Magritte at SFMOMA

I don't consider myself a big Magritte fan, but as is almost always the case with any Big Name Blue Chip Museum Show About a Very Famous Artists that you happen to actually go see, once I saw some things at the current big SFMOMA show that I had never seen before I got interested. I cruised past most of the bowler hats and apples and clouds and birds (ok, not all, but most) and instead became intrigued by the lesser known works in quite a wide variety of styles. The things you haven't seen reproduced a million times are so much easier to actually see  with your own eyeballs.

Of course none of this excuses the fact that here we have yet another big show about yet another dead white man, but it certainly does give you some interesting things to look at while you're there.

Color Poem #62

there are thirty-six colors in

the ceiling mural but their
proportions are uneven
three oranges three yellows
seven greens and nine blues

Filming at CreativeLive

I filmed my CreativeLive class, Publishing for Creatives, last week, and it was great fun. You film live, in front of a live studio audience, so the talking just flows -- no retakes, no do-overs, no time to think "wait, did I say that as perfectly perfectly as I might have?" just go, go, go. Which, if we're being honest, is my preferred speaking style. A huge crew, it seemed, of extremely helpful folks were on hand working hard to make everything flow smoothly and be the best it could be -- I really enjoyed the people there. Of course, I've got no photos of the class because I was too busy scampering around in front of the camera yakking. Instead what I've got are photos of the getting ready process -- the greenroom, makeup, wardrobe, and so forth -- which perhaps give you a little glimpse into how fun a for reals this whole thing felt. If all this sounds appealing and you think you might want to learn about publishing straight from my horse's mouth you can preview, and potentially buy to watch at your leisure, the class right here.

Recent Mabels: August and Everything After

Mabel's dream in life was to dye her hair purple for her eighth birthday. She did it in time for her little sleepover party, her overnight at her grandmother's house on her actual birthday, and it even held up til the first day of school. Since then it's been fading and is hardly discernible at all in her wacko school photos or lounging around the house this past Saturday morning.

Cookbooks

Here's a drawing I made about two years back of some cookbooks. The big sort of cookbooks with recipes for everything, of which we own quite a few. The smaller cookbooks, that focus on a particular cuisine, or subject, or certain chef's vision, are on a different shelf.

Milton Avery's People

I've recently discovered, and fallen more than a little in love with, modernist painter Milton Avery's blocky people. Even more than their satisfyingly solid forms, and more than the world they evoke ( it's a very nice world of women talking and reading and making art and playing music and lounging and sewing and riding bikes and doing each other's hair and nursing babies - but it's tarnished a bit by the inevitable looming presence of the male gaze: these women seem to be alone together but of course they're not really, our boy Milton is there, hovering around behind his easel - not to mention the unrelenting whiteness typical of the period) I positively adore the color palette of these pictures. Here are a whole bunch of examples so you can see for yourself