Full Version: iPad Project 2011 Culmination/Film

This film runs a bit slower than a previous version I posted.  This is my preferred way for viewing the work.  It's too long for YouTube.

iPad Project 8-10-11

iPad Project 6-17-11

iPad Project June 15, 2011

iPad Project 6-11-11

iPad Project 6-2-11

iPad Project 6-1-11

Two Oil Pastels

Red-Violet Maple, 18" x 15", oil on canvas

Maple, Purple, Green, 18" x 12", oil pastel on black paper

Night Maple, 18" x 12", oil pastel on black paper

Hip Hop artist Jay Z spun his song Hard Knock Life from Charles Strouse's It's a Hard Knock Life written for the musical Annie (Strouse says he was flattered). Jay Z was attracted to the lyrics because of the grit; he liked that it showed how it really is for some kids.

These works of mine have grit, an edge. They aren't pastoral. They have expressive marks and are skeletal, a builder's framing of a tree.

The bare canvas lights the form of the tree in Red-Violet Maple. The black paper provides atmosphere for Maple, Purple, Green and Night Maple. Their limited palette shows restraint, minimalism in service to form.

I love drawing in color. Here I wasn't willing to totally abandon it; I still wanted it for feeling. I draw with color when I use the iPad. It is some kind of drawing/painting hybrid just like pastels. I also love Hard Knock Life and hip hop dancing even though I'm a generally quiet white girl (o.k., it's been a long time since I've been a girl). The images are hybrids of my internal quiet and energy, strong from years of abrasive grit.

iPad Project 1-5-11

A project for 2011: Every day for one year I will make and post a new iPad artwork. It begins with the image for January 1st and then I will change that same image each day, not starting a new one but building off each subsequent day's image. Thus you will see the evolution of one artwork in 365 stages over a year's time. Sometimes the changes will be subtle, sometimes drastic. We'll see what happens. Enjoy! Reminder: images from this site can only be used with the permission of the artist. Email to contact.

Dot Painting #1

14" x 13", oil on canvas

Light moves, color moves, dots swirl like blowing leaves and dust. Dot Painting #1 pulses, extends itself forward and back just as it is stabilized by left and right verticals and a horizontal mid-line. Transitions between earth tones

are close, the off-white canvas is bare, harmonizing with the lighter colors. The lower left corner is held by a pink dot while diagonally opposed by an area of red.

Painter Lois Dodd in a YouTube video says she sees things other people may not see just as musicians probably hear things she doesn't. I think this painting is an example of the unique way I see and is stronger for it. It is this same quality that may make it esoteric. I stand by what I make no matter the degree of accessibility. People like different things. My job is not to guess what they like, be part of a think tank, but to make good art whether it is liked or not. That is the luxury a fine artist has over a commercial artist. The same quality interferes with cash flow, so perhaps it is the only luxury. It is sometimes discouraging and many artists quit from the compounded factors of money and lack of appreciation of their work. I don't regret my choice. I can't rest without making the images. Here is my personal declaration, a reminder of what I am doing. It's my raison d'etre and I take it with me into 2011. It was done on the iPad. I give permission to any artist to print it out for themselves (not to reproduce). Happy New Year!

The iPad Project 2011

A project for 2011: Every day for one year I will make and post a new iPad artwork. It begins with the image for January 1st and then I will change that same image each day, not starting a new one but building off each subsequent day's image. Thus you will see the evolution of one artwork in 365 stages over a year's time. Sometimes the changes will be subtle, sometimes drastic. We'll see what happens. Enjoy! Reminder: the use of any images from this site can only be used with the permission of the artist. Email to contact.

iPad Advent Calendar

Abstraction Yellow Center

Check in daily to Art Weekly for an iPad Advent Calendar! Each post will feature one or more of my artworks done on the iPad using the apps Brushes, Sketchbook Pro, Inspire Pro, Art Studio, or Type Drawing.

iPad Advent Calendar

Woman Reaching for Stars

Woman By a Window

Check in daily to Art Weekly for an iPad Advent Calendar! Each post will feature one or more of my artworks done on the iPad using the apps Brushes, Sketchbook Pro, Inspire Pro, Art Studio, or Type Drawing.

iPad Advent Calendar

Maple 2

Check in daily to Art Weekly for an iPad Advent Calendar! Each post will feature one or more of my artworks done on the iPad using the apps Brushes, Sketchbook Pro, Inspire Pro, Art Studio, or Type Drawing.

iPad Advent Calendar

Windy

Check in daily to Art Weekly for an iPad Advent Calendar! Each post will feature one or more of my artworks done on the iPad using the apps Brushes, Sketchbook Pro, Inspire Pro, Art Studio, or Type Drawing.

Maple, Grass and Maple, Dusk (iPad)

I am so happy. I blogged before about a book close to my heart, Just Kids by Patti Smith. Much to my delight, it just received the National Book Award for non-fiction!

"The judges called her memoir "an evocative work of cultural history" and an "unsentimental elegy for a time that seems both very recent and very long ago." - Bob Minzesheimer, USA Today

Smith cried while accepting as she told of working at Scribner's Book Store in New York City when she was starting out. She used to put the National Book Award winners on the shelf and wonder what it would be like to win. She promised Robert Mapplethorpe the day before he died to tell their story. They came from nowhere, committed themselves to art and came out on the other side. She means a lot to me for writing a book that is about art and the artistic struggle, fine literature than can speak to everyone. She opens the door to show people what an artistic life can be like. The book takes place in a particular location, time, and culture (NYC, 1970's bohemia) . This differs from my experience as someone who is just as committed to art but also determined to have a quiet family life avoiding walking the line with a risky, potentially self-destructive environment. I don't believe that that environment is necessary for great art-making but the proximity to other artists and exchange of ideas can generate more. It can lead to recognition as well. I neither celebrate nor criticize Smith and Mapplethorpe for choosing that framework for living; it's a valid path. It isn't for me - art yes, instability, no. I plod on painting dots in quiet.

