A fun little game, testing a little bit of your typeface knowledge: Font Game.

Cant figure one out? Use this dandy little tool:  What The FONT!?.

My first stop to check out fonts: Abstract Fonts.

A little place to compare profile of fonts: Typetester.

Here are a few of my favorites as they relate to the “arts”…

Art

Siegfried Woldhek: Shows how he found the true face of Leonardo
Leonardo revealed… ’nuff said.

Ron Eglash: On African fractals
I love Fractal Generators: Oxidizer (mac), Apophysis (pc). Dont let those sites fool you either, Check out the programs. I never really understood all of the math behind them, until Eglash walked through the process. Very cool to see the equation based African villages.

Chris Jordan: Pictures some shocking stats
Scary stuff.

Sculpture/Engineering

Theo Jansen: Creates new creatures
Magnificent creatures. The thought behind these is so great. I would like to see someone animate a horde of these things marching into battle against man. These critters would actually be fun to procedurally rig in 3D, so that they could just get pushed along an axis and fully animate. One of these days…

There is only one fault in his plan to set these things loose on the beaches. Kids will want to ride them, throw rocks, break off limbs, or light them on fire, yah know… kid stuff.

Arthur Ganson: Makes moving sculpture
He shows his intense moving sculptures, my favorite being the walking man, but the exploding chair is also quite beautiful. Art and engineering collide.

Design

Ross Lovegrove: Shares organic designs
I look to the elegance of nature for a lot of things. The thought of nature being optimized was of particular interest. I have looked at this for a little while and Lovegrove presents a lot of great references to micro-structures that I really didn’t look into much before.

The form to that water bottle is exceptional as well. Great stuff.

Architecture

Moshie Safdie: On building uniqueness
Even though this one is on architecture, it really got me thinking on abstract concepts, and reinforcement on approaching each endeavor like you are doing it for the first time. When you get into the “grind” of things, it just comes as second nature or formulaic to follow a thought process. In doing that, there is the chance that you may miss a greater opportunity for exploration. Be unconventional.

Norman Foster: Green Agenda
This is a longer speech, clocking in at 32 minutes…

Playing Sim City a bit growing up probably fueled a lot of my interest in architecture and over all space planning. I had sketchbooks filled with concept houses, citygrids, floorplans, down to my attempts at a 1 room multiuse house/space (something amazingly cost efficient).

This struck a nerve (good nerve) with me, when he says “These are the new cathedrals”, because I have had the same conversations with friends about where are sense of architecture is going. Stripmalls and Wal-Mart megacenters don’t exactly paint an awe inspired gaze on your face. He goes on to say that the new airports and public buildings are taking the position for architectural experience. For the most part, it is a bit depressing to see a lot of the old styles go by the wayside, but as materials, needs, and styles change we will move forward.

Also, here is one that doesn’t relate to the Arts because he is too awesome to not include…

Stephen Hawking: Asks big questions about the universe

There are new speeches added all the time, so there is plenty to see.
Enjoy.

It was a pretty great time, really my first time figure drawing since… High School (Which accounted to all of 2 sketches). While I have drawn for quite a few years, I have mainly drawn from imagination or nature, lots of trees… birds, bees, that sort of thing. While drawing males without reference or monsters comes naturally to me, the female form is less tangible. In the past I have found myself turning every reference picture into a form of androgyny. I let it rest at that for many years, but I feel it is time to conquer my inept scribblings of the opposite sex…

Featuring the fashion stylings of Vontinka, here are a few of my renderings from the evening…

5 min

10 min

15 min

15 min

The piece was “Limbo”, by Norwegian artist Odd Nerdrum… whose name is a little hard to forget, especially after seeing his work.

As you burrow through his gallery, you may stumble on a few pieces which are a little “odd” (sorry),  but every single one is beautiful. The dark alien feel sucks you right into the paintings and the ethereal, ghostly  appearance haunt you. Personally I found his “Void” series to be my favorite, while the “Lack of Darkness” series is less dark (go fig), yet just as distant.

His work was also referenced in the y2k film “The Cell”. The filmmakers cut Nerdrum’s “Dawn” into a pretty eerie scene…

For more, visit his site at www.nerdrum.com

Visit his site at www.chuckconnelly.com

Below are a few to whet your appetite. Enjoy!

“Trojan Rocking Horse”

“Artist and Model”

“Gold City”

Mueck has a real command of his craft. It was interesting to see the process in an informational video. He seemed almost as alien as his work, speaking just about as much. I went in liking “Mask II”, a self portrait, but I left with my favorite piece being “Wild Man”. It almost felt as I crouched down and examined his feet that the giant man would hop up and give me a non too gentle kick to the teeth.

The “Spooning Couple” was also quite impacting along with any of the smaller works. The level of detail on such a small area was intense.

Examining all of the pieces, I could see a resemblance between all the pieces of the artist himself. The depth of the eyes were all very akin.

There were seven works in total that were shown: “In Bed”, “A Girl”, “Wild Man”, “Spooning Couple”, “Man in a Boat”, “Mask II” and “Mask III”.

His work is a must see, cameras cannot capture the mood of his work… Truly impressive work.

Here are a few of my opinions on it so far…

• The font management on OSX is far superior to Windows… basically Windows has none.
• Automator: After seeing this demonstration is about the point that a Mac’s silvery glow started calling to me. It was just one of those apps that I couldn’t see Microsoft ever including in its OS.
• The UI is far superior. I actually use the finder. Searching on a Windows machine was such an arduous task.
• No viruses yet.
• I am still getting used to all of the new key commands and key symbols.
• I dig dual booting. OSX plays well will the Windows Partition.
• I have not yet even begun to learn about the guts of the OS. After having so much experience with the Windows registry and utilities it was a little ominous leaving that for something new, but so far it has been great.
• I am also looking forward to popping FinalCut Pro Studio 2 on here and taking it for a spin.
• Some of the Adobe line are still being developed for Windows only, which is a little frustrating for workflow. I don’t know how many times in a row I have restarted the machine only to forget to press the option key for bootcamp. ID10-T Errors, gotta love ‘em.
• I love being able to drag a file to the taskbar to open it with a program.

I will probably be cross platform for quite some time to come. PCs have their upside, as I will be able to upgrade my 4 or so other machines with whatever Frankenstein pieces I can pick up along the way. They make great render nodes for larger 3D projects, every cycle counts. It seems like people like to throw them away after they get a new one… to which I say: send them to me!

DnA had a great turnout and DnA 2.0 looks like it will be even better!

Performances by: Doughnuts in November, Pfunkt, and Apefight.
More artists than you can shake a stick at(Depending on the size of stick).
Pance Darty afterwards.

Get all of the details at:
doughnutsandart.com

Dont forget to come… thats the important part.

Why should you attend you might ask?

FREE DONUTS! (And to check out the bands and local artists of course.)

Besides, I’ll be there. Isn’t that reason enough? … Don’t answer that.

The event will be held at the Creative Treehouse in Bellevue, PA.
For more details, go to DoughnutsAndArt.com!