MORE BLOODY COMPUTER WOES

Image from Tack-o-rama (see Links, right)

Rats and double rats - the computer is still not fixed. The technician came Wednesday as promised (a miracle in itself) and pronounced the computer not very well at all. So the new hard drive was delivered yesterday (!) by DHL, but I am still awaiting the discs without which the hard drive cannot be programmed as my reboot disc is also corrupt. Oh joy. And now I have to depend on the postal system...

So fingers & toes crossed that the discs arrive tomorrow and then Sunday I will be attempting to replace my very first hard drive (Himself not being very good at the electrical side of things, and also one of Those Men Who Do Not Read Instruction Manuals).

Meantime, although the hard drive and discs are being paid for by the insurance, I have had to buy new memory myself (1GB) as every security programme uploaded takes its memory from the same area as Windows - so although my computer tells me I have 85% unused area, it's obviously not in the same place as all my other stuff, as Windows keeps telling me I am out of Virtual Memory. So what DO people load up? Tons of Excel documents? You can bet Bill Gates made sure there'd be plenty of room for geeky stuff and accounts stuff and other unnecessary (to me) rubbish.

The technician also told me I don't have enough graphics capability - I am not a gamer, and apparently most of the graphics capacity is aimed here, and not towards photos, artwork etc. Which means I have had to buy a graphics card - and now have to find out where to insert it (don't tempt me...) as this one has to go in some slot in the motherboard. The other option being not to have many photos or fonts on the computer - which is what I mainly work in.

So the next question is, if I have a hard drive, what is a motherboard, and what relation is it to the hard drive? I take it they are not one and the same thing.

Oh for the days when I worked in an office and the nice young IT man down the corridor used to come and change the toner cartridge for me, and all was magically updated overnight without my lifting a finger... It's all a very steep learning curve I could well do WITHOUT. And all due to some smart little shit with nothing better to do than send out computer viruses as a "joke". I got a Trojan back in May which has permanently damaged the machine, and this is the result.

Still, I managed to replace the modem on my old computer when it got fried in a lightning strike (luckily for me, I had the windows open at the time - the lightning flashed right through the living room - we are right next to a telephone post). I was on the phone at the time, and it went ZZZZZPT. Luckily I dropped the phone at the time or you might not be reading this post... Suffice to say, I replaced the modem (it took a couple of tries as they had sent the wrong one, which explained why it wouldn't fit) not that it was because I was female. Thankfully, things seem to have moved on a little, and I am not encountering so much prejudice when I shop in Maplins for computer-related bits & bobs. So I will certainly be giving this my bestest shot.

SO... once the hard drive has been replaced and I have reloaded the programmes, I will then be able to load up Week 3 Life Class drawings. I'll keep you posted!

COMPUTER WOES

I'm in a down mood tonight - the usual: the stupid computer is playing up again. So I feel like this (left).


I'm of an age where I shouldn't sulk or scream. As an adult rational being I should be able to cope with this calmly and serenely.

Whereas I feel more like chewing the carpet - or seeing whether the damn machine can swim (after I use a sledgehammer....)

After numerous phone calls, the tecchie guys have decided that although I am but a feeble brainless female who can't tell a jpg from a url, that the machine isn't behaving properly and may actually have a fault! So finally it looks like the very expensive extended insurance may pay off - I am actually getting a Personal Visit from a Technician on Wednesday. Which might actually fix the problem - the machine needs reformatting (ie: wiping the memory off completely and reprogramming from scratch) and guess what? They don't give you reboot discs, only recovery discs - so I can't do this myself. And they now think the recovery disc is probably corrupt anyway! Oh joy....

I'll put it this way... if this doesn't fix it, never mind the 2 years the insurance still has to run, this machine is out the window and I'm going shopping! Watch this space.

Aaaaargh!

LIFE DRAWING CLASS: WEEK 2

WARNING: IF YOU FIND THAT NUDE IMAGES OFFEND, DON'T LOOK!

