8-30-01
Road my bike today for lunch up into the hills of the North end where I used to live back in the late seventies. There are some very steep hills there. My heart felt like it was going to explode. I've been waking up at 4 AM for over a week now. I have no good reason to be waking up like this. One of my theories was lack of exercise, hence the brutal bike ride. I've been letting my knees recover during the week from the regular climbing most weekends this summer. I climbed with M last weekend up at exit 38. I've been stressing out over a complicated new project at work. We may have finally come up with the solution. I need to get better at interface design so I can get approval on a concept that is designed for easy slicing from the start. I finished my second statue drawing but haven't scanned it in yet. When I wasn't worn out from stressing at work, I spend my evenings painting on my new Wacom. It's fun to create abstracts. No wasted paper or pastel to fret over. We are having our 18 year old roof done this week. I pulled the money out of my rainy day savings account, whacking it in half. My ear has been roaring steadily, but at a tolerable level. I am planning a vacation in a few weeks. Not sure what I will do yet. Certainly I won't spend it reworking this web site as I did last year although I might work on the laptop in the evenings if I can keep the batteries charged. A trip down the Oregon coast may be in the works, mixed in with some climbing later in the week if my buddy can get a way.
My friend G from school loaned me a video tape on interface design, looks interesting. I kind of hate to switch away from focusing on flash, but they indicated they needed more help in that area than flash, and I've always wanted to study it anyway. A well designed interface is a pleasure to work on.
8-25-01
It's a bright sunny morning after a long week of rain. I've been learning the tools in the bare bones version of Painter Classic that came bundled with my Wacom tablet. It's so much better than a mouse that I actually found myself enjoying creating some abstract art. I'm planning on climbing tomorrow, so today is my day to hang out, wax the cars and help Sue with her checkbook. I've had my hands full at work helping out on a large Flash project that features drop down menus and looks, and functions rather like Excell...for lack of a better comparison. I've also been struggling to build a wrap around interface. By that I mean a border with round corners wrapping around the browser window. To make matters worse, it has a drop shadow under the top and left sides that overlaps a gradated tint in the body. I figure once I get that to work the insides will be easy. I found out I will get some vacation time before my one year anniversary comes up at Thanksgiving. Unfortunately the family is going back to school in 8 days, so I'm not sure where I can use it. I could always go on a lonely painting trip down the Oregon coast, but I'm not sure I need to paint that bad. The mountain is out until next spring when it gets more snow. Talk about a big ugly hunk of dirty rock.
8-22-01
My Wacom tablet is everything I had hoped for. Or, at least I think it is, I haven't had much time on it yet. Lisa took over tonight as soon as I turned it on. It came bundled with a bare bones copy of Painter which I'd heard was much better than PhotoShop at imitating traditional media. So far I've only tried the pencil tool, but it duplicates that exquisitely. When I press lightly, it draws a very faint line, as I press slightly harder on the non battery powered pen (the insides are filled with circuit boards, how does that work?) the "pencil" line thickens and darkens exactly as a real pencil does. It captures my drawing motions in real time and seems identical to paper. It even erases like a pencil: flip it over and rub. In PhotoShop, the stoke varies from a pinline to the full width of the selected brush diameter, depending on how hard I press as I paint. And this is only after a couple hours of practice, including installing all the software. I'm not sure yet if or when I will take it to work. It's almost too big to fit in my backpack. I can honestly say I have never really felt like I was painting on the computer until I tried this Wacom graphics tablet.
We are busy at work, a welcome change from the slow dog days of summer. Today I got so wrapped up in a Flash project I forgot to take my lunch until two o'clock. I hopped on my bike and pedaled up into old town for an hour in the intermittent showers, marveling at the huge mansions overlooking Commencement Bay. My ear, after a week of roaring, finally switched to a high pitched ringing signaling a dizzy spell, but that, thankfully been very minor, almost an insignificant annoyance. Never a dull moment with this old body. I think I might need an exorcist. Perhaps he or she could do a "cleansing" ceremony over me and get rid of the gremlin who seems to live in my body...you think I'm kidding?
8-17-01
It's Friday already and my last entry was 6 days ago. My apologies to any of you who come here for regular entertainment. I've kind of lost interest in writing here lately for a couple of reasons. My ear has been ringing almost constantly for a week and has been a distraction. I also spent a few evenings reading an excellent book by Jon Krakauer. He writes about his obsession with danger in a manner that makes me grateful to not be so afflicted. I was never so obsessed with the sport that I climbed without a rope. I feel sorry for those people who do, they often die.
