I used Illustrator to not suck when I drew this

Yesterday, I spent the afternoon at Adobe with NMC CEO Larry Johnson. We talked with folks from Adobe’s higher education division, and we saw some really, really cool stuff. One thing that I loved is Adobe Rome (see the video demo of Rome from MAX 2009 last October). Rome is going to be a fantastic tool for K12 mediamaking and collaboration, I think. It makes it easy to pull together different kinds of media along with text and drawings, and then to output the project in different ways. I really want my son to play with it, because I’m curious about how the tool will feel to a young person. It looked very intuitive to me, but then I’ve been using Photoshop and Illustrator longer than my son’s been alive, so it’s hard to say how a new, inexperienced user would see it. The demo just blew me away because of what could be done with it in schools, if the Big 3 Issues are properly addressed (what does it cost? can I make the kids’ work private? do I need to install and maintain it?). I have high hopes.

We also saw some of the new features coming up in CS5, but I’m not sure which ones have already been revealed so I’ll just say this: Wow. I am so excited about what I saw. Photoshop in particular has some new powerful features that I look forward to playing with, and there are some other treats coming out as well. Keep an eye out for CS5 and Rome!

Point Lobos landscape

At the NMC Summer Conference this year, Larry Johnson, Alan Levine and I tried something different: we actually attended a preconference session. Crazy, I know! It was a photography workshop led by Bill Frakes (Sports Illustrated) and Don Henderson (Apple), with Bill Hanson (Apple). The session was planned and organized by Larry and the three of them, and included a full day walk along the California coast at Point Lobos State Reserve near Carmel, California, followed by a half-day post-production workshop using Aperture.

It was an amazing day. Larry loaned me his Nikon D70 and some killer zoom lenses. I filled up 3 memory cards with the 1,038 pictures I made (the best of which are in a set on Flickr). The whole experience — the scenery, the company, the exploring and learning — was so moving. Partly out of gratitude to Bill F. and Don for leading the workshop, and partly out of reluctance to let go of the experience, I started a Voicethread piece and invited the other participants to comment (please feel free to add your comments, too, if you wish).

In the post-production session, we each selected our five best photos (give or take); the selections were to include one landscape, one flora/fauna/nature shot, one portrait showing emotion, and whatever else we liked. Bill Hanson created a video slideshow of the photos we picked (see the Quicktime version here) that was aired during one of the plenaries at the conference. What a thrill to see them up there on the big screen!

reaching

Map of Gabon

Today, for instance, I found that an illustration I drew in 1992 and scanned a few years ago was used in a blog post about the death of Gabon’s president, Omar Bongo, earlier this month. The illustration is a map of Gabon that I drew in my sketchbook while I was interning with the Peace Corps there. (Incidentally, the post consists almost entirely of a quote from another source.)

I love finding things scattered around the Internet this way, especially when the person using the image has taken the time to honor my requests (by-nc). I can’t say enough in favor of Creative Commons. My postcards rely on cc-licensed photos; it’s where I get inspiration to be creative, or find just the right image to bring to life the art in my mind. I’m sure all six of my blog readers already use CC, but just in case you don’t, please consider licensing your visual, written, or other creative work with one of the Creative Commons licenses. Who knows where your stuff might turn up?

Until now they’ve been housed on a static web page on my old domain. I’ve wanted to get them moved over here to ninmah.be for a while, but I had grander dreams than my own poor css skills could support. Lucky for me, I have a colleague who likes a challenge and can make WordPress do incredible and amazing things. I showed the old page to Alan Levine and explained what I wanted, gave him a key to the door here at ninmah.be, and stepped out of the way. I’ll let him explain what all he did — but I love the results!

All my postcards dating back to the very first one (August 1996) are now collected on their very own page, and other blog pages have random sidebar thumbnails. It’s easy to add new postcards (I’m still making them from time to time) and easy to see the old ones.

My latest cards take advantage of Creative Commons-licensed work on Flickr — a wonderful source of inspiration and modifiable art. Older ones use my own photos and illustrations, and the occasional borrowed or stolen image (whups! I know better now). The next one’s in the works as I write this.

(Photo credit gratefully given to stoobydoo for Illuminate Yaletown 2009. Thanks for using Creative Commons!)

And the instructions:

What would your own album look like if you were in a band?
The image is what mine would look like.

Follow the directions below and find out yours…

Here are the rules:

1. The name of your band is the first random Wikipedia article you get here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random

2. Your album name is the last 4 or 5 words from the last random quote you find here:
http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3

3. Your cover art is the third photo you find on flickr’s interesting last 7 days here:
http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days
** Rachel’s rule addition (yes, you know I had to make up a rule): Reload until the 3rd image is under a Creative Commons license allowing you to use it! Then use that one.

4. Assemble in your favorite image editor.

5. Post in note – add photo and tag your friends!

Have fun!

Talk about a revelation! There are a dozen little numbers you can play with, and if I had paid more attention in geometry I might have glommed on earlier. In any event, after examining some very well-made prim jewelry, I made my first set. Well, my first wearable set, anyway. Here’s a picture of me in my new gold and pearl jewelry.

The earrings came out very well. The necklace needs a little tweaking — I’m not entirely happy with the chain, and if your avatar is taller than mine (very likely, since my avi’s height mimics my RL height) the necklace will rez invisibly inside your chest. I made a “tall” version, but I need to find out how to attach a necklace so that it automatically finds the avatar’s neck. The earrings work on any height.

What do you think? The birth of a new jewelry line? Do I have that kind of time?

We started with Georgia O’Keeffe and Matisse. We read books about them first (I recommend the Getting to Know series by Mike Venezia), and then we talked about some of their works using my extensive library of art books. That was the point at which I realized exactly where all my money went while I was in college. It really is a nice collection. We went to the grocery store and bought large flowers that interested us — we each picked out one bunch — and then brought them home and drew them close up, like Georgia O’Keeffe. Tomorrow we will be drawing with scissors like Matisse.

This morning David, Craig and I made the trip to the city and visited the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. They have Femme au Chapeau, which is one of the images from the Venezia book, and I wanted David to see it. It could not have been a more perfect moment had it been scripted. We climbed the stairs and turned to the left on the second floor — you can almost see it right from there, but there were people in the way. We moved over toward it, and when a gap opened he saw it and pointed and squeezed my hand and gasped, “That was painted by Henri Matisse!” Why, yes, yes it was. Imagine finding that here.

We talked about how it looked, and how it was bigger than he thought it would be. I had told him the colors would look different than they did in the book. He wasn’t convinced, but that’s okay. Then we wandered through the galleries, looking at whatever interested him. Fountain stopped him for a moment, but he was perfectly ready to accept it as art. “It’s sculpture, Mom.” Yup.

We spent a few minutes in the Koret Visitor Education Center, watching part of a film that talked about Matisse and Picasso and their models.

I have a personal tradition when I visit a museum of choosing a postcard from the gift shop to remind me of one particular work that I enjoyed on that trip. David made his first postcard choice today. He picked Les Valeurs personnelles by Magritte, which is the painting he spent the most time in front of during our visit. Back in the car, he showed me Femme au Chapeau in his Matisse book. He admitted that his favorite part of the visit was the translucent walkway on the fifth floor. Fine by me: he had a favorite part.

A ticket, a postcard, a map, and a blog post — David at SFMOMA.