Drawing Post for March 31, 2015 (Tue)

Here it is 5 days or so later and I’m posting … um … number 4 of 5 pictures for this series.

I was hoping to post something new, or at least recent, but I keep coming across this one when I look through my files and decided that it was telling me something. It’s not original, it’s a copy of a Picasso, a water color I did quite a while back (87 or 88). But I’ve always liked it, so I’m going to post it as today’s entry.

Drawing Post for March 25, 2015 (Wed)

Drawing 3 of 5 – I can’t seem to keep a consistent “every day” thing going here. So it goes…

This was the envelope I used to send Lisa the ad for Hank Green‘s upcoming show at the Majestic in Detroit. Guest stars Harry and the Potters.

Daily Thought for March 22, 2015 (Sun)

These are some other bits I did during the concert – I mean, I WAS listening and all, but you know, your hands drift and…

These 4 drawings were on 3X5 cards. I scanned them and put them on a colored background just to give some structure to the whole thing…

Daily Thought for March 21, 2015 (Sat)

Lisa and I are in Lafayette for another concert – Five Year Mission and The ShakeUps in Ponyville. Professor Savvyshy was handing out coloring sheets and crayons (!) so I took one and doodled a bit. I ran out of paper, so I folded over each other corners and modified the base drawing a little bit, then turned it over and filled in the center. Here’s the results:

This is the basic drawing, colored and with a few mods of my own.

Then, folding top left corner gives us:

While folding top right corner gives us:

Now, if we fold the bottom left, we get:

and if we fold the bottom right, we get:

If you turned the whole thing over,a diamond shaped area in the center would be blank,

so naturally, I had to fill that in…

That was fun.

I’m looking forward to their next show.

Daily Thought for March 20, 2015 (Fri)

This is the first in a series of posts for a 5 day art challenge.

I made this Beaded vase for my friend Sarah several years ago. It’s about 10 inches tall, 8 or so in diameter. I typically do not do repeating motif so this was an experiment. The angel is hanging on embroidery thread.

Sorry for the unclear picture, it’s the only copy I have.

Daily Thought for March 10, 2015 (Tues)

Nothing too thoughtful today, just feeling nostalgic… this pic is from the “Twine Ball Road Trip” Lisa and I took in 2011.

Daily Thought for March 9, 2015 (Mon)

Jean and Lisa are endlessly amused by the way I stack things. It makes me think of the line early on in GhostBusters. They’re in the library. One of them points at a 6 foot stack of books and Bill Murray quips: “no human would ever stack books like that!”

Um, yeah they would.

I have.

That aside, here’s a couple of pictures from our little road trip last week. These formations were found in our hotel room just hours after we checked in:

Possibly the funniest thing about this was what Jean said when she saw the pictures. It wasn’t about the size of the pile or the precarious nature of the stack, it was “you brought all of that with you for a 2 day trip???”

Excitement at the Improv Class – Improvised Music Possibilities…

This is a very cool semester at my Rec and Ed improv class – for me!

All 5 students have interesting back stories and goals, but one in particular is just a “right place, right time” gift! I’ve been thinking of different ways to structure musical offerings at soon-to-open Pointless Pub (and here’s our Facebook Link). We are talking about music-behind-improv or music-between-improv sets, open mic, jam sessions, a host of possibilities.

I’d been reading about improvised opera, an idea that goes back at least as far as Leonardo daVinci. I learned about the International Society for Improvised Music some years ago, but after putting out some initial feelers, I figured their bar was a lot higher than I could jump. I don’t have an advanced degree in composition or musical performance, I’m just a guy who plays guitar.

A few months ago, Ann Marie brought Bradley Sowash – jazz composer, improviser, all around cool person, and a horse guy – to Ann Arbor First Methodist Church. His down-to-earth style refreshed my interest in (and confidence about! – thanks Bradley) doing larger scale musical improvisations. But even if my own sense of possibilities opened back up, I still had to accept the fact that this is a very high bar, especially for a program just getting off the ground.

And then Peter signed up for my Improv-for-non-Actors class.

Not to stress him out (if he’s reading this), but he’s quite a cool guy for me to run into. He’s a student at the U, he’s part of the Creative Arts Orchestra (which does improvised music), and he’s interested in the connection between improvisation and mental health. That’s been an interest of mine for a long time, most recently after doing an improv session with Kirsten Milliken (PlayDHD) at last summer’s ADDA conference.

I’m still not sure where this is going to go, but a lot of possibilities are opening up.

Daily Thought for March 8, 2015 (Sun)

Last week, Lisa and I were in Indianapolis (stayed northside in Carmel). We had a good time. We went hunting at a handful of used CD/DVD stores (we visited 5, 2 were out of business or moved, 1 was shut down while moving), went and said “hi” to Mike at The Hero House, discovered that we both really like Hot Box Pizza, and visited United Art and Education in Greenwood, IN. There were more reasons for going but that’s Lisa’s story to tell…

While we were at United Art & Education, I decided to pick up a book on “Zentangle”. I’d been curious about it for some time and wanted to try it. So I bought a jet black ink pen and an instruction book. I already had 5X8 index cards to draw on (I usually have a few on me). I drew several of them and “kind of” liked them. But overall, I think I prefer my “impossible” drawings. They’re a combination of optical illusions, things I’ve picked up from Escher and Dali, and just random doodles.

So for today, here’s a Zentangle and a couple of my Impossibles: