The Dark Office series of paintings and prints reflect the nihilism, corruption and pointlessness of corporate existence.
Left: This is a rough sketch I did while spending the entire day at Tires Plus on a Friday, inhaling the fragrant bouquet of rubber, dust, and stale coffee while listening to bad daytime TV filled with courtroom shows and incessant lawyer commercials, surrounded by year old magazines.
This pretty much sums up the mood I was in on Friday. It's called Workflow, and might be another addition to the Dark Office Series.
This is a study for a painting in the "Dark Office" series, called Consumption. This painting is now completed and will, at some point, be available as a giclee painting for sale.
Below: Fallacy Of Independent Thought, ink on paper 2013
One of the things I want to start doing is time-lapse photography, which takes a lot of patience. Time lapse photography is the art of taking a picture every couple of seconds and then stringing them together, to make things look like they are moving much faster than they really are. The results are incredibly cool, and here are some fantastic examples. Enjoy!
This video is mind blowing! Photographer Danielle Navarette spent a year taking 30,000 pictures of Disneyland in Anaheim, Calafornia and created one of the coolest time-lapse films I have ever seen.
This is another time-lapse film done to simulate a tilt-shift lens. Tilt-shift photography makes everything look miniature, as if you're looking at a realistic model landscape, by having an extremely narrow zone of focus and blurring everything else out.
Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing editor, writer and graphic novelist, has a great essay on how the publishing industry has virtue, as opposed to the music and movie industry, which rip off artists and deny them royalties at every turn, cram lopsided contracts down their throats, and pummel users with threats and attacks, which only affect the people who have legitimately bought their products not those for whom the threats are intended.
The publishing industry, in comparison, tends to treat artists with a lot more transparency and fairness, and should be proud of this fact.
Finally, authors’ advances are (usually) only charged to their current books, or sometimes across a single deal. Unlike musicians, who are often required to pay back shortfalls from their last project before they can start earning on their latest one, authors’ balance sheets are zeroed out with each new book. If your last book tanks, your next book usually doesn’t have to pay back its advance. Publishing doesn’t do debt slavery.
Jenny Colgan of The Guardian has a great collection of children's books that are, for some reason, nightmare inducing. She wonders why in the world France would want to scare their children with such creepy imagery.
This clip made me misty, and I'm not ashamed to say it.
On this Memorial Day 2012, which for me holds so much promise, it seems important for me to share this with you, and I hope you will share it with others, especially those you know who have lost a loved one. Vice-President Joseph Biden shares quite candidly the death of his wife and daughter to a group of families who have lost family members in combat. This is no politician speaking, this is a man who is sharing his deep loss with a group of people who know how it feels, and he tells them that it gets better.
Cake maker Alexandre Dubosc created this fantastic zoetrope-themed cake that pays homage to Tim Burton, complete with a Jack Skellington on top. Very cool!
To learn more about zoetropes, what they are, and how they work, click on the link below:
Regular followers of this blog know that costuming, or cosplay, is one of my interests; I am a member of the 501st Legion, the global Star Wars costuming group, and I have another costume I wear to Dragoncon every year, and I'm currently working on another costume.
Some people consider this a waste of time, or just don't understand the whole costuming thing. Some people think it's downright weird, and that's fine. I kind of like it that costuming is out in the fringes. I wouldn't want it to gain complete social acceptance, what fun would that be??
Below are some videos, and a link to my Dragoncon podcast to show you why costuming is so much fun and why otherwise-rational people do it. Enjoy!
This video is from the New York ComicCon and has interviews with attendees explaining their interest in costuming:
This isn't the official Dragoncon video, but it should be! This is the big event I attend each year, and this video demonstrates why it's so much fun:
This is the podcast I created last year during Dragoncon with a report from the con and interviews that gives you a good sense of what Dragoncon is like. Listen on your PC, download it to your iPod or favorite MP3 device:
This is my blog entry from my report on Dragoncon from 2011, filled with pictures and links. Enjoy!
If you're a regular reader of my blog, you know that freedom of expression is the issue I am most passionate about as an artist and photographer, not to mention a drawing instructor. While I never discuss politics or my personal beliefs in my classes, I try to keep my blog readers informed about threats to their free speech rights.
So, I'm posting this video on my blog only because TED, a non-profit entity devoted to spreading ideas, refused to put it on theirs, claiming it is too controversial. You can view this post as an act of defiance against the forces of censorship, always a valiant endeavor. In this video, economist and business owner Nick Hanauer makes a very compelling case that rich people, and the tax breaks they seem to get in greater abundance, do not create jobs at all, but in fact do just the opposite.
Whether you agree or not, I encourage you to watch, if only because someone tried to keep you from doing so.
Magnum Arts is Michael K. Lyman, an artist, photographer and instructor who teaches cartooning & drawing in Pinellas County and is publishing his first graphic novel based on real events from 2011. He is also a member of The 501st Legion, a global Star Wars costuming organization that participates in parades and raises money for charity. See magnumarts.net for more information.
