Say What!

I was sitting here yesterday munching on some fruit and it suddenly hit me how everything these days is catalogued and bar coded. All the fruit in front of me was labelled with bar codes and product numbers to help the grocery stores figure out what they were selling. I just wondered what people did before all this technology took over and what they would have thought about all these stickers and bar codes on their produce.

Well inspired by my friend Brian and his "So I Noticed This" blog I pondered some more and thought about where this was all going. Today those annoying stickers, tomorrow why not Genetically Engineered or Modified produce. Why not grow the produce with the bar codes right in the darn food and save having to print and stick on all these tags. LOL

So after having a break from sketching and painting for a long while, I thought this would make a good piece to practice on. So I got out my blue Mont Blanc fountain pen ink and sharpened up a handy chopstick. The sketch was all done in ink with only the stick as an application tool. I kind of enjoy doing this as the stick and ink are hard to control and it makes me concentrate but keep things relatively simple. The single colour helps me concentrate on hard and soft edges.

"From Bar Coded Stickers to Genetically Modified Produce"

[Click on image for larger view]

Urban Sketching

I have known about a group of Urban Sketchers around the world for a couple of years but only recently saw this article about Urban Sketching. "http://spacingvancouver.ca/2012/05/01/headspace-author-gabriel-campanario-discusses-the-art-of-urban-sketching/"

Vancouver Contemporary Artists Group

At the Sketchcrawl 35 event I met a number of very keen artists that came out to sketch. About 10 of them belonged to Meetup! The Vancouver Contemporary Artists Group. I decided to sign up as they have some very interesting ways of meeting, discussing art and drawing. As of today I have not attended any of their events but intend to do so.

"The Vancouver Contemporary Artists is a group of active professional and passionate visual artists, (The visual arts are art forms that create works which are primarily visual in nature, such as painting, ceramics, drawing, sculpture, architecture, printmaking, photography) who work in their studios and would like to get together with other artists alike to talk about art, their work and other artists' works, who would like to have studio visits for viewing, discussion and critique, and who would like to be actively involved in the art community (opening exhibition, gallery visits)."