What bugs me about digital artists...

I am not an art snob.
I love all kinds of art.
But a few things bother me about the "art world" in general...
and digital art, specifically.
When I first discovered programs like Photoshop and
PaintshopPro...I played with all the doodads.
It was beyond amusing to make photos of myself look like
metal or leather with the click of the mouse.
It was neato to make kalaidoscopic patterns with a similar
click or two.

Then I discovered you could actually make a mark...your own
mark...using a digital paintbrush.
Slowly, I would use a mouse to make drawings and paints.
I could even enhance them with grain, or changing color.



This pic is a drawing.
It was disqualified from a competition because it was
believed to be a photo...or at least that some trickery
was involved. Although the competition had a digital
art catagory...they didn't understand digital art very
well. They thought I had submitted a photomanipulation...
which they understood...and didn't allow.
I did use a grain filter...but other than that I used
PaintshopPro's round paintbrush, and smudge tools...
and nothing else. It is the equivalent...using a pencil and
a smudge stick. I didn't trace anything, I didn't
manipulate a photo. I used a reference photo to
LOOK at, but did not use any kind of trickery...
and this was before I had a graphics tablet.
My point.
I can draw.
I have honest artistic skill.
No..not the best skill, but I do have some.

So, can you guess what is bothering me?

I'm going to make people angry...
I will appologise now.

But I don't get all these people who "exhibit widely",
win "numerous awards", even judge competitons...

and all they do is run filters!

Or they do what is actually photo manipulations.

And most call themselves digital painters.

Shouldn't something have been painted,
before calling a piece a painting?

I am not saying that anyone or
any style is or is not art or an artist.
I am saying that running a
filter isn't painting.

I will furthur venture to say that until people stop
doing this, those who are anti-digital and think that
all digital art is "generated" , and that digital art is simply
not real art...will keep thinking these things.
How can they help it when digital artists themselves seem so confused,
about what they are doing?
I leave you with a digital...painting.
I made those marks.
I guided a stylus to paint them, and formed them into
a picture of a girl.

kind of done

Donna's sweater.
I still need to put all the buttons, and weave in some ends.
But..it's kind of done.

Model( Donna)is home sick from school today.

Sweater is not intended to wear with PJ's.

My Mom is too much.
Seriously..I love my Mom, but...
Well..I could see myself doing the Mother Daughter version of that old blog "Why I hate my flat mate."
Or whatever it was called.

Food messes and filth are ok...but knitting being left around is shameful and slovenly.
She hopes for the day that I will stop painting, because she thinks it's too messy.
And has tried to get me to move my studio to the garage.
I reminded her that HER car is parked there.

I might also say that I own this house.
I support my Mother.
I buy the bananas and oranges whose peels she leaves around.
I buy the socks( and make!) that she uses to stop a bloody nose and then leaves laying here, there, and everywhere.
I buy the insulin syringes that she insists on never thowing out...much less never thowing out properly.
But this time took the cake.

I said something about needing to get back to work on Donna's sweater because sweaters dont knit themselves.
She says something about how she would have a whole bunch of sweaters if they did.
So I ask...
"Mom..would you like me to make you a sweater?"
She looks at Donna's bulky knit sweater with distaste and says.
"Oh..no...that's ok...I like my sweaters to be a little more refined."
WTF?

I reminded her that sweaters can be made in all sorts of ways and that this one is this way intentionally...but still..WTF?

Somehow though...just as boxed Mac and Cheese will always be superior in her mind over homemade, and canned soup so much better than my soup....
A machine made sweater from Wal-mart says love far better than one of my unrefined homemade ones.

And she sews....

Oh yes..her view on sewing verses knitting.
And my releuctance with sewing( ok...fear)

"Well..some people aren't meant to sew. It takes alot of presicion. Some people are just meant to knit..and you do that very well."

I will not call my Mom a bad name. I will not call my Mom a bad name.I will not call my Mom a bad name.I will not call my Mom a bad name.I will not call my Mom a bad name.I will not call my Mom a bad name.I will not call my Mom a bad name.I will not call my Mom a bad name.I will not call my Mom a bad name.I will not call my Mom a bad name.I will not call my Mom a bad name.I will not call my Mom a bad name.I will not call my Mom a bad name.I will not call my Mom a bad name.I will not call my Mom a bad name.I will not call my Mom a bad name.I will not call my Mom a bad name.I will not call my Mom a bad name.I will not call my Mom a bad name.I will not call my Mom a bad name.I will not call my Mom a bad name.I will not call my Mom a bad name.I will not call my Mom a bad name.

ok...done.

As for the sweater..I am especially pleased with the short row shaping done on the collar/back neck...I dont know what it would be called...it just seemed natural to do that. Gave it the baseball jacket look.
Also am pleased with the sleeves..knitted in the round, directly onto the sweater. And the heart...nice for no chart what so ever.
Entire sweater was a wing it project...no written pattern exists.




 

I need a new face

to this blog, that is.
First...I maintain the position that knitting and other textile and needle ...crafts are simply art in a different form.
They are as valid to me as painting.
So...
All the art is going to live together.
I want this to be a compilation of all my thoughts, writing, and whatever else I spit at you.

I have seperated myself from myself for too long.
Maybe I thought that if I put each part in a box, it would get easier to figure out...but it isn't.
I do know one thing..I have let others influence my art too strongly. I have let others tell me what is or isn't art.
I may argue, but I complied in the end.
It's funny. I was praised for color usage. Then I was told that I should be insulted by that.
I was praised for imagination...but when I did realism people seemed skeptical.
So I went on to try and prove my abilities there.
When noone responded, I just didnt know what to do.
I listened to my Mom when she more or less told me I wasn't all that good.
I got upset that I paint in the style that this person or that person paints.
I let other's tastes, skill, and opinions dictate how and what I paint....and knit....and every other creative pursuit.
I have to stop.
No one is going to tell me what, how where, or why anymore.
I dont care if DiVinci himself comes to haunt me and tell me it's wrong.
In fact...the more I think about it..I dont need a new face..
I need MY face.
Anyone that doesn't like it can look elsewhere.

