I looked out the window and there were three types of light sources of increasing power. On the ground below were man-made city lights. On the horizon were flashes of lightning from a tropical storm. And above a myriad of stars.
Flight to Egypt
Collections of work
Art organised into various collections.
Taking The Mickey
Theo does quite a bit of “Taking The Mickey” in his art.
Here he takes the mickey out of Andy Warhol’s, 1981, Quadrant Mickey Mouse/Myths.
The Collins English Dictionary has these definitions:
take the mickey in British
or take the mickey out of someone
informal
to tease someone
take the mickey in American
The Urban Dictionary has this definition:
Taking the mickey
Joking, doing something without intent.
Making fun of someone or something.
A less offensive way of saying taking the piss.
Happy National Procrastination Week
Tomorrow is only a day away. Tomorrow might be a bit too close and this song may be too optimistic for some procrastinators but it may have potential as a procrastination anthem.
What do you think? Leave a comment sometime.
Procrastination Die 2018
A while ago I created a social media procrastination die (single dice) for times when you need to decide which social media platform to procrastinate on.
I have updated it for 2018 with the current top 6 social media platforms according to DreamGrow.
The 2018 die features logos for:
- Facebook (~2.10B monthly users)
- YouTube (~1.50B monthly users)
- Instagram (~800M monthly users)
- Twitter (~330M monthly users)
- Reddit (~250M monthly users)
- Pinterest (~200M monthly users)
Tumblr and Google+ on my original procrastination die have been replaced by Instagram and Reddit. I am on Instagram but I am procrastinating on joining Reddit.
Using an online tool to randomly go to a social media website could save you time, but remember, procrastination is not about saving time. Make your procrastination more effective with this manual tool. First, step away from the computer, then roll the die several times, then type in the address of the social media website (not provided so you get an extra procrastination step to find them). In every part of the process, there is abundant opportunity for you to get distracted and procrastinate further.
This Way Up
Which way would you hang (or wear) this art?
The orientation of the image is important. To ensure maximum viewing pleasure place this side (with the image on it) so that it faces the audience. Placing the art so the image faces away from the viewer may make it difficult to see.
Available as prints, apparel and other formats from Society6 and RedBubble.
Ode to Summer
Ode to Summer
Shall I compare thee to a Summer’s day?
Yes if you like, but ’tis winter now and
Summer hath long faded
Her days are a distant memory, a long forgotten hope
Gone is the sun with its passionate heat
Gone the joyful scent of flowers and their vibrant colours too
Where are the cool evening walks and the lovers in the park?
I am alone in the cold and the dark
All around is grey and dreary and gloomy as I await the dawn
How I long to embrace your light and be wrapped in the warmth of your touch
Return to me again
Shine your smile on me and dry away my tears
I’m looking forward to the end of this winter and fulfilment of this scripture:
“My beloved spoke and said to me, “Arise, my darling, my beautiful one, come with me. See! The winter is past; the rains are over and gone.” – Song of Songs 2:10-11 NIV
Too many winters
I am in the midst of my 53rd Winter. So far I have experienced 50 Autumns and 48 Springs, but only 47 Summers. How old am I? Why am I procrastinating Summer?
One of the benefits of international travel is that I can spend time in different hemispheres, experiencing the different food, culture, and people of the world. I grew up in the Southern Hemisphere where Christmas is in Summer and the school year matches the calendar year. But, 14 and a bit years ago I moved to the Northern Hemisphere for work and a different lifestyle. I now get a real Winter Christmas and the academic year spans two calendar years with a long break in the Northern Hemisphere Summer/Southern Hemisphere Winter.
One of the drawbacks of living on the other side of the equator from family and friends is the opposite seasons. With my immediate family in school, our local long Summer break is the only practical time for us to visit our antipodean whanau, who are then in the midst of their Winter.
Unseasonal days experienced during the season have not been counted, only prolonged exposure to the season experienced by the rest of the hemisphere at that time.
For the purposes of my calculations, a season is counted if I was in a hemisphere experiencing any part of that season at the time. If I visit an opposite season and return before the end of the original season, the original season is only counted once – for example, I left the Northern Hemisphere Summer in June 2016, had four weeks of Southern Hemisphere Winter and returned to experience the remainder of the Northern Hemisphere Summer; earlier/later in the year I had another whole Northern Hemisphere Winter. I have only counted a season if I experienced it for at least one week – I do not remember any of the 21.5 hours of the summer of my birth.
I am using the Meteorological definition of seasons:
Southern Autumn / Northern Spring: 1 March to 31 May
Southern Winter / Northern Summer: 1 June to 31 August
Southern Spring / Northern Autumn: 1 September to 30 November
Southern Summer / Northern Winter: 1 December to 28 (29 in leap years) February
[ Source https://www.timeanddate.com/calendar/aboutseasons.html ]
No. Digits
Can you solve these simple equations and find the pattern?
This was the question I posed to friends on Facebook. Thanks to them I found some missing brackets and corrected the above image, representing digits as equations.
From this, I created a simple book reminiscent of a child’s counting book or math exercise book with a number represented on each page by its equation. If you include the answers to the equations (left as an exercise for the reader), each statement has all of the digits from zero to nine appearing only once. I created the book from a school desktop flip calendar, giving it a distressed old school look by painting the pages with a mixture of gouache and acrylic house paint. Letting the wet pages stick together before separating and applying a second coat produced the rough surface for the equations in pastel, sharpie and pencil.
The title of this work No. Digits is a play on the idea that “Number” is often abbreviated as “No.” and for each equation there is no digit for that specific number until you solve the equation.
Country Thief
What would happen if certain countries did not exist?
One of the items in Theo’s procrastination list (since 2014) is an geographical education computer game called Country Thief.
As someone who comes from a country (New Zealand) that is often left off global maps, I decided to create a game where countries are disappearing from the map for various reasons (evil dictators, nuclear war, economic collapse, alien invasion, meteors of unusual size and shape, global warming). Players race against decreasing time limits to find the missing country and identify it. Can you beat the clock and save your country from disappearing?
Given recent current events and environmental concerns, I am releasing this concept design image for people to share on social media and make their own comments.
Approximately Φ
The mathematics of the golden ratio [phi (ɸ) ~1.61803399] and of the Fibonacci sequence [1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, …] are intimately interconnected.
At 90 x 55 cm, the dimensions of the Ikea Lack Coffee Table are close to two consecutive terms of the Fibonacci series, and give a ratio of 1.63636363636 which is only 0.01832964761 or 1.1328% more than phi. Our coffee table was in need of refurbishment and so I painted it with this exaggerated approximation of the fibonacci series / golden ratio spiral.