As promised, here are the last sketches for Week 2 of my life drawing class. These are both of Suzanne, on A1 size paper with a soft, dark brown chalk pastel. Fixative was cheap hair spray! (I bought Tesco's Own unscented, the theory being that if it's cheap it is also unscented, won't have conditioners etc, so will basically just be a coating.)

Both poses were completed in the one 40-minute session - I think around 25 minutes for the first one, which is more "finished".












This pose took around 10 minutes - I didn't get to finish in the time, which I am sorry about! You can see I had started with the shoulders set too high, and managed to adjust this before the session ended - but I would have liked to flesh the sketch out a little more.












Watch this space next week - it's another male model!

Each week, we leave the afternoon's work for the teacher to critique, so I have to wait until the next Tuesday before I get the previous week's work to take home. I think this is a ploy to stop us all either:
a) fiddling with it and perhaps spoiling it, OR
b) thinking it's totally awful and then binning it!

Actually, when I look at the previous week, I don't think it's as bad as my initial impressions - which gives me the courage and impetus to keep on. And post the work for you to see, unretouched and Warts & All, which I think is the best. I noticed in the course print-out that we are listed to do a complete painting... should be very interesting! I think I have a spot earmarked - a fairly large patch of bedroom wall - but it all depends on the model and the pose of course. And whether I could stand looking at it first thing of a morning (I am so NOT a morning person...)

LIFE DRAWING CLASS: WEEKS 1 & 2

WARNING - BEFORE YOU LOOK AT THE SLIDE SHOW, THIS CONTAINS NUDE IMAGES.

Maybe some of you remember my mentioning I wanted to sharpen up my drawing skills, as I haven't "drawn properly" for quite a few years! So I signed up for a short course at our local Adult Education Centre: one 3-hour session once a week for 10 weeks, and I have to say I am enjoying it hugely.

It was pretty scary, as I hadn't drawn for so long... but it soon came back! I started off drawing A3, then A2 and am now on full parent-sized A1 size sheets. It looks like I can't draw small! Each week, we have to leave the drawings for the teacher to critique, so I only just got these back otherwise I would have loaded them up earlier!

All the sketches are entirely unretouched, so you are seeing them exactly as I drew them, mistakes and all.

WEEK 1:

Studies 1 - 4 are of Ken, a 70-year old man, who was stooped, balding, with an endearingly squashy tummy. The first two sketches (001) are warm-up studies, each pose taking 5 minutes. The next two (002 & 003) show Ken sitting in a chair. Each pose took 15-20 minutes, and were drawn with black crayon. The next (004) is a back view using watercolour crayon, dampened down with a wet paintbrush, 10 minutes.

WEEK 2:

The model was Suzanne. The first pose (005) was a 5-minute warm-up study in pencil, and the next one (006) was drawn with dark brown chalk pastel. This one took around 15 minutes. Both these were on A2 paper.

I will load some more (the light was too bad to photograph the drawings properly - they are so huge, I had to stick them up on the back of the bedroom door). I think I can definitely see some progress!

Until tomorrow...

RECIPE SWAP COOKBOOK

I got an email today which really cheered me up - years ago (at least 6 years ago) I hosted a recipe swap on the Stampsmith and UKPaperArts Yahoo groups - and Linda still had the recipe book!

This was a Japanese Stab-bound book that I made: a copy for everybody, to bind the recipes that were sent in. The rules were easy: send a postcard with your fave recipe on it, printed or written any way you liked, and another postcard to illustrate it in the same way. They had to be separate so I could mount them on facing pages. So I got a couple of odd ones, and solved the problem by putting a couple of collage pages in to fill any spaces.

So here it is in all its glory - maybe not the best scans in the world (I have improved a bit since then) a little blurry, but you can make out most of the recipes clearly enough. If you are a chocolate lover, check out my recipe for Helga's Chocolate Truffles...

It was a lot of fun, and I think I really must do this one again sometime! BTW, if anyone is desperate for any of the recipes, email me and I'll send it on.

I hope you all enjoy this little trip down Memory Lane.

STUDIO SPACE - OR LACK OF IT!

