Sketches and throwies

Doing a few sketches with oil pastels, with a rather nice set of Sennelier artist quality pastels.
I haven't used oil pastels much recently, usually working with a selection of different soft pastels.
My problem with soft pastels is how to fix and store them easily. I am working on organizing my work into different folders and so on, not something that comes easily to me.

Following a brief article on the Graffiti Research Lab, and the idea of throwies,( link is to video about throwies) little LED lights fixed to batteries and thrown onto urban structures vehicles ect. I decided it might be one way of working with lights, and I found a supplier of LED lights and ordered a few to experiment with.

The Graffiti Research lab has a good website with photos and videos of various interventions including clever uses of laser tagging and filling in by computer. I like the idea of using something temporary and harmless to make comments on social and political issues. It's almost incongruous the idea of pretty little coloured lights making a statement about war for instance.

Video Art

A New Year and a new course on video editing. Of course I don't have a Mac or the very expensive software at home, but some of the skills will be transferable I'm sure.
I have quite a collection of videos waiting for a bit of editing so I can upload them. Doing some more research for video artists lead me to Jonas Mekas where there are some great short videos to download and others to buy. I liked the little intro video by Jonas as well.

Here a couple of my short videos, filmed at the Christmas market along the Southbank.

Andy Warhol exhibition and the South bank

I have been keen to see the Andy Warhol exhibition at the Hayward Gallery for a while. The only problem with the exhibition being the amount of his films on show. From factory recordings to interviews, to TV channel shows, a huge range of work that would take days to view.

I did enjoy seeing the prints, silkscreens and books on show and think one of the things I like about Andy Warhol is this recording of everything around him without discrimination in a sense. Obviously on the one hand there is always selection by an artist but here there is also recording whatever happens. I also like the fact a lot of videos had what could be called bad technique. There is hope for mine in the new year.

Afterwards I was taking photos outside the gallery and the South Bank.

Snow and Christmas lights

The weather has turned colder, I caught the snow on the way to the tube. Leyton looking pretty bleak in these images.
The Christmas lights are on in Walthamstow, not that there are many, this blue net of lights strung along the lime trees brings a bit of a show. Interestingly with the lights of the shopping centre behind we could imagine we were somewhere more continental.