Cold and windy and cloudy yesterday. But we drove into the vicinity of what used to be a very poor trailer park here in town fifty years ago and we found some interesting sights. And then we got into an area that used to be known for bootleggers many years ago, and took pictures there. I got numb fingers but the pics turned out OK. Conditions too adverse to risk the good camera, however.
Still no new photos. Very busy week. It's like that after Christmas and New Year. So this is more old, old, OLD, stuff. Some started as satirical drawings. It's all a kind of experiment, to see how digital techniques might be used to finish what begins with analog graphic media, like pen and ink, watercolor, chalk, charcoal, etc.
The image above was extracted from a sheet of watercolor paper with faint, barely visible, markings from a wash with slightly dirty water.
The image just above started with black tempera on poster paper. I used a spatula to goop on the tempera.
Above image started with black ink applied with a small eyedropper to wet newsprint.
I just don't remember what I started with to get the above image. Obviously, the end result is mostly an accident.
Years and years ago I took digital photos of abstractions I drew/painted with traditional and non-traditional media and then imported them into Adobe Photoshop for some extreme manipulations. Here are some examples of the results. I can't help but find them interesting. Some of them remind me of old Peter Max psychedelic posters.
I have a lot of these, preserved from the days when I was doing a lot of experimenting with digital cameras, when that was a new thing. I doubt that I'll ever do any more. I'm putting some of these things up because I ran out of conventional photos and it has been too cold to take more.
Surely, one can at least say that the work is "interesting"?
Clearly, we are not seeing pics of walls and doors today.
But we aren't talking about big accumulations. And we braved the weather yesterday to get some essential errands run, driving in rain that turned the ice to slush. It was a little dicey but not all that bad. But all that rain froze overnight and there's a crust of snow on top of that so we might not want to get out today.
This is more stuff from downtown.
Below are nocturnal views of Santa Land, taken from a bluff in McKenzie Park, using my wife's iPhone 5.
Don't underestimate the iPhone cameras!
And here are a few views of Texas Tech at night, just after Christmas.
We used an iPhone camera for these as well.
Winter in Lubbock is rarely much of anything. But now the weather services are predicting more snow and ice and conditions over the next few days that will make travel "difficult to impossible"! That does not sound very encouraging. We have not been getting out because we haven't wanted to play bumper cars on the iced streets. We were hoping for enough improvement to be able to do a few things, at least. But no. We might be housebound for a few more days. We miss going to the gym a LOT. I have a free weight collection and I've been using those, but motivation isn't there. Constant gloom. No sun. It might as well be Siberia. Why not put up more pics? I'm actually about to run out, and might be forced to improvise!
I look at these pics and I remember the sunshine and the warmth...
Below, you see the old eyesore Omni Building. The city bought it, but we don't have a clue as to what to do with it. Some want to do one thing and others want to do something else, and a few want to tear it down.