Clint's knees are finally getting better. The physical therapy appears to have strengthened his joints. He's back to riding his bmx bicycle with his friends after work. I've been doing a lot of interface design at work. I've decided to buy a Wacom tablet. I read a recommendation for them in my bosses Flash book, then researched them on the net and ran across some people who hated interface design until they got a graphics tablet. They sounded just like me: traditional painters who never felt comfortable painting with the mouse or track ball. Once they got the tablet, they suddenly found themselves painting on the computer and loving it. I have no plans to give up my pastels and pencils. I am simply trying to make my day job more enjoyable.
I've been riding my bicycle downtown from my streetside parking everyday to ease the burden on my knees. As an unexpected side benefit, I realized I can now ride my bike around town for exercise on my lunch hour. Thursday I had a great one hour ride North to old town and back.
8-11-01
Painted two landscapes today after sleeping in the back of my car up at Mt Rainier although sleeping isn't quite the right word for my ordeal with a car full of hungry mosquitoes. The worst part of the night was the heat which didn't cool down until well past midnight. Waking up at 6 was brutal, but I had a morning painting waiting. I pulled off the morning piece nicely, but the afternoon session bombed. I'd forgotten how popular the Glacier Vista viewpoint is on a sunny day in August. Most of the three hours I was there painting, I had half a dozen people or more sharing the viewpoint with me. Many times it was huge groups of chattering Japanese. I could have put up with all that, but the lack of snow on the mountain this year makes for very hard painting. Where usually I paint small patches of rock surrounded by long expanses of snow, this year it is the opposite: miles of bare brown rock and scree with small patches of dirty snow. I may be able to finish it at home, but usually, if I don't like it after 3 hours it's history.
8-10-01
Yesterday at lunch in the park I had an interesting visitor to the bench where I draw. This is my second drawing of the statue. I finished the first a couple months ago, and have tinkered with a couple other subjects in the park without much inspiration. The statue fascinates me. For a simple, slightly larger than life size bronze, it has a presence that is remarkable. A week ago I began casually drawing him again, figuring that I needed to practice, and if it didn't turn out, I would take a nap in the sun instead.
I drew the head and left shoulder first, without much confidence as my inner critic harassed every line. Over the course of several sunny days, I worked my cautious lines around the upper torso until I felt I had some accurate proportions, then began working in some light and shadow. The next week, on opening my sketchbook I realized the entire lower body was drawn almost half a shoulder width out of line from the upper body, tilting his stance unnaturally. I had neglected to hold up my pencil as a plumb line, trusting instead on my hand eye coordination. Fortunately it was corrected easily enough with a lot of erasing. My critic had crawled back in his lair by now, seeing that I was "in the groove" as it were. I redrew the lower body, and by the time my lunch hour was over felt pretty good about the initial sketch.
The next day, when I opened my drawing pad, I saw a nice sketch awaiting my attention. I got comfortable on the grass embankment and lost myself in the drawing. I heard a dozen people walk by on the gravel path but no one paid me any mind. It's that kind of park, built as an after thought right downtown over the roof to a freeway rather like freeway park in Seattle. At any time other than lunchtime, the homeless people outnumber the office workers. Consequently not too much friendly chatting goes on between strangers. Most of us are there to get away from the stress of the office for a while. Sometimes we doze on the grass, other times we simply stare up at the seagulls soaring in the air sweeping up from the bay two hundred feet below.
I didn't pay any mind to the footsteps crunching up behind me although I usually keep an eye open for a fine female form, considering it one of the loveliest things in creation. This woman was one of the rare ones. Blond, tall and slender, about 25, dressed in very nice fitting slacks and a tight red top, a professional woman by the look of her, with curves in all the right places...truly a knockout and a face to write home to mama about. I couldn't help but notice her when she stopped three feet past me, backed up until she was standing right next to me and stared down at my drawing in wonder.
"That is so beautiful," she said with open amazement, "You are really good!"
"Thank you," I said simply. She lingered for a few seconds, then went back to meet her friend, and older woman more my age, who also smiled at me as they walked on into the park. I was glowing the rest of the day. Art is the only thing I've ever found that I can do well and fast. It's nice when people notice, although I don't do it simply for attention. I do it because it makes me smile, and because other people enjoy it also, occasionally enough to want to own it. I've learned not to question my art, it is as necessary to me as breathing.
