Dr. Woohoo!

save money. live better.
2′ x 4′
Archival Inks
Canvas
Unique (1 of 1) Print

it’s a small world after all.
2′ x 4′
Archival Inks
Canvas
Unique (1 of 1) Print

asphalt jungle
2′ x 4′
Archival Inks
Canvas
Unique (1 of 1) Print

More info here: grassyknollgallery.com

The grassy knoll gallery from Portland, Oregon presents:

The war between Mother Nature’s Ego vs. the Id of Humanity

Artwork by Dr. Woohoo!

Exhibition Dates // April through August, 2009
Artist Reception // Thursday, April 2nd, 2009
6-9 PM, free, open to the public
Live Performance By //  Let’s Go Outside

As we race to the end of our existence, watch the results as Mother Nature fights back against our poisonous species – captured with a dark sense of humor in the surreal and generative artwork of Dr. Woohoo – as we regenerate and consume beyond the acceptable threshold. In piece after piece, his artwork displays the results of Mother Nature’s self-defensive mechanisms as they struggle to kill of the cancerous cells via: Disease, Natural Disasters and Global Warming. Woohoo mashes up math, algorithms and applications he develops and hijacks a host of creative applications in order to emulate the beautiful movements and emergent behaviors of hurricanes, swarms of abstract insects and angels of death and the black plague.

More info.

Continuing on the conference tour, thanks to Daniel Schutzsmith next up is the WDDC, aka Create Chaos ‘08 conference in Orlando, Florida on October 15th at 3:50 pm. With a focus on AIR/SWF Photoshop/Illustrator: What Happens When They Talk? we will explore the creative possibilities of two new tools in addition to the CS4 apps. I will also delve deeper into what the implications are for the textile/apparel, printing and publishing industries when we apply the rules of generative art/design with the tools we’re now able to create – in short, it’s time to redefine how we play this game. I hope to see you there.

Fireflies on a Blueberry Blossom Tree
signed, unique diptych print (1 of 1)
archival inks on canvas
6 x 6′ (182.88 x 182.88 cm)
$3,500 USD

  

My approach to painting with code continues its path in search of beautiful colors, and mixing surrealism with emotional evocative scenes. The linear progression of generatively painting objects randomly within rectangles, geometric shapes, distorted and sliced 3-dimensional surfaces and as skins to different 3-d skeletal structures now takes a turn towards shapes that are familiar to us, like the cherry blossom tree in this instance.

I’m making these creatures with via code in Maya 3d because it allows me to dynamically change their skeletal structure, skin, behaviors, expressiveness, etc… in order to duplicate beautiful and mysterious creatures in this world – but shift the perspective to match my surrealist view. They are currently being printed on Epson printers using archival inks – however I would prefer to be using one of the large format HP printers [hint, hint HP. lol].

the starfish boa with a bad sense of direction
archival inks
canson montval aquarelle watercolour paper
deckle edges 
12 x 24″ (30.48 x 60.96 cm)
$300 (US Dollars)

  

the reckless disregard of a jaded boa
archival inks
canson montval aquarelle watercolour paper
deckle edges 
12 x 24″ (30.48 x 60.96 cm)
$300 (US Dollars)

  

transcending prejudice through the color vortex
archival inks
canson montval aquarelle watercolour paper
deckle edges 
12 x 24″ (30.48 x 60.96 cm)
$300 (US Dollars)

  

el toro
archival inks
canson montval aquarelle watercolour paper
deckle edges 
12 x 24″ (30.48 x 60.96 cm)
$300 (US Dollars)

  

It’s hard to believe but it’s time for Flash on the Beach! I’m bringing my daughter this time, so I will only be at the conference for the day of my presentation because she doesn’t want to miss too much school. ;) 

I present on Monday at 11:30 am with a focus on transforming ideas-to-pixels-to-atoms. Following the flow of ideas-to-pixels and how my artwork comes to life on the screen, I will discuss two new Adobe tools that will make driving the CS3 & CS4 Creative Suites (CS) dramatically easier than previous methods. I will also explore automating Maya via code and integrating it with the CS apps. I’ll wrap things up with how-tos on different options for converting your pixels-to-atoms: using innovative printing techniques that allow you to print to any substrate from your inkjet printer, laser cutting/etching and more. 

Hope to see you there. 

Update: As a side note, for my early experiments driving the CS apps via code, I used ExtendScript ToolKit (ESTK) – as simple ExtendScripts (ES) to begin with and then with embedded swfs that could communicate through the ES. When Apple’s Leopard was released, Apple changed how the windows, including the swf palettes, redraw and this made swf palettes unusable in CS3 apps. Luckily, Adobe and specifically Michael Daumling and Bernd Paradies were already working on the follow-up to ESTK. With the merger of Adobe and Macromedia, it made perfect sense to combine some of the great technologies and out of that came Adobe SwitchBoard and PatchPanel. Both are SWC libraries for Flex Builder, the former allows an AIR app to communicate to the target CS app, the latter enables a swf palette/panel to communicate to the host CS app. SwitchBoard is available here and PatchPanel will be released at some point in the not-to-distant future.

