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Colorists inspire two new Extractions!

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“Playmates”

Recently I have been taking the same drip painting on the road when setting up my coloring station. “Playmates” was my initial find, and now I have Extracted two more that have been inspired by past participants!

"The Passing Pope"
“The Passing Pope”

A young gentlemen sat down with his girlfriend at Maker Faire to color. She barely began when he said, “There, a Pope’s Hat”. She objected and said it wasn’t enough and I jumped in and said, “What if, because his hat is so tall, it’s the only thing captured in a shot of the sky?!” I went on to do my own version of this Pope’s hat and added a cloud.

"Crossing the Creek"
“Crossing the Creek”

A very young lady colored, what had earlier in the day made for a dog’s ear, a bright fluorescent yellow section. She had deemed the abstract a unicorn – complete with horn. I took that initial head and horn and had the creature cross a creek.

Austin artist misses his job with Lyft & Uber

I can’t wait to have the two big guys back in Austin.  For now, I must return the 2015 Ford Fusion with sunroof, leather interior, rear view camera, and awesome a/c!  Xchange Leasing did me right with the following letter:

THANKS FOR YOUR SUPPORT
As you may have heard, Uber will shutter its operations within the Austin city limits effective Monday, May 9 at 8am. We know many of you use your Xchange Leasing vehicle to drive on Uber. If you no longer wish to keep it, you may immediately return the vehicle, as we are waiving the required advance two weeks notice. Simply return the vehicle to the dealership where it was leased.

If you choose to end the lease, Xchange Leasing will waive the $250 disposition fee and – if you are otherwise in good standing under the terms of your lease agreement – will credit your $250 security deposit to your Uber account within 7 business days. If and when Uber returns to Austin, we promise to help you get back in an Xchange Leasing vehicle (subject to program approval requirements).

If you want to keep your vehicle under the original terms of your lease you may do so as well. See direct payment options here.

Thank you for being a faithful customer of Xchange Leasing and we hope to do business with you again soon.

– Brent West, Xchange Leasing General Manager

Austin artist misses his job with Uber/Lyft.
Austin artist misses his job with Uber/Lyft.

Panama Papers Reveal How Elite Zig Zag Around the Laws

I used to be a regular editorial cartoonist publishing in the local paper, The Austin Advocate.  It’s been a while since I’ve made one, but every once in a while a bit of news will move me to create. Pictured here is both Mr. Mossack and Mr. Fonseca.

If you’ve not heard of the Panama Papers, you will! From the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists:

“The trove of documents is likely the biggest leak of inside information in history. It includes nearly 40 years of data from a little-known but powerful law firm based in Panama. That firm, Mossack Fonseca, has offices in more than 35 locations around the globe, and is one of the world’s top creators of shell companies, corporate structures that can be used to hide ownership of assets.”

N-uber, noober, newber, nuber

I invented a new word – N-Uber! This refers to a newcomer or inexperienced Uber driver.  So far, the response has been:

“Is that a real word?  If it’s not, it should be!”

“Ooh, I’m tweeting that, awesome.”

About the origins of the word Noob (from Know Your Meme):

 

About

“Noob” (also referred to as “Newbie”) is an English slang term and a pejorative label used to describe a newcomer or inexperienced user. On the Internet, “noob” usually refers to an inexperienced computer user, especially in the context of online gaming or programming.

Origin

“Noob” originated from the word “Newbie”[13], a term originally used in the 1960s–1970s among U.S. troops during the Vietnam War to refer to a new man in a unit. There are multiple theories regarding the etymology of the term “newbie”; some assert that it may have come from the word “newie,” which referred to a neophyte or a beginner as early as since 1850s, while others point to the British public school slang “new boy” or “new blood” that emerged around the same time.

A Coloring Party by Becca Borrelli and Ismael Cavazos

I’m pairing up with Rebecca Borrelli, to bring you all a coloring party in late April!

I had the pleasure of meeting this amazing artist back in 2014 at a restaurant we both worked at.  If you know Borrelli, you would not be surprised to hear she gifted her trainer (me) with some art as a thank you.  Of course, being the empath that she is, she gave a special gift that really fit who I am and what it is I do as an artist. Can you see the clouds coming alive with imagery?

Becca Borrelli Professional Doodles
Becca Borrelli Professional Doodles

Her style doesn’t just account for the objects, but also the spaces in-between!!  I fell in love with this aesthetic and when I learned she was the producer of this amazing coloring book, I reached out to her.

