As we are now moving slowly forward into 2011, I've begun to set up another blog for my art work, published books and films. I've done this in response to my own particular need to have an art gallery on the web. Although at the initial building stage, the work I'm producing is beginning to grow and it needs a showcase, hence the dedicated 'Toni Bryan Art Centre'.
The Toni Bryan Art Centre will also be a 'showcase' for other artists, and I invite other artists to submit their own blog and site links so I can include them. Whilst there may be a tendency for professional artists to submit their links, I'd like to encourage the enthusiastic 'amateur' to participate in particular. To anyone whose link is included in the Art Centre, I'd ask the same courtesy is extended to the Toni Bryan Art Centre. All of us know how important marketing is, and the majority know how time consuming it is and difficult it can personally be if, like me, you are no natural born salesperson. If you would like to be included, leave a comment below of how I can get in touch.
Whilst it is my intention to have the Art Centre up and running by the end of this month, January, please remember it takes a little time and nothing involved with technology ever runs as smoothly as it should. Please also note that the Art Centre isn't a money making venture. The intention is only to make available a resource so artists have another potential marketing avenue available to them.
I look forward to hearing from you!
An individual stroll through life, often taking an amusing view, or sometimes a little more serious one, depending on the mood.
Showing posts with label art. Show all posts
Showing posts with label art. Show all posts
Sunday, January 9, 2011
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
A new work in progress!
You may remember me mentioning in my last blog that I wanted to change the direction of this blog. And as you can see we have a work in progress! I'm not sure at this stage whether the change in layout will be the final one, but I think it's clearer and better laid out, although I'm sure that most of my regular readers will only notice slight changes, but I think the change is for the better.
As will be seen I've now added a photo of me, constructed from a warped mind that loves surrealism in all its many splendours. I make no apologies for looking very weird and demented, except to say that I got very happily carried away with GIMP and trying to manipulate the mugshot in question, so that I'd look 30 years younger...I've always been a naive optimist! What I was thinking of at the time of manipulating I've no idea but I do like the idea of combining punk with the romantics....it's also satisfying to see that I have a head of hair again.
I continue to work on my second short film, working title 'Penguin Amore!' and it's almost finished. 30 minutes ago I found a piece of music that I hope fits the film. I never realised how hard it was to add a soundtrack to a film, especially when you come up against copyright. Personally, as an author and film maker, I can understand your work being used in an inappropriate way, but music I want to use is 40 years old and hardly likely to reach the heady heights of the pop charts again, but we have to play by the rules.
I continue in my creative mood, last weekend saw me on Saturday getting wet due to the early autumnal rain. Sunday a much brighter and drier day, and as the gods were smiling off I traipsed to a local fountain to take some surreal shots. One of my glaring faults, yes I have one or two, is that I tend to become preoccupied with whatever I'm doing when in an arty mood. The fountain was particularly well lit by a slowly setting sun, which added a sense of the cheerful unknown, tiny wavelets from the cascading water sparkled and glinted and danced merrily before disappearing into watery nothingness. To take the shots I wanted I lay down so I was at eye level to the surface of the water. Five minutes later I was wet, wet, wet due to lying in a puddle of water I hadn't noticed. How one suffers for one's art!
Of course the week begins again and two hours of raw film footage has to be looked at, which is always enjoyable until that moment you realise that the camcorder is out of sync with your brain cells. Thankfully I don't record such moments, a man crying into his pint mug of tea is perhaps too much for everyone to bear, and likely to cause the few friends remaining in my life to finally bid farewell to the antisocial, miserable git!
So it's now back to the drawing board and coming up with ideas for content. Whatever I end up with as content I'm sure it'll be useful, at least to me. There I'll finish, acknowledging that I do like me and thinking how cute I ended up looking when I'd finished mucking around with GIMP. Anyone fancy a makeover?
As will be seen I've now added a photo of me, constructed from a warped mind that loves surrealism in all its many splendours. I make no apologies for looking very weird and demented, except to say that I got very happily carried away with GIMP and trying to manipulate the mugshot in question, so that I'd look 30 years younger...I've always been a naive optimist! What I was thinking of at the time of manipulating I've no idea but I do like the idea of combining punk with the romantics....it's also satisfying to see that I have a head of hair again.
I continue to work on my second short film, working title 'Penguin Amore!' and it's almost finished. 30 minutes ago I found a piece of music that I hope fits the film. I never realised how hard it was to add a soundtrack to a film, especially when you come up against copyright. Personally, as an author and film maker, I can understand your work being used in an inappropriate way, but music I want to use is 40 years old and hardly likely to reach the heady heights of the pop charts again, but we have to play by the rules.