A note on the above images:

The singular trees are figurative, like self-portraits. They are made colored light occurring at a particular time of day. Key is the loose, energetic line, free yet structured, communicating space and form. I am very free yet structured.

New iPad, Reflections on Artist Hitoshi Nakazato

iPad images, byNicole Maynard

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Master printmaker Hitoshi Nakazato died July 17th from a head injury due to a fall in his studio. He was seventy-four. I had the opportunity to study printmaking with Hitoshi at the University of Pennsylvania where he showed me how to do etching, lithography, and silkscreen. "He called Philadelphia and the University of Pennsylvania the place of his intellectual awakening," said his wife, Sumiko Takeda Nakazato. Teaching from 1971 until the present and serving as chair in the mid-nineties, he had a strong commitment to the school. Always full of stories, he told us to appreciate relationships with our peers as we journeyed through graduate school at Penn.

His paintings and prints focused on the particular placement of simple geometric shapes: the circle, triangle, and square, vibrant in color and zen-like. The Machida City Museum of Graphic Arts in Tokyo exhibited more than 400 of his works this summer. He was a very kind man in addition to being an artist and teacher.

iPad: Like Morris Louis, Green Blue Triangle Red, Cloud on Land

Like Morris Louis

Green Blue Triangle Red

Cloud on Land

Green Blue Triangle Red seems primordial. The red makes it seem like we are looking through a tepee: the door drawn back allowing the opening to be filled with the bright landscape of summer. Compositionally and coloristically (I don't think those are real words but we painters use them all the time) they relate to painter Morris Louis. Morris Louis , an Abstract Expressionist and a central figure in the development of Color Field Painting. He was inspired to experiment with paint applications of newly available acrylic paints after seeing Helen Frankenthaler's Mountain and Sea, the first "stain painting". [See Louis' 1961 Alpha-Theta] I was privileged to have Frankenthaler speak at my small departmental graduation ceremony for the MFA department at the University of Pennsylvania in 1996. Her speech was regrettably short (she seemed excited to get to her private showing of the Cezanne show up at the Philadelphia Museum of Art) but she got to the point which is what we often wish speech-givers would do. I will never forget her clear message, "Use your skills." She knew we were accomplished and understood how art can get pushed aside. She's now eighty-two and I am not alone in appreciating her contribution of luminous, energetic spaces. I haven't heard anything about her owning an ipad. I wonder what she would do.

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[A most excellent website: http://www.theartstory.org

It's mission statement:

"The Art Story Foundation's official statement of purpose is to: "Educate, inform, and introduce people to modern art through speaker series, educational workshops, and online educational resources".

Nicole is all excited!]

Ipad Art, Brushes App, QuickTime Player

Farm 3, Brushes/ipad

Field, Brushes/ipad

Box, tablet computer, 2007

Untitled, iphone/idoodle, 2009

I am not anti-technology. A public confession: I think I'm addicted to clicking. I think I found a way to paint and have my clicking too. While nothing replaces painting, each artistic medium having it's own inherent strengths and limitations, Brushes for ipad is very exciting. Here's a

Brushes demo video by creator Stephen Sprang. It sells on iTunes for $7.99 and I think it will save a bit on paint as I am able to use it not only for digital art in and of itself but also for painting studies. I love the materiality of all traditional art media. The difference between an oil painting and a digital painting is corporeality, similar to a person in real life vs. a photograph of that person. Photography has a lot to say, or rather show, so much so that Native Americans thought being photographed might steal their souls. The photograph is far from soul-less, and so is the digital painting. My work is mostly seen via the computer (I wish it was seen more in person, oh well). Digital art is made for the computer. Scale isn't an issue. The images are light-filled. British painter David Hockney is totally on-board and says it is like painting with stained glass. I LOVE stained glass, always wanting to achieve colored light like it. Hockney is prolific, totally going to town on his ipad and emailing friends drawings of flowers daily. He started out using Brushes on the iphone and the pictures were exhibited at the Tate and Royal Academy in London. [Lawrence Weschler's Hockney article and Jordan Galloway's in The New York Press ]

The ipad isn't my first excursion into creating digital art. I've used a tablet computer and an iphone (see above). Ink Art was the software I used on the tablet. It's not that different from Brushes. Many people on customer reviews complain about having to use a finger to draw in Brushes rather than a stylus like on tablets. I am much happier skipping the stylus. It felt too removed for me and touch brings me that much closer to what I'm making. I think it's just a question of getting used to it, like a touch mouse. There are fans of drawing with pencils rather than painting in general because of the difference of control.

The ipad's big screen is the key to my excitement. I enjoyed making images on the go with the iphone, thinking of them more as studies. The ipad is large enough to do more. Jorge Colombo has made three covers for The New Yorker using the iphone, achieving a surprising amount of detail; I'm assuming by zooming in and out. I'm a little worried the paintings will pale in comparison to my new digital images when seen on-line. I also wonder how it sits with me that the digitals are more graphic in nature. I intend to make paintings from some of them, so it should be a rather fluid back-and-forth process. I can also take a picture of my painting and work on it further in Brushes. This can give direction to a work in progress or expand the idea for working in a series. Best yet, Brushes allows the actions/steps involved in making a picture to be played back as a QuickTime file. The subjects I'm painting lately are non-narrative yet I'm seeking to make them into moving images. Move over, Hockney.

The movie below is the making of Farm 3. I had a little technical trouble with Brushes Viewer and Steve Sprang himself replied to my query. Thanks, Steve!