toms box of tricks

piggies

Thu, 16 May 2013 14:45:00 +0100

piggies

Down the hatch

Thu, 16 May 2013 14:43:42 +0100

Down the hatch

Heard from telegraph lines

Thu, 16 May 2013 14:38:00 +0100

Heard from telegraph lines

Photo

Thu, 16 May 2013 11:22:54 +0100

I decided to take on the challenge of drawing hair, because I...

Wed, 15 May 2013 22:22:00 +0100

I decided to take on the challenge of drawing hair, because I find it difficult to and have never really draw hair with any great detail. Where the hair covers her back is all fucked up because I used the same shading style as the rest of her top so it looks like her hair is transparent. Also there are too many lines overall. Too sketchy. This was also my first attempt at using biro to draw with so cut me some slack. Version 2 will follow tomorrow or the next day or something. I love drawing hair though, it has the most elegant shapes.

A young man walks from his house and takes a long route into town. He is walking because he feels...

Wed, 15 May 2013 13:22:18 +0100

A young man walks from his house and takes a long route into town. He is walking because he feels that sitting inside all day, despite doing some things of artistic merit, is a bad choice, and some form of activity is needed to keep the body in proper working condition. The sun is shining and warm, the air is bright and he is wearing comfortable clothes. He thinks as he walks, and takes several deep breaths of air, noticing the smells that are present. There is a breeze which climbs into his open jacket to cool him down; the combination of warmth and cool providing some small amount of pleasure to him.

The town is relatively busy and he takes some time as he walks, because he has nowhere to go apart from eventually home. On a whim he steps into an alleyway which leads to one of his favourite shops. Inside it is quiet and filled with beautiful objects. One day he plans to buy the lamp that he’s always seen in there. It is a beautiful lamp, but he doesn’t have anywhere to put it or the justification to spend the required amount of money on it just yet. One day he will buy it, place it in some as of yet unknown private room, turn it on and feel an amount of pleasure from its light and presence.

Walking out of the shop he stops to read some posters which are affixed to the wall. Looking up above the walls of the alleyway into the open space above he sees an arrangement of ageing brickwork and chimneys with the sky behind, which strikes him as a scene he would like to photograph at some point in the future. The act of photographing the scene and then viewing the print will bring him a small but qualitatively pure amount of pleasure. He also takes pleasure in knowing that he will return to take the photograph.

Walking around the town he sees people going about their daily lives, and allows them to do so. He finds joy in the movement and simplicity of it all, and looks carefully at the people he passes. He participates in a spontaneous scene where three people gather and wish to cross the road at a point that lacks a proper crossing. He stands in the road and waits, his pose static and knowing, waiting for the proper time. The confident man to his left leads the way, with him a few steps behind. To his right a young woman also crosses and enters a shop on the other side of the road, greeting the inhabitants brightly before her voice is cut off by the tinkle of the door closing.

As he settles into his mobility scooter an old man causes the chair to produce a squeaking sound as he swivels it into its proper forward orientation. The sound draws the young mans attention as he passes. The old man seems so frail and innocent as he goes about his daily tasks, looking ahead with an almost wide-eyed expression, his mouth moving slightly as he adjusts himself into his seat. His wrinkled hands display two tattoos to signify that he was young once, too.

As the cars slow and form a queue to allow people to cross further up the road, the young man glances into one of the waiting vehicles. He sees an old lady putting on her seatbelt, as though she’d forgotten to before that moment. Her mouth assumed a natural state for someone of her age and in that specific moment the young man perceived her to be looking quite afraid, almost sad. He thought that the car must be driving itself, her only an observer to the scene, the modernity and rush of it all outpacing her delicate mind.

The young man looks forwards again and feels inside of him a surge of love for the people he is witnessing on this bright near-noon. He has a sudden strong desire to run and jump on to something and smile and shout and hold tight everyone around him. In the moment he loves everyone so dearly. He wants to somehow communicate to them all that it is okay, and how perfectly they are all getting along. He wishes to share with them all something of the feeling of simple joy that they are all unwittingly feeding him. He walks onwards with a glowing feeling in his chest and what feels like a smile in his mind, piecing the words together so he could write them down when he returned home.

In the car park he bears witness to the close passing of two cars, noting that one of them is the same as a girl from high school used to get picked up in. He wonders how she is doing and walks onwards. Rounding the corner onto the main street he passes two people standing near the window of the library and catches a couple of words of their conversation, but he will forget what they are. A man with a black jacket and black hair with his hands in his pockets passes by him in the opposite direction.

