The librarian's tangents.

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.

Loads of updates to go up in the next couple of days… So much to catch up on including the fotowalk with the lovely LMUG and British Tech Network guys and gals and the closing of the art exhibition (a week ahead of schedule, was a tricky friday). I also did a camera comparison of four Apple devices so I’ll throw that on the blog sometime soon.

BUT on to business! This Sunday coming, April the 1st, (it’s been a mad March) sees the Bar Des Arts host the world’s first tablet ONLY life drawing session with the brilliant Brighton Life Drawing Sessions as the models. It’s going to be a corker and there are still a few tickets left so if you want to join in get in touch.

(click on the image for larger version).

We’ll start at 7 and end at 9.30 and, while there play with art apps and styli and all sorts. And hopefully some people in the room will discover how easy and lovely drawing on iPad’s and other styli can be…

(more stuff to come but much to do, aargh!)

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)).

I shall Momento this post up so as to start with the exhibition!

Which leads me to the next two weeks:

Next Weds is this: an iPad art exhibition in amongst other excellent things. Guildford if you can make it and would love to see some lovely people there…

The venue is the very lovely Bar Des Arts, opp Yvonne Arnaud. It’s a great place for an exhibition and better still that it’s a collaborative work between different artists. True to form my stuff gets hung at the last minute (well, Tues and Weds am) but the stuff that’s ready now is glorious and the whole thing, metal machinery by a teenage engineering genius, soft toys by an undiscovered creative mastermind, Fine Art by lovely and amazing artists and so on, not to mention iPad art by the very modest Moi, mean that it’s going to be a fab evening. I hope. You can never tell, can you? But I love the contents of the room and the artwork going into frames very soon indeed…

And then… Well, the small matter of the world’s first tablet only life drawing session (April 1st, honest) and from then… Easter break I think and OH BOY do I need it.

Fade to black, we open at the beginning…

It’s been a week. Yesterday and the day before especially so.

Tuesday was teaching, new students interviews and then dash up to London to go to the US Embassy (note: iPads will be taken off you at the door. Small objects, suspiciously shaped like hand grenades, will not be). Still didn’t get my itin number sorted out so now have to phone the US.

Hurrah.

Then off to meet Lumilyon, who you should all know I am a fan of and she was in London. Happy happenstance and she’s a heck of an iPhoneographer. Was excellent to see her working.

Which led to the Hi5 innovation in teaching awards. I was nominated but failed to make the final cut. Least said the better really, although I was a little surprised and disconsolate by the end of the evening. Learning without frontiers seemed a little more future facing and implementing Youtube into a class structure or making a VLE wouldn’t have been my picks of obvious innovations, excellent though I’m sure they were. Hey ho. Will not talk of it again, although may post pics in the future and the food was very nice.

Then yesterday was, of course, iP3d night so I spent it with the LMUG’s and British Tech Network, drawing and laughing and chatting about liveblogs. All good fun. Prior to that I’d had an easy day of teaching 50+ year 5 and 6 girls how to do iPad art, despite the best efforts of both Arriva busses and South West trains to get in the way rather than get me there. Then another final meet up with Lumi and then to LMUG. Got home at midnight for the second night in a row, a smidge tired.

(also I’m being lesson observed so that’s this week completely frazzled then).

Unsurprisingly I’ve been thoroughly enjoying the Hockney exhibition at the RA in a number of ways and, just to spite everyone who knows me, in ways unexpected as well as the more obvious iPad art angle.

For a start the exhibition itself is an amazing sight. Full and free and flowing and fabulous.

For a second thing the Andrew Marr Culture Show special was wonderful. Thoroughly enjoyable stuff.

Now, those who know me ask what I thought of the iPad art, to which I reply – very good (although I do wonder why it wasn’t screened on iPad as it was in the Parisian show last year) – which is expected. Then I follow it up with ‘not my favourite work of the show’. The favourite piece? Well, of course it was wonderful to see the Grand Canyon and Route 66 up close and personal – both wonderful pieces – but the images which moved me the most were the video installations. I could have watched them for hours. I did, in fact. Mesmeric stuff.

A third wonderful moment came when I travelled to see Edith Devaney talking to Will Gompertz at the Apple Store, Covent Garden. Of course I decided to draw in the q, on the seat while waiting and during the discussion as it went on. Those pictures are the first four below.

(waiting for the talk to begin).

(Stylus t. Frog, waiting patiently on his seat).

(Will Gompertz, arts editor for the BBC, beginning proceedings).

(Will Gompertz talking to Edith Devaney).

While waiting for the show to begin I also borrowed the Apple Store wifi to do some Sketchshare collaboration with the marvellous Mr Marjoram:

… all good fun and very diverting from waiting for things to kick off. I must admit to harbouring the faintest fraction of a hope  that David might install Sketchshare and draw a collaborative piece with myself or my students one day. Who knows…

I was also lucky enough to be invited to the teachers preview night of the exhibition, where I drew this and ended up talking to, and making friends with, a good few teachers also in attendance:

…and then a week or so later I was invited back to the RA to help the learning team get to grips with Brushes app. Directly after that I went to speak to the London Mac USer Group on iPad art in general but, just before I did, I had a brief walk through the exhibition again and drew the learning team this:

All ways round it’s been a thoroughly excellent exhibition If you haven’t seen it yet I recommend it wholeheartedly. You may never see its like again.