One of my major bugbears is lack of studio space - we live in a tiny flat, and the "studio" is one end of the living room - one alcove beside the fireplace is the computer station. As I know everyone is always fascinated by everyone else's space organisation, I thought I'd post what I've been up to this last week.

The desk is situated by a window, opposite the door coming into the living room, and has two metal drawers (Ikea) underneath and another one on the window side. I took everything off the walls, and repositioned the CD shelves (Argos).

Here's another view. Wow, it looks so nice and spacious when empty! Wish it was like this all the time... The lower pair of shelves are separated by an inch or so, so I could get my storage tubs inside and still have room for my hand to get in to pull them out.

Here's most of my stuff piled back on.








I have way too many art supplies, which are on the floor beside the sofa, behind the chair (you can see the arm - dark brown) and the door - now you see how little space I have! All the rest is under the sofa. I also have boxes under the TV unit!

Rather than have a complete gap, I stuck in some little glass "ice cubes" from a floristry shop (using No More Nails) which give the effect of little glass bricks - and some support, in case I overload the shelf above (which is the top of the upside-down CD shelf). This holds a lot of UM rubber stamps, all stored in CD cases.
At the other end of the room (think "shoe box shape") is a fireplace with an alcove on either side - the left one has built-in shelves for books (thanks to my husband who got a load of MDF offcuts, which I painted) and on the right is my computer gear.

It's usually tidier than this, but all the stuff got piled in here trying to sort out the other end of the room. C'est la vie.

The shelves are more MDF offcuts. Yes, there are 2 printers, one on top of the other (one is an all-in-one with cheap inkjet printing ink so that I can do transfers, and the other is Epson's pigment ink for archival quality stuff). Behind the computer chair, and next to the sofa arm (dark brown, with terracotta cushion just showing) is a little shelf, holding my scanner and file folders). This area is pretty organised, just doesn't look tidy.

So when I get round to it, I will sort it and post up another photo just to show you don't need scads of space (although it helps!). I DREAM of winning the lottery, then getting a sprawling house with tons of bedrooms, outbuildings, a conservatory...

ALTERED IKEA FURNITURE

Everyone has a love/hate relationship with Ikea: love it, because it's inexpensive, well made, solid, lasts for ages... and hate it, because you see it everywhere (the number of makeover/housing developer programmes I've seen it on...)

Well, due to being fairly permanently impoverished, we bought Ikea bedside tables and a wardrobe around 3 years ago, which I was pretty tired of. I decorated the bedroom last month, and we couldn't afford to replace them, so I thought What the hell, and went ahead and transformed them into objects of love and desire with paint.

The wardrobe has had 1 coat of paint - and I had just started to paint the plastic panels - which is why they now look chic and totally UNLIKE Ikea! (They are now doing the wardrobe in Beech & White finishes - their white looks really cheap and nasty).

First the prep: minimal - a quick going-over with fine sandpaper to give it a tooth, after which I applied two coats of self-undercoating eggshell paint (Simple White by Crown) applied with a small varnish roller.

The left-hand drawers are the original beech finish. On the right is the painted finish (again, just one coat so far).

The trick in painting furniture successfully is to use an eggshell finish rather than gloss, sand first, and apply with a gloss roller or varnish roller if at all possible.

I mixed the whites in my bedroom by using different shades of off white, which all meld beautifully. The room is miniscule, so I had to keep to light colours (and just one feature wall with a metallic-finish wallpaper) and the effect is light but WARM. Don't use brilliant white, it's got a blue undertone and looks brash and very cold.

The finishing touch - as you can see here - which I am convinced made the difference - was to change the handles.

These were from B&Q, the DIY store, and are antiqued brass with white china (and cost as much as the wardrobe itself!)




I added a couple of tassels on the wardrobe, being as they were on sale and an offer I couldn't refuse - and I think they do add a little Je ne sais quoi, and also break up the expanse of white.

On the practical side, I added clear heavy glass (6mm thick, cut to size) for the table tops,which just sits on little silicone tabs - no other fixings needed.

Hope this gives a little inspiration!