The librarian's tangents.

Recently I’ve been asked a number of interesting questions about collaboration by a number of people who seem similarly minded to me on the subject.

So first off, that’s nice. I’m not alone in my occasionally mad machinations.

Secondly an app has sprung up recently which REALLY inspires my love of collaborative work. It’s a lot of fun, something which, from the get go, I wanted to share with the world and so, over a range of social networks, I have. This is not a post about that app, more on the collaboration it has inspired.

And no, it’s not Draw Something, although I love the fact that that app, more than any other, has got the mobile device world drawing on their screens…

The app I’ve fallen in love with is called Sketchshare and, from the instant it first booted (hah, there’s a blast from the past word), it blew my mind.

Remember when the Nintendo DS first appeared? What inspired people the most? Mario 64 on a handheld? One of the left-field games? (I didn’t come to a DS until a little later so, for me, one of the launch games was Feel The Magic which I thought was gloriously odd and made some brave and clever decisions). For me it was the chat room and the ability to draw and type at the same time. Fast forward to now and, Netsketch aside, no app has made me want to draw with people as I put stylus to glass screen (although I am growing to like Draw Something as well)…

Anyway, this post is about the collaboration aspect and last night I came back from a family birthday party with a stinking cold and opened up an art chat with the amazing Mr Dave Hall. Fun it was and we spent a wonderful couple of hours creating this image together:

The time flew by and was only interrupted by the fact that my sons bedtime took priority (or, more truthfully that my wife reminded me that my sons bedtime took priority) and that was the spur to finish. But we could have gone on and on… Fun it was, and more fun it will grow to be.

The fact that up to four people can draw at the same time? Lovely. Haven’t managed to get four people drawing at the same time but I will, I hope. As it is all of the sketchshare collaborations I’ve had, with Roz, Rose, Ben, Stefan, Chris, Stew, Richard, Mr Rama, Mr Stick and Mr Siggs, Lenny and the Grauel and, of course, the luminescent Lumilyon… All have been wonderful moments, chatting and doodling and seeing what happens when pixels are herded together by more than one pair of hands.

Long time readers of the blog will know that 2004 – 2009 were lovely art collab years focused around the Big Book Draw. Is there a way to get that and the newly found collapp work put together? I really hope so… We’ll see… For the moment? Onwards, onto the next picture, and the one after. My favourite ones being those that friends are a part of, rather than simply the audience of.

Why collaborative art? Because enthusiasm is infectious and is a bug that wants to be caught…

Yes, I know, I should be talking about the life drawing, or the app showcase from last week or a million other things. I will, but am still cutting videos etc. In the short term: a tweeted app review!

Accidentally reviewed Paper (by FiftyThree) over a few sequential tweets so thought I’d add that here before I can never find it again…

Paul Kercal ‏ @Kercal

Initial thoughts on paper: undo icon ((action)) is very misleading (read macworld review for fix), LOVELY pad implementation, tools feel expensive ish.

Paul Kercal ‏ @Kercal

Paul Kercal ‏ @Kercal

Overall, love it with reservations. Don’t know if no zoom is big thing or adds to purity. Beautiful inky lines.

Paul Kercal ‏ @Kercal

Paper again: things we’ve become used to not there, gorgeous, lovely pad integration. Didn’t like the initial opening screen paper texture.

Paul Kercal ‏ @Kercal

Between @Sketchshare, Draw Somethng+ Paper has there ever been more iPad drawing? Hope it’s start of lots of people finding their art

So there we have it. A potted review of one of the new vogue art apps. Updates soon I hope with things like clock hands for undo (to see how far you’re going back and forth, resizes on watercolour, zoom etc. But it’s a LOT of fun and the closest thing to having a Moleskine in your pocket. On a screen. Doodles below, will carry on using this app, I think.

So it’s been a lovely bonkers week, only some of which I remember.

Weds was the opening of the art exhibition. For those who’ve not read prior posts: I organised an art exhibition of my students and those in the photography and Fine Art departments. It wasn’t without issue but it was a lovely show. The original plan had been for the tutors to follow it up with an exhibition of their own but, for one reason of another they mostly dropped out leaving me with a couple of weeks of exhibition venue to fill, if I wanted to. My workload should have dictated that I said no and that I’d pass but I’m a little bit too stubborn and stupid to do that. So I phoned around, got a few other artists to join in and then we had a magnificent 7 artists doing a lovely collaborative exhibition of everything from soft toys to coil guns, pen and ink to iPad art with fine art in between. Lovely stuff.

So we filled the room full of people, everyone seemed to have a very merry time and it was all lovely.

Thursday I don’t really remember, Friday I taught for the morning, dashed up to London to buy an iPad 3 or two, dashed back, did youth group, got home to draw and was so tired I fell asleep almost instantly, which is where things more or less remain. Saturday and Sunday, father in laws birthday/Mothering Sunday notwithstanding, have been very dozy days.

