I’ve been into drawing the human figure and portraits for a couple years now, loving it, but also wanting to do more exploration in the area of drawing, art and technology. A friend of mine, Darcy White has developed a couple DrawBots and last night he hooked me up with one. To get it to work I needed to do a little fabrication which was fantastic and gave me more insight into how the DrawBot works. I had to do a bit of wiring and soldering to connect the steper motors to an MShield and then connect that shield to my Arduino Uno. This was my first time soldering, I think I did alright and didn’t burn my fingers, whew. The MShield connects on top of the Arduino and provides the controller with the ability to control stepper motors and some servos, I thought that was pretty cool.

Just happened that I had a pack of coloured sketching pens with me so we used those swapping out the colour once in a while to create my first output from the DrawBot. The software is still in the early stages and I see an incredible amount of potential in something like a DrawBot. Just think of all the different kinds of data both historical and from the realtime environment that can impact the creation that comes from the DrawBot. That and there is nothing stopping an artist from building upon what the bot does.

Here are some pics I snapped last night as the bot was doing some drawing.

The Figureworks show runs from September 28 to October 23, 2011 at the Orange Art Gallery. The awards night is September 29th, 2011.

Here is the drawing that will be on display at the gallery.

Update: here is the invitation.

Here are a few of my sketches.

Burlesque!

Carnival

Sideshow Poster Challenge

Bin in Japan

Date: October 19th 2009 6pm to 9pm
Location: Clocktower Brew Pub (downstairs), 575 Bank St (http://bank.clocktower.ca)

To sign up for the event please register at http://democampottawa12.eventbrite.com

For Event information and Demo sign up see http://barcamp.org/DemoCampOttawa12

At this point it looks like the demo slots are full. If you didn’t get on the list this time watch out for announcements about the next DemoCamp and get your name on the list early. Also put yourself down on the wait list as someone could drop out.

For this DemoCamp we’re mixing it up a bit and opening up the opportunity for anyone to be the MC. To put your name in the hat head on over to StartupOttawa and submit your name along with a line or two about why you would like to be the MC. Closer to the date a poll will go up letting the community vote.

Demos at this point are goint to be from Betidings, Twegather from TeamCamp, Squirrel (A model airplane powered by an elastic band that can fly hundreds of feet, can’t wait for this one), BattleTwip from 76design and Shiny Ads making the trip from Toronto. Looks like it’s going to be awesome.

For some additional reading be sure to check out Rob’s post

The workshop was two days in length and involved painting and 11 by 14 inch portrait of a man with a massive beard.  I was unsure and a bit skeptical of how well an online painting workshop would workout. It was pretty good, had some technical glitches but that was to be expected as this was David’s first online workshop.

As part of the workshop we, the participants, would follow along and send in photos of our progress for review. It worked out to two reviews per day and these were quite valuable. At each step I was on the right path but has some issues that needed to be addressed. With out the crits I surely wouldn’t have got the results I did. Watching the other participants work get reviewed was valueble as well, so much to be learned by seeing other people’s approach to the same painting.

Below is my step by step progress.

My Setup

My studio setup, prepared like a total keener.

Day 1

Day 1 Photo 1 - Sketch

Day 1 Photo 2 - Darks

Day 2

Day 2 Photo 1 - Flesh tones

Day 2 Photo 2 - Photo sent for final critique

At this point it’s not done. Had a few things to finish up and some pointers from Dave.

The Bearded Man, Final Painting

I took a couple pictures as I worked through this painting over the course of a few sessions. I started with a canvas toned with some Burt Umber to give it a warm base. Next I sketched out the shape with paint, again some Burnt Umber. Then I got to business laying down darks first an then blocking in major values.

I was pretty happy with the results of my first session. The painting was feeling somewhat accurate and loose, I’m really trying to loosen up my painting style. However I felt my colours were too cool so I swapped out the lemon yellow from my palate and used Cadmium Yellow instead. I ended up painting at least one whole new layer over the first session.  The paint went on a lot smoother this time which was nice.

I  paid a lot of attention to warm and cool values during my second session. I had a small window to the left that was letting some nice cool blue light that hit in the shadows. I also had a warm brown surface that the valve was sitting on so I wanted that warmer value to be reflected in the relevant shadows.

Here is the end product.

I learned a lot on this painting exercise, it’s certainly not perfect but I’m happy to let that go and move onto a new painting, which I started today. Carrots, yeah I know, not exciting but I want to paint something orange. 

So I’ve been painting. Initially I was a bit apprehensive to get started, which is natural, but once I did, wow, I haven’t looked back. As a perk, I’ve rediscovered music and fallen behind on some TV shows. All good.

Rather than dive in head first and tackle big complex paintings I wanted to work on some basics to get myself perpared for the ‘serious’ projects.