Nearly at the bottom of his street now he glances across the road to the other side and by chance sees his co-worker from the pub with his girlfriend. He sees them, but they do not see him. He hears his co-workers big friendly laugh and feels an affection for his happy demeanour. The young man crosses the road and looks back at them as they walk away towards town with all of its movement and people. He notices they are hand-in-hand and allows them to continue on in their private moment, feeling a gentle sense of warmth at having borne witness to such wonderful scenes.

Video

Wed, 15 May 2013 12:31:31 +0100

Orange Simulacra: All Eyes To The Nostalgia Telescope A...

Tue, 14 May 2013 22:29:37 +0100

Orange Simulacra: All Eyes To The Nostalgia Telescope

A Clockwork Orange is a film about violence, fancy costumes, iconic scenes, Beethoven, a hospital visit and the colour orange, yes?

The visual and intellectual scope of A Clockwork Orange provides a rich bed of inspiration from which to draw should anyone want to create anything at all related to the film. Anyone who has seen it would be able to look at this poster—and it is indeed intended for people to look at after they’ve watched the film—and feel that they understand its cleverness and tone with its lashings of dirt and reference and in-your-face colour palette. “Ah, I’ve seen A Clockwork Orange. Yeah, cool film. I understand.”

However this poster, though not intentionally, can only ever be looked at as it is, and therein lies its fatal flaw. It is an Image in its own right. Separate from any connection to the film “A Clockwork Orange” it is to be gazed at in awe with a detached reverence by Fans Of The Film “A Clockwork Orange.” It is a veneer. The film itself is somewhere else.

To see this poster for what it is you must see the angle from which it has been created. You must see the meaning it infers to see how it fails.

——

I use this poster as a scapegoat for most of the modern imagery associated with A Clockwork Orange but I also am attacking it more directly for two reasons. The themes of obvious and over-used imagery are present in many places surrounding ACO, but this one in particular goes a step further into a direction which highlights a perceived cultural attitude towards the film that I wish to expose. Alongside this, it falls poetically into the trap of faux-agedness which our modern computers allow us to create so easily. This is a personal bugbear but it also amplifies and complements my argument in this case.

The film itself holds much depth and meaning alongside its iconic imagery and style and yet the original posters are tantalisingly devoid of direct reference—where the film is more directly referenced through images (the prominently erect knife Alex holds, the servile woman being penetrated by the negative space from below or in mysterious silhouetted figures in a subway) are far subtler and reference deeper, darker and more underlying elements of the film.

In contrast to this, one of the effects that time and hysteria has had on ACO is the iconification of certain visual elements of the film, namely Alex’s costume, mask, eyes and of blindingly literal translations of the title. Seeing the eyes here, as meaningful as they are, coupled with an orange background brings the poster firmly into a category of naive blatancy that is charming but only superficially clever. And yes, Clockwork Orange. You’ve made it orange. Very good. I see the link there. Let’s move on.

Admittedly for a “modern” poster this is one of the more refined ideas out there,^† but it drowns in the sea of others that have used the eye motif and ultimately sinks because of another element of its delivery. It fails because it creates a false image of what the film of A Clockwork Orange is. It fails because it takes A Clockwork Orange away from being a film and cheapens it by seeing it as a cultural reference, to be viewed from afar. It fails because it transforms the purity and depth of the film into a flat image of itself. Ultimately, the poster fails because… it is dirty.

With the main focus of the poster on our humble narrators glazzies, (his eyes for you who, on the off chance, are not versed in Nadsat) two separate meanings are conveyed. One overt with its focus on the iconic augmentation of little Alex’s glazzballs, and the other more subtle in their representation of free will vs. enforced “goodness” (see left / right eyes respectively… but you knew that.) Apart from the deliberate inclusion of the X rating on the bottom right, there is little more to the poster to suggest the content of the film at first glance—but then again it’s not meant to be glanced at. It’s meant to be fawned over by those who have seen A Clockwork Orange.

The artwork created by Philip Castle (illustrations) and Bill Gold (arrangement) was created to accompany the film at the time of release to shine and entice and complement the original article. As such, that artwork can be seen as authentic. As time has gone by with the mystique of the film being withdrawn, Kubricks growing fame and legacy and the magnificent imagery contained in the film have all added a certain “nostalgia” to ACO and it is looked upon with a great fondness by a great number of people. This gaze is where the problem lies, and it is the root of the failure of this poster; it gets hopelessly entangled in the folklore of ACO and manages to not represent the film itself at all, although that appears to be its original intent. We are gazing at the distant memory of this radical and dangerous film from our comfy chairs in the 21st Century.