I continue in my creative mood, last weekend saw me on Saturday getting wet due to the early autumnal rain. Sunday a much brighter and drier day, and as the gods were smiling off I traipsed to a local fountain to take some surreal shots. One of my glaring faults, yes I have one or two, is that I tend to become preoccupied with whatever I'm doing when in an arty mood. The fountain was particularly well lit by a slowly setting sun, which added a sense of the cheerful unknown, tiny wavelets from the cascading water sparkled and glinted and danced merrily before disappearing into watery nothingness. To take the shots I wanted I lay down so I was at eye level to the surface of the water. Five minutes later I was wet, wet, wet due to lying in a puddle of water I hadn't noticed. How one suffers for one's art!
Of course the week begins again and two hours of raw film footage has to be looked at, which is always enjoyable until that moment you realise that the camcorder is out of sync with your brain cells. Thankfully I don't record such moments, a man crying into his pint mug of tea is perhaps too much for everyone to bear, and likely to cause the few friends remaining in my life to finally bid farewell to the antisocial, miserable git!
So it's now back to the drawing board and coming up with ideas for content. Whatever I end up with as content I'm sure it'll be useful, at least to me. There I'll finish, acknowledging that I do like me and thinking how cute I ended up looking when I'd finished mucking around with GIMP. Anyone fancy a makeover?
Monday, September 13, 2010
Monday afternoon waffle!
A few weeks ago I had a rant against the world, largely due to what I thought was an injustice, someone who was likely to be denied the opportunity to improve their English because of the horrifically low level of salary they were getting. In the end the individual and I agree to my solution to the problem, which was happily accepted by the individual in question. Yet here we are three weeks later, only one lesson taken and appointments continually missed by the said individual. I've done what I hate doing and withdrawn my offer of help.
Of course it saddens me that no matter how hard you personally try to make a tiny part of life more accessible and enlightening for others, you still get your butt kicked for the effort. Not particularly thinking about this particular story, I wrote yesterday '...it's very peculiar that humans love to be around success, but only the rare one helps someone actually achieve it.' I've taken this out of context, but it remains all too true regardless of the context. Such a thought makes you question your own particular responses to other events in your life, and think about the times you've been a cussing SOB when someone has offered their hand out in friendship and you've refused because of a stubborn streak of pride. I suppose it all comes down to swings and roundabouts, and history having a very uncanny knack for repeating itself. But I remain sad because I wasn't able to help someone, even though I have the knowledge and passion to open the door a little further.
I was talking to my son this morning, waffling as we do in our normally relaxed manner, bouncing ideas off each other with regard to his business and my own future plans. At the moment I've come up with an idea that has some 'legs' to it, and in time will enable me to move in a direction that I'm excited about. At this stage it's just an idea, although most of the things needed are already to hand and in place; that is apart from a particular piece of technology, the 'right camera'. Now I realise that minds will be going ten to the dozen and no doubt full of smutty innuendo when I say 'camera'; shame on you! Nothing could be further from the truth, but needless to say the 'right camera' is a must for the idea to come to fruition.
I've spent hours doing the necessary research on the Internet and I'm no further forward than when I started out, well that's not strictly true because one of the things I have discovered, and please feel free to correct me, is that it is virtually impossible to hook up an HD camcorder to either a pc or mac, and use it as a webcam. Use a webcam, no problem, well apart from the poor colour, the awful streamed picture, the lack of autofocus or variable focus, the lack of a wideangle lens, no aperture control, poor mic, and so on; all of which is easily accomplished with an HD camcorder. I'd be grateful if anyone reading this, who is technically superior to my poor self, can leave a comment on how to achieve the impossible. Sadly it seems, based on this particular experience, there is a massive gap in camcorder technology that needs to be filled, post haste! As always, my books can be found to the right hand side of this blog, along with my very first short film, which has recieved a few comments already. When watching the film, you can find it on the right hand side, just remember that it's an experiment and wonderfully reflects my own surreal thinking, which according to a couple of comments lost them in what I was trying to say; another comment wondered if the film was about a pink sky. How true it is you have to suffer for your art!
Finally, thank you to 'Almost Precious' for adding her comments, always nice to hear from fellow bloggers. If you've got a few minutes go to her blog and check out her handmade jewellery, scrumptious might be an apt word to describe her wares.
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