Lastly – unrelated the A Bigger Picture, but I’m nervously anticipating tomorrow night. I’m up for an education award for iPad art in education for the World Skills Festival. No idea on chances – unaware of who’s in same category so assuming on a bronze medal at least. Then, on Weds, I’m the artist in residence for the London Mac User Group live podcast of the iPad 3 launch announcement.

Interesting times ahead.

For the past week it’s been half term and, since I’m now only 2 days a week at the college, I’ve been picking up freelance work where I can. One of the loveliest jobs offered to me was three days at the Electric Theatre to take part in their Family Festival: one day mini book making, one day Manga art lessons and today, doing iPad art as part of the Arty Fun session… Katy Ashworth from CBBC was leading the day and I was in the background, encouraging all who wanted to to draw on the iPad using either a Nomad Play brush and a Stylus Sock especially when young children were queueing to have their photos taken with her – it was a pretty long line so I was the mid- line entertainment…)

Lovely day, lovely time, lovely kids. Will finish the pic off next week (was so busy not many of the Electric Theatre team got to draw on the picture so will take the iPad back in for them to add to in the coming week) but this is what the kids, ages 3 and up, got up to between 1.30 and 4.30…

Post Hockney, and inspired by the work in the show at the Royal Academy I’ve been back on Brushes app (and Art Rage but more on that at a later date) to see how I can start pushing myself a little more. Not that I’m getting much time to sit and draw at the moment (this weeks been crackers and my feet are killing me. That said both holiday clubs seemed to go really well, which was nice).

Anyhow: son boy wanted to sit and watch youtube videos and, since he’s as accidentally likely to stumble on one that’s NOT suitable (seriously youtube – can you get a filter sorted please?) I said I’d sit with him and keep an eye out. That led to this (because I can multi-task, honest) but it bears little resemblance to the Hockney-esque inspiration which preceded it. Hey ho, that’s why he is who he is and I am what I is.

Brushes app, iPad 2, finger rather than stylus as they were downstairs and son boy and I were up.

Working title. I may go with ScreenPainter instead but this title always makes me smile. Stylus t. and I have shared quite a journey over the past few months.

The other thing I’m working on at the moment is a book. So, yes, another of those then. This one’s different though, in as much as it’s an art book almost solely about my travels with a variety of Apple devices: iPod touch through to iPhone 4S.

It’s a 100 pages long, contains over 150 pictures, photos and all sorts and chats over which is the best stylus, which art apps make the grade and some of the large scale art events I’ve run over the past couple of years.

Not sure how much it’ll be when it hits the iTunes store (I’m thinking around the £4.49 mark?) but hopefully it’ll be worth that at least I’ve made it in iBooks Author and that’s been a lot of fun to work my way through with only the occasional incidence of teeth grinding frustration.

Bit of luck it’ll be released on or around March the 1st.

First talk on the book 8 accidental tour will be at the London Mac User Group this Monday.

It’s been a long year.

Actually it’s been a long year starting July 2011 when things started to hot up in a big way for the World Skills Fest. Neither Stylus t. nor I feel like our flippers have touched the floor since.

In Oct it was the World Skills Fest of course, closely followed by LITS. That took me pretty much up until Christmas. So far this year it’s been demoing IWB artwork at BETT on behalf of Art Rage and Promethean, planning for a holiday club (this coming week), helping the Royal Academy staff get the most out of Brushes app (tomorrow), talking to the London Mac User Group (also tomorrow), prepping a few school trips (starting beginning of March and so on) and organising the run in for students towards their final exam projects. I’ve got a meeting about book 9 tomorrow as well. Very busy month!

Through January until now the main thing on my agenda was the opening of the Fine Art, Graphics and Photography students work at the Bar Des Arts, Guildford. (It’s on until the 20th of Feb so still time to catch it if you want to).

And it was a very cool happening indeed. Both the Bar Des Arts and Haydon Gallery were brilliant in helping me on the organisational side and it’s lovely to see the Fine Art, Photography and Graphics pieces side by side (well, photography are in their own room – their choice – but we’re together in spirit).

So, added here are a few pics from just before the opening. The opening night was nuts, students, parents, visitors and college staff all over the place and I took some photos (but they’re all awful) so here’s the gallery in the calm few moments before the storm

(the table was an exhibit, although it wasn’t always recognised as such. Made by a graphics student who also does carpentry at the college and a lovely mish-mash of both worlds… The pink sofa belongs to the BDA )

One student even managed to create three graphic pieces, print them on to vinyl and wrap them around drum kits. It makes for a very powerful display piece…

Most heartening for me is that a number of chosen pieces, chosen by the students not by me. were created on iPad. That’s great as it’s where I hope we’ll go in the next year, more and more. Certainly things like iBook Author, Brushes app, Nomad brushes etc all make life much easier in bringing people to tablet devices… Also lovely is that every picture here tells a story and a number tell quite large stories, whether triumph through depression or working around autism. There’s a lot involved in the artwork on show, and not just the framing and hanging of it all… An excellent show, hope to be part of many more as lovely as this one has been.

Done, dood.