Walking weekend, Ingleton.

After  assessment week we had a walking weekend with the usual mob, Ingleton in the Yorkshire Dales. We left at 6 on Friday and got there in time to go up Ingleborough in glorious sun, and the pub  in time for an excellent meal, even better because it was happy hour and 1/2 price meals.

Saturday was cold & windy, today low drizzly cloud over the Howgills. have to go back when the views are visible.

Belgium, 38Decadent Breakfast! Old Friends.

We went to Belgium for the weekend, sounds a bit random but after nearly 11 years got in touch with Jacques & Marion who lived across the road from us when L&A were babies (& saved our combined sanities). We agreed to meet in Ghent, & spent an extra night in Bruges. It's a wonderful medieval city, full of fantastic buildings and an excellent source of gargoyles. We stayed in a B&B, with a chocolate fountain for breakfast.  

The city itself is beautiful, but a bit cold& February-ish. Well worth a summer visit.

                                                         

        

I added several to my gargoyle collection, including what appears to be a green lion, animal ones much less common than green men.

                                                            

                                                         

                                                        

                                                       
                                                         

        

We then moved on to Ghent, also beautiful, rather bigger, less easy to find the way around and full of road works. We met J&M right on time and took up almost in mid-conversation from 11 years ago.

                                                         

                                                 

      

      

Have a look at briandettmer who produces extraordinary sculptures whom Amy found. I suspect there are a lot of librarians and English teachers out there (and Clare!) who would be horrified , particularly as many are very old, new books don't have quite the same feel or beautiful covers.  I think they're amazing, I wonder how long it takes to make one. 

Ice, Who can knit socks?

A bright frosty day, I worry about the kingfisher we saw the other day, the canal is so solid.

 I also worry about the moor-hens and their elegant designed-for-picking-through-mud-feet, I think he needs socks!

It's still a bit snowy, just enough to be pretty, not enough to stop normal activity.

Darwin, final version. 37 Photoshop.

Darwin-the-Axolotl is now finished & ready to watch! More detail for the geeks are on 60pix
It was a busy day, among other things we had a workshop on Photoshop yesterday, the results are on 60pix. We started with photos, then drew the results, then combined the two and changed the results in various ways.

Snowed Under!

Nothing to report apart from studying recently, but I think I am beginning to get to grips with the things we use. Give my computer phobia, animation was an odd choice as it's the most computer-based of the choices, but seeing a series of pictures, cut-outs or models emerge from the machine moving is too magical to turn down. Of all the options it's the one I was least likely to be able to try at home. Now I have some sort of grounding, a small(ish) investment in software will let me carry on after the course has finished. I'll really miss the people though.
Clare mentioned Darwin on threebeautifulthings on 19/1/12, he features, no, stars, in my next animation. Here are some stills from it, the final version will appear soon

The story is that Darwin-the-Axolotl crawls out of his tank in the middle of the night, & with help from an old book about mythical creatures turns into a small dragon-type creature. He scurries around all night, then goes back into his book and is tipped back into the tank in the morning. 

Not quite Lord of the Rings, but we only had 2 weeks and the brief was to concentrate on adding appropriate and atmospheric sounds.

Snow, orchids.

In spite of exciting weather predictions the snow here was disappointing, only about an inch, slushy almost at once, grey sky, so not even tempting to go out and take photos, so here are my currently-flowering orchids to cheer everyone up!

Animation, More odd art! Nick

Where's January gone? It's been busy, so much still to do. Our group animation is now done, and on youtube. It was quite challenging, plenty of scope for improvement particularly the sound track. We have a sound workshop in the next day or so.
Our next project is in preparation for a Photoshop work shop. We had to photograph marks&traces left inadvertently, then draw them in a variety of experimental ways, to Photoshop next week.
Finally, Laura's Nick's new band has now been officially launched. They're  called Fairfield, so check them out if you dare, if not get your younger friends& family to try. They'll be rich&famous with your support!