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Showing posts from November, 2010

Slippery Fish and Other Lies

The slippery slope  fallacy posed an obstacle to my creative process. Someone else has already come up with a memorable, concrete metaphor. I suppose I could have thrown up my hands and drawn a snail at a water slide, but that would have been a cop out. This blog is about (mostly) original material. The slippery slope fallacy involves predicting that one small move, say, dropping a hook, will ignite a series of actions that lead to whale-sized results. Once you give them an inch, start down that path, open that can of worms, the worms escape and chastise you for your horrible taste in canned food. The fallacy knits causes and effects together as if they are logically connected.  If they happen to be logically connected, you don't really have a fallacy. You have a valid prediction. In the case of my fish, however, fallacy abounds.  The food chain doesn't always work in nesting-doll order, from large to small. Sometimes slender lampreys feed upon the skin of larger sh...

Topographic Relief

I have photographed my most recent painting in various stages to show my process. The title, TOPOGRAPHIC RELIEF , begs some kind of play on words, though I copied it faithfully from my model. I plastered the words on top because I enjoyed some real relief in stepping away from digital art for a period. Of course, it doesn't take long to recall the perils associated with rendering without Control + z. The painting equivalent involves dabbing at things with a moist Q-tip. I decided on the project with the intent of of gaining knowledge about U.S. geography. I have a fondness for infographics, particularly those that involve midcentury fonts. This typeface reminds me a bit of Vera Humana . I thought about creating a political map, but I enjoy the rippling lines that topographic maps entail, and also, elevation maps take longer to go out of date. The painting is a very literal exploration of the states through topography. Literal doesn't mean exact here. As I quickly disc...