New paintings for the Shakespeare Collection

Robin's studies of Shakespeare in England are inspiring new canvases here at the Mermaid Tavern. Click images to show an enlargement.

Sad Hours Seem Long 

(40 x 30)

Hamlet Undecided 

(30 x36)

One of 16 images from the next issue of The Shakespeare Papers, on the press now and scheduled to be delivered to subscribers this month. 

Sweet Swan of Avon: The Masters Program in London on Shakespeare Autho...

From Robin's blog:

Sweet Swan of Avon: The Masters Program in London on Shakespeare Autho...: "This is a report on my experience, from Robin Williams Professor William Leahy made history in 2007 when he developed and inaugurated the f..."

Testing a new Safari extension: ScribeFire

The new version of the Safari browser enables you to download "extensions" that add features to the browser. I'm testing ScribeFire, a blogging extension that automatically uploads posts to a blog site from within Safari.

If you have Safari 5.0.1 or higher, you'll find in the Safari menu a link to Safari Extensions Gallery, a page on the Apple site that lists and describes extensions. Also in the Safari menu, choose Preferences and you'll see a new category, "Extensions," where you can manage installed extensions by turning them on or off, or click the "Uninstall" button to remove any extension.

Installing ScribeFire puts a ScribeFire button in the Safari toolbar (a black speech balloon). Click the button to open, in Safari, a window that enables you to add or remove blogs, create new blog articles, and publish to your blog.

You can also schedule when you want the blog to be published, or save it as a draft.

Looks pretty convenient  so far. Except that adding images looks awkward. Click the "Add image" button and a dialog opens asking for the image URL. No images for this test.

When finished, click the "Publish Post" button. Testing, one two three.

Dinner before La Bête

Still catching up on some blog notes and photos:


We picked up our tickets to La Bête with an hour to spare before curtain time. Scarlett and JohnD had spotted a sushi restaurant nearby they wanted to try. Robin and I went to a nice little Italian restaurant across the street from the theater that had a pre-theater menu designed for those of us in a hurry, going to a play. 

While waiting for our spaghetti I pulled out the small sketch book Robin gave me and did a quick sketch of Mark Rylance, using an iPhone photo I had just taken of the play's poster across the street. Robin wrote a note on the sketch (she knows him), tore it out of the sketchbook, and took it to the backstage door of the theater to have it delivered to Mark.

Gobsmacked!

One of the highlights of this trip was to learn exactly what gobsmacked means. This comes straight from Lynn, our friend and Oxford scholar, and verified by her husband Neil who knows a thing or two about gobsmackedness.

When something is so brilliant that you involuntarily get wide-eyed and smack your hand over your gob (your mouth), you're "gobsmacked."

I assumed it was just a goofy, meaningless expression, but nooooo, the British have put a lot of thought into this one. Refer to the attached scientific illustration.

Playing with IPad ArtStudio

The nine hour flight from Heathrow to Houston is the first chance I've had to play with ArtStudio, an app for iPad. The lack of control drawing with a finger on the touchscreen, plus the bumpy motion of the plane, makes for a more primitive and crude sketch, but that's often better than laboring over a more finished one.

Not a great likeness, but you probably guessed who it is, even without reading the caption. And some of you probably guessed Kiki or Louise Brooks.

Drawing session at the Tate Modern

Now that I'm on the flight from Heathrow to Houston I finally have a chance to write some blogs I didn't have time for before. Sometimes we were too busy, sometimes too tired, but most of the time just low quality WiFi service (yes, you Starbucks) or none at all.

I don't have WiFi on this flight (what is this? The dark ages?), but I'll post a few entries as soon as I get a chance, perhaps in Houston.

The drawing session at The Tate was run by two people from something called "drawing London." Just my luck, they decide to get artsy and experimental on the night I attend. Like having the models move continuously, or hold a pose for 30 seconds or so. Or 10 seconds. And no chairs or stools, just sit or kneel on the floor. For two hours. The art materials supplied are a hodgepodge of crayons, dried up markers, pencil and chalks ready for their last strokes.

But hey, it's The Tate, it's after hours, there's a naked model standing in the middle of the room. So I started drawing as fast as I could. Which wasn't anywhere near fast enough. I moved to the other side of the gallery where another model was holding her poses a little longer. But still, by the time I'd drawn an angle of the leg or arm, or two eyebrows for gawd's sake, the model would turn and completely change the pose.

At the end of the class, everyone put their drawings on the floor to show. I took some low- quality, bad-lighting iPhone photos of my favorite ones, including one of the only two of mine that I bothered to keep, titled "Brown paper with masking tape."

Even though I didn't get a lot of good drawings out of it, it was a unique and memorable experience, and a super cool gift from Robin.