Creative Cogitation

I planned on tak­ing the week­end off to paint.  I got on my com­puter, Saturday, and just spend the whole day there. I had eight paint­ings I needed to get on my web­site com­plete with all the lovely pic­tures, most of PopCult Gallery Three got uploaded.   Then I needed to start get­ting the word out there via social media, post­ing pic­tures on my Face­book fan­page which auto­mat­i­cally goes to var­i­ous places.  Once that was done I was finally able to post a blog about two of the new pieces and deep link on a cou­ple of other posts that are in the que wait­ing their turn.

On the upside I started five, zero and a paint­ing called Vuvuze­las in honor of all that soc­cer stuff I keep hear­ing about; I don’t have the sports gene so I was nit watch­ing the matches. What that means is that I am still on track with respect to a paint­ing a day for the first week, assum­ing I fin­ish them by tomor­row  You should hear me right now… I am chuck­ing at the unre­al­is­tic dead­line I just set myself. In addi­tion to this blog I want to write a bit about the other two paint­ings I uploaded so I can do some deep link­ing to them too.

I am find­ing social media is tak­ing a lot of time.  I am try­ing to work in some more Linkedin and today I hit a bunch of new Face­book friends with a request to become a fan of my Fan­page.  While I was at it I uploaded the 8 new paint­ings to the photo album on my fan page and changed my avatars on my fan­page and Face­book page all the while chat­ting away via Tweet­Deck.  Oh my. 

I keep hear­ing that I need to auto­mate newslet­ter sign up.  I have a newslet­ter — it tends to go out when I am have a show, but right now it’s too hot locally so no email newslet­ter, so I won­der what am I going to put in a newslet­ter.  Then there is affil­i­ate mar­ket­ing, mon­e­tiz­ing the site, etc. etc. - those are just words to me right now — I don’t know what they mean.  Any­way while I was blog­ging I fig­ured out how to put links to Twit­ter, my Face­book fan­page, Linkedin and MySpace etc at the top of my art blog.  When I set up the blog that idea never occured to me, now of course it’s, “Like Duh…”

By the time this post gets done I will have five and zero done, but will they be uploaded to my web­site, I am mak­ing heavy sigh­ing noises even as I think about it. 

five, by Jake Beck­man. Five yel­low canaries cavort about an orange num­ber 5. The back­ground is an abstract of warm pur­ple bub­bles. The binary reads “five” and “5”.

So this is five, finally posted in this blog, and zero is below.  Vuvuze­las got its own blog on the eve of the World Cup final.  I had to post it before the end.  It was coin­ci­den­tally painted in the col­ors of the win­ning coun­tries flag-red vuvuze­las and a bright yel­low canary (excuse me, gold canary) .

zero, by Jake Beck­man. An out­line of a canary, rep­re­sent­ing the canary null set, flies before a gilt num­ber 0.

OK I guess by now you know what 6, 7, 8 and 9 will look like.  But zero was a puz­zle for me until I came up with my “null set” canary.   I am enjoy­ing the minia­ture abstract back­grounds more too.  As much as I love paint­ing my big ones, some of my effects take a long time and a long time to dry.  Work­ing on this scale def­i­nitely speeds things up. 

As I write this blog on day five (pic­tures to be inserted later) I real­ize time-management is def­i­nitely and issue for me.  Got any tips? 

Also all this art is for sale.  Mama needs some more can­vases.  Want to buy some? Check out five and zero’s pages on my web­site.  Thanks for stop­ping by. 

Jake

Artist, AKAJake.com Come Expe­ri­ence the Art!

The art work in this blog is fed­er­ally copy­righted. All repro­duc­tion and pub­lish­ing copy­rights are retained by the artist. Images are not to be copied, re-distributed, imi­tated, derived OR oth­er­wise used in any form with­out the explicit writ­ten per­mis­sion of the artist.

I fin­ished this paint­ing more than a month ago.  I can’t believe it has taken me that long to upload the images to my web­site and to sit down and blog about it.  As John Lennon said, “Life is what hap­pens while you are mak­ing other plans.”  So true for me too.  I found myself spend­ing sev­eral weeks deal­ing with feral cat issues, softy that I am.  Adding that one thing really put me behind on every­thing and so these paint­ings lan­guished in the obscu­rity of my studio.

