I decided to take a multi-media computer arts class next. Combining different types of art is what I do. It’s what drives me… (crazy)… It’s why I never get anything done…

But the idea of making art out of little dots of light is just so appealing, so deceptively simple in theory and so hard in real life. Ask any of the great impressionist painters. They all went mad and cut off their ears…

Here is me, (or, here I am, or there I was, whatever), in those glorious days of being a college student…

So youthful, so full of dreams…

My teacher was a wonderful Irish lady we all called Dr. Katie. We were all crazy about her.

I learned a lot in her class, but she trusted us to work unsupervised, and we may have occasionally abused the privilege somewhat. I downloaded a lot of military pictures and photos of monuments and cool backgrounds onto those old disks I just opened. In my defense, I was trying to learn Photoshop, and needed a lot of material to play with, so it was, more or less, school related. (You do not have to be as self-absorbed as me and use your own faces to learn Photoshop, but I found that my never-ending fascination with myself helped keep me motivated).

I remember one day when Dr. Katie left us to our own devices… (ha, that was almost a joke… speaking of which, this is a joke that I made up and told to all the computer nerds in class, which made me somewhat popular for a time; ‘Hey, I think there is something wrong with my Zip drive… my disk keeps popping out’). There were not very many students in class, so I decided to use some of our ‘devices’ for a little fun. I got on an empty row of computers and logged into some chat room on like six machines, as Arty 1, Arty 2, and so on. Then I put a sticky note on each monitor with a personality type written on it. I was ‘grouchy’ Arthur, ‘sarcastic’ Arthur, ‘nice’ Arthur, ‘mean’ Arthur, ‘smart’ Arthur, and ‘dumb’ Arthur, if I recall correctly. Then I took part in that chat room as sort of an idiot-savant with multiple personalities… (It was a multi-media class, after all).

I would enter a conversation or start a new conversation as nice Arthur, roll my rolling chair down the row to a new computer, and chime in as bad Arthur or dumb Arthur, and then roll to the next personality. I would contradict myself, or stand up for myself, or curse myself, depending on the personality type on the sticky note. And I had opinions for every topic those people in the chat room wanted to discuss. Some of my opinions were less than positive, but you could always count on nice Arthur to come to your defense. And his own defense, for that matter. Those people did not know what to make of me…(us)… Since my different characters were all logged in separately on separate machines, they must have wondered what the heck was going on.  My fellow students took my wackiness in stride. Oh, college life…

We did do actual projects in class. With a partner, a smart guy named Mark, I started a project called B.L.In.C., which stood for Business-Learning Interface Connection. It was a plan to connect local businesses with students in the graphic and computer arts classes in a sort of intelligent internship program where students could connect with their future employers so the students could focus their learning on what they would really need to succeed in actual jobs. For their part, the companies would get free interns helping them out, and then later could hire people who already knew how to do what was needed. This seems like a brilliant idea to me, and the only reason it didn’t take off is because some idiot… (uh, me)… put me in charge. We put together proposals and brochures and contact numbers and we had students ready to go. Then I got busy, and that was that.

Here is some of our early concept art… (all I could find on the disks that I could open. Unfortunately, all the Word documents refused to open)…

What I got busy with was the next big class project. We worked in association with the Natural History Museum in Balboa Park. They needed a touch-screen-friendly program for their upcoming Mummies of Ancient Egypt exhibit. The whole class worked on it. The program ran on computers put on pedestals around the exhibit hall. There were photos, maps, history lessons and funny artwork of all kinds. And I never even got a copy of the final project. All I have left are these two little guys from a series of pictures I created, and that we… (by which I mean the smart kids in the class)…animated to carve obelisks and build pyramids…

(They were a lot more interesting when they moved)…

Meanwhile, when I was at home, I was playing with all those downloaded pictures and scans of my head. I didn’t start off being good at Photoshop, trust me…

I wonder why I painted over my hair???…

Remember, learn from the process, and have fun!!!

Just start with a simple picture…

And let your mind wander… (You may not start out as good at letting your mind wander as I have always been… it’s a gift)…

You have nowhere to go but up…

And it slowly begins to come together…

*** (If I am boring you with too many details of my life, please leave a comment below… or if you want more details, I can do that, too)***