catpea

https://www.catpea.com/ custom code exploring github editable data, that is then processed into a local .cache folder and made into an express (JS) website which I then spider to convert into a static version.

UI uses bootstrap with minor modifications.

Compilation is handeled via https://github.com/catpea/eternia which I can't replace with hugo, as I want to have a notion of books, playlists, maybe javascript apps in some articles. I need a custom static site generator.

I am learning how to Narrate audiobooks while reading my own poetry, and learning how to write out philosophical ideas in the process.

I also convert the audio into simple videos on youtube, and recently uploaded a 70+ hour behemoth to the Internet Archive (3.6GB) https://archive.org/details/@catpea-com

I recommend making an audio recording of your writings (I use audacity and a mic with a pop/plosive filer) even if just for your family for 50 or a 100 years from now.

I have no views, I have no time to argue with people which is why I keep away from social media, I only have time make a stranger laugh (I do digital portraits on reddit and occasionally compose a weird song on youtube).

As to the content it self, I am just exploring random subjects, that capture my own curiosity. It is nothing special, it will take me a couple more decades to grow into a writer. This is my start.

Currently I am babbling about digital painting, previously 3D Printing, Music Composition, Circuit Design, Programming, Teaching, Dancing (I dance to Blanco Brown https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7U6AoZ27yE at the gym every day I can't help it), Bicycling, Camping, and sending people on the Appalachian trail: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPSvdKTEZug

I host with vercel, as a hobby project. If you want to grab all the audio, use the archive.org or youtube. The archive.org link has everything one file, and youtube has a playlist you can hop around.

I am not a fan of ads, I understand YouTube maybe running their own ads on videos I did not monetize. If I recorded a video of my readings, and did video editing, I would regret putting all that time into videos that now would have ads between them.

I like being a narrator, not a fan of videos, decades from now I'll write an AudioBook, in which I complain about High School.

I just added couple more, here are the video versions:

Stanislav Petrov: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7EmLf4Xlq0

Oleg Antonovich Gordievsky: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yprpoPc2g0k

Vasili Arkhipov: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLokpu4ixQE

According to some comments "The Collapse Of Communism: The Untold Story" is a movie about Oleg Antonovich Gordievsky and there is a book "The Spy and the Traitor."

And Stanislav Petrov has a movie as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTFUqnY3E3Q

Maybe this imperfect selection of mostly off topic videos can help a tiny bit:

Here is Eric's Freedom Downtime: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WN4fCK23Srk

Captain Crunch, and Woz: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FufYSx2_6Bg

Evil Society Whose Plot Was To Control The Word: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDk82bLYscg

Spot a fed 14: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMHZ4qQuYyE

And Loyd: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tEnnvZbYek

(Wasn't there a huge documentary about Legion Of Doom, or was that a book?)

I just love how he explains this fancy piece: https://web.archive.org/web/20010810133642fw_/http://davinci...

"Despite its 3D appearance, this interface is 100% hand painted in Adobe Photoshop 5.0 using the airbrush tool. No plugins of any kind were used. All shading and highlights are carefully applied by hand. Although very time consuming, this method affords the artist greater control as opposed to letting the computer decide how it should look. ;)"

Photoshop 5 came out in 1998, so this maybe 25 years old. It is still really good, it makes me want to install enlightenment and play with the settings:

https://web.archive.org/web/20020203085841/http://enlightenm...

DaVinci's website is 25+ years old now. In some way the art is from the beginning of the earliest more creative websites.

1024x760, for some, is a statement that demands a decent computer. A lot of people had 800x600 resolution. And DaVinci Ice made it clear that his art required more.

I hate to say, but by internet standards the website is an archaeological artifact.

The web.archive.org link shows the last time the site was up. It is gone now. Goggle returns nothing. The subdomain return DNS errors.

As to the UX. Back then we used to put up these dumb a$$ door pages, before you entered a website. It is like a splash screen, in many ways.