Hmmm..I had a new name for this blog figured out...then I forgot it.
Sigh..I hope it comes back to me because it was really good.

OK...the girls want to go out...I would rather cut my tongue out than go out right now ( or any other time generally speaking).
But you do things for your kids that you dont want to.
You just do.

But you really do use both hands..

 I hate that crap.
Yeah..one does use both hands to knit..but it IS a directional and handedness oriented task.
It DOES matter what hand you use.

I just wanted to get that off my chest.
I was fed that speil again at a guild meeting...by a knitting teacher.
Lemme tell you what... If I knit a cable pattern using right handed instructions..it'll be backwards.

As for knitting right handed..my 6 year old is right handed, and learning to knit.
I am ofcourse teaching her to do so with her right hand..which means me going that extra measure and showing her while using MY right hand.

Makes sense, right?

Yet people still believe lefties should just go ahead and learn right handed.
If I was teaching my little northpaw to knit left handed it would seem ludicrous.
It would be like men giving birth..it would go against nature.
( actually, that's a bad example..I am all for men giving birth.)


I learned something interesting while teaching Becca.
I knit english when knitting right handed!
Totally blew my mind when I automatically started doing it.

magic splotches

ugh..I wrote this whole thing out and then when I was about to finish up..Opera 9 beta crashed and I couldn't recover my post.
That's what I get for using two betas to blog, I suppose.

Anyways..I was talking about Lion Brand Magic Stripes.
I LOVE the colors..they are all so cute.
But the yarn has issues that mean it will be fine for socks for me and the girl people in my family..Bill doesn't do..stripes..magic or otherwise...
but it will not be good for the light verticle striped sweater that I have always wanted to knit for myself.
It is for one thing..rough. I have heard it softens after washing...I was thinking some hair conditioner.And it IS reasonable for socks if you knit at a guage of 28 stitches per 4 inches or less..for shits and giggles I guaged with a size 1 US and it was a bit unfriendly feeling.

But the bigger problem is in the dying. I have twice in a short amount of yarn used found undyed spaces mid stripe..and there are splotches and flecks from where the yarn of one stripe colored area touched another.
This makes it look like you are knitted in a splotch in the cases of bigger areas..and dirty when knitted up when it was just a small fleck.

I now am coming to the pic part..and will copy and paste this text. The crashing in the last attempt for pic uploading related, I am sure.



The above is a sock for Becca and my multi needle playing around swatch..NOT a guage swatch..just fooling with the yarn.
I frogged the sock, and started with another pattern that had fewer typos and mistakes in it. ( funny how someone SEEMS to be so clever until you actually READ what they wrote..but that is another issue..one I will not eleaborate upon, because I dont believe in being nasty for nasty sake.) I also was kind of astounded at how poorly I knitted the ribbing and couldn't live with such uneveness..and people would know for all enternity that I knitted that.
Anyways..see that splotch..and the kind of dirty look?

That's why for the sweater I always wanted..I will keeping searching for a self striping yarn..or just do it the less magical..old fashioned way..intarsia verticle stripes or sideways as I would do if using the self striping yarn..The world wouldn't end. I just like the less yarn and bulk with the self striping.
I also wonder..if I knitted the stuff up and down..would the stripes be cut short..and I would have kind of jagged irregular stripes? Worth playing with I think.

by the way..still waiting for my knitpicks order..oddly enough, it is taking some time. I live in the same area as they are located and assume that is why I always recieved pretty quick. But they just did send out yesterday, and FedEx hasnt even dropped it off to the US postal service yet.
This is upposed to be a time saving method..maybe just money saving..dont know. I qualified for the free shipping ( my order was well over 40 dollars. *blush* so if knitpicks can save themselves some money this way, I'm ok with that.

yeah I knit backwards

 wanna make something of it?

Seriously..why should anyone care if I knit backwards..I mean, yes..it is completely backwards continental knitting. I hold the working needle in the left and the yarn in the right.
The very fact that I do any kind of left handed knitting seems to bother some people..why?

Nevermind the fact that I do everything that involves small motor skills lefthanded..why should it even be ANY concern of anyone how I knit?

Dont look?

But back to the fact that I am left handed.
I taught myself and I did indeed reverse everything in a picture from a book.
I am running into more and more writing and comments from people both online and real life where some think that you should teach a left hander to do it ...

right handed.

Maybe we should reverse that situation..teach a right hander to do it left handed.

hmmm....any takers?

I do sometimes have to fiddle with directions and stitch patterns..I admit it..oh horrors!
I have a much better understanding of how knitting is what it is because of that fact.
What a shame that I am forced to actually THINK as opposed to blindly follow someone elses instructions.
That's terrible..better I go completely against nature and knit with my right hand..that way I can be ready to follow the words of anyone that comes along.

I dont rant often..but this time I have.

Yanno..my husband is older..he will be 67 next month ( wanna make something out of THAT?...dont even get close to it..in my eyes he is the most wonderful man on this planet.)

Anyway..he is a switched lefty. His mind still does lefty things.
He cuts himself ALOT using everyday tools.
He was forced to go against what was natural for him.

I cant see the benefit in this.

My two cents.

Oh hey..by the way

You can post comments anon...this as mentioned is a beta blog..normal commenting will return one day.