A Quiet Moment Amongst Friends

How To Make Your Own Sea Monster

My friend Jake C was cooking recently when he noticed that his silicone oven mitt looked like the Loch Ness Monster. He followed a few simple steps to turn it into a real sea monster. Here's how you can do it at home:

Step 1: Put a silicone oven mitt on your hand and hold it out so it looks like a lizard. 

Step 2: Put something on the mitt to make eyes and nostrils (buttons or olives, it doesn't really matter).

Step 3: Take a digital photograph of the mitt. (Jake used his cellphone to take and edit the photo, so you don't need to be a genius or rich, okay?)
 
 

Step 4: Import the photo into a digital art program and add a bunch of fog, hills, and waves. You can also add optional features like fish, boats, or the moon. Have fun! 

Step 5: Send it to all your friends. 

That's all there is to it. I hope you enjoyed learning how to make a sea monster. 

 

Mysteries of the Human Body

Hey, everyone, I'm currently training to become a doctor, but instead of going to medical school, I've decided to figure everything out on my own. I created a series of animated diagrams illustrating the most critical bodily functions. These are the areas of the body I'll be working on every day in my clinic.

 

Blood

Blood is the fuel that powers the body and keeps all of the internal parts moist. The heart moves the blood around the body so that it doesn't slow down and stagnate. If blood sits in one spot for too long it turns blue.

If you lose blood, either through injury or blood donation, your body will eventually make more of it. I'm not exactly sure how that works.

Breath

After blood, breath is the most important bodily concern. The lungs create air, or "breath", and shoot it out into the atmosphere to collect oxygen molecules. You can think of breath like a swarm of bees that collect honey and bring it back to the hive. Your breath is always out there working hard, looking for oxygen. 

Guts

The guts of a human body are incredibly complicated. Guts encompass all of the internal functions not related to breathing, blood, or your brain. Put your hand on your belly and push in. Everything you feel under there is your guts. 

The most famous thing that guts do is turn food into waste. Your guts also alert you to throw up when you eat something rotten. 

Nerves

Nerves are the invisible pathways that send and receive signals from the brain. Very little is known about how this works. For example, you can think about moving your foot, and it moves, but sometimes if you sit cross-legged for too long, your foot won't move even if you want it to. Stranger yet, if you poke a sleeping person in the foot with a stick, they will kick. That wasn't even their thought. They were asleep!

Hair

Hair is the most aesthetically pleasing bodily system, but it also plays a critical role in our survival. The body uses hair to regulate temperature. If you live in a cold climate, you will grow a lot of hair in the winter and shed it in the summer. People living in hot climates are practically hairless.

I hope you learned some things about the body that will help you live a healthy life.

IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: While the information presented here is factually correct, I am not yet licensed to practice medicine and therefore cannot recommend the use of this information to diagnose or treat a medical condition. If you are experiencing a medical emergency, please call 911.

Things I Did in January

 

 

This past January I participated in the annual Fun-A-Day art project. The project takes place across the country and the only requirement is that participants create one art piece per day for the entire month of January. For my project, I created a daily animation based on the most notable thing that happened each day. At the end of the month I had thirty-one very short films that I stitched together into a silent movie that was shown on a loop at the Rock Paper Scissors Gallery in Oakland.

For the web version of the video, I asked my friend Carl W to help with a soundtrack. I was basically asking for Carl's interpretation of my interpretation of my month. It could have been a huge mess, but Carl came through with a big song that gives the animation some emotional depth. Slam dunk.

UPDATE: Here are some pictures from the show on February 4. (Photos courtesy of Nick L, the show's curator):

 

Dear Gif Diary, I Like You

Animated GIFs, blog, new media, 2010

David N, a friend of my friends in Portland, has created a special website that harnesses the full potential of animated GIFs and uses them to tell poignant stories about real life in America. I'm not lying at all when I say this is my new favorite website:

Dear Gif Diary

I've presented a few selections here to give you a sense of the artwork, but it doesn't do justice to the site. You should really go straight there and see the entire collection. You'll feel like you are viewing the world three-dimensionally from inside the eyeballs of another person. It's much more interesting than the office work you should be doing right now.

David is also the creator of the excellent and mysterious Dickbird.org website. I strongly encourage you to spend a lot of time there, too.

