Pages

Friday 24 February 2017

50 Years And Nothing Has Changed

It seemed like a good idea at the time.

I mentioned in this post from a few weeks back that I'd noticed a sort of peace sign in the sidewalk cracks while out walking. At the time, I failed to get a photo, so I went back for one a few days later.




Along the way, I noticed a few more peace signs so I started taking pictures of those, too.




Not a crack, but the right arrangement of straight lines to meet my requirements


I don't know what people thought as they drove by, while I seemingly took pictures of my feet.

We suffer for our art, do we not?

Anyhow, the peace signs were not really complete because they had no circles surrounding the lines.

So my next thought was that, by Jove, I'd learn to use Paint to draw the circles on my photos. Usually I try to avoid voluntarily learning new technology, but I really wanted to do this, so I called an emergency meeting of my two brain cells and figured it out.




While looking for peace signs in the sidewalks, I had also started noticing patterns in the cracks in the streets as well, and found one that reminded me of the "Kilroy was here" pictures that we used to doodle on our binder covers in high school.



So then I used Paint to fill in the details of that sketch.


What on earth is going on with that nose?


Refined the details after researching Kilroy on Wikipedia



And THEN I noticed a place in the sidewalk that had a lot of random cracks in it that reminded me of one of the kinds of "art" our elementary teacher had us do. She called it a "Scribble Picture" and it's just like it sounds. You scribble randomly around the page, and then you fill in the various shapes formed by the lines with different colours.

Here is my inspiration piece from my little art book that I wrote about in this post:

Please remember I did this somewhere between age 5 and 8. You were expecting Monet?



And here is the sidewalk "scribble picture" without colouring:



And this was where things started to go off the rails. I could not, for the life of me, figure out how to use the "fill" option in Paint to fill in those shapes. However, I'm a persistent donkey and I chose the "marker" option and began, laboriously, to colour in my sidewalk scribble picture using the mouse.

(No, I am not five years old. Or even ten. But I'm stubborn. And have too much time on my hands now and then.)

Now, I was not a good colourer in school. I could never do it neatly, nor consistently, nor within the lines. I couldn't see the point of it, I didn't enjoy doing it, and I was terrible at it.

Apparently nothing has changed in fifty years. Computer colouring is every bit as horrible and crazy-making as crayon colouring.

By the time I had that sucker finished, there was a cramp in my mousing hand, my left eye had started to twitch, my shoulders were somewhere north of my ears, and I had to resist a serious urge to fling both the mouse and the computer screen across the room.

But having done all that work, I couldn't NOT post the result here.

Donkey gets a D grade in colouring, and an E for effort. I think those are two different marking schemes, but whatever.

I think I actually prefer the one I did in elementary school.



*          *          *


Here is a link if you're interested in the background of the peace sign. Did you know, for instance, that it's based on the semaphore (flag signals) for the letters N and D - which stand for Nuclear Disarmament ... I had no idea before the article in that link popped up in my email.

And here's a link to a Wikipedia article on Kilroy -- who seems to be known as Foo in Australia and Mr. Chad (or Chad) in the United Kingdom.

*          *          *

Peace out, people. And if you know how to use the "fill" option in Paint, for a photograph, I'm all ears. As donkeys tend to be.

Donkey ears courtesy of Pixabay, my favourite donkey supplier.





34 comments:

Red said...

Well that's really cool to take cracks in the sidewalk and make them into an art project.

Steve Reed said...

Ha! I love your eye and your creativity. I never would have noticed peace signs in those sidewalk cracks, but now that you point them out they seem so obvious. (Especially with the added circles!) And I think the scribble picture turned out really well! You did not suffer in vain! :)

only slightly confused said...

You have been a busy bee collecting all those 'peace' signs. We could use a whole bunch of peace in this weary old world.

Joanne Noragon said...

I was laughing hard as I went, thinking "she has too much time one her hands." Then I came to that line! Fortunately, the village sidewalks are sandstone. Their cracks are boring.

Chicken said...

I want the link for how you learned to color on your computer. Very creative-I'm impressed!

Diane Henders said...

Well done! As my dad used to say, "You get an 'A' for 'Affort'!" ;-)

jenny_o said...

"An art project" ... that sounds so much better than "wasting my time," Red - thank you :)

jenny_o said...

At least I got a post from it :) And to be honest, it was a welcome change from reading about politics!

jenny_o said...

So true ... unfortunately all the peace signs in the world don't mean anything without the attitude to go along with it.

jenny_o said...

Ha ha! You NEED some concrete sidewalks, Joanne, admit it!

jenny_o said...

I just clicked on the photo to make it big, then clicked on "open" at the top of the page, which gives a drop down menu. One of the choices is "paint" and when you click on that, you get some choices at the top of the page. I just tried a bunch of stuff - you know, pretended to be six again :) I'm sure there are tutorials on using Paint on youtube somewhere, and I'm wondering why I didn't think of that for the problem I was having!

jenny_o said...

Hah - love it!

dinthebeast said...

I, too, only have two brain cells. I used to have three, one for each of my favorite activities at the time, but the stroke took out the right one. Which is OK as I wasn't using it any more anyway...,

-Doug in Oakland

Mr. Shife said...

Excellent work. I love it. Glad to hear that you wanted to do something and you did it. You definitely can see your improvement from the first to the last. Take care.

Geo. said...

I don't recall the exact quote (Oppenheim, I think) but will paraphrase: The wise seek happiness under their feet. I think sidewalk cracks qualify nicely, Jenny. Good post!

LL Cool Joe said...

And I thought I was odd! Ha, joking. Very creative. You know creating circles and filling in areas of colour are really easy to do in photoshop elements?

e said...

Very creative, and humorous, too.

klahanie said...

Some might say that art isn't all it's cracked up to be. Yet, you have displayed, very cleverly, that your art's in the right place.

You have a terrific blog and thanks. Now, before I make an ass of myself, I shall now go back to my blog....

Gary

jenny_o said...

As long as you have two, it's all good!

jenny_o said...

As a parent of elementary children, you know just how to encourage!

jenny_o said...

I like that thought, Geo. :)

jenny_o said...

Thanks - I've never used photoshop so that didn't occur to me. I need to google it!

You do know that if I'm successful, there will be a follow-up post, right? :)

jenny_o said...

Thanks, e. It was fun to be a kid again :)

jenny_o said...

Welcome, Gary - thanks for visiting! You are the Master of Puns and Wordplay and I am honoured to have you here! Hope you and Penny have a good weekend :)

37paddington said...

Art is everywhere around us, and now I will see it in the sidewalk cracks as well, thanks to you!

jenny_o said...

I can't stop seeing things in the walkways and streets now, but calling it art is being very generous :)

Lovenicky said...

Thanks for the post! It just reminds me to see beauty in everything in our surroundings. We just need to take a pause and look hard.

jenny_o said...

Thank you, Nicky! Looking closely pays off surprisingly often.

Martha said...

HAHAHA! Yes, we do suffer for our art! You have a good eye for noticing those details. And you are very creative!

The Happy Whisk said...

I like both pictures and neat about the peace signs. I like the bit about suffering for our art. You're funny.

jenny_o said...

Thank you for those kind words, Martha! I'm not sure it's creativity as much as just playing :)

jenny_o said...

Aw, thanks, Ivy - you're easy to please :)

Margo said...

you made me laugh! And now I will notice the cracks when I walk the kids to school tomorrow. Maybe we will take chalk along one of these days and actually doodle on the cracks as we walk by!!

jenny_o said...

And now I'm wishing I still had young kids so I could do this without attracting attention! I hope you have fun!