1. Observation. This is one of the first things I like to do when getting back into art projects (usually have breaks of many years between attempts). To get this muscle back in shape I’ve opted to do a bunch of still life’s until I feel comfortable with the medium and process. In the past I’ve used life drawing class as a great way to get back  in shape.

2. Oils as a medium. It’s been years since I had an intro to oil painting class so I feel like I’m totally  back to basics. I’m certainly learning a lot with each painting.

3. Process. I like process, I like to know what’s behind a piece of work, the different steps taken, so I’ve been reading books and watching videos to get exposed to as many different and not so different approaches to painting with oils.

To help me along I’ve loaded myself up with a few good books that are not the typical how to paint variety but ones that get deeper into colour theory, mixtures, harmony and all that good stuff. The books I’ve got right now are Fill Your Oil Paintings with Light and Color, Helen Van Wyk’s Favorite Color Recipes and Mastering Color. All really good books so far, it’s going to take me a while to get through them. I’ve also been taking advantage of all the great demos on you tube, check out my youtube favorites for a good sampling to start with. I’ve also found a wonderful ustream show by Dave the Painting guy, Dave paints portraits and takes his audience thought he process from start to finish over as many sessions as it takes. I’m not painting portraits yet but I have been learning quite a bit through listening and observing Dave’s painting process and techniques.

So here are a few still life paintings I’ve done over the last month. Nothing groundbreaking here but everyone has to start somewhere.

Oil painting of lemons, December 2008

Oil painting of radishes, December 2008

Oil painting of teacup, December 2008

Oil painting of apples, January 2009

Oil painting of a baseball, January 2009

I moved back to Ottawa from Halifax in the summer of 2005 and I was instantly captivated by how vibrant Ottawa’s grass roots tech community is. While living in Halifax I was always on the lookout out for the new media design and tech scene but it just wasn’t there yet, awesome art scene though. Since my move back to Ottawa I’ve seen the community grow, smaller more specialized groups form from larger ones and co-working facilities like the CodeFactory come about. Ottawa continues to become a more and more exciting place to work and play, my struggle now, what events to attend.

Here is a list of some of the events I’ve had the pleasure to attend in Ottawa , I’m sure there are a lot more and I’ll update the list as I discover them.

Web Development and User Experience

Agile Ottawa Group
Web site: http://agileottawa.wordpress.com
Facebook group: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=86747383253&ref=nf
Linked in group: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=1981258&trk=hb_side_g

Agile Ottawa group meets every 4th Tuesday of the month at The Code Factory, with the exception of July & August, to discuss agile process, software and product development.

BarCamp Ottawa
Web site: http://barcamp.pbwiki.com/OttawaCamps and http://barcamp.pbwiki.com/BarCampOttawa

A BarCamp is an unconference where interested developers come together to spend a day participating in discussions, teaching and sharing. Ottawa has had 4 BarCamps as of the time of this posting each more popular than the last, the latest being BarCampOttawa4. Each and every barCamp has been a treat, the community ralleys together to put together a great event, that has something for everyone. I always learn a lot and have a great time in the process. Aproximatly 80-100 people come out to these events of varying levels of skills and backgrounds.

CAPCHI – Computer-Human Interaction in the Ottawa Area
Web site: http://www.capchi.org/

Capchi is an chapter of SIGCHI and is agreat place for designers, developers, engineers and anyone passionate about how people interact with computers to come together and share throughts and experiences. Speakers area regular part of the meetings. Very friendly group that is open to all.

DemoCamp Ottawa
Web site: http://barcamp.pbwiki.com/OttawaCamps

DemoCamp is an evening event that involves several participants presenting a functional product demo (no powerpoint slides!) to an audience of piers. The demos typically involve a two minute intro, eight minute demo and five muniutes for questions and answers. DemoCamp is a great opportunity to come out and see what is being developed in our community, provide some feedback and lend some support. If your a presenter it’s also a great opportunity to recruit some talent and get some local PR. DemoCamps typically get somewhere between 60-70 people in attendance.

Drupal Group
Group site: http://groups.drupal.org/ottawa

The Drupal group is focused on the open source Drupal CMS. This group has been meeting for a year or so and is a growing community of experienced and junior developers. Great group to learn more and explore Drupal with.

Flex User Group
Group site:http://groups.google.com/group/ottawa-adobe-flex-user-group

A group of Flash, Flex and Air developers sponsored by Adobe. This group has had some good presentations and speakers in the past and event put on Ottawa’s first FlexCamp earlier this year. Mix of seasoned professionals and newcomers.

JQuery Group
Web site: http://www.teggnology.com/

jQuery group is devoted to the awesome jQuery JavaScript library, plugins and techniques. This group has recently had it’s first meeting and I’m looking forward to the next meetup. Group has a mix of developers that are familiar and just getting stated with jQuery.

OGRE – Ottawa Group of Ruby Enthusiasts
Google group: http://groups.google.com/group/ogre-list

When I moved back from Halifax to Ottawa this was the first group I connected with. It’s a friendly passionate group of developers who like to work and play with Ruby and Rails. This group is great for the experienced developers as well as newcomers.