A PowerPoint Presentation About Donkeys

PowerPoint presentation, 500 x 300 pixels, 2010

I recently upgraded to Microsoft Office 2008. In this latest edition, there is a much larger selection of realistic-looking clip art and graphic design elements. It was a slow day at work, so I used some of the new features to make a PowerPoint presentation about donkeys:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Feel free to copy any of these slides for your own presentations. All you need to do is replace the pictures of the donkeys with whatever it is people talk about at your office. Or even better, keep the pictures of the donkeys, and at the end of the presentation, tell the audience that the donkeys are a metaphor. You might get a promotion. 

Why Are Things So Slow?

Doodle, digital color, 8 x 8 inches, 2010

 

Why are the blog updates coming so slowly, you ask? It's because some people have been very busy and they need time to think up new ideas so that everyone can have a lot of fun later on in the year. You see, if my friends and I just start posting stuff for the sake of posting stuff, it will dilute the blog. Do you know what dilute means? It means when you put too many ice cubes in your soda and it gets very cold, very fast, but then it starts to taste gross when you are only halfway through because the ice melted. 

I want this blog to be luke warm and potent. Stay tuned!

A Quiet Moment at the Beach

iPhone painting, 800 x 550 pixels, 2009

In this digital painting by Jake C, a man takes some time to unwind and watch the waves. I'm guessing this guy's wife and four step-kids don't even know about this secret spot on the beach. It's the perfect place to chill-out.

Jake is pushing iPhone art to new limits. The depth and shading are amazing. Nice work!

Stretch Your Neck Out There

I'm continuing my push for artworks that are created by (or transported via) mobile devices. If you have a fancy phone, it's super easy. I think phone art is interesting enough to look at for two minutes and it's also great filler for when I'm too busy or lazy to work on bigger projects. After Thanksgiving, I promise to roll out another collaborative assignment, but in the meantime, here is some more cellphone art:

Nico already sent in a few photos, and today he e-mailed this doodle of a long-necked fellow in a trench coat and a fancy hat.

 

Anna U sent in a digital drawing of a squirrel that has been startled by an earthworm. 

 

Lila K snapped some fish eggs in a blue bowl.

 

And yesterday at work I drew a Nordic guy with a distorted face and a pine tree air-freshener.

A Safe Space For Your Cellphone Art

As the decade draws to a close, everyone is walking around with camera and internet phones. Many of these phones now have art programs similar to MS Paint or Photoshop. To take full advantage of the technological riches of our time, I've dedicated the Friend Art photo gallery on the right side of the page as a place for friends, or friends of friends, to contribute photos or any art created with a mobile device. 

Here are some recent examples:

While riding the train to work, Jake C used the iPhone app Brushes to draw a vengeful wizard standing amidst a pile of slain knights.

 

Anna U, my sister, used her phone to snap a photo of the birthday cake she made for her boyfriend Mike. 

 

She also took this shot of Native Americans at the Natural History Museum in New York. 

Nico C took a snapshot of some mannequin legs next to a football advertisement. 

 

He also used his quick reflexes to capture the exact moment when his toilet screamed at him.

And this last piece is my own mixed-media contribution. I made a doodle of a ghost catcher, photographed it, and gave it a title. Catchin' ghosts. 

Cellphone art is easy. Please send it in to aquietmoment@gmail.com.

Reimagining Sasquatch: Finnish the Art

In June, I posted ten submissions for the Faces in the Mist: Reimagining Sasquatch collaborative art project. Morit G, a frequent contributor, was traveling abroad at the time and missed the deadline. After returning, she was bogged down by a broken computer. Undeterred, this week she fixed her computer and completed her Sasquatch face. 

It seems she misread the instructions to "finish the art" and instead adapted the drawing into a Finnish coat of arms:

I also received another very late submission from Kent C, my friend who found the original Sasquatch Activity Book. Coincidentally, Kent is of Finnish descent. 

Kent works at an outdoor science camp and he based his version of the drawing on real evidence. He writes: 

My submission, while it may appear crude, pays homage to the closest I have ever come to the mythical man-beast, which was a story told to me by a decidedly real man-beast about an encounter he had with Sasquatch while working as a wildland firefighter in the mountains of Northern California's redwood country. Among his less spurious claims was that bigfoot gave off the aroma of "50 dead sea lions". I feel the green stink lines and buzzing flies help to bring this multi-sensory experience to the viewer. I also think sasquatch probably has pretty bushy eyebrows, and yellow teeth, since he/she likely hasn't developed dental hygiene technology.