But no more.  Since June 27, 2010 was a total washout on paint­ing I endeav­ored to “catch up” on my blog­ging, and my web­site main­te­nance among other things. I cranked out quite a few so I can post them later. It’s now later for this blog, enjoy.

Bridge is a spin off on iPod Tweety and iPod ads in gen­eral, but it is also a con­trast as well. Once I did iPod Tweety, one of the first things that came to mind was a per­son who con­ducts an imag­i­nary orches­tra while lis­ten­ing to a record­ing of some kind. The cock­a­too became the obvi­ous bird because of the crest. I dunno but I think of con­duc­tors as hav­ing shocks of unruly hair stick­ing up.  Con­duc­tors usu­ally wear dark suits so the bird in sil­hou­ette also tracked in my mind. 

But unlike the music behind Rock Me! clas­si­cal music has lay­ers, move­ments, changes in melody, key and other such devices that gen­er­ally imply a more com­plex arrange­ment; besides most clas­si­cal works are much longer than your aver­age pop radio tune.  With this in mind I set out to make my abstract back­ground con­vey­ing this com­plex­ity and pas­sage of time.  I chose green.  The back­ground is a very dark green, which is over­laid with bright green and then light sea green. I did sev­eral waves of color sweep­ing from the top of the can­vas to the bot­tom around the con­duc­tor bird as a melody.  I placed a series of thick bright spires behind the cock­a­too oppo­site these waves, I think of them as a deep throb­bing base­line.  Finally I painted some thin ver­ti­cals that were much lighter in color to con­vey a sprin­kling of high notes.  The top of the paint­ing is lighter in color and the bot­tom is still bright green but much darker, the waves and ver­ti­cal lines “bridge” the two zones. I also have some tex­tural ele­ments in the waves and the thick bright spires. Of course while I was paint­ing it I was not in this lit­eral “this means that mode,” I was feel­ing the music. 

Bridge, by Jake Beck­man. A crested cock­a­too con­ducts and imag­i­nary sym­phony while lis­ten­ing to its iPod. The green back­ground is an abstract rep­re­sen­ta­tion of clas­si­cal music.

That was the thought behind Bridge.  I hope you like this dif­fer­ent take on Binary Birds, iPods and music.  Any com­ments?  If you would like more details about Bridge or would like to buy it, please see its page at AKAJake.com.

Artist, AKAJake.com Come Expe­ri­ence the Art!

The art work in this blog is fed­er­ally copy­righted. All repro­duc­tion and pub­lish­ing copy­rights are retained by the artist. Images are not to be copied, re-distributed, imi­tated, derived OR oth­er­wise used in any form with­out the explicit writ­ten per­mis­sion of the artist.

As I sit down to write this blog I real­ize I fin­ished Rock Me! a month ago.  I can’t believe that much time has passed before I finally got it posted on my web­site and of course do this thing.  But I guess I must push on as I really do want to paint tomor­row, oh wait it’s 2 AM which means I want to paint today!

One thing I decided to do start­ing with Rock Me! was to cre­ate a series of smaller more afford­able paint­ings.  I have heard per­son want­ing to start col­lect­ing me might want to start small and work up to a larger piece.  There is an advan­tage in these smaller works in addi­tion to afford­abil­ity to my collectors; to some extent they do go together faster, my invest­ment in mate­ri­als is a lit­tle less, and they take up less space in my stu­dio while being stored.  The down­side is, I am not used to work­ing this small, to some extent work­ing in the smaller scale with smaller brushes takes as much time as work­ing with larger brushes on a larger scale and doing abstract back­grounds on this scale is limiting. It feels odd to cre­ate non rep­re­sen­ta­tional flow of color on some­thing so tiny.  But I am endeav­or­ing to do this very thing.