And this was right after 9/11 so DaVinci Ice passionately, and angerly, put up the banner.

This is the world of the old Hacker Manifesto, my friend. Which is extremely valid today due to the nuclear threat just made on the free world.

I am sorry, but the past must not be forgotten. Even if it does not work well on modern gadgets.

Here is another piece of history, from that era, The Hacker manifesto in text, not crazy HTML goofyness.

http://www.phrack.org/archives/issues/7/3.txt

And here is Loyd Blankenship himself, with annoying microphone noise:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tEnnvZbYek

I never knew who DaVinci Ice was, I just came across his work on the internet, and loved the colors and art so much, that I remembered to look him up 20+ years after that.

I also posted a link to Fravia, https://fravia.net/ which may even be more confusing.

It breaks my heart to know he passed away in 2009: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fravia

(Ps, to me the modern web is broken, my general purpose computer can't handle javascript, I love my PI Zero and this other cheap $35 thing that can't render big images without crashing. I can't view many sites, most. And I only know instagram as a website with thots that was bough by facebook. I never got it to render on my screen and I don't care enough to pull it up on my desktop.)

I am sorry, I wish the website worked for you the way it used to in 2000. That art was amazing, still is.

DaVinci Ice is part of the internet, he created very pretty Photoshop works for people with good taste. I spent days trying to photoshop like him, and when I saw the lighter he engraved I died. He was just too good.

I'll help you with Leonardo. Firstly, it is sad, but not everyone can afford Photoshop. And when we speak on the internet, we don't just reply to each other, but to all. So we must switch to an Open Source alternative here.

We have two influential programs GIMP, and Krita. While I love GIMP, there is something special inside Krita. The Image Reference Tool sits above the window, it allows you to stretch a "meta-layer" over the layers of your art.

Fury, Anger, Contempt, results.

The old artists turn in their graves. Leonardo becomes secretly green with envy, and Salvador Dalí is ready to rise with a "handful" to throw at the critics.

If you allow a young artist to stretch a reference image over the entire canvas, and set the opacity to 50%, and create a camera obscura, for free, and effortlessly.

If you allow a young artist to trace original photos under Krita... like Leonardo they will be able to study, the color, the cheeks, the invisible details.

Come to RGD https://www.reddit.com/r/redditgetsdrawn/ grab a image of the face, make sure you have pen and tablet, and trace.

Day by day, you can build your own Codex Leicester by tracing one one side, and note taking on the other.

Search for "how to sell digital art" and platforms that allow you to put up paywalls, and teach others how to build their own Codex Leicester.

Do not let lairs trick you out of the practice of art, by convincing you that you must immediately know how to draw a face.

They are using imperfect techniques: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UaDogDQdpws

You are more than mnemonics, you are a genius, always have been: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQPEZdBTOeE

Art has always called to you, and art it is an important part of every human being.

And if someone ever tells you that what you do is not art, know that they are mad, and you are free to invent your own movement.

bryanrasmussen the best way to study the way Leonardo DaVinci did, is to begin with hyper realism in Krita. And if you are not a fan of computers then just use a wall projector, and glass for mixing and testing your colors (place the glass over your reference image to match the color you are mixing).

As to replicating the Codex Leicester art style on paper search for "sanguine pencil" that will come really close, here you can project a face outline using a mini projector, often called a pico projector.

Don't let anybody trick you into practicing the face shape first, you learn or memorize that automatically as you jump past this step (with reference images or projectors) and dive right into the gentle shadows, right into giving outlines life.

Should this approach prove to be beneath you (or other commenters in here), help the little ones, anyway. Help children begin with hyperrealism, and unencumbered with shame of nonsense, as they are - they'll become great artists in no time.

Learning how to draw, sharing your work, outgrowing realism taking to impressionism, pop surrealism, is such a critical part of out growing up, that if bad advice knocks it out of you, you'll end up with a hole in your soul.