Ottawa PHP Community
Web site: http://ottawaphp.com/

Local Ottawa PHP User Group. Meetings are typically  the last friday of each month.

Ottawa Web Weekend
Web site: http://www.ottawaw.com/

A mix of professionals and amateurs from many disciplines gather together with the goal of forming a new company and developing a product over the course of a weekend. It’s a tall order but a lot of fun. Great opportunity to meet and work with new piers and show your stuff.

Ottawa WordPress Developers Group (OWDG)
Web site: http://ottawadevelopers.wordpress.com

Ottawa .Net Community
Web site: http://www.ottawacommunity.net/

If your into .net development this is your group.

Refresh Ottawa
Web site: http://refreshottawa.org/

Refresh is a community of designers and developers working to refresh the creative, technical, and professional culture of New Media endeavors in their areas. Promoting design, technology, usability, and standards.

The Ottawa LAMP (Perl and PHP) Meetup Group
Web site: http://www.meetup.com/The-Ottawa-LAMP-Perl-and-PHP-Meetup-Group/

Get your open source on with this great LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, Perl/PHP) group that attracts some talented developers. Event is often hosted at TravelPod‘s sweet office.

The Ottawa Podcast and New Media Meetup Group
Web site: http://podcasting.meetup.com/79/

A good group to meet other local podcasters. Members range from very experienced to the novices, something for everyone.

Marketing, Social Media and PR

CaseCamp Ottawa
Web site: http://www.casecamp.org
Status: inactive until someone gets this going again

CaseCamp is an evening of local marketing case studies where the slide deck is quite welcome. CaseCamp involves a short introduction then a presentation followed by questions and answers. It’s been quite a while since we had a CaseCamp in Ottawa, perhaps we’re overdue.

Digital Ottawa
Web site: http://digitalottawa.ca/
Meetup: http://www.meetup.com/digitalOttawa/

The Digital Ottawa as a group has gone through a transformation from a local group of web design and development professionals getting together for socials to become a consulting group with a focus on eGovernment. Digital Ottawa still hosts some good events so keep a look out.

SNTT – Social Network Theory Think Tank
Web site: http://www.founderfab.com/
Facebook Group: http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/group.php?gid=5953251231

Social Network Theory Think Tank events often involve a presentation by either a member or guest followed by a healthy question and answer period afterward. Subject matter is generally around building, maintaining and learning about social networks both offline and online.

Social Media Bookclub
Web site: http://www.meetup.com/Ottawa-Social-Media-Book-Club/

Social Media Breakfast
Web site: http://www.socialmediabreakfast.com/
Sixent Group: http://smbottawa.sixent.com/
Facebook Group: http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/group.php?gid=19832554895

Social media breakfast gets out a mixture of PR professionals, developers, entrepreneurs and other professionals interested in social media web scene. The event consists of networking, coffee and a presentation or panel by invited guests and members. This is a great event to meet new people and an inspiring way to start the day. This event fills up quickly so make sure your in the know so you can sign up as soon as the event is announced.

ThirdTuesday Meetup
Web site: http://www.meetup.com/third-tuesday-ottawa/

ThirdTuesday is one of my favorite events. I find I always walk away with some knew knowledge that I can put to practice. The event if focused on PR in the social media space and has a slight government slant, hard to get away from that in Ottawa. Event involves a speaker or panel and the quality is always high. The audience includes pr professionals, marketers and other professionals interested in social media.

Startup

Lebarge Wienstien Start-Up Drop In
The Venture Creations Group and LaBarge Weinstein are proud to host, ‘Start Up, Drop-In”, a pub night and constructive networking session hosted at the offices of LaBarge Weinstein the second last Wednesday of every month, for purposes of encouraging the development of management teams, assisting with the start up networking, and making available service provider, sales, marketing and investor resources to local high-tech entrepreneurs.

Additional Sources:

• Startup Ottawa
• Meetup
• CodeFactory
• The Ottawa Network
• OttawaCamps
• OCRI

Horseshoe Canyon

Horseshoe Canyon was an excellent stop, and I think we saw it at a great time of the year. The grass was still fresh and green and hadn’t browned from the heat of the summer.

Horseshoe Valley, 2008

Hoodoos

Can’t got to the Badlands and not check out the Hoodoos. To be honest before this trip I really didn’t know what a hoodoo was or how they got their name. Essentially it’s two layers of rock, the lower being a softer sedimentary rock and the top cap being a harder rock. Over time the softer rock is eroded creating an interesting totem shape. Here is an interesting link on the origins of the word hoodoo.

Hoodoos, 2008

The following are a few others photos taken around the Hoodoos site.

untitled, 2008

I don’t know about you but this harder rock formation in the foreground looks like a head to me.

untitled, 2008