illo friday - help

it's hard to tell if this will work or not. I have changed to the beta version of blogger and it doesn't like me trying to put big pictures on the blog, or at least on the front page
anyhow, I'm assuming it will work because the image exists. I have it open in another browser window right now.
if not I will have to repost

illustration friday


EDIT: Well that really sucks, now I am using the beta blogger I can't put big versions on the front page. as is my want.
pout.
(and if you don't believe me about the first time go here

but if you try to hotlink it as an image it comes up as the little crossy thing

Illo Friday - Thanksgiving

hey I'm back,
long time off line
but to show how I'm not slack
thought I'd chime
in with last frid's illustration friday theme

september 11

I would just like to promote this video
download a copy for yourselves
it's worth it
I'm sorry if that's a bit cryptic but I cannot do justice to this trying to describe it and just wanted to get it out there since I found the downloads page


peace

(oh and by the way it's not actually a 911 video, so don't be worried about that)

illustration friday

wild mix

can't be writing stuff now though

shadow Hosted on Zooomr

galiciamonafternoon Hosted on Zooomr

fromthewindow Hosted on Zooomr

lastride-1 Hosted on Zooomr

lastride Hosted on Zooomr

elpardorain-2 Hosted on Zooomr

elpardorain-18 Hosted on Zooomr

too tired

illustration friday

photos from galicia

we had a bit of a long weekend away
Lourdes, eni and I caught a plane to Galicia and stayed in a place on the beach.
Galicia is the bit above Portugal on the western edge of the Iberian peninsula.
full of old stuff, like this half built medieval bridge.



but the smell of bushfire smoke was never far away, as there was over 1000 bushfires that week in Galicia.



but we were right next to the beach, and that's hard not to like



and the smoke made for some beautiful photos, devestating effects on the everything not-withstanding



the other side of the ria, which I suppose you would call a fiord, or inlet, or something



sunrises over land and sunsets over the ocean.



I'm still not feeling very talkative but there's quite a few more images on my flikr page, linked from that box at the bottom of this page. Unfortunately, I've already used up my upload bandwidth for the month so the rest will have to wait.
lots of dog shots of course. Maybe later I'll do an illustration friday, but don't hold your breath, or as they say here in spain, wait sitting down, although they say it spanish, claro

clean-illustration.friday

illustration friday

hey, I'm back

although I am out of time to write my content, but I will come back to finish up later today
shit, I mean poo I mean joder.
it's been a week since I wrote that.
how time flies, and rightnow I am here instead of where the plan calls for, - out on my bike getting some more kms in.
dog knows I need them.
my ability to procrastinate lately, instead of get out there and suffer like a god, is costing me dearly.
and obviously the same thing happened last tuesday as well


at least that's a smile ¿no?

ever since I started to relax a bit, that has become my new norm, while the others in the group are doing secret training , or eating less ice-cream, or doing something because every time we come to an uphill stretch I'm off the back and I don't like it.
I was climbing really well, when I wasn't working.
that's pedro next to me in the following photo.
don't let that knome like appearence fool you. he he shaved off that beard he would look like the killer that he is.
he came in only four minutes after the winner in a recent 'race' to the mountain pass called navacerrada. in about fifteenth place.
and although I didn't do it I know that another day he climbed navacerrada in 26 mins and I took 34 on sunday.


and that fellow behind is the same sort of problem.
they are just killing me in the climbs now.
I have to do some serious rectification.
anyhow, I've got to go now or it's just not going to happen.


and eni is crying from frustration.
vaya team.



illustration friday

It's been a while

though things are still the same.
we are stuck in the routine, although it affects each of us differently



I just haven't had much time or inclination to update the blog when things are, . .
I don't know, basically depressing.
I don't like admitting that I am depressed to my world wide audience, but there you have it. still life goes on



or, still, life goes on. nature is as complex as ever, and we are as ignorant as ever



it's spring time already and there's plenty of floral action around



I am completely at a loss for words
completely sick and tired of the status quo
maybe we'll move to Bolivia
if Morales appears not to slacken of in his efforts, I'd love to go and do what I can to support a move away from capitalist imperialism.
after all is said and done, there remains plenty to say and do.
well I'm not making much sense now.
I need to go to bed.
more cycling kms tomorrow.

to the anonymous commentator from last time, have no fear, the crash didn't keep me off the bike.
In fact I did 300 kms that same weekend and have done 1900 since then. and if it didn't rain so many weekends I would have done more.
so don't worry, be happy.



illustration friday

really losing the plot

can't seem to get it together enough to post at all


so just some skies, so you'll know that I still live


and take photos sometimes


all taken on my sister's birthday


but I forgot to ring her, and didn't remember again until she rang me to find out if I was still alive

unforgivable
although kraus forgives me



illustration friday

I've been tagged by teri C

thanks teri, I have enough time to do this now (I think)
although the truth is, as usual, that I have very little time indeed
any how the tag is to reveal four things about me in different catagories.

