to the new place you want it.

I think I will stick to drawing heavy things.

Making dough with dough

Another drawing, another post. Making designs with my pictures.

I like baked goods.

Things you shouldn't do

Fortunately the wise designers of the power outlet made the plug area smaller than fingertips. Otherwise, boys might try to insert fingers. Unfortunately, boys will try to find other items that do fit. Nobody got hurt, just a scorch mark on the wall. Don't tell anyone.

Newspaper

I keep staring at this thing, the headlines don't change, the pictures don't move and Apple doesn't force me to look at a banner ad with no close option. But there's something about the convenience of a newspaper. Read it. Cut it up for ransom notes. Line a bird cage with it. Wrap a fish with it. Use it as a background for a painting.

You can't do that with a yahoo page.

Zoo Pictures Revisited

The last time I set a up a site to show some of my wildlife pictures the web was still pretty young. Folks back then liked things like frames and tables for designing pages. The images have aged better than my code base, so I decided it was time to do something new.

This time I decided to use some of the the features of html5 and css3. I also used jquery to build the navigation interaction. If you click one of the squares at the top right of the screen, the script in the background checks the number of the square you clicked and then finds and shows the image that corresponds to that number. A good puzzle for my small brain.

To finish it off I tried to make it responsive, so it looks pretty good on different size screens.

I hope it works well for you. You can see it here.

Content Management with Joomla

As part of my quest to control the world, or, at least my bits of the web, I wanted to learn more about content management systems.

I have used content management systems extensively, both for personal and work sites. This blog for example is written in the Blogger content management system. It provides a lot of the things I like:

• I can add post anywhere, from any platform
• All the new posts are styled automatically
• I can choose when to deploy the new content, if at all
• I can choose when to retire content
• I can share the content with other sites

I have used others too, Liferay and Wordpress for example. I have learned a lot about manipulating the css and javascript to control the presentation in those systems.

But what I want to learn more about is controlling the back end nuts and bolts of a content management system. Controlling the actual templates and structures of sites built in content management systems.

So I installed joomla in a subdirectory of my regular web site. And then, with the help of a book or two, and a lot of good information on the web, I learned how to build up the basic components of the underlying joomla template. It took me a while to understand it, but now I get it!

You can see the site in it's current form here. I will continue to add content as I have time.

Puzzle

Sometimes I don't know what to say.

The Paper Cup Factor

I wonder, do companies like Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts consider the flavor variable introduced by the paper cup they choose to use when serving beverages? I know from experience that, in my opinion, Starbucks coffee is served way too hot for paper cups. Even with a paper sleeve, it has to be close to boiling point. Since I already dislike Starbucks coffee, this is not a point in their favor. Though I guess the flaming temperature of their coffee does make sense since it tastes burnt.

Here is a picture of paper coffee cup taste tester.

Same Old City, New Site

Quite a few years ago I built a site to show a bunch of paintings I did in and around Baltimore. It was pretty cool! I used Flash!

Well, times change, technologies change and so the page had to change. I rebuilt it with html and instead of using Flash, I built the animations with jquery.

This is way easier to develop, deploy and maintain. And the paintings still look pretty good! You can see it here.

Here's what it looks like:

Tablets

Everyone is talking about tablets. Are they just for consuming, as many say? Or are they useful for real work? Personally I like my computer. Easier to type on, easier to design, illustrate and develop on. But in the mean time, here's a picture of guy trying to use his for work. Of course, it was done on a full computer with Adobe Illustrator, based on a preliminary sketch I did with good old paper and pencil.

Practicing the Alphabet

Part of being an artist is that I tend to draw a lot. Much of the fun of making art is in the making. And sometimes I want to make things, but I don't want to wait around for great inspiration. In those cases, I know I can use an old stand-by excuse to draw or paint, like the alphabet. (I've heard of some artists returning to themes like rural Pennsylvania with brown paint, or sad European clowns with blue paint.)

As a graphic designer, I also need to practice designing things. And as a web designer, I need to practice making web things too.

As an excuse to draw something, I did ink illustrations of each of the letters of the alphabet. To design something, I made a web page to display them. And for a web design project, I made it with one html page that uses jquery to change the images when a letter is clicked. Plus, the layout will change if it is viewed on a small screen.

Go ahead and have a look!

Trash or Treasure?

Sometimes things break. And sometimes when things break, it isn't immediately apparent what should done with the broken item. (I now have two broken sump pumps, should I just put them in the trash?)

I imagine the owner of the old lawn mower in this painting may have intended to fix it at some point. Maybe it was kept for spare parts. Maybe the owner just hasn't gotten around to properly disposing of it yet.

And what about those tires?

It's funny how some of the most interesting things to paint are things that really shouldn't be there in the first place. The grass needs to be cut, but the lawn mower is broken. The walls haven't been painted in years. The roof looks rusty and leaky. But it looks interesting!

If it was all cleaned up, I wouldn't have noticed it, or painted it.

Broken things have stories to tell. Brand new things, cleaned up things don't have stories yet.

Manhole Covers

I recently put up a page to showcase some photos I've taken through the years of manhole covers. I combined the photos with some special effects in Photoshop to give them a bit of a posterized look. I built the page with some html, css and jquery.

Take a look and tell me what you think.

Fell's Point Front Steps

Had a great time a couple months ago painting with a lot of my watercolor friends at a Frank Webb workshop. This painting was from a photo I took a few years ago while hiking around Federal Hill and the Inner Harbor in Baltimore. I like the steps and the bricks.