More Music

So here are a few more bands and artists that I think make really good music.

Stereo Lab is a really cool band from England. They make music that sounds like candy and feels like a hot bath. Super poppy and really foxy. Check them out.

Tom Waits is a master of songs and sounds. He is dark and poetic. A voice like gravel, glue, and a pack of wild dogs fighting over a chicken bone.

I have mentioned Talking Heads before, and I will do it again. Few bands have ever been any cooler than this. Fun, Funky and completely Danceable. Listen to all of their music.

Cibo Mato is a band from Japan. They were popular for a short time in America and are very cool.

Plastics is another Japanese band. They are a little bit like Talking Heads. They are very cool and make very fun sounds.

Blonde Redhead is a super strange band. One Japanese woman and twin brothers. They sing in English, but play their music in all languages.

Oil Paints

I read an interesting article on oil paints recently. It was written by my friend Eva. Her blog can be found here http://nightlynoodlemonthly.com/

by Eva Avenue

I was looking for the back issues of Modern Painters at painter Carol Dameron’s house so I could cut some of the pages to collage in the Nightly Noodle Monthly zine cause Zine Fest is coming up! The magazines were not where she said they were, so in a victorious effort to distract me from the situation, she handed me a book about paint and started saying something that, a few paragraphs later, slipped into a waxing on how to most successfully mix your oil paint:

“Cool reds are considered violets and not true reds,” she said. “The only true reds are Naphthal Red and Chinese Red or Chinese Vermillion, except Chinese Vermillion is about $60 for a small, little tube. And a Cadmium Light is considered a true red, even though it’s a little orange-y.

Carol’s Barcelona painting

Cad Red Medium, Cad Red Deep, all those reds are considered purples and should be used as such. Whatever you’re doing, consider them as purples. All the raws, Raw Umber, Raw Sienna, anything raw is a yellow. And the burnt colors are oranges: Burnt Sienna, Burnt Umber.”

OK, but then she started putting it all in the context of chicken. 

“The metaphor would be you buy a raw chicken which is yellow, a raw pigment, and then when you roast it, the pigment turns orange. (And Eva was like … “what?”) Roasting a chicken is the analogy, you heat it (it actually, literally is raw and burnt, the pigment) and the raw yellow turns burnt orange.”

Green- ”Viridian is ok,” she said. “It’s really strong. Green Earth is a weak color but it’s really beautiful and Salvador Dali calls the Chrome Oxide Green as the greatest color in the whole world. It’s like the color of colors. So I went out and got some. When you use it, it’s like a perfect green that could go up or down and it’s really opaque and covers really well and fits into nature and mixes very well and I can see why Dali loves this green so much.

Carol’s painting

Black- It’s better just to use Ivory Black, it’s soft and weak and warm; it’s a little more of a transparent black; it’s not such an opaque dark black; it settles the pallet down and it doesn’t overtake it. For years I didn’t use any black at all and just worked with color opposites, and now I’ve mixed black in there and it has really settled down the whole chord.”

BLUE: I got really sick of Cobalt Blue and then I read a book and the author also thought it was a dull color and there was nothing on earth that could brighten it. But Dali doesn’t like ultramarine blue, so who’s to say? I hated Phthalo Blue for years, which is the same thing as Prussian Blue pretty much. I just avoided it.”

Phthalo

And then I was like, “Dave Hickey hates Phthalo Green too! I mean, and I think Phthalo Blue, too”

And Carol was like, “And I completely understand why! It’s like too much sugar in your cereal! It’s just so overwhelming. But now I changed my blues a lot, I changed my palette. Once I realized Payne’s Gray is blue, I changed everything.  I’m using Payne’s Gray and Phthalo Blue and it works really well. I’ve added Cad Orange from the tube, which is a really great orange, and it’s a good contrast with the Phthalo and Payne’s Gary.”

And I was like, “Dave always gets everything.”

And Carol was like, ““He’s nuanced. He sees underneath the surface and he has a great sense of the ridiculous and is able to keep his perspective about things. He just seems to be true to his principles and he is contributing to society by pointing out things that we already knew for which we had no language. Once he says it, you’re like Of course! I knew that! But you just couldn’t say it, it’s just a feeling. It’s just this feeling you had in your stomach and he puts it out in this very crisp language and you can’t get past what he says, you can’t argue with it.”

OK ANYWAY…

“AS FOR WHITE, I always stuck with Titatium, but I find that Zinc is a great white cause it’s so weak and it doesn’t overtake the color. It’s a little more transparent so that’s a great mixing white. If you want to introduce white as a color, then you need titanium white. The thickest white is Flemmish White which is really hard to come by, you have to order it. Blue Ridge Mountain Oil Paints has it, it’s paint from the 17^th century and it’s ropy and thick to begin with, into which you mix mica and leaded glass ground up and it thickens it, so it becomes sculptural. So if you remember what Rembrant does with texture looking at skin like the bags under someone’s eye, an old person’s eyes or their nose or the skin on their hands or a light part of a cloth or hair, he does that by adding that Flemish ropy stuff and he glazes over it, it’s like he’s sculpting with clay in a way but that’s just technical prowess.”

More Movies

Hello Students!

So I have been thinking a lot about movies recently. I wanted to share a few more titles with you in case you have been thinking about them too. So if you are looking for a good movie to watch check out some of these.

Rushmore is a great movie about a high school student in trouble. He is very smart, but he has trouble doing his homework, and then he falls in love with his teacher. If you want to see something funny, sad, and beautiful, watch Rushmore. Learn more about the film here http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0128445/

The Rundown is a very funny action movie. It is about a small town in Brazil that is being terrorized by a crazy American. Lots of laughs to be had. Learn more here http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0327850/

2001: A Space Odyssey is one of the greats films of all time. A masterpiece of science fiction. It is slow, beautiful and full of images that will blow your mind. Learn more here http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062622/

Christmas is over, but Elf is still a great movie. It is the story of a human raised by elves on the North Pole. Santa tells this elf he must return to the human world. He does, but he doesn`t really fit in. Full of good jokes and kind hearts. Learn more here http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0319343/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1















That is all for now, but I promise more too come!