Friday, August 8, 2014

Tangents

Tangent - one of those words with multiple definitions.

It could mean

"a :  meeting a curve or surface in a single point if a sufficiently small interval is considered tangent
to a curve>
(1) :  having a common tangent line at a point <tangentcurves> 
(2) :  having a common tangent plane at a point<tangent surfaces>"

or

":  diverging from an original purpose or course :  irrelevant<tangent remarks>"

Let's start with the first and consider a little art project.  Daisy Yellow is doing a weekly series on Tangents and Tactics and I tried the first one.  Starting with a common point - the center - adding radiating lines, then color, then design, then color, then more design, etc.  I picked up a small set of gouache and had a very cheap set of watercolors and this is my endeavor at week one's project.


Yes, it's a bit of a mess.  I think impatience played a large roll in that. (And also the fact that I still can't sit without pain.) And when I said a cheap set of watercolors, well, they feel like dust when they dry and they also rub off on your fingers, which is what led me to order a hopefully better set online today.  I remember my first set of watercolors that was a Christmas gift as a child and even those, all those years ago were of better quality than the one's used here.  But it all can't be blamed on the quality of your materials because I've seen some pretty darn good art created with pretty bad ingredients so let's just say I've learned a bit about what not to use and what not to do with what I do have the next time.  This is an art exercise (which seems to be all the exercise I am getting of late also).  

Will I continue with the series?  Not sure.  I've checked the materials list and some of the things I know I don't have and don't know when I'd get a chance to get them.  So maybe I'm destined to do this one over and over again.  We'll certainly see.

But on to the other tangents.

You know what next week is?  Shark Week!  And apparently my daughter and my daughter-in-law really enjoy this week of watching sharks on TV.  So, to keep myself occupied whilst standing the other day I created these



Something I saw on Pinterest that has absolutely no use other than to be cute, if you can call it cute.  Enjoy the horror ladies!

And another tangent that had me in horror was when I picked up my somewhat expensive camera to take a picture of this lovely plant outside the kitchen window with the sunlight shining on it (I would tell you the name, but somehow in the last 10 minutes the name has escaped me - it must be on a tangent of it's own)


and as I went to focus in on it I kept getting a error message in the viewfinder and the camera would not let me take a picture.  I was already in a horrified mood that morning as I had woken up with a line of spider bites up my left arm so I pulled all the bed linens off the bed to be washed, threw the first load in and then promptly couldn't find my cell phone.  I thought for sure that it somehow got added to that first load of wash that was already swishing away in the washing machine. But after wearing myself out clomping up and downstairs several times, I found it...........in my shorts pocket......... but not the one I normally would carry it in.   And now back to the camera tangent......I tried taking a picture again and this time on the screen it said something on the order of memory card malfunction.  So I popped out the memory card and then put it back in and thankfully, it worked.  I must have not had it set properly.  But there I stood, now trying to focus on something to take a picture of........


The owl and mouse on the window ledge in the corner of the living room.  Don't they look happy there?

Streptocarpus - that's the name of the plant.  

1 comment:

  1. Have fun with your new watercolours when they arrive, whatever you do with them! Just this year I've been so glad that a good set was one of the things I bought with staff discount when I worked in art supplies - and being pans, no worry that they might have dried out after all these years. I also have a silver-plated set that was produced for the millennium year, but I'm not sure I can bring myself to use it (at least not till my current ones run out, and technically that one is DH's!!).
    Camera-induced panics are pretty bad!! I've had a couple when my lens accidentally got switched (on the lens itself) into manual focus mode and I was frantic wondering why it wouldn't auto-focus anymore. I think after about three times I have learned to check, and thankfully only one of my lenses has that manual switch on it. But a phone-in-the-wash panic must have been just as bad. If you're like me it's often on silent so I don't always even have the option of ringing it from the landline. I tend to put it on silent at bedtime and don't turn the volume back up till I've left work the next day.
    The shark clips are pretty cute - they'd be great for young boys, maybe with something other than flip-flops, mind you!
    That feathery owl is just so sweet.

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