It has been just too hot recently. And we are set for more, the forecasters tell us. I tried to do some housework today and nearly melted into an oily puddle. Late this afternoon we had heavy grey clouds come over and rumble at us but that is all we have had. The State has invented a new fire category – CATASTROPHIC ! We have had little rain and now it is topping 30 deg C every day, expected to go higher. Too hot!

We had a good trip to Newcastle today. (I always need to explain that I am talking about Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia). It is about 50 minutes drive north of here, call it an hour for comfort.

We had seen a review of the new Coen brothers’ film A Serious Man last night, checked it out, saw it was on at a good time in Newcastle, so off we went.

We have enjoyed previous Coen brothers’ films and their quirkiness, focus on detail, quality of scripting, subject matter … all these fall into place so well that their films are just so enjoyable.

A Serious Man is set in middle America:

A black comedy set in 1967 and centered on Larry Gopnik, a Midwestern professor who watches his life unravel when his wife prepares to leave him because his inept brother won’t move out of the house.

The locale and times are typical of those in which the brothers grew up, so I felt it was pretty accurate and representative. It was a great little film, very funny, with a black, but benevolent look at Jewish beliefs and way of life.

But my point today is not to review the film.

We don’t go to Newcastle much and each time we go we are surprised to remember what an attractive city it is. There are still many of the old colonial-style buildings left, as well as run-down premises, old street shops, and some fine new buildings. It’s a great place to photograph, so I made a note to go back for a photo-shoot as soon as I can.

Here’s a quiet spot in the middle of the city. The cinema is at the back of the shot, across King St.

Here’s a digital painting I did of a sunflower, based on a photograph (of course), but worked up as I would do a painting. In this case I have used a pastel-like style and a rough paper effect.

Credit for the photograph goes to Rachel Groves, who does lovely photography and painting works. Her Web site, her photostream on Flickr.

I am having a lot of fun with this, I am using Corel Painter 11 software, a very excellent digital painting program.

I have done a few works like this now and am beginning to get used to the software a little. But right now I am going to jump to the About.com Web site, where there is a lot of fine inspirational information to keep me going exploring software like this. Also, importantly for me, a pile of tutorials in Corel Painter.

I have started playing around with Corel Painter and the more I get into this program, the more I like it.

Corel Painter enables you to create digital works that, for all the world, could be paintings. It has a huge array of markers, from acrylics to watercolour, with chalk, pastels, oils, conte, pencils, pens and loads more along the way. And for each of these, there is a stunning set of sub-choices – size, texture, opacity and the like. I can’t believe that there would be anyone who would fail to find his or her favourite tool.

Lots more: shapes, cloning, layers, transparency, blending … everything you could want. But a devil of a learning curve. Luckily, in About.com, there are lots of tutorials and I am sure you would find stuff elsewhere also to help. I followed one of the tutorials in doing my peaches painting above and it was a breeze.

The thing about these tutorials is that you learn one or two simple things, and whole new processes are opened up, things to do to create a picture. Doing it is what matters, reading a manual or the help file is only helpful when you have a basic idea what you are doing and need to check some aspect of how to do it.

There are lots of choices to make the sort of finish you want to see, whether paper, canvas, linen, wood grain and so on.

I love learning this and using it! Having done a bit of painting with oils and acrylics and quite a lot of drawing, it is amazing how real the experience feels. The best bit is when you do the shadows and make your subject jump from the surface. Give it a go!

Another thing – now I can do pictures like this, I can make all sorts of new cards!

I should say that I have no connection with Corel Corporation.

Having a bit of spare time at the shopping centre yesterday, I took it into my head to buy myself a book or magazine. So I went first to the bookshop, one of the bigger chains of bookshops in Australia.

I was in the fiction area staring dully at the shelves of mediocre muck that passes for “good reading” these days when a grey-haired be-spectacled woman bobbed up at my elbow.

“Can I help you?”

“Well,” I said, quick as a flash, “do you have At Home in the Fields of the Lord by Peter Matthiessen?”

Gulp. “Err, no, I haven’t heard of that one. Home in the …”

“At Home in the Fields of the Lord” I said, ever the pedant.

“Ahh … no. What sort of books do you usually read?”

“Picture books, mainly.”  Looking back on it, this was probably not helpful.

“Do you like murder books?”

“No.”  “Could you get that book for me?”

“Home in the …”

“At Home …”

We went to the counter and her computer.

“Home in the Fields of the Lord?”

“At Home in the Fields of the Lord.”

She types into the computer … “Hum …. it’s not coming up. Is this a new book?”

“Oh good grief no it is quite old.”

“We’ll try by author. M-a …”

“M-a-t-t …”

“M-a-t-t …”

“..h-i-e ..”

“..h-i-e ..”

“s-s-e-n.”

“s-s-e-n. Matthiessen,” she said. … “I’ve got a Stephen Matthiessen.”

“It’s Peter.”

“Stephen …”, as if to say “Will that do?” Trying to help.

“It’s Peter.”

“What’s it about?”

“Well, err, um, I don’t know actually, I’ve seen the film but that doesn’t necessarily relate to the book, does it?” I said in a smart alecky sort of way, feeling some futility creeping in. Maybe if I had read the book I could tell her about it, but then I wouldn’t want to buy it, would I?

“What sort of book is it?”

