Jan
27
This portrait is somewhat out of sequence in relation to the recent paintings. It’s from one of my sketchbooks and I rattled it off in about twenty minutes one evening in early December 2011. It was one of those sketches that simply drew itself; every line seemed right and the whole thing was effortless – …
Jan
27
This Prezi is serves as a brief introduction to the differences between critical and creative thinking and was created as part of the course material for tutorial sessions delivered to Industrial Design students at Coventry University. Some of the notes are based on an article by Robert Harris, An Introduction to Creative Thinking, 1998. I’ve …
Jan
22
Creativity is intoxicating stuff. Anxious to keep my painting momentum going, I thought I’d have a go at a quick sketch, just to keep things moving. For this picture I painted with the surface horizontal as I looked upwards into the mirror. The diffuse tungsten lighting was largely from behind and a bit to the …
Jan
20
It’s no secret that I’ve come to despise the Apple organisation and all it stands for. [No neutral opinion from me!] Apple’s determination to control and screw content providers and consumers alike knows no limits. But even by my contemptuous pronouncements on their activities this is a whole new level of outrage from Ed Botts …
Jan
19
OU students who are or once were enrolled on the U101: Design & Creative Thinking in the 21st Century will no doubt recall the TMA11 assignment, which despite the odd numerical sequencing, is actually the first TMA that U101 students encounter on the module. For those who aren’t familiar with it, the nature of the …
Jan
12
The quest to dust off the old painting skills continues. Another self-portrait I’m afraid; largely for the same reason I did the first one! This self-portrait is larger than life-size which is the first time I’ve ever approached a portrait in this way and it took a little while to correctly eyeball the proportions and …
Jan
03
In a previous post I opined, more or less, that in design specialisms such as interface design, for example, any quest for some sort of universally intuitive solution is unequivocally doomed to failure. The reason for this, I argued, is that before any user of interface-driven devices can get to grips with them they must, …
Jan
02
According to John Singer Sargent, “A portrait is a painting with something wrong with the mouth”. I know precisely what he means. Over the recent Christmas break I decided that I’d make an effort to get back to painting again. It came as a shock to realise that I hadn’t painted at all in more …
Dec
22
In the worlds of ergonomics and user experience design it seems that one of the most desirable of all outcomes – the golden ideal – is to conjure up a solution that, while it may be novel in concept to new users, is nevertheless rapidly and painlessly understood and absorbed by novitiates when encountered for …
Nov
16
It is now virtually impossible to escape advertising. There is seemingly no piece of real estate or virtual space too small to hold an advert. Brands now pay games developers to place adverts and sponsor notices inside virtual worlds. Fill up at a petrol station and look at the pump handle – and there’s an …
Loading tweets...
Recent Comments