I still recommend playing with ESTK because it’s easy to get up and running because the code feels like JavaScript and ActionScript 1 and it’s free if you have any CS3 app installed. Get to know the DOM (eg., in ESTK Help > Adobe Photoshop CS3 Object Library) of the CS app you’re interested in developing for and how to set/get different values, like the name of a layer.

Using ESTK is a simple stepping stone to developing AIR apps with Flex Builder and SwitchBoard – which brings the code up-to-date with current standards, such as strict data types, code hinting, etc. For all of the demos I did that involved AIR apps, I used Flex Builder and SwitchBoard exclusively, including the color apps for In The Mod. 

Hope this helps.

Touring the Leeum-Samsung Museum in Seoul

Original Signed Fine Art Print
Archival inks
Aquarelle watercolor paper
Deckle edges

$35.00 (US Dollars). Add to Cart

$79.00 (US Dollars). Add to Cart

$158.00 (US Dollars). Add to Cart

$236.00 (US Dollars). Add to Cart

$350.00 (US Dollars). Add to Cart

All prints use standard sizes, making framing a breeze.

Are we looking at a new stained-glass piece?

Not yet. This limited edition (30 signed prints) is printed on a mirrored substrate from Strathmore which gives the colors a rich metallic-like finish. The inspiration comes from the cover of my artbook, which has a subtle and similar quality to it – although it’s difficult to see in the cover photo of the book.

Here’s the final shot of the image, which is 12 x 17″ (30.48 x 43.18 cm).

The signed, 30 limited edition prints are available for $150 (US dollars) here.

What happens when Aviary Peacock + Adobe AIR + Painter Scripts + Watercolor Paper + Deckle Edges + Precoating + Rubber Stamps + Dr. Woohoo are mixed?

Deckle Edges
To my surprise, deckle edges on paper are extremely easy to create. All you need are: watercolor paper, glass of water, a sponge brush, exacto knife and a metal straight-edged ruler. I start by marking where I want to cut the paper. On my Epson, the maximum size is 13 x X-amount, so I’ll cut the paper about 1/2 - 1″ shorter on the width and my desired height of each sheet so that the deckle will still fit within the maximize width and height of the printer. Once the paper is marked, I paint a brushstroke of water over the line and let that soak in for a few seconds. I then place the metal straight-edged ruler over the pencil line and rip the paper in small sections at a time.

There are two tricks here: pull the border of the paper that is on the outside and not the main body of the paper; and adjust the amount of my index finger is under the paper in order to control the amount of deckle for each pull. For the former, if I pulled on the body of the paper and not the border, I tend to get a straight-edge rip and the paper tends to rotate enough to ruin a straight rip. For the latter, the more my index finger is under the paper, the more it will rip inward, and vice-versa for having the deckle rip outward.

Precoat
I was precoating watercolor paper that I picked up at a local art store so that I could run it through my Epson R2400 printer and the inks would stay vibrant and not wash out and I discovered something wonderful during the process. When I brushed on the white matte precoat from Inkaide and then printed on top of it… the texture of the watercolor paper and my brushstrokes were still visible underneath the ink. The latter was a wonderful and unexpected side-effect – and highlighted one of the characteristics of printing with manufactured precoated substrates that I am not fond of – that missing dimension of depth. When I was in Zürich, I saw a Jackson Pollock painting from the side and the levels of paint on that canvas was just as exciting to see as it was from the front perspective – and here it was again.

So the question was – how can I incorporate this into a print? I knew I wanted to do something subtle and decided on an ornate type of pattern. I’m on the beta for Peacock – Pattern Maker that Quasimondo is working on for Aviary. Woohoo!

So I decided to generate a pattern in Peacock, then I exported and brought that PNG into Photoshop. In Photoshop, I copied the image into a new channel, loaded that as a selection, converted that selection to a new work path (in the Path Panel) and exported that path to Illustrator (AI) (File > Export > Paths to Illustrator). I then opened that file in AI, touched up the paths a bit and then emailed that file to a local stamp maker. Here’s where it gets good.

Within two days, the rubber stamp was ready. On my next print, after I applied the second precoat on the paper, I pressed the rubber stamp down on the paper and left an indented pattern. I repeated this step until all of the paper had an impression of the pattern on it. There’s easier ways to do this I’m sure, but for the first pass, I love the results.

I apply two precoats to the substrate because the first precoat tends to leave some gaps and any gaps in the precoat may lead to ink not sticking to the surface in that location. I wait between the 1st, 2nd precoat and the actual printing about 8 hours in-between for each precoat to dry thoroughly. In the image above to the right, I’m hang drying the procoated paper in the top row in order to avoid the curling up of the paper. If I didn’t, I would have a difficult time feeding it into the front slot of the printer.

In this image, I placed the print on the window so that it is illuminated from behind to give you an idea of what the pattern looks like in the print.

This is the final result of the print with deckle edges, and a very subtle imprint of the pattern. The design is a style I like to call Organic Color Visualization and was generated from a color palette that was captured with the application In The Mod: Your Images Edition and a custom AIR application that I created that takes that color analytic data and generates a painting script that I run in Painter.

This unique print (1 of 1) is available for $750 (US dollars)  here.