four jobs I have had
well I have had a mountain of them
1. my fist job; at 13 and a half; assistant to the news agent, operating the primative paper rolling machine on saturday and sunday mornings, from 2 am to 5:30 or 6 o'clock. 30 dollars a week, if I remember correctly.
2. my first full time job, after I dropped out of medicine; dog food delivery driver, for a company called HAY YOU Pty. Ltd: and no I am not kidding.
3. my higest paying job; although it was only for 42 days. working as an unqualified rigger and all rounder in the last frantic lead up to World Expo 88, in brisbane, queensland. I earned 9000 dollars in the forty two days and 'pissed it up against the wall', although I also went skydiving.
4. my most missed opportunity job; working once a month or so hanging the shows in Micheal Milburn's gallery in new farm. (rest in peace Micheal)

four movies I watch over and over
1. Pulp Fiction; I don't think I need to say any more. one of the all time greats.
2. Baraka; If you have not seen this movie, you really should drop what you are doing and go search it out in a specialty video shop.
3. Pink Floyd's The Wall; I watched this movie 8 times in one weekend, at one point of my life, quite a long time ago.
4. Toy Story and Toy Story 2; I could sit right down and watch them again right now.
(if I had the time and a video player, because I own them on video, in the spanish dubbed versions), and anything else by Pixar.
hors catagoria. Torrente. el brazo tonto de la ley. A classic spanish movie that I can't recommend highly enough.

four places I have lived
this is hard.
1. Kingston. I have a house still in Kingston, not the one in Jamaica though, Kingston in Logan City, between Brisbane and the Gold Coast in Queensland, Australia. I would be happy to live there again, even though it's in my hated suburbs.
2. Madrid City. at one stage I lived in Callao, which is as central as you can get, but now I live in Tetuan, right where Metro Francos Rodriguez is.
3. Blackwater, Qld. a coal mining town, where I lived during the formative period between ten and twelve approx. very country Queensland.
4. Coles Creek, Qld. on a dairy farm called Kevindale. when I though I could drop out. I didn't succeed because I didn't stop drinking, but it set the tone for the second period of my life. from there I went to Art College.

four TV shows that I watch
well this is easier, because I don't watch any.
true Gasp. I don't actually have a TV, although I do have a tv tuner card in this very computer, but I only fire it up if there is cycling on.
so
1. Tour de France
2. Vuelta a España (tour of spain)
3. any other cycling race. (which translates as none)
4. previously I did watch quite a bit of tv, and would again, which is why I don't own one. shows I would watch include, for example Blackadder, I'm Alan Partridge, The New Statesman, Alas Smith and Jones, Father Ted etc.

four places that I have vacationed
also can't really say I ever have vacationed, in the usual sense. but I have been places. so here goes.
1. Fiji, with my mother, when I was fifteen. my mum and dad got married in Fiji, and we had an uncle or two living there, so we took advantage of that and went and stayed on the cheap.
2. Kata Juta. one of the most incredible places on the planet. We camped illegally on aboriginal land about 30 k's to the west and arrived two hours before the legitimate sightseeers. bit bad but I recommend it as it's the only way to see it alone.
3. Segovia. here in Spain. amazing aquaduct, and castle and stuff like that
4. Sydney. far more beautiful than I really thought all my life.

four favourite dishes
1. spagetti bolognase, as made by me
2. avacado on toast, with king island chedder, or parmasan or some rich cheese
3. muesli, with corn flakes and fruit juice and skim milk and yogurt
4. maybe ice cream, with chocolate cereals, or maybe lomo adobado.

four sites I visit daily
1. http://www.fromthewilderness.com/ something everyone should do
2. clusterfuck nation by jim kunstler I include jim kunstlers blog in the interests of truth as I do visit almost everyday, but I no longer pay any attention to what jim actually says on his blog as he has turned out to be a complete fuckstick, pardon the french. he even has the gall to deny 911 truth. but his commenters are not all so backward and if you want a way to make some sense of the web, do what I do, read the (500 or more every week) comments and follow the links that are offered there and you will have a direct line to the most interesting things on the web.
3. jack dinglers blog although as with my own weasledogs lair is not updated everyday, I still go hopefully looking. I started going here as he is a regular and very valuable commentator on the aforementioned clusterfuck blog
4. the weather in madrid (according to robots). I also go to this one and click on Madrid, right in the centre and read the human written version. and it's all bad news again tomorrow. (for cycling)
and I look at my yahoo mail.

four places I would rather be
I'm not sure I would rather be anywhere that I am not. but if you insist.
1. climbing mountains on my bike
2. amongst the termite mounds in the Northern Territory
3. Tasmania
4. anyplace away from the city and all the people

four bloggers I am tagging
1. jack dingler jr
2. detlef
3. joe
4. lily and lucy white, who count as two I suppose.