I love the idea behind Rock Me! It’s a spin off the idea behind of iPod Tweety and iPod print ads in gen­eral.  My first sketches had the full body of umbrella crested cock­a­too includ­ing the spread wings.  As I fooled around with the sketch in pho­to­shop I realzed what enam­ored me most about this idea was the full head of back lit feath­ers.  I really felt like it con­veyed Rock & Roll’s energy.  The sug­ges­tion of the open beak com­pletes the image of the rock affi­cianado howl­ing and grind­ing to his or her favorite song. I decided not to zoom in any futher as it would have been too much black.  DH thinks I went too far… 

Red also seemed appro­pri­ate.  I love the energy of blood red.  And black is a very pow­er­ful color too.  As for the back­ground I just wanted it to appear splat­tered with sound, vol­umn, energy.  As I do my abstract back­grounds I real­ize I think they not only rep­re­sent emo­tion, but are accom­pa­nied by music as well.

Rock Me! by Jake Beck­man. An umbrella crested cock­a­too rocks out to iPod tunes.

I think I resem­ble this ani­mal, I am pretty much a rocker babe. I hope you like this lat­est Binary Bird as much as I do.  Rock on!

If you would like to find out more about Rock Me! or buy it, check out it’s page on my web­site. Feel free to comment-like it, hate it? 

Jake

Artist, AKAJake.com Come Expe­ri­ence the Art!

The art work in this blog is fed­er­ally copy­righted. All repro­duc­tion and pub­lish­ing copy­rights are retained by the artist. Images are not to be copied, re-distributed, imi­tated, derived OR oth­er­wise used in any form with­out the explicit writ­ten per­mis­sion of the artist.

Part of my think­ing about Social Media revolves around the fringe ele­ment.  I think we all are fringy at times. Here’s a fringe the­ory from me. Please explain oth­er­wise why kit­tens are a per­rienial favorite post­ing in all forms of social media? I think it’s their secret power — I’d reach for for my tin foil hat but my cat is send­ing rays to me bend­ing me to her will… I… must… pet my cat.  Just jok­ing — but I think you get the drift. 

I have been hear­ing about the end of time (accord­ing to the Mayan Cal­en­der) since I was a teenager.  My mom is a go to source for all things fringy.  I love my mom, but she did expose me to every­thing from Nos­tro­damus, to the­o­ries of Atlantis so I have known about fringe ele­ment the­o­ries for quite some time.  I am sure the mod­ern day Mayans (yes they are still around) are sick of hear­ing about the end of the 13th b’aktun as they know the 14th b’aktun starts the next day. To them I am sure its just a flip­ping of the cal­en­dar like Jan­u­ary 1, 2000.  If you want to find out more about the Mayan Cal­en­dar, read my post dis­cussing the wheel of time that appears in the paint­ings below.

Any­way, from what I have read, it seems the Mayans would view the flip­ping over of their cal­en­dar as an aus­pi­cious event, a time for cel­e­bra­tion.  “Hey folks, we made it another 400 years.  Lets Party!”  Of course you really don’t need an excuse to party, “Happy Wednes­day!” Any­one?  But flip­ping a 400-year cal­en­dar seems to be a good a rea­son as any.

So when I was con­tem­plat­ing my Binary Birds paint­ing on the sub­ject and fig­ur­ing out how I was going to depict the the long count cal­en­dar, I decided the paint­ings would reflect this more joy­ous take on the end of the 13 b’aktun.  I decided to use a red-crested par­rot as the bird in the paint­ings as this dis­tinc­tive bird is a native of Mex­ico; after all it is their cel­e­bra­tion… no? 

But a some­thing hap­pened when I went to paint.  I could not decide how many birds to put in the paint­ing so I came up with two ver­sions.  The first sim­ply enti­tled 12/20/2012 has a happy par­rot danc­ing on the outer most cog of my wheel of time; the paint­ing is dom­i­nated by the entire cal­en­dar.   By the way any­one else notice the end of the 13th b’aktun as num­ber is kind of the same for­ward and backward? See how easy it is to point out spu­ri­ous coin­ci­dence and build some fringe the­ory around it? Of course true to Binary Birds theme there is ASCII binary which reads right to left & top to bot­tom 12/20/2012. 

12/20/2012 by Jake Beck­man. A red crested par­rot dance in Jake;s con­cep­tion of Mayan Long Count Calendar.