I’m pleased to announce she is letting me ride her coattails and we will be collaborating to bring you this most amazing coloring party.  From her representational art to my abstract art we will whet the appetites of all colorists.

Are we the Yin and Yang of the coloring world or WHAT?

Details of the coloring event coming soon…

 

Why are we doing this?

“Paint books and coloring books emerged in the United States as part of the “democratization of art” process, inspired by a series of lectures by British artist Joshua Reynolds, and the works of Swiss educator Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi and his student Friedrich Fröbel. Many educators concluded that all, regardless of background, students stood to benefit from art education as a means of enhancing their conceptual understanding of the tangible, developing their cognitive abilities, and improving skills that would be useful in finding a profession, as well as for the children’s spiritual edification.”

Why can’t I use FB as my page?

     Many are waking up to a very different Facebook, asking, “Why can’t I use Facebook as my page?”!  Last night some time my FB changed and I am no longer able to navigate the platform as one of the seven pages I manage.  Apparently this has happened to some accounts more than a year ago, and more accounts are just catching up – I guess I was lucky to have it the old way for as long as I did!
     After some research, I found a workaround. You can still do the things that were once possible, just not as convenient as it used to be.
     Okay, here is the way you work it now, from Boo Rhodes:
  • “Use your personal page to login to facebook and then when on the page you wish to like you click on the ellipsis (3 dots) next to the page info and select “Like as Page.”

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  • “If you are also wanting to see the feeds from other pages, visit your page that you admin and on the left side click on “view pages feed” then you can see what everyone just from your business likes are posting.”

Thanks Boo Rhodes, otherwise known as Geekmom!

See you at Maker Faire 2016!

We are excited to announce that we have been accepted at Maker Faire 2016!  Stop by our booth to make your own abstracts and learn the amazing art of extracting resemblances and giving them life with color and shading.  You will have the opportunity to meet the Old Man in the Peanut, a character whose life was created using this very technique and you will discover how all this has culminated into a field of study known as Biomimetics.

12417759_1011374668899688_5434362778170532743_nBy the way, if you want to join me as a creative, they’ve extended the deadline to April 7th – apply today!

Modern Peanut’s Wild Cousin, Thought Extinct, Found!

serveimageOkay, here’s the big question… Do Arachis duranensis & Arachis ipaensis have a well-formed embryo the way the modern peanut (Arachis hypogaea) does?!?

 

The gist:

The modern peanut (Arachis hypogaea) is the result of the hybridization of two older types of Andean peanut. It has 20 pairs of chromosomes—the total from both old species, which have 10 chromosomes each. Scientists always thought—a suspicion now confirmed—that the “parents” of this peanut were the variants Arachis duranensis, very common in the Andean foothills between northwestern Argentina and southeastern Bolivia, and Arachis ipaensis, a species that had been reported but unconfirmed in a Bolivian town several hundred kilometers north, but thought to be extinct, until now. Read more.

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The nitty gritty:

Cultivated peanut (Arachis hypogaea) is an allotetraploid with closely related subgenomes of a total size of ~2.7 Gb. This makes the assembly of chromosomal pseudomolecules very challenging. As a foundation to understanding the genome of cultivated peanut, we report the genome sequences of its diploid ancestors (Arachis duranensis and Arachis ipaensis). We show that these genomes are similar to cultivated peanut’s A and B subgenomes and use them to identify candidate disease resistance genes, to guide tetraploid transcript assemblies and to detect genetic exchange between cultivated peanut’s subgenomes. On the basis of remarkably high DNA identity of the A. ipaensis genome and the B subgenome of cultivated peanut and biogeographic evidence, we conclude that A. ipaensis may be a direct descendant of the same population that contributed the B subgenome to cultivated peanut. Read more.

The Year of the Face Swap

I read an article today about an artist out of Houston whose Instagram account was suspended.  He morphs faces of well recognized people and it may be why it was shut down.  Instagram has since apologized and reinstated his account but it left me thinking…

With everyone using the face swapping app this year I was inspired to create this character: Donhil.

Here is more about the Houston artist that inspired me.

A Living Sculpture

In this exciting experiment, I have taken a raw peanut and carved it.

I then placed this peanut in water to germinate – the question was can the plant grow with out the other half of the cotyledon.  After several attempts, it worked!

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The beard (plumule) on the Old Man in the Peanut grows to become the first leaves that break the soil’s surface on the way to becoming your peanut plant.  The hood (radicle) elongates becoming a tap root that goes into the ground to collect nutrients!

 

This is a living sculpture that goes on to become a living plant!

 

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