The poster is a fantasy where we are supposed to believe we are viewing a rare ancient relic of this mysteriously violent film that has lay apparently lost for so long. We are to assume the role of the archaeologist who is uncovering a delicate fossil. We are to believe that this poster has lay unseen for many years, a flash in the pan artefact of a time gone by when it might have actually been displayed publicly, and which has now lay folded neatly in half (notice the crease?) to gather dirt and grime (notice the “worn” textures and the coating of transparent “dirt”?) until being finally rediscovered only recently for us all to witness. Gather round all, come see this piece of history. Madame, please do not step over the line.

The dirt is a façade we cannot forgive, but to further undo this particular piece I could also point out the choice of typeface for the tagline; we witness the smooth forms of Helvetica Rounded, a version of the classic typeface that was released in 1978, seven years after the film and as such wouldn’t have been used on posters around the time of its release. But I won’t mention that. Nitpicking is an awful habit.

——

It is the make-believe element and 21st Century gaze which means this poster unfortunately cannot be taken seriously. It joins the ranks of others like it that try to emulate the style and authenticity present in works of art that culture idolises, but it falls foul of several traps that many others are also caught in. While its intention might be pure and its use of eyes as a motif is acceptable, overall it provides too little depth and separates itself too far from the film which holds so much effortless style and clean, blunt danger.

A Clockwork Orange still shines marvellously from 1971, its style and depth available for anyone willing to travel to it. This poster has been developed from an image seen through a warped lens, pieced together from misheard scraps, and it lies helplessly in the 21st Century, hanging limply forever on the eyepiece of the Nostalgia Telescope.

——

†

^{^{The main idea behind this poster bears a striking albeit massively simplified resemblance to an image produced by Philip Castle around the time of the films conception. Some rudimentary photoshopping reveals the very real possibility that the poster in question here has been in part copied by the creator of the new poster, given the similarity of the shapes used, which shows a certain laziness on the part of the modern interpreter. Either way, the issue is time: Castle’s image can be seen as authentic, whereas the modern one is perhaps a cheap copy, but has still chosen to use the “iconic” imagery of the film to represent it.}}

^{^{Link to the image in question. / Link to comparison of old vs. new images.}}

ezgi polat only quick.

Tue, 14 May 2013 11:21:04 +0100

ezgi polat

only quick.

did this mostly today. found the picture online, I forget how...

Mon, 13 May 2013 17:16:00 +0100

did this mostly today. found the picture online, I forget how and when.
you can get so far and still be so far off, but at least I’m going.

source.

the picture with the orange gate is probably my favourite picture I’ve ever taken.

Mon, 13 May 2013 15:17:58 +0100

the picture with the orange gate is probably my favourite picture I’ve ever taken.

Photo

Mon, 13 May 2013 15:13:16 +0100

Photo

Mon, 13 May 2013 14:56:34 +0100

Great Artists in Their Own Words: The Future Is Now (1907-1939)

Sun, 12 May 2013 23:14:24 +0100

Great Artists in Their Own Words: The Future Is Now (1907-1939):

The story of modern art as told in the words of the artists who helped create it.

If you have some form of creative animal in you, and I have a good idea that you might, please, watch this program. It is about how art changed in the early 20th Century, detailing the influences of a few key persons and how their work changed, several times, what the idea of “art” could be.

The program creates in me a surging desire to create and express something—anything—of what is inside. It makes that desire, in a new way, suddenly and obviously apparent that the creative process of expression, whatever form it may take—is easy. To create and present something is an absolutely intimate act, totally free in that it is both tied to no limiting factor and that the eventual outcomes nothing you produce can be incorrect, instead only a step on the ongoing path of development. There are no base models to adhere to.

Seeing these brilliant works of art in context and seeing them accompanied by video and auditory portraits of their creators and contemporaries brings them so much closer to real life, to understanding them as works of art created by real people trying to express something of the world around them and the human condition in all of its complex mystery and microscopic detail.

I hope that you watch the program. This is because I hope that you can get something out of it as I have done, and that it gives you the same energy and drive that it has given me. I also implore you, please, because you can, to make something.

Photo

Sun, 12 May 2013 09:35:13 +0100

Photo

Sun, 12 May 2013 09:34:58 +0100

Photo

Sun, 12 May 2013 09:34:25 +0100

SFV Acid - ‘New American Noise’ Documentary...

Fri, 03 May 2013 12:25:16 +0100

SFV Acid - ‘New American Noise’ Documentary Series

Short documentary about a guy who draws and makes music. I don’t even know what it’s about, but I enjoyed it. It’s about a guy going about his business with some voiceovers telling us about him. It’s got good music. Nice to watch. I enjoyed it. Here it is.

Photographs by Tyrone Lebon. Lots more Here.

Fri, 03 May 2013 12:15:23 +0100

Photographs by Tyrone Lebon.

Lots more Here.

Photo

Fri, 03 May 2013 11:48:41 +0100