Strange & Exotic Fruits of the Interwebs

Sometimes I feel like there’s nothing on the internet. Like one of those people who say there’s nothing good on tv — the same tv that brings us Dexter, Doctor Who, and Downton Abbey! Sometimes I think I’m bored with using the internet recreationally and other times I find tasty morsels like this:

A beautiful song, beautifully animated: The Audreys, “Sometimes the Stars”

Completed painting available in my Etsy shop

I love a good making-of video for art – so few artists I know do these! This video is Jacob van Loon creating one of these paintings.
Even though painting is my chosen art-form, authors are my favourite people. In this interview, Patrick Rothfuss who wrote one of my favourite books – The Name of the Wind – exchanges banter and interesting notions with photographer Trey Ratcliff.
For the design-inclined and Photoshop literate, check out this very groovy tutorial for creating letterpress effects.
Speaking of boredom, I rarely find the conversations online about making art interesting because they all seem to be fixated on just a couple of themes; namely painting intuitively, fearlessly, and focusing on mixed media techniques which lend themselves to the above. Ironically, I feel like these have become the new “rules” of painting. I found this interview with Thomas Fluharty in which he talks about working in oil in the Dutch Flemish approach, a breath of fresh air. It’s nice to hear an artist talk about mastery and hear him revel in the skill of his craft.
One day I was having a conversation with a guy whose personality type is pretty much the opposite to mine and we, not surprisingly, arrived at an impasse. He enjoys talking about ideas, whilst I prefer sharing personal stories and exploring what makes us tick. He was trying to talk to me about one of the many reasons why the world is doomed and I explained to him that I’m not very good at thinking or feeling about the future because I can’t help but get all Buddhist about it, which is pretty much a conversation killer. Luckily, next time I’ll be armed with this gem of a Ted talk, which brings conversations about the future and why we’re all doomed (or not) into a realm in which I am literate: people.