As I write these words on the laptop, I am sitting in my car on a dead end abandoned logging road just outside Mt. Rainier National Park. I will soon throw my sleeping bag out in the back of my station wagon and try to get some sleep while swatting at the clouds of mosquitoes. I assumed I had some bug juice in my art pack, but I was wrong. We had a company meeting this morning. I was pleased to hear that the state of the company was good. Just this morning we got a couple new jobs in that will keep us busy for a few weeks at least. After the meeting they took us out to lunch, where I rashly decided to order a normal grilled chicken sandwich, my first in over a year. It was Friday, and I figured this was a good time to put my ear to the test. Nothing I do seems to make any difference. The symptoms come and go of there own accord with no rhyme or reason. I waited on tenterhooks all afternoon for the dizzies to hit me, but all was calm in my strange little disturbed inner ear. I remember reading on the net that several ENT doctors had told other sufferers of this disease that the no salt diet is only a theory, and some people will see no improvement from avoiding salt.
8-8-01
I've figured out how to make water in flash.
We are planning a possible water environment in our company flash site. I needed a project on which I could hone my animation skills. I found some .fla files on flashkit.com demonstrating water and took them apart. Learning fancy flash is similar to learning how a toaster works. You take it apart while examining the insides, then attempt to put it back together. If you are daring, you make your own toaster from pieces out in the garage, assembling it in a manner that resembles the professional one but reflects your own creativity. I've also been doing a lot of pixel bending in Flash and Illustrator as we develop a project for a client. We are on the second round and I am beginning to like what I see. It's interface design, but done entirely in the vector environment. My knees are killing me from the constant climbing on the weekend. I'm toying with painting Mt Rainier one day on the weekend. I'd love to drive up in the evening, sleep in the car and do morning and afternoon landscape sessions. There are places on the side of the road where I can paint without hiking. I've had 7 days without any ear symptoms.
8-5-01
My hands are bruised and bleeding but it was a great day at the cliffs. M and I were fresh from climbing last weekend in Leavenworth and cruised most of the routes we tried. I was able to conquer a route that scared me badly a few weeks ago. My friction practice last weekend allowed me to walk right through the difficult crux on the steep slab. I also tackled a 5.9 and two 5.10a's. The last 10a turned out to be over my head, literally. By the time I reached the lip of the overhang, my forearms were toast. I had a choice of leaving some carabiniers or aiding the crack. I chose the latter, stuffing friends every few feet up the roof until I was over the lip and able to resume climbing normally up to the anchors. I think my big mistake was placing a piece of protection in one of the prime hand holds, instead of trusting the perfectly good bolt out on the face. Placing the friend in the crack robbed me of the hand hold I needed to clip the bolt. Once I had the friend in, I clipped the bolt, but clipped it backwards. All the monkeying around with extra unnecessary protection cost me the lead. Ah well, live and learn. M followed it in fine style. His feet popped off into space briefly at the lip of the roof 60 feet over my head. I figured he would pop off altogether as he dangled from one arm with his feet windmilling in space, but he recovered quickly and cruised on up to the anchors. He is getting good at the logistics of rope management at belay stations. I feel I can trust him now while he switches the rope from belayed climbing to rappelling.
8-2-01
M eniere's disease is getting tiresome. Last night it owned me from 7 PM to 11 PM. It takes these 4 hour chunks out of my life about once a week. I didn't vomit, but only way I avoided it was by holding perfectly still and staring at a fixed point across the room. When I closed my eyes, the haywire balance organ in my left ear told me I was slowly spinning in space. If this keeps up much longer I may have to go in and see my doctor. Perhaps there have been some new drugs invented in the 16 months since I last saw him. At lunch I walked down to the park for some fresh air. When I came around a corner of the last building before the park, the view stopped me cold. The sun was shining brightly across the 7 mile wide tideflats. My favorite statue stood proudly on his green lawn in the afternoon light, patiently waiting for me to finish my second pencil sketch. I thought, as I often do when my life gets ragged, of my old friend Paul, moldering in his grave. Things could be worse.
At work I've been creating interface concepts for a Flash based application we are developing for one of our clients. I started with a plain jane black and white version, then created a 3d color version. After my boss saw it, he noticed I had picked colors very close to a concept from one of our other designers. I reworked it in an entirely new color scheme learning a lot about Flashes drawing tools in the process. It was challenging picking colors that were attractive together, without overpowering the application which I see as being the primary focus. In your typical Flash project, impact is the primary concern. Here, I am trying to build something that looks like Pagemaker and PhotoShop, with the drag and drop functionality of Flash.
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