Thursday, March 24, 2011

Extremes ~ Evelyn Markasky

R-A-D #8 2/13/10
Celery
What is art? Is it something I make to sell, is it a statement, is it a feeling... is it all those things? Is it some of those things, sometimes? Is it one of those things all the time? Why do I do what I do?

Sometime to straighten out my thinking I read Andy Warhol or about Andy Warhol. Right now I'm reading 'I'll Be Your Mirror, the Selected Andy Warhol Interviews.'
This is from an interview with David Bourdon 1962-63. (p. 7)

B: A few years ago, Meyer Schapiro wrote that paintings and sculptures are the last handmade, personal objects within our culture. Everything else is being mass-produced. He said the object of art, more than ever, was the occasion of spontaneity or intense feeling. It seems to me that your objective is entirely opposite. There is very little that is either personal or spontaneous in your work, hardly anything in fact that testifies to your being present at the creation of your paintings. You appear to be a one-man Rubens-workshop, turning out single-handedly the work of a dozen aprentices.


W: But why should I be original? Why can't I be non-original?

He always reminds me to be just who I am.
And that some days I work with vegetables and somedays are more technical...
I like thinking that is extreme. It doesn't mean that I'll do that, but it shakes me out of my safe- boring-box and alters my thinking just a little bit.

TADA 57/365 2/27/11

Sunday, March 20, 2011

How to make a video using still photos

Recently, I used the process photos of my resin and acrylic series, to make a video presentation of the making process. You can see this video here. I used i-Movie to do this, which is a video-editing program for Mac computers.

Today, I would like to share with you a few simple steps to make a similar video, using still photos. As an example, I will use some pictures of my recent trip to London, to create an inspiration gallery.

First, open i-Movie and click "File"/"New project":


Choose the theme that you prefer and type the name of your project. I chose the scrapbook theme and named my video "Inspiration gallery":


Click the photo icon to choose photos from your computer. Drag the chosen photos to the top left area:

Click where the red arrow is pointing at to play your video and see how it looks so far:


You can make adjustments by changing the order of the pictures. Just click on each one and move it to its new location:


Click where the red arrow is pointing at to choose a transition effect, to be placed between each photo. When choosing the scrapbook theme at the beginning of the project, transition effects where automatically assigned.


You can change them by choosing another transition effect and drag it between the photos:


To change the duration of each clip/photo, chick "clip adjustments":


I changed the duration to 2 sec and applied this change to every clip:


To add titles, comments and text of any kind, click the "T" icon and choose among a variety of options:

Drag the chosen text style on top of the clip/photo and write your text on the right. If you drag it on top of the photo, the text will appear when the photo is displayed. If you drag it in front of the photo, it will appear before the photo.


If you want the text to be displayed longer than the duration of the clip, just drag it, as shown below:


Click the icon shown below to select music from i-Tunes:


Drag the chosen music on top of the clips:


When you're happy with the result, click "Share"/"Export as" and your video will be ready in a few minutes!

Here's how it looks after I have exported it:


This is just a basic demonstration but you can make endless variations depending on the themes, effects, music, text that you'll choose.
As mentioned before, this video is made using still photos. But you can also import your own videos from your camera or your computer and follow the same procedure, after the video has been imported.

PS: I tried to enlarge the screenshots so that you can see them better, but apparently Blogger won't let me do this without blurring the images. If someone knows how I can fix this, please tell me. The screenshots look clean and sharp on my computer but they're distorted now that I changed the pixels.

Friday, March 18, 2011

What a Week - Evelyn Markasky

What a week. Major earthquakes, thousands of people dying, tsunamis, tsunamis where I live, part of Pacific Coast Highway 1 falling into the ocean... This stuff paralyzes me. Everything seems so fragile. When you get down to it, we are flying around in space  on this planet, god knows what can happen out there.

Event Horizon TADA # 57
We could fall through a black hole!
I start to feel insignificant. My art seems to feel insignificant. How can I do something so insignificant when there are so many scary things going on? But even a better question is how long can I hold on to all of this fear.

My answer is... not very long.

And my insignificant art starts to take on a new meaning. I do it, because not to do it would be insanity. I would get lost in my fear of crashing into a meteorite or California falling into the ocean. I can't live like that. I go into my studio and start to work and I get absorbed, I forget about being afraid, and I play. I do what I can in the world to help and I live my life.

Part of living my life is making art.

Friday, March 11, 2011

Sea Side

My husband is watching TV and about every 15 minutes there is a weather alert announcing a tsunami warning from the huge earthquake in Japan. I can't even imagine what it must be like there right now. And at the same time hoping there is no tsunami here.

In the meantime, I thought it might be a good time to honor the sea.

Mary Lu Wason started off her TADA study with pirates and the sea. The first 2 photos are inspiration and the third is a lovely result of her study 'Double Pearl Pirate Earrings.'

Ship Coin Pendant 1/365 Tada
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mluwason/
Pieces of Silver 43/365
Cast Silver and a Shell                  

Double Pearl Pirate Earrings 25/365
Double Pearl Pirate Earrings
TADA365-44-54 Ready to Bake.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/57663951@N02/
      WretchesWings coronet is actually based on claws and talons
      (technically birds with claws and talons fly over the sea!) but it 
       reminds me of seaweed and a perfect crown for a mermaid.

Friday, March 4, 2011

A Walk Through the Garden--Evelyn Markasky

Let's pretend that it's not snowing or raining or freezing. Let's pretend that it's spring.  We will use our artistic license and pull out some of our TADA artists and take a walk through our virtual spring garden. After all on February 2, Punxsutawny Phil, the groundhog, crawled out of his burrow and didn't see his shadow, which means that spring temperatures are just around the corner. Well, that prediction was over a month ago. We just had an arctic storm come through and the winds were strong, cold, and icy. Soooo, if you're getting tired of winter... come take a look and see what the TADA sunshine has grown:

20/2/11 How odd combinations can work TADA365 No:58
 Helen Derici   http://www.flickr.com/photos/43798936@N02/




TADA365-40
 Ponsawan Sila  http://www.flickr.com/photos/polymerclaybeads/ 


TADA 365 #55 Jessica's Poppy Pendant
Jill Palumbo  http://www.flickr.com/photos/jillpalumbo/



TADA 3/365- Brooch
A Blackbird  http://www.flickr.com/photos/blackbird-broken/

TADA365 031 Swirling Sari pendant
Lee Ann  http://www.flickr.com/photos/25951260@N06/


TADA365 #35
Aleksandra Micic  http://www.flickr.com/photos/micic/with/5418952101/

I feel better already!!