Caravaggio the criminal

Old state archives from Rome, show that Caravaggio had somewhat coloured past.

He had frequent brushes with the police, got into trouble for throwing a plate of cooked artichokes in the face of a waiter in a tavern, and made a hole in the ceiling of his rented studio, so that his huge paintings would fit inside. His landlady sued, so he and a friend pelted her window with stones.

Tack on a murderous brawl and you’ve got yourself a fine upstanding citizen.


Hockney’s iPad art

David Hockney is showing his iPad artwork at an exhibition in Paris. He’s not adverse to using technology to create art, but found that computers were too slow.

It has given him a new way of sharing his creations. Fleurs Fraiches has its origins in smaller drawings that Hockney made on his iPhone and then e-mailed to friends. After a short while he’d produced hundreds of drawings, loving them for their immediacy, and for the instant responses and critiques from those who received them.

“You can make a drawing of the sunrise at 6am and send it out to people by 7am.”

Yup, the iPad is only for consumption of media, you can’t use it to produce content.



Plotter Drawings

Example of a plotter drawing

Plotter drawings from the 1960s. These are probably some of the earliest examples of digital artwork. The Wikipedia entry has some more information about plotters.

Pen plotters print by moving a pen across the surface of a piece of paper. When computer memory was very expensive, and processor power was very limited, this was often the fastest way to efficiently produce very large drawings or color high-resolution vector-based artwork.

That would’ve been some fun programming.


Whiskerino

Whiskerino

This is the last year of Whiskerino, an exercise in camaraderie, manliness, photography and general beard growing. The last time it occurred, I was travelling without a razor, already rocking a massive beard, and was unable to compete. Basically, you start on November 1st, clean shaven and don’t touch your razor or any other trimming implements until February 28th, making a full 120 days of uninhibited beard growth.

I will be uploading a daily photo to my profile on Whiskerino and occasionally to my flickr stream, if you feel like keeping track. I’m also planning on producing a book at the end of it, with each of the daily photos and a collage which may or may not be related to the day’s photo.