Stumped by this question and momentarily forgetting the word literature, I went off at a tangent: “Do you know Vladimir Nabokov?”

I think she had paled by now. Or maybe I had. Or more likely I was getting flushed.

“I’ve heard the name. Can I help with anything else?”

Help? Help? “No thanks, I’ll just browse a bit.”

I had a look at the photography books, then shuffled out soon after, not giving her a glance, to look at the magazines in the newsagent’s shop next door.

I remembered on the way home that the book is called “At Play in the Fields of the Lord”. Help me, someone …

I have been really enjoying playing around learning a bit about Corel Painter – the best painting program around, I reckon. A steep learning curve but my first effort turned out like this:

Now, I know this is a bit messy – that is partly my style – if I wanted a photo-realistic image I would grab a photo. But I think I have got the essence of Tom, with that hat, the tilt of the head and especially the distinguishing upper and bottom lip. Maybe not too well, but I am pleased with this first effort. I’ll get better – I hope! – as I do more.

I think it is obvious that I started with an image of Tom. I found I could do a beautiful clone/copy, but what would be the point of that? Corel Painter has such a choice of media – maybe 40 or so markers, brushes of all kinds, oils, acrylics, pencils, chalk, pastel … and so many choices within each category it is a bit overwhelming. But if you want to make a mark of some kind, I am sure there will be the tool to do it for you.

If you have ever done real painting, and I have, then you will be delighted with the feel of this program and I thoroughly recommend it to you. And no mess to clean up afterwards!

I should say I have nothing to do with nor do I represent the Corel corporation.

When you get a shot like this (unprocessed, straight from the camera, taken from a bus window):

… would you:

• straighten it?
• crop it?
• make it black and white/greyscale?
• or, just maybe — ditch it!

… or some combination of these effects? Go on, tell me, I want to know.

I suspect it depends on what the image is for.

I have just had a great trip to Sydney. Several things were going for it, to make it a good one:

• The weather was excellent for mid-winter.
• I was going to what turned out to be an exciting recital by Ustad Amjad Ali Khan – one of the most esteemed players of the Indian sarod. He was accompanied by two tabla drummers.
• I caught up with my elder daughter
• I had a great chance to get some photographs—for various reasons I have been starved of taking photographs for some time and I have been longing to get to the city to make a change from the lines of nature I am stuck with otherwise in our lakes and beaches. Not that I should complain about the lakes and beaches—surely there is an infinity of pictures in these subjects. But I just wanted a change.

Before I line up my thoughts on some of the music and other experiences I enjoyed, here’s a teaser in the form of one of the snaps I got (as I said, more by luck than judgement). This old guy was on a bench by the hotel I used.

resting

For what it is worth:

My PC collected a Trojan somewhere along the line, it was opening Internet Explorer and going to various gaming sites.

I tried cleaning it out with Windows Defender – detected nothing. Then I tried the avast! Anti-Virus software – nothing.

I found something called SUPERanitspyware, downloaded it and it found a heap of malware, which it corralled and then deleted for me.  Nice, no more problems.

I have no connection to any of the organisations that provide these products (all of which are free, by the way, there is only so much you can do as a pensioner).

I like playing around with software. Not so I can produce wonderful presentations (gah! is the day of PowerPoint over yet?), slides, images and so on. But just for the fun of seeing what software is and what it does.

[Forgive me if you have read me going on about this before, but it comes up each time I find a new toy.]

Well, a new toy I have found. It is the Google (yes, them again) sidebar.  I found a link to it from Wired How-To (link on Wired’s main page), one of my favourite places on the Web or should that be on the Internet, I know they are different but cannot remember which is which.

Firstly, here’s a screenshot of it, along with the Web page where I found the link to Google’s bits and pieces, listed along with lots and lots of other how-tos under the heading of software.

There is a how-to on the Wired site under another heading, Be an Expert on Anything, which I wish I had read forty or fifty years ago.

Things I like about it include:

• it lists and lets me play with my recent Google online docs
• it doesn’t get hidden by your browser window and is easily hidden (for more room on the desktop, for example) although at the moment I have forgotten how to do that!
• it gives me local news headlines
• it tells me the weather in Sydney (we are a bit north of Sydney, but Sydney is what we would call home, I think)
• it’s got a nice analogue clock, which I love
• it cycles through the pictures on my hard drive
• it has an easy-to-use scratch pad
• it has Web clips (haven’t explored this yet)
• there is a host of other gadgets I can load

The sharp-eyed among you will note that I am using Orca browser and no doubt say “what the hell??!!”.  Well, it’s different and actually pretty fast, got lots of nice things about it and I like playing with software, remember?

You’ll find the Orca browser here if you are interested.  I suppose it’s unlikely you’ll be as mad as me.  It calls itself “the fastest browser on earth”.  This is good for folk like me who have not a second to waste.

Just digressing for the moment, but still on software, I have been trying Corel’s Photo Paint in lieu of Adobe Photoshop and I like it a lot. It’s not high-charged like Corel’s more powerful Paint Shop Pro, which rrivals Photoshop, but I am finding these Corel products a nice change. Corel Photo Paint is good and simple and I find there is little that I can’t do easily without going to Adobe Photoshop.  But don’t trust its “Auto Adjust” feature. Unless you are actually looking for weird effects.  I think it is only available as part of Corel’s CorelDRAW Graphics Suite.