thanks again teri for thinking of me
well now I have really got to go, (and let them know) and go to bed.
illustration friday

damn it all, I fell

although nothing too serious, I must admit.
but it's the first time in 5 years, I'm pretty good at staying upright usually.
I cleaned my bike on friday afternoon, including the wheels and tires, and I think I left a film of shampoo on the tires. That, combined with the criminal waste of water that is washing the streets every night, was enough.


you can see in the above foto that they just did it again.
the fact that there is a serious drought on doesn't make any difference to these crimal cabals in government. They passed a law about six months ago to stop watering the parks and gardens and to stop the washing of the streets, but all they did was put new stickers on all the water trucks that say 'not potable water'
like that solves the problem
I can't believe what I see everyday. The sooner it all falls apart the better, if you ask me. Won't be soon enough for the majority of the species on the planet, I'm sure enough about that.
anyway, as usual I haven't any time, so I better not get into any extended rant about the problem with the human species.
suffice to say that I suffer more from looking at our behavior as a species than I did from falling.
that's the worst of it


and this, on my beautiful consumer product.


also a little other bit


and a little more, along with a hole in my only cycling jacket, which would explain why this didn't make it through the first layers of my skin


and the other end of my bike, but really nothing that is more than superficial damage to me or the bike.
I had only just left the house and jumped off the curb and into the badly off-camber roundabout, which as I have mentioned had just been watered by the council watertruck.


I started to lose it but managed to control things, and was just engaging in a little self congradulation about how well I handled that dangerous front wheel slide and next thing I'm on the floor.
maybe if I wasn't so cocky the second slide wouldn't have happened. but I think it was meant to be. I need to remember to clean off the tires better after I wash my bike.
still this is the worst, so I came out alright, really.


sorry to say, no illustration friday again this week.
Hi to my mum and my sister who are on-line now.
welcome

another quickie, with last years work

well I have a few minutes before I get to go out on my bike to climb mountains in the cold.
(It's zero degrees out there right now, with a forecast maximum of 7) (degrees celcius, that is. for the americans out there, ºF equals ºC multiplied by 9/5 plus 32, and get rid of your president, before it's too late. although I have a dreadful feeling it already is. don't be going down to the superbowl today)



the above is a small experimental work that could spawn a whole series if I could just find the time. this following work and the next couple are pencil on paper and to answer detlef's question from the other day all my pencil works are at life size, so this is enlarged on your screens while the others are about their actual size. (on my screen 17" at 1280 * 1024 res)



while the watercolour that I posted last week is 24 by 30 cm or 9.5 by 12 inches. so those circles are pretty small. the first work in todays post has also come through at about real size.



these smaller pencil drawings are just a few days work each. I find I can do about one square inch of drawing a day, when it's all averaged out.
that's why I don't try any big works for now, apart from the fact that I don't have the space to do it in, literally



and, greatly enlarged, here is the first ball painting. this is a scrap of paper about 2 inches square, or 5cm's square.



I should have learn't my lesson from the time it took me to do this and never tried the 10,820 blue balls over scarlet
(I'm going to repost from an earlier post because I love it so muuch)
(sorry to any who have already seen this before)


three months, it took. with time off for good behavior.
or really with a couple of weeks where I had to work on other things because it was getting a form of carpal tunnel syndrome.
that's three months where I was working 10 to 12 hours a day.
there is ten thousand eight hundred and twenty blue balls there.


each has seven steps to complete it and the background is painted between the balls, as one of the last steps.
well before the shadows anyway.


the whole thing is watercolour on gesso, and as you can see there is a lot of cracking and crazing, a thing which I think adds to it's charm.


I just hope that it doesn't mean that at some point the paint will just fall off.
I hope it is in some museum by then.
(which contradicts what I think will happen, but we can all dream ¿no?
I should point out that the whole painting is 27 X 22 cms or 11 X 9 inches so it's fairly concentrated painters energy there.
I did fear that I wouldn't finish it a few times.
(right near the start too, when I realised that I should have left the space, that represents the reflected highlight of each ball. I had to draw the paint back off the surface of the gesso with the tip of a paintbrush putting the tiniest little drops of water on each one and then drawing that water and paint up with the brush and then cleaning the brush on kitchen paper and with water and then repeat. etc. ad infinitum)


anyhow an experience it was.
got me a mention in the review of a competition exhibition in an arts newspaper here in madrid (el punto de las artes) where the reviewer, who remained nameless, even after I rang to ask who it was, lumped it in with a couple of other works in the 'also worth a mention' part of the review.
after getting my name badly wrong, as did the organisers in the catalog and on the wall tags, he said that my work represented a new and interesting discourse.
so I was pretty pleased with that,(one has to take what one can get, otherwise known as beggers can't be choosers) and of course I think it does.
my little doggy mate has posted as well.
anyhow got to go

love to the illustration friday crew.
I don't deserve your visits, but rest assured I have been looking over your blogs without commenting.
teri is really posting some great drawings. the whiskey cowboy is such a ripper teri.
I will come back to you all, but for now I'm going to miss my group if I don't leave here in a few minutes.
love and peace.