Vlogs


Vlogs were new and unfamiliar to me when I first started following one, a little over two years ago. I came across Eight Miles From Home, an almost-daily video diary made by a young English expat couple living in Portugal.

My youtube viewing experience up to that point had consisted primarily of travel videos. Some were slickly produced, like those made by Expedia, or Rick Steves, and some were less so. I was a fan of Kees Colijn’s videos in which he simply turns on a camera and walks, or bikes, around a city for an hour or so. He has made videos in many places, but it was his native Netherlands, particularly Amsterdam, that I was interested in seeing. In true Amsterdam fashion, he shows no fear of getting hit, or running into, cars or bikes.

In the months leading up my trip to Europe in 2016 I watched his videos frequently, whetting my appetite for my travel to come. After my trip, watching one of his walks in Amsterdam, I realized that he was walking through the neighborhood, and within a block, of the apartment I had stayed in. I found this very exciting.

After watching one of my travel videos, youtube had some recommendations for other things I might be interested in, including Eight Miles From Home. I started watching it regularly. The videos are well shot and edited, some of the best I have seen in terms of photography and especially pacing. I find the hosts thoughtful, insightful, and engaging. Jmayel and Sacha seemed basically to be quiet introverts, who found personal value in forcing their personalities outward to do their vlogs, and to live the lives they have wanted.


The image above is a recent drawing of a hinge, and part of a doorway leading to another door. I thought this drawing seemed relevant to the way vlogs cover the small details of their makers' everyday lives. My sketchbook wasn't with me, so I had to draw in my lined notebook intended for verbal notes. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why Am I Doing This?

Image
Why Am I Doing This? I have decided to write a blog about art and travel. Things that I like to think about, and talk about, tend to fall under these categories, so it seems to make sense. Why am I doing this? One reason has to do with something that contemporary artist Vincent Desiderio has said about art making in general, that it is a process of self-enlightenment for the artist. Bo Bartlett, another major contemporary artist, with whom I had the good fortune to study at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, spoke of an idea that I think is similar: making art is a way to wake up. But art serves the viewer, as well as the artist. I hope that this blog, like my artwork, may be interesting and useful to other people. I am working to link this to my Facebook account, which will, I hope, help more people see it. This calm little interface on Blogger that I am now using is more to my taste than is the dense web of information that a Facebook page has to offer. So if I
Read more

Birthday

Image
This is a detail of a painting I am working on. That rectangular shape is the start of a birthay cake. My mother made a cake for me when I was three or four, at the end of the 1960's, or five months into the 1970's. There is a photo of me sitting at the table in the apartment my parents were renting on Montgomery Ave. in Ardmore, with my mother standing nearby and another young person, who I cannot now identify, looking off to the left. The photo is square, the original Instagram, but black and white, not murky 70's color.   In this painting I started painting the cake and the white table cloth in green because I felt like it. I wanted to have my feeling supersede any intrinsic requirements the subject may have presented, for the sake of my ongoing connection to my work. Sometimes when this allowance is made surprising connections are made, or depths are revealed that feel true to the subject. And sometimes the self-satisfying decision can just express my feeling, whic
Read more

William Brymner, Girl with a Dog, Lower Saint Lawrence

Image
This is a sketch from William Brymner’s painting Girl with a Dog, Lower Saint Lawrence, from 1905, and a reproduction of the painting.  The piece caught my attention during a visit to the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in 2017. The subject matter was unusual. A girl sits on the sand, or dirt, wearing what I guess was everyday dress in 1905, and holds a stick in front of her dog. Is she restraining the dog from greeting the viewer? Or is she protecting the dog from us? In the painting she has an expression I would describe as angry or frustrated. I find that my sketch adds more sadness. In the original work she faces the viewer more directly. In the painting she is connected to the land by similarity in value and color, and is held down by a horizontal land form in the middle ground. In my sketch I lightened the light on her hat, separating it from its surrounding values and perhaps connecting it more closely to the sky. I like the comma in the title, separating the protago
Read more