iDraw: In the Rainbow Style of My Younger Self: 2009.07.25

iDraw: In the Rainbow Style of My Younger Self: 2009.07.25 , originally uploaded by Julia Kay.

This was done on my iThing using the Layers and Brushes Apps.

This time I'm letting myself be influenced by.... me. If you click on the link to the right for the 1980s, you'll see some of the earlier portraits whose style I've been reconsidering.

'Jackson Pollack' Portrait on my iPod Touch

This was done with the 'Jackson Pollack' app on my iPod Touch. Delightfully, the paint drips in the direction you tilt, and the 'ink' 'blots' based on speed of stroke.

iDraw: Philtrum of Many Colors

iDraw: What Should I Draw?

And Chaos Ensues

Trying to Channel De Kooning

...but definitely not getting it. That's Willem de Kooning, though Elaine de Kooning was also an interesting painter. If he was a misogynist, as the feminists claim based on his imagery, not his actions, then I guess I am too. He was a fabulous painter and I think his images of women are really great.

iDraw: Ghost of Julia Past

iDraw: Getting Bored with Drawing on my iPod Touch

I've done all my drawings this month on my iPod Touch, and I'm ready to go back to traditional media for awhile. Unfortunately, I expect to still be quite busy for at least another 4-6 weeks, and the Touch is the quickest as there is no setup, no cleanup, and I can do it anywhere. So I expect we'll continue to see alot of iDraw drawings for at least another month.

iDraw: Wearing David's Big, Furry Hat

iDraw: In Vogue

I guess if I have a theme this month, it's trying out all the latest free draw, paint, sketch, doodle, etc programs for the iPod Touch, the more idiosynchratic, the better. In keeping with that, I used three different applications to create this image. I did the initial drawing in Kid's Paint , which chooses a new line thickness and color randomly each time you lift your finger and put it back down. I then tinkered with the eyes in Sketches. Last, I smushed it around in OilCanvas , which is sort of like the old "auto van Gogh" feature in the original Painter program for the Mac which came out some ten years ago. Unfortunately, although I like the combined effect, something about moving it through all those programs left me with a pretty low quality image file.

iDraw: Hello to Lim Ding Wen!

Lim Ding Wen is a 9 year old computer programmer in Singapore who wrote Doodle Kids, a free iPhone/iTouch drawing program intended for kids, which I used to make today's portrait of me waving at him across the ether. Thank-you Lim Ding Wen for this fun application!

iDraw: The Little Princess - ala Warhol

iDraw: One More Day

...until a week's vacation, But between now and vacation I have to give a 160-slide powerpoint presentation in 2 hrs. When I was putting it together, I wasn't sure I had enough material but now I see it's probably too much....

Color My World

First Blush of Morning

Worrying About My Friends

There's something High School angst-y about this, which seems appropriate to wondering about my High School friend Chris Lombardi's big move from NYC to Philly today.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

I cut up an old landscape watercolor painting, planning to draw portraits on the back. However, I was drawn to the front and drew right over the old attempt at trees.

Noisy Neighbors

The Other Half a Smile & The Sum of the Parts

Half A Smile

Still Tired in the Morning

Too Tired to Proceed in the Usual Fashion

Orange You Glad You Aren't Blue?

Tomorrow I'm off to the East Coast for the Annual General Meeting of the American Society for the Alexander Technique. I'll still be drawing every day but I don't know how frequently I'll be able to post.

My Eyes Are Getting Ahead of Me

What's the Big Deal with Spock Being Able to Raise One Eyebrow?

Left-handed blind drawing, with right-handed, sighted color, to be exact, Captain...

I Come From Remulac, a Small Town in Southern France

I periodically have alot of trouble uploading images to blogger via ftp from my mac to my website hosted outside of google-land. On the assumption that others are having similar difficulties, I thought I'd share what I've figured out. I used third-party ftp software to look at the uploaded_images folder on my web server, and it looks like often when there is a failure message, the error is happening after a successful upload of the image. The problem is that in order to reference the image in your post you need to know what it is called - your original file name with blogger-generated numeric suffix. However, using the third-party FTP software I could see the names and sizes of the uploaded files, so I was easily able to deduce which was the thumbnail that appears inline in the blog, and which was the full-size image that it links to. I copied the 'a' tag from a previous successful post and then changed the names of the files based on my preview via the ftp client, and voila, it worked! For mac users I recommend cyberduck, though there are many fine free and/or inexpensive ftp clients out there. (In case you're wondering, .ch is Switzerland)

Bull-headed and Pig-nosed

I tried to turn my mouth up into a smile but it didn't work... so I don't look too happy here about my 500th post (and this is still just a subset of my lifetime self-portraits!). Still, we like round numbers and 500 seems like a good one.

Big Orange Schnozz

This was done 'peeking' again. Specifically, my eyes were open while I mixed paint, dipped my brush, and positioned over the paper. My eyes were closed while I actually painted, guessing when I might be out of paint on the brush and needing to load it up again. Also, this was quite early in the morning - before the dental cleaning which was before school which was before work which was before doing my homework...

Blind and Semi-Blind (Peeking)

Organs, Organs, Where are my Organs?

As part of my Alexander Technique Teacher Training, I'm learning some anatomy - but coloring in the Anatomy Coloring Book doesn't really work for me - to understand things I have to try to draw them myself. Too bad organs don't actually come in these nice colors.

Lost in the Mail

Rainbow Waif

Look Ma, No Brushes!

Painted left-handed with magic markers and wet socks dipped in watercolour pans.

Peanut Breath

And now you know what I had for my midnight snack.

5th Day of the Evil Virus

Dark Eyes

Exploring the Watery Depths

Blotter Paper Portrait

What's so Great About Realistic Color?

I'm All Wound Up Preparing For My Trip to Thailand!

I'm leaving in less than a week!

Introducing my Inner Mad Scientist

Don't ask me, I just work here!

Laughing All the Way to the Bank

I never know what I'm going to see by the end of the day in the studio, and surely that is one of the great pleasures of being an artist.

The Whole Kit 'N Kaboodle

Or at least almost every color in my 6 jars of Tombo markers.

Mask of Early Morning Light