The sec­ond paint­ing I think expresses the cel­bra­tion aspect a bit better.  The wheel is still pretty large, but my par­ty­ing par­rots are def­i­nitely more com­pelling.  The title is Party like its CJJHJ!  Which is of course a take on Party like is 1999! reflect­ing on the par­ties that occured at the end of the last cen­tury (of course some like to point out that the new cen­tury didn’t begin until 2001, but I am going with the major­ity on this one-even if they are not tech­ni­cally cor­rect).  The binary reads Party like its CJJHJ from left to right & top to bottom. By the way, is it just me or do par­rots have ugly feet? If you are won­der­ing about CJJHJ, read more about my rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the Mayan long-count cal­en­dar in my blog post on the subject. 

Party Like its CJJHJ, by Jake Beck­man. Three red-crested par­rots cel­e­brate the end of the 13th b’aktun of the Mayan long-count calendar.

So thats the story of my paint­ings on the sub­ject of 2012 as relates to Binary Birds & social media.  I hope you like them.  If you want to find out more about these paint­ings or buy one or both check out their pages on my web­site: 12/20/2012 and Party like its CJJHJ

By the way I have con­firmed my par­tic­i­pa­tion in the End of the World Face­book party on 12/20/2012.  Have you?

Jake

Artist, AKAJake.com Come Expe­ri­ence the Art!

The art work in this blog is fed­er­ally copy­righted. All repro­duc­tion and pub­lish­ing copy­rights are retained by the artist. Images are not to be copied, re-distributed, imi­tated, derived OR oth­er­wise used in any form with­out the explicit writ­ten per­mis­sion of the artist.

UPDATE June 21:  I sur­vived a week­end of push­ing myself away from the com­puter.  I wish I could say I got a lot done, but I didn’t-I felt like I was miss­ing some­thing.  It was hard-I admit it I am now a social net­work­ing junkie.  I logged in once on Sat­ur­day and then by Sun­day I had a whole bunch of stuff that I had not seen before; one per­son com­plained it was hard to fol­low my tweets as they did not remem­ber what I was respond­ing to a day later.  But on Sun­day I only logged in one more time and got off within 10 min­utes or so.  I have decided 1 time per day is not going to be enough to keep up with my stuff.  Today its busi­ness as usual.  But I am see­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ties…  So the exper­i­ment will con­tinue.  Dur­ing the week I need to work on my com­puter, but Iwill only check my social media and email 2 times at most and I will only be on the com­puter when I have to.  Of course all that free time gave me another idea about how to spend more time on my com­puter.  Eek.    More later. 

June 19: OK. I am in com­mu­ni­ca­tion over­load.  I find myself in front of this device all the time.  I spend so much time in my office that I grow cats who get very com­fort­able on me while I am work­ing.  It is not easy to work with a 15 pound feline demand­ing atten­tion, which I guess is their way of say­ing, “Step away from the box…”

Me, work­ing at my com­puter with a help­ful feline in my lap and another on my desk gen­er­ally knock­ing crap over.

I have come to feel like my desk has a grav­i­ta­tional pull that stronger than the rest of the earth.  I am in orbit around it reg­u­larly and it is very hard to pull myself away from it-and I always seem to wind up right back in front of it.  Sure my day job forces me to be here at least part of the time, but more and more I find myself drawn into email, blog­ging, online mar­ket­ing, social media and other elec­tronic com­mu­ni­ca­tion to the point where I believe it is tak­ing too much of my time. 

Resolved, I will start bud­get­ing (limiting) my time in front of the glow­ing screen so that I can get out  and do stuff in the big blue box too.  I was think­ing I would try to stay away from the com­puter all week­end, but I think that is prob­a­bly not real­is­tic so I may just need to get a timer or some­thing to limit the amount of time I sit here.

We’ll see how it goes.  Step­ping away from the com­puter… as soon as I post this, link to it on my web­site and post it to social media-see what I mean?

Jake

Artist, AKAJake.com Come Expe­ri­ence the Art!

The art work in this blog is fed­er­ally copy­righted. All repro­duc­tion and pub­lish­ing copy­rights are retained by the artist. Images are not to be copied, re-distributed, imi­tated, derived OR oth­er­wise used in any form with­out the explicit writ­ten per­mis­sion of the artist.