We went to see the Creek Show downtown this evening. It’s a series of illuminated art installations along Waller Creek. Very cool, and free! The weather was very nice and it was fun to hang out with friends. The only thing missing was food and drink, but I’m sure we’ll make up for that in the future!

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We went to see the Bruce Munro’s Field of Light installation at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center. It was very cool!

The field is difficult to capture with a camera, but I did have fun with a bunch of de-focused images. If you have a chance to see Field of Light, I recommend it.

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Just wanted to mention that the art in the men’s bathroom at Ramen Tatsu-ya in North Austin is amazing. And the ramen is pretty good too.

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Today I dropped Koa off at UT Austin for his third and final band camp of the summer. The dorm he is staying at is right next to the Blanton Museum of Art, so after Koa was squared away, I decided to check out the artwork. As a bonus, I bundled my ticket with parking so I saved a few bucks.

As luck would have it, I bought my admission at about 3 pm, right when a free guided tour was starting. It was “Best of the Museum” and we stopped at nine pieces of art and had discussions about each one. It was very interesting and illuminating! I’ve been interested in art all my life, but I find it hard to understand the purpose of it. Some of the art we saw today from the early 20th century was clearly made to make a social statement, but other Italian art from the 1600s was more of a depiction of a typical everyday scene. They were very different, but both are “art”. I suppose the hangup I’ve always had in understanding art is that for some reason I thought art should have a singular purpose, but that is clearly not the case. Some art is meant as a protest against the status quo, some art is religious and devotional, portraits can simply be a likeness of the subject, etc. I guess the art is more about the artist’s vision, rather than the objects in the art themselves?

Listening to the museum docent describe what the artists may (or may not) have been trying to say opened my eyes as to what art might mean to me. I’m excited to think about it more, and maybe I can use my creativity to make some more meaningful art. The first step is figuring out what I want to say, which honestly could be a challenge.

It’s funny to think that although I’ve been interested in art since elementary school, took classes throughout high school, majored in Art Studio and minored in Art History, then interned at a museum, that finally at 50 years-old I am giving serious thought as to what art means to me. All this time I’ve just been making things just because I liked the aesthetic. But there can be so much more, right?

I hope you had a nice Sunday!

またね～

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こんばんは。How’s it going?

Here’s the digital paint version of the pencil sketch I did a couple days ago. In the previous digital painting, I used the pen tool in Photoshop to create smooth lines for filling and erasing, which I found super-convenient (and fun). So for this latest sketch, I decided to use Illustrator to create the line art, then copied and pasted as Smart Objects into Photoshop.

I also found out about the Width Tool (Shift+W) to vary the width of a stroke. This blew my mind! I loved creating the line-art in this way. Check out the Smart Objects that I created using Illustrator and the Width Tool:

I think this version looks really cool. Maybe even better than the finished drawing. I guess that just means I need to practice more.

Anyways, for the final version, I had a little fun by putting a Nyan cat on the shirt and giving the character a more goth look. Both my kids said she looks like one of the Splatoon girls, which I don’t really see, but I’ll take as a compliment. 

To see all the sketches I’ve been working on, you can check out the Flickr album “My Sketching Journey”, or my Instagram account barron.sketches which I created just for posting sketches, watercolors, and stationery items.

I hope you had a nice Monday!

おやすみなさい！

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こんばんは。

Tonight the forecast is for a storm. Heavy rain, high winds, and hail are possible.

Cloud photo

The photo above is one I took at around 6 PM when the wind was picking up and you could feel the changes in the air. At least the crazy weather brings with it some interesting clouds.

Artwork

This evening I was browsing the work of an amazing digital artist. I just love Ilya Kuvshinov’s art! Simply fantastic.

Source: ArtStation – Eki, Ilya Kuvshinov

I found many other great artists and illustrators this evening, but I’ll share them at future dates. Just so much cool stuff out there.

I hope you had a nice Tuesday.

おやすみ

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