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By Victor, August 19, 2010 6:30 pm

I’m still on my archive.org old 1950s educational film short kick. Here’s a new song inspired by one of the films, along with the film re-edited as a music video. The original film meant to teach kids not to be afraid, but seriously — what kind of lesson is that to be teaching our kids nowadays?

And here is just the music:

Victor Lams – “Don’t Be Afraid”

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By Victor, August 8, 2010 10:38 am

I’m putting together a probably less-than-comprehensive, but definitely more thorough than anything else that’s out there, list of all of my music for people to listen to and download. So far there are over 80 songs posted there, with more to come! Check it out!

http://www.studiolams.com/music/

(Or click the “Music” tab at the top).

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By Victor, August 7, 2010 8:01 pm

This isn’t a real song, just me messing around for an hour or so with some synths and a new channelstrip plugin (TeamDNR’s Mixcontrol). If you like repetitive robot music, then you might enjoy this.

Victor Lams – “Repetitive Robot Music”

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By Jackie, August 6, 2010 3:47 pm

In the last two days I’ve managed to photograph a whole lot of pieces from several large portfolios and sketch books. Still have many more to go. I converted my work space into mini photo studio. More on that later. But for now here’s a quick glimpse at one of my favorite pieces.

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By Jackie, August 3, 2010 6:56 pm

Still working on digitizing and archiving three very large portfolios from the WestWind Studios. So I’ve been doing lots of research on photographing sketches and stumbled across this one.

One of the best how-to’s I’ve seen for how to photograph artwork. Not to mention it made me feel like I was back in photography class in college.  Now if I could just find that much open wall space in my house.

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By Jackie, August 3, 2010 6:56 pm

The summer projects have revolved largely around kid friendly fun. We made plushies based of templates from this book. It came with an envelope in the back that contained templates for the creatures featured in the book. Couple that with lots of soft fuzzy fabrics in my stash and we created Blockhead and Wally Whale.

For another art adventure we broke out the Setacolor paints and fabric for some sun painting. It was good, sloppy, messy fun… outside . First we painted, then we let the sun do it’s thing. The dog was very interested in all of this. I also managed to sun paint a perfect square on the grass. That part wasn’t planned. I’ll aim for the driveway next time. We also finished the project with lots of painted fingers. So I had the kids wash with Reduran and the texture freaked them out a bit, it was kind of funny.

After the sun painting was done I was left with a little bit of paint left over. So I stuck several used dryer sheets into the containers and soaked up the leftovers. Here they are drying on the fence.

Then a few days later I did some screen prints of grape leaves and tried it on some dryer sheets. Came out pretty interesting. The images print on the sheets and the fabric. I found that the sheet could easily be removed for twice the printed images or you can leave the sheets to dry on the fabric and they will be very stuck. Also did one regular print. I used the Golden Silk Screen Gel and Neocolor Crayons for these.

There were a few weeks of very exciting weather around here. Lots of thunder and wind to keep everyone on their toes. But after one afternoon of rather harsh weather we were left with a lovely rainbow. I don’t recall ever seeing one with such vibrant colors.

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By Victor, July 28, 2010 8:00 am

There’s never been an easier way to learn the “Pater Noster”!

I’m not sure what I was thinking when I had this idea, because shoehorning plainsong into one of the most rigid forms of music around was probably not the best idea in the world, but I thought it’d be fun to hear once I’d made it. And I’m pleased with the results.

Also — here is the audio file so you can download it for your iPods:

Victor Lams – “Pater Noster”

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By Jackie, July 12, 2010 1:53 pm

I got a big container for Silk Screen Fabric Gel by Golden last month and have been itching to try it out. Finally got to that a few days ago. I’ve been screening with a combination of matte medium and fabric medium with good image results but not great fabric results. It left the hand of the fabric stiff and rather plastic like. Rather defeating the point of it being on fabric and not fun to sew on. So hence, the experimenting with silk screen mediums. I know, I know! I hear you saying but there are already silk screen paints already out there, why not use those? Because I’m stubborn and have to do it differently. I want to be able to mix any color I want or not use any color at all. Sorry I didn’t take any photos of the screening process. Really nothing new there to show. But what comes with this silk screen fabric gel is a big orange and black ‘x’ on the side of the jar.

For that reason I ironed the screened images outside. Yes, there was a bit of a funky odor. Nothing awful. But open a window or turn on an exhaust fan when you do this. So here’s the ironing outside on the picnic table.

Here’s the images. Really just tests of the mediums. The images were made out of things I just threw together.I like the stuff. It leaves the fabric looking and feeling like fabric.

With these, I screened once with plain gel then again with tinted gel, all while wet. It does take a few hours to dry before you can iron. But it’s been rather humid so that could vary.

Then this morning I got curious about if this stuff could be used in an image transfer and leave the same fabric feel behind. So I found an old image and tried it. It worked.

I think you may need to use a larger amount of the stuff. This came out a little faded. But I slapped it on pretty quick and unevenly. And I had to leave it for at least an hour before I had a decent transfer. So interesting to say the least.

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By Jackie, July 9, 2010 1:20 pm

Here it is already well into July and I haven’t made my way through to much of my summer ‘to do’ list. But I’ve been very busy nonetheless. We escaped up north last week before the Independence Day rush. Had a lovely time. Here’ s one of the reason we love it up there, sunset over Lake Bellaire.

Much of my time has been tangled with family activities, photographing vintage artwork, and graphic design jobs. I really want to do some fabric dyeing with this ghastly hot weather going on right now. So I keep doing little bits of prep work when I get spare moments. I did finish this piece, finally. It came out pretty well.

It’s size (22 x 28) made it a bit of a challenge. I know I usually like to work large, but this just seemed a little to big, even for me.

The garden(s) are doing really well this year. I actually have produce growing successfully! The potato plants are taller than the four year old and are flowering. Even found a rogue tomato plant growing outside the raised bed. It doesn’t take much to impress me sometimes.

Here’s the latest journal page I did for the round robin journal book I’m doing with the art group.

And we did celebrate Independence Day in the traditional manner. Food and fire.