National Portrait Museum in D.C.

When I got my HTC incredible I thought that it would be a great way to add posts easily to my blog.
I’ve found that the built-in browser is pretty awful in trying to access my WordPress site’s admin module. And it was almost impossible trying to write a blog of anything other than a really short post.
So I’ve been looking around for a blog posting app, and I’ve tested out a few. “PostBot” was a complete failure, the interface was nice and simple, but it just couldn’t post to the blog.
Right now I’m using the WordPress appointed, and so far so good, it was easy to configure with my blog, it recognizes my categories, and It’s simple enough an interface that there’s not that much room for clutter.
The big test of course will be to see if this actually posts to the blog, and if it is easy to upload an image for the post. Hey look, styled text too!
It looks like I won’t be able to position the image anywhere I want, but it is pretty easy to select an image from my phones internal photo app.

The front runner, Gretchen finally gets her comeuppance when the perennially up beat and diplomatic Tim Gunn gives her “what for”!

The competition this week was for the designers to split up into two teams with each team creating a cohesive “collection”. The way thee teams ended up, it looked like a slam dunk for the “annointed” “Winner’s Team” (Team Luxe) and a sure-loss for the Losers (Team Military)…

I don’t know how much influence the producers have on this show as far as staging the drama, but if they staged this, they did a fantastic job.

Team Military, the underdog team won, hands down, and looked like a cohesive team that was comprised of a collection of individuals. Whereas Team Luxe, the losing team ended up with a mediocre showing at best and was obviously being led by the nose like lambs to the slaughter by the self-proclaimed queen of fashion, Gretchen. (boo! hiss!)
The underdog of underdogs, “Casanova” won the competition this week. So despite the fact that he’s the biggest whiner/baby on the show, it made for good drama.

One of the best part of the show was during the critique where the judges wanted to pick a loser to leave the show. Everyone and their mother wanted Gretchen to lose, and she came pretty close to it, seeing as how she was the team’s de facto leader. Any comments to the contrary from her are so transparent. After promising to stick together as a team, almost everyone on Team Luxe threw Michael under the bus (but having immunity he was “safe” as long as he didn’t mind a black and blue ego afterwards). And in hindsight, I’m pretty sure Gretchen pushed the “go Team!” aspect at the second critique because that would help her argument that she wasn’t the leader of that steaming pile they called a collection. In the end, Gretchen and AJ were the last two members of their team standing, and AJ fell on the sword and accepted responsibility for his own work, forcing him to be the one to leave the show.

The icing on the cake was when Tim Gunn came in to say goodbye the the loser, pretty standard for this show, but he actually took a stand on the whole Team Luxe mess. He expressed confusion over why the losing team didn’t stand up for themselves, and allow Gretchen to use and manipulate them all into doing what she wanted. It’s the first time I’ve ever heard him blast someone, and it was in front of everyone, Gretchen could not crawl into a hole or argue that she wasn’t to blame, it was pretty obvious almost everyone agreed she was the demon seed in this whole episode.

The show is going to be much more fun to watch now, and it’ll be interesting to see what the rest of the season is like with Gretchen now on the bottom of the social totem pole. ALL her cred’ from winning the first two contests has evaporated and she’s shown her true self to the rest of the designers, it’ll be interesting to see what they say behind her back now… It’s always better when a show has an obvious villain…

Shame on America, you got the President you wanted, but you know nothing about him at all. How can only a third of America know that Obama is a Christian? Did they not go through the Jeremiah Wright incident, or were they just mesmerized by that spectacle on Tv? Quite frankly, America doesn’t deserve Obama, in 10 years we’ll look back and be thankful for all of the things he did for this country, but he won’t get any credit while he’s sitting in the White House.

Believe me, I wish he were more progressive, and some of his NSA decisions have been almost as bad as Bush’s. But he’s almost exactly who he said he was when he was campaigning.

I think all “superhero” artists knew Frazetta’s work, probably his cover illustrations for pulp science fiction and fantasy works. I think I even bought a Conan softback JUST for the cover when I was younger. I had (and probably still have, in my basement somewhere, his poster for the animated movie “Fire and Ice” by Ralph Bakshi.

I wonder how many fans knew his early work was not just for the pulps or magazine covers, but he also did Romance, Cowboy, Science Fiction and even Funny Animal comics (he went under the name “Fritz” in those). I always think that he was a master in the true sense of the word, classically trained, but took off with the training with kick-ass talent and attitude.

I’ll try to find examples, but his pen-work was some of the best in the industry, he could do brush-work like a Japanese master, and emote gesture and attitude with a few simple lines. He executed the most amazingly detailed illustrations keeping the same gestural freshness as a one line brush stroke as well. (This post seriously needs examples, I’ve got to re-visit this with some of his work)

Frazetta lost NONE of that power or sex appeal when he worked up to a finished drawing or full oil painting, unlike the second-rate hack “BORIS” (Boris  Vallejo – that stinker could paint, but he didn’t have the confidence to be able to do it from his head and relied WAY too much on photographic reference.)

We’ve lost one of the giants in the industry, there will be pretenders to the throne, but NEVER anyone who will be as great as Frank Frazetta in the genre.

Here’s a link to the NY Times’ article on his passing: http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/10/frank-frazetta-fantasy-illustrator-dies-at-82//22k2yab

There will always be those who don’t say what they actually mean, (“I just don’t want black people to vote” would be honest at least) like a lot of these so-called mainstream pundits who latched onto every ACORN story as if it were the devil himself. Give Glenn Beck the Big Cojones Award for not hiding his race-baiting very well, he’s somehow managed to make racism in style again with mainstream America, how can normal people actually think he’s not talking about race when he attacks ACORN? When did Voter Registration equate to ELECTION TAMPERING? (hmmm, let me see, after the Emancipation Proclamation, when all of a sudden white people North AND South weren’t so concerned about equal democracy for all, afterall.)

In case you’re wondering, some of my best friends are white, I’m really not that angry at white people, really! : )

The article had a great link to a short primer on the history of US Voter “Literacy” tests in the South.

Allison Farese:

Bethany :

I think that’s it! If I find any more pix I’ll post them.

This was Mark (above), and also below. They’re quite different because I always thought Mark had a really interesting head and face shape and I wanted to make that as geometric as possible and take it as far out of realism as possible. The drawing above is more “heroic” and the one below is more “goofy”.

Below is Dan (?). He was Amy’s direct supervisor in Altum and came to a few meetings with us and Biologic Matters.com.

Below are pix of Ruby, or at least Ruby’s hair in one case. The hair stayed in one place long enough to draw it, that one time and I should have tried to make it more finished even if it was just a sketch. P.S. Ruby – sorry! I know you don’t like the picture below, but I don’t think it’s that bad or unflattering.

Ah, the joys of long meetings…

Below is a sketch of Shusheel, one of the QA engineers, asleep at a priority meeting. His direct supervisor Sam always got a kick out of this sketch, it always made his day:

It’s not always easy to draw some people, Stacey below should have been really easy, but I could never get her right, I think this was the closest I ever got:

Below is the first of a few sketches I did of Esther, another PM:

…and this the last sketch I did of her, I think that’s my best of her, a good likeness: