Creativity

I came across Imagination Cubed through its high entry in del.icio.us. It is basically a doodler type program (excuse the non-tech talk). You can draw pictures and create your own scenes, then click on replay and have your drawing repeated right before your eyes.

Better still you can invite friends to waste their time also and join you in a spat of artistic expression, or save your picture and email it to your nearest and dearest. What a fantastic idea!

It reminds me so much of my school days when I would have spent hours in the computer suite messing about with Microsoft Paint, creating birthday cards and crap pictures which my poor mother always pretended to love.

Monday, July 10th, 2006 // Creativity, General, News & Media

What do you do when your girlfriend sprouts a set of wings and the tail of a serpent?

The picture above comes from the Fantastic in Art and Fiction website at Cornell University, which has an interesting and grotesque collection of dark images. The site is grouped into themes like Angels & Demons, Danse Macabre, Weird Science and many others.

I’ve been fascinated by the occult for years, and this collection reminds me of the appeal of the unknown. Notably, virtually all of the artwork is from centuries ago, before modern society replaced the threat of God and otherworldly influences with politics and terrorism.

Looking at some of these images, I remember the strange mix of curiosity and fear that I felt as a child, and the faces that would appear in trees and wallpaper and the knots in a door if you stared long enough…

I’m in the mood for a good ghost story now…

Friday, June 23rd, 2006 // Creativity

So, Halloween’s over for another year.

I’m not a big fan of Halloween, but I do love the dressing up and the pumpkin carving fun. The ones above are my Three Amigos Of The Apocalypse, and great craic they were to create.

The pumpkin on the far left is Nipper. She started life as a vampire, but one of her teeth fell off! Thus Nipper was born.

The middle pumpkin is Evil and the figure inside his mouth is supposed to be a man trying to escape! Unfortunately, I cut the arms too thin and as the pumpkin dried out, one broke. Not having much luck this year, am I?

The final pumpkin was actually done this morning (a bit late..), but is my favourite at the moment. I call him Mungo. I cut out some small holes and then filled them out by punching through with a rolling pin which gave the eyes and ears a really round, smooth look.

Anyway, you can see more pictures of my pumpkins on my flickr photo feed. I’m pretty sure I did better carvings last year, but I can’t lay my hands on the photos (if there were any). If you’re looking for more inspiration for next halloween, try Extreme Pumpkins, Pumpkin Carving or Pumpkin Masters.

Thursday, November 3rd, 2005 // Creativity, Family Life

Although there is an abundance of well-written, informative material out there on the Internet, there is a shocking amount of dross in circulation also! I don’t know where theLeveeBreaks stands in the midst of these extremes, but my aim is for the content to be interesting, engaging, informative and above all, easy to understand!

Writing creatively is difficult for me, because of my technical background. My use of language sometimes resembles an incomprehensible computer manual!

I recently discovered the Poynter Online website and Roy Peter Clark’s Fifty Writing Tools. Granted, the site is for journalists, but it tackles basic writing techniques that many of us are unaware of. I’m hoping to use this to improve my writing skills. Here’s why:

If you maintain a blog, it’s fair to assume that you expect other people to read your entries from time-to-time. Unless you are anti-social, generally you’d hope they will return regularly, and even recommend your writing to others. That’s what a blog is about: You write. Other people read. Make comments. Recommend you to others.

Without going off on a rant, it’s been a while since my last English lesson. Fifty tools = fifty articles = too much information! If you’re interested in sharpening up your writing skills, sign up for the email newsletter. This gives you a ‘tool’ a week, which you can start working into your writing.

Monday, June 20th, 2005 // Creativity

I came across the Illustration Friday website while in a bit of a browsing ‘free-fall’, and thought it was worth mentioning.

Apparently the site editor submits a theme each Friday. Subscribers to the site then go away and illustrate a picture based on that theme. The theme this week is ‘ambition’.

I think if I ever find the time I might contribute to that…

Thursday, May 5th, 2005 // Creativity

I took this photo about a year ago in London while skiving away from a conference I was on for a while. Muscovy Street is just across the road from the Tower of London and London Bridge is close by.

I think I must have been in the right place at just the right time, because the lighting was perfect and captured the statue beautifully.

The reason this all came to mind was that recently I saw the statue again on a programme (about pest control among other things). There’s a little park across the way from this where people eat their lunch on a sunny day. Apparently the litter left behind causes a bit of a rat problem.

Anyway, this is just a little experiment to test posting images to WordPress. Click on the thumbnail for a larger version.

Monday, May 2nd, 2005 // Creativity