(didn’t take any photos of the iPad 3 dash – it was a little frenetic and I felt guilty about walking in and out of the store without having to queue – but I did take a couple of snaps at Chin Chins Also: tweeted the next image to a twitter contact which I hope entertained him in a q for a few seconds or so…)

Next on the list is next Saturday (photo and art walk around Camden Market – more of which later), the week after is the Hockney exhibition with my students and the world’s first iPad and tablet only life drawing session…

So: lots on the menu over the next couple of weeks and then have a week COMPLETELY booked off. After that? We’ll see. Still no idea on the iPad art book hitting the bookstore – the EIN/ITIN/SS4/w8-BEN/W7/US IRS/Apple accreditation side of things still being all ways up in the air – but stuff to come, that’s for sure…

Where can you see machup machinery made by a 20 year old engineering genius, soft fabric sculptures and characters created by a mother and daughter team up, beautiful illustrations by an amazing artists, two brilliant collections of fine art pieces and a range of images, all drawn on iPhone and iPad?

Well, funny you should ask… At the Bar Des Arts (who’ve been an ace and very helpful gallery partner) which is opposite the Yvonne Arnaud, Millbrook, Guildford.

And you don’t even have long to wait as it starts tomorrow night, Weds 14th.

All joking aside this exhibition is a joy to see (and have put up over the past week or so) and has, if I can put it this way, ecclecticity coming out of the wazzoo. Looks lovely and I can’t wait for tomorrow night

Until later I can only really post a couple of my pictures up on the wall but I hope a good few friends will pop by to see them in the frame…

And there’s more to come (I have 12 or so pieces in the show)…

As noted I’ve been an admirer of the Bigger Picture exhibition at the Royal Academy. I’ve been twice and look forward to a third time with my students at the end of March (although, I must admit, this has been the hardest teaching year I’ve had and I do nothing with them at the moment without a small amount of reluctance).

As also noted my favourite part was not the iPad artwork but the video installation. A hauntingly beautiful method of displaying a view that is both an obvious link from past works and a new method of seeing all in one.

With that in mind the idea for this picture struck me (on my second walk through of the exhibition) and has sat patiently in my sketchbook since. This week (not, it has to be said, a week I’m going to look back on fondly for a hundred reasons) allowed me the time to draw it on four train journeys to and from London and the occasional seat on the tube, if the seat was available and the journey was long enough.

The apps used were:

Adobe Eazel (bonkers watercolour simulator, odd and effective UI),
Adobe Ideas (lovely vector app which I always describe as having the hugest collection of best possible felt tip pens),
ProCreate (fab, good UI, nice painterly feel),
Paintbook (unusual but pleasant to play with, a little clumsy in places but very speedy/good feature set),
Sketchtime (strange effect, no colour picker but… interesting nonetheless),
Wasabi Paint (no colour pallette? Lovely thick gloopy paint feel),
FX Studio Pro (photo effects. I wanted to add a vignette to all boxes but in the end though the vignette over the whole piece was effective enough),
Art Rage (one of my favourite art apps and probably the one which I’ll load up first when I get an iPad 3),
Brushes app (which was the ‘mother’ app; my favourite and the one in which all pieces were resized and collected but an app which hasn’t been updated for a year or so and is beginning to show it)
and Sketchshare (which as has been mentioned off and on is a wonderful collaborative tool allowing four players to draw together and talk to each other as they do so. Bit of a game changer it is).

The styli used were my three go-to styli. I did have four that I relied on but one has, sadly, passed away recently. The ones which remain are the Nomad Compose, the Stylus Sock and the Jot pen. All three are wonderful to use and my go-to input sticks when it comes to drawing on an iPad.

One of my principle reasons for doing this pic was to see what other apps were on my system and give them a fairer play test than previously I might have done. I still think Adobe Ideas, Brushes app and Art Rage are my favourite apps and will remain so but Sketchshare time is always wonderful time and a couple of the apps I used were a lot of fun to use and I’ll go back to them off and on.

So, belos is the youtube video and the picture which I painted over the course of 4 or 5 hours. Hope you like…

watch?v=oErVGw3hLDk&feature=youtu.be

((Oh I wish I could work out how to embed a youtube video into these blogs)).

Depending on what the plan was, yesterday went to plan.

I say that because at the moment I’m taking things as they come, because I don’t know where things are going. I know where I want to be in a year, and I’ve got a couple of things I’m working towards, but for the most part I’m allowing things to move as a river flows.

Which has worked well, in ways. Yesterday being one of those lovely unplanned but successful stops on the journey.

First off, once I’d got everything packed for the day (and there was a lot) was a book meeting with Mr Moloney at a cafe opp the Royal Academy. Very nice it was, we had coffee and pastries and we discussed where the industry is as a whole, past projects, digital distribution, what comes after that and so on. When the pitch process started we quickly agreed to refresh a book I’d suggested to him a good year or so ago and two other pitches went well enough for sample materials to be requested. I’ve been itching to get back into writing for a while and these projects would be a welcome return for me as they’re not the big project I’ve got in mind but mini-steps on that path. The other nice thing about both projects is that they’ll have a good space for illustration within and that means I’ll have another reason to load up the art apps

Stepped straight from that meeting into the learning department of the Royal Academy, via a lovely impromptu meeting with friends on the way who’d been to see the Hockney exhibition. The q was massive and I felt a small amount of guilt that I was at the RA to teach rather than view the exhibition but would likely get to see more of Hockney’s exhibition as a result. It was a lovely time, a good number of department members wanted to see Brushes app demoed, the variety of styli that I’d brought with me and so on. I didn’t get to take a picture (completely forgot DOH) but it was just a lot of fun and they were an excellent class (bar the trouble makers at the back who were taking pictures of themselves and defacing them but that was all part of the experimentation of the session). Later that night the learning team were hosting a group of young people and I wish I could have stayed but I had another thing to dash off to at 6.

Once I finished showing the app it was a half hour back in the Hockney exhibition. I’d already been on the teacher day and had thoroughly enjoyed the larger percentage of what was on show. What I hadn’t got to see as much as I wanted to were the videos and it was an odd feeling to walk past everyone else viewing the images on display with the mind to get to one of the final rooms. When I’d been there last time a number of teachers had been asking me about iPad art (I had been drawing off and on through the exhib) so I only caught part of the video room. This time I sat there for as long as I had and it is just the most interesting wall of imagery I can imagine. Fabulous stuff.

After that it was back to Waterloo to pick up a friend who was joining me for the next talk and back on the Bakerloo line to Marylebone for the London Mac User Group. Fab stuff. I’ve been a few times now and get on very well with the audience anyway but to stand in front and talk away – I was nervous and as always I forget the planned notes I have and afterwards have forgotten everything I said during the time on stage. Everyone seemed happy with the demo and it got a good round of applause so my inner Egozilla slept well that night, all cities conquered or at least laid to a good deal of destruction.

What’s next? Today it’s holiday club for 25 10 year olds doing artwork, shrink plastic and mini-books. After that? Holiday club on Weds. After that? All sorts of interesting stuff, I just don’t know what that is yet…

As if the start of an academic year wasn’t chaotic enough, with the normal enrolment, paperwork, risk assessments, welcome packs and so on to be done I’ve also got the World Skills Festival to concern myself with. It should be ace, and terrifyingly huge. Apparently they are geared up to have around 7,500 people coming in every half hour and the Digital Forest is one of the first things that will be seen by main entrance 2. And there’s only two entrances.

Terrifying.

What isn’t terrifying is the concept: lots of people draw trees and those trees are placed into a digital forest which is shown on HDMI screen for all to see. It’s a collaborative artwork sort of thing I’ve now done several times and I can’t wait to see how this one looks in situ, although tbh the reality in my mind is always constrained by the budget I have to work to. What’s mind blowing is the potential numbers which tbh scares the wotsits out of me.

But hey, a chance to show off iPad, DSi XL and desktop artwork off, and the work of my students, and all sorts of all sorts and it’ll be ace. In many ways I can’t wait, but… but… only three weeks away AARGH!

Best of all, potentially, are the possible desks that we’ll be working on. Which sounds silly I know, but the digital forest has the capacity to be printed and shown on some AWESOME platforms which I can’t wait to get my hands on and see. Ace ace ace stuff. But that piece of paper is yet to be signed and agreed so can’t mention it just yet. Hope all of this comes out of my mind onto the stage in similar fashion.

But, mainly, AARGH! Scary.

Bit of Pixelmatoring, just to spice things up a little.

At the moment it looks like this:

(although without the mute button, obviously. Didn’t realise they turned up on screenshots…) You can still see the old website here if you so wish…

Now, or at least for the moment, it looks like this:

Which is an improvement. Still not quite what I want but times a pressing as ever and the Carbonmade chasis that I’m using is smooth and wonderfully easy to use. It is more of a focused thing though as it concentrates on the iPad artwork which is where I can see myself going in the near future (work being as it is, I shan’t bore you with the current ums and ahs).

Anyhow if you want a look-see you can now see it at www.kercal.co.uk

Also added the little dots below which will be at the base of all of my posts from now on in. I wasn’t overly happy with the break at the end of a post so this will do for now as a break between musings (it also provides links to the new folio as well as the youtube, twitter and flickr pages… ) I may make a couple of small changes but have a couple of small freelancey bits and bobs that I really should be getting onto, like about an hour ago…

Which is as counterintuitive as it sounded but good fun with the company I had

The Yellow Brick Road.

Sunset Fish

(as ever, click for larger versions).