People will comment that I am making assumptions, and snipe everything in here, but be strong, do what I tell you, because even YOUR first impression may be wrong.

I give you, and all the kind people that read this, Hyper Realism, as your first step.

Because making a perfect portrait is the simplest thing you can do.

Before you draw, before you get your pencils, your easel, before it occurs to you to get a wall projector (a modern camera obscura):

download Krita!

And buy the cheapest pen ant tablet you can get (about $40). Don't use the mouse, because it does not have a pressure sensor.

That is what the pen is for, the tip is pressure sensitive, and allows you to lay down transparent layers of paint.

If all you have is a mouse at the moment, then that is OK for following these steps. But get the pen, a mouse is nothing like it. Warning: the mouse may trick you into thinking digital painting is not for you, buy a used pen.

Before I continue, I remind you all, that as you learn how to do this one simple trick, you must become teachers. This is the tradition of the programmer, you learn and you teach the little ones how to do it. They won't learn in school, schools, like bad advice, will trick the younger artist out of art.

(Critics, keep in mind that this is teaches about drawing, it helps the heart to art, this is sacred, just let it be. And remember how internet works, one person asks, but the response is for many. I know the person asked for drawing and not digital painting. This teaches pencil drawing too.)

Once you have krita (which is open source) installed create 15x15 inch 300 dpi canvas.

Go to https://www.reddit.com/r/redditgetsdrawn/ and pick a simple well lit face, make sure you can see the lip/eye details at 1:1 zoom, though a little bit of blur won't hurt you, as you have to paint many paintings to to learn how to draw.

Now, and this is the magical part, use the Reference Images Tool (pushpin icon) to load up the image from Reddit Gets Drawn, AND STRETCH IT OVER THE ENTIRE CANVAS. This will feel like tracing, people may call it tracing, but this is learning to draw for real. This is about discovering the details of the face.

Begin by setting the opacity of the reference image to 50% and rough out the details, the shape of the face, the location of the eyes, assign a shortcut to CTRL+` to "Show Reference Images" which will help you turn the reference image off and on. This is your CAMERA OBSCURA, here you get everything in place for your Hyper Realism.

Once you have your shapes figured out, preferably on separate layers, DROP THE REFERENCE IMAGE OPACITY TO 1%, you won't be able to see it, BUT THE COLOR PICKER WIL, Holding down the CTRL key flips your brush into color picker mode, so you pick the color and brush it on, PICK AND BRUSH IT ON, PICK AND BRUSH IT ON, PICK AND BRUSH IT ON.

As you explore this technique studying your reference image, trying different variations of the technique, YOUR BRAIN, will begin soaking up details about the face, that you never knew existed. The little puffyness near the eye, the light that is always by the cheeks, the light pink near the lips, the support shadow beneath the nose.

The more you paint, the more you will learn how to draw.

NOTES:

Reddit Gets drawn has this happy clause: "By submitting a photo, submitters are agreeing that artists can distribute and sell work based on the photos uploaded."

Be mindful of copyright look up Shepard Fairy's trouble with the Obama HOPE poster.

Search the internet for "How do I sell my digital art."

Teach others how to do this.

And finally, when I hope to teach this technique, I half-jokingly call this the Cat Pea Technique.

I arrived at it independently about three weeks ago, and I kind of captured the beginning of the light bulb going off, in a silly time lapse video of a very patient and lind lady from Reddit Gets Drawn: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ov9m1iTJgSk&list=PLOo-pqnffy...

I am not selling anything, the video has only 7 views, and no sound, use an ad blocker, etc.

I am really just giving you all the ability to learn Art VERY QUICKLY from Hyper Realistic Digital Painting, which is a very inspiring start.

I know it will work for many if not all of you, because once you finish your first work, you will never stop.

We are all artists, we just need that first taste.

Thanks for bringing this question to the front page autotune.

Take care everyone, and remember to teach others.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPSvdKTEZug