I’ve been intrigued by accordionist Vincent Peirani for quite a while now. Here’s a quick digital painting of a screen shot that I used as a reference.
See YouTube link below for a sample.
Technicals: Sketch Club app, iPad Pro, Apple Pencil, iColorama
peiriani at 30,000 feet
All joking aside, I’m pleased to share the following from the National Association of Digital Artists (naDA):
I had 15 minutes to kill before Spanish Conversation Hour at the Athens Public Library yesterday, and I wanted to play around with one of my favorite painting styles, Impressionism. (See my Sorolla study.) So I Googled Impressionism and portraits, and I found the AI-generated image below my freehand rendering, which I decided to use as a reference on a digital iPad painting…just for fun. I tried to work faster and more playfully to embrace the style by being less Ralph Kramden and more Robin Williams about it. I was over half way finished when it was time for me to close my iPad and go into the reserved conference room. Once home and after dinner I finished it off in the Sketch Club app along with final adjustments in Procreate and then iColorama. By 8:00 pm on Thursday, January 23, 2025 I officially became the image’s offspring in the “transformational reversal” that Cervantes described when he wrote that, “Cada uno es hijo de sus obras.” (Each of us is the child of our works.)
Here’s that AI-generated image. You’ll notice that I don’t mind rounding things up or down to the nearest 1,000.
Screenshot
According to O’Betty’s website, the eatery is located in the Cameron building, the smallest building in Uptown Athens. Originally built as a barber shop, the venue has been the home of other restaurants, such as Seven Sauces, The Strawberry Patch, The Korean Restaurant, DV8, The Redbud Cafe, and finally and lastly, O’Betty’s. I fondly remember Redbud Cafe; but, whenever I bite into one of O’Betty’s delicious hot dogs, I’m overcome with amnesia, euphoria, and dejavú.
O’Betty’s in Uptown Athens, OH
Technical: I used my own reference photo to make this quirky iPad painting in Sketch Club with an Apple Pencil. The composition took me about 3 hours over the span of several days and consists of 6,486 brush strokes on 3 layers. I then tweaked the image in iColorama.
Annyth and I joined our dear friends Darcy and Chris to ring in the new year at the Dakota Jazz Club in Minneapolis, MN with Davina and the Vagabonds, a jazz blues band founded in 2004 by front-woman Davina Sowers. We fell in love with the group, especially Davina. By the way the Dakota handed out little bells, so we actually did ring in the new year!
A free-hand iPad painting of Davina done in the Sketch Club app with tweaks in Procreate and iColorama:
Davina herself. See reference photo below. Click on image to enlarge.
My own reference photo.
The bow before the encore.
As you well know, we here at portfoliolongo.com have a holiday tradition that goes back all the way to 2013, yes, our Annual Christmas Letter! (Please continue reading below.)
At our annual retreat in early December the Board of Directors and Senior Management – both of us – meet and, after a self-facilitated process that incorporated large sheets of adhesive, butcher-block paper and color-coded stickies, decided ultimately that the 2024 letter would be A, mainly because of our new facility in Canaan Township, Athens County, Ohio. Please click here to view posts previous years’ letters.
Several years ago I saw an awesome photo on Flickr taken by David Wilson, I believe in 1969, of one of the old buses that I would see almost every day of my childhood growing up in Canonsburg, PA. Click here to see that photo. I’d been so taken by that photo that I decided to use it as a reference for a freehand, digital painting on my iPad Pro in the Sketch Club app. The image brings back fond memories, and I can almost hear and smell that bus going through this intersection in Houston, PA, a neighboring town.
Click HERE to see a Patsch Auto Bus Co. token.
(click on image to enlarge)
Lean in.
Sketch Club stats:
Screenshot
“Impermanent record,” occurred to me as a vague notion. When I mentioned it to Annyth, she suggested that I do a cartoon, and the notion remained a velleity until now.
The title of this post can be attributed to the late Dr. Owen Dukelow, Professor of Philosophy at Washington and Jefferson College. As an undergrad in the mid to late 1970s I took a couple of his classes. I also worked in the college library all four years, and Professor Dukelow would show up now and then and place a stack of his newsletters/bulletins on the front desk for people to take away and read for free. The informal series was entitled, Pardon Me, My Mind Was Wandering. I remember finding his short essays amusing, but I wasn’t mature enough to recognize the themes of equanimity and impermanence. I do now, at least to some extent.
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