Virtual Brush Box

Stories

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Solstice. Summer starts.
Sunny skies. Sweaty showing.
School starts. September.

Shiny!

Awareness of the outside world. Space.com: See 1st photos of the moon’s south pole by India’s Chandrayaan-3 lunar lander, Pultarova, 23 Aug 2023.

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It’s Hot Out There
Central Alabama
Heat advisory
August 2023

What I Learned

How do you photograph heat? You can’t. You have to work indirectly.

Effects. Boiling water. Panting dog. Person wiping sweat from brow. Wilting plants.

Measurement. Mercury bar on a thermometer. Numbers on a digital thermometer. Colors on a weather map.

Associations. Desert sand. Beach. Palm tree.

Do I always know the subject? No. Some days I know what I’m looking for and I get it. Some days I spray and pray. Some days I am convinced the best way to look at the subject will be X, but the answer turns out to be Y. Often Y is a shot on which I took on a flyer. In this case, I have multiple images of a solo plant in a vertical orientation. Seemed the logical choice. Hence the meta pic. Once downloaded, the clear winner was many plants in a horizontal orientation, of which I have one exposure. Is still an exposure in digital photography?

Do I know what I’m doing? Meh. I was on f/5.6 due to light restrictions. No idea why a sunny day should have limited light. Possibly my nice, but moderate lens does not hold up to zooming. I had a similar issue photographing Coach Kate’s Derby. Given that I didn’t have much choice, I had the vague feeling that limited depth of field would not be bad in this case. [Tennessee Travels, Photography]

Success? Yes. Went somewhere. Found a suitable photo subject at home when I didn’t feel up to going anywhere. Did something. Check.

Technical Details

Stats. f/5.6.0, 1/125 sec., 48.0 mm, ISO 400. Manual.

Post production. Resize, border, and watermark.

Last Week [Coosa River at Gorman Park]

Onwards!
Katherine

Awareness of the outside world. CSU: Birch sugar is the same thing as xylitol and it’s toxic to dogs. 2021.

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The dogs have established several routines concerning their water.

Plentiful

Jasmine doesn’t get around much. Therefore, she has one water dish near where she spends the day. Another near her night sleeping spot. And a third on the patio. Perhaps also a fourth dish closer to the front door if she is out for a sniff of air but doesn’t feel the need to go the entire 15 feet to the dog pen.

None of these are more than half full because …

Clean

Rose can drink without making a mess. Jas leaves behind both dirt and dog drool. Le ick. Waiter, fresh water, please!

Jas can have water that looks okay but if you change it, she’ll have a slurp.

Clean water? Fresh water? Cooler? Aerated from the faucet?

Who knows. She’s of an age that we want to encourage her to drink. So, we dump the water and bring new.

Personal

During the day, Rose prefers to drink at the night water spot. No idea why. She will bypass a fresh dish in the living room to trot the length of the hall to have a drink.

Jas has never been audibly grumpy about sharing, but there may be canine subtext that we don’t perceive.

Plus, Rose getting a bit of exercise up and down the hall is not the worst outcome

Outro

Yes, we are dog minions. Your point?

Dog posts [Archives]

Onwards!
Katherine

Awareness of the outside world. None at the moment. After two weeks of over-reactive stressing, I spent last weekend in the lovely land of digestive upset. So, a cheerful one from the reserve pile until brain back online. If the chronology seems out of order, Monday’s post was scheduled on Friday. Guts were good then.

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Any one have a guess what the second green ribbons are for?

Still taken with the idea of towels as prizes. [April 2016]

The Borzoi folks know how to do it.

Blurry, but so much pretty.

The supervisors.

Previous Horse showed with a red ribbon in his tail. I would so have used this.

Taken during a photo exercise in April 2023. [At The Dog Show, Photography]

Onwards!
Katherine

Awareness of the Outside World. Asian American Journalists Association: ʻAhahui Haku Moʻolelo (Hawaiian Journalists Association) and AAJA-Hawaiʻi encourage sensitivity and precision in reporting on the devastating Lāhainā wildfire, by Yi-Shen Loo, August 14, 2023. Hat tip to G. Not my G. I mean G-who-is-a-linguist.

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A while back, the feed store started closing in Wednesday afternoons.

1 year ago? 2 years? 5? Whenever.

I can’t tell you the number of times that I pulled into the lot, saw the closed gate, and thought ‘Shit, it’s Wednesday!’

Last week we needed hay.

I managed to remember that it was Wednesday!

Before noon!

It’s a small thing, but one I am pleased about.

Onwards!
Katherine

Awareness of the outside world. “Each day the first day. Each day a life. Each morning we must hold out the chalice of our being to receive, to carry, and give back.” Dag Hammarskjöld.

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The Great Wave off Kanagawa – Paint by Numbers Kit from Today Is Art Day.

The idea of paint by number was invented by specific person for specific reason. My Modern Met: The Fascinating History of “Paint-by-Numbers” Kits, Taggart 2023.

The Great Wave is not a painting. From Internet comments, people may not realize this? Also, Hokusai was the designer of the image. Carvers and printers were also involved in creating the final products. Reminds me of comic books, which require writers, pencilers, inkers, colorists, and lettering artists.

Directions said to start with the light color, but that was the wave itself. So I started with sky because background.

By the time I got to the last colors, the two dark blues, I was swishing the paint on. I found I could not be precise. First off, the paint didn’t go where I wanted it to, at least not compared to fine line markers.

Secondly, you literally cannot be precise. You cannot keep it between the lines. You want to cover the black numbers and lines. I had to decide which of the two bordering colors would burst out of its bounds to obliterate the marking line.

Thirdly, I think being free with paint is the point. A line of paint needs to be applied with smoothness and authority, much like calligraphy with an ink brush. I think I was trying too hard to be exact. With one of the light blues, I took so long to paint that the pot dried, leading me to think I was not using the materials in the way they were designed.

What I Learned

Paint by number is all about process. If you want a pretty picture, you are better off buying a print.

By doing the painting myself, I learned about the materials. How does paint behave? How do brushes behave?

By doing the painting myself, I learned about the image. What are the shapes? What colors are used? Oh look, a bit of that color over there.

I suspect people who have this as a hobby work on several at a time. Move on to the next while the paint on the first one dries.

I also strongly suspect outcome is still dependent on artistic ability. The procedure seems simple. Put color A on area A. In reality, there are many, many micro decisions. How much paint? Where? These would add up to different final results for different people.

In his 1998 memoir—Whatever Happened to Paint-By-Numbers?—He [Dan Robbins] wrote, ‘I never claim that painting by number is art. It is the experience of art’ ” My Modern Met: The Fascinating History.

Exactly.

Links

CNN: The man who invented paint-by-numbers has died at the age of 93, Johnson and Baldacci 2019

Paint By Number Museum

“No records of the number of prints of the Great Wave produced during the Edo Period exist … And because the prints were not considered valuable at the time, their owners did not take much care of them and in most cases would end up throwing them away!” The British Museum: The Great Wave: spot the difference, Korenberg 2020.

Posts

Using 36 Views as inspiration [Views of Vulcan, Revisited]

Cookiegawa Wave [More T-Shirts for the Barn]

Onwards!
Katherine