Roz Wound Up

Adventures at the Hospital, and a New App

Left: A photo of me that my friend Linda took with her iPhone and altered using the app ToonPaint. Click on the image and view an enlargement. (Check out the fun plant in the background and look at that braid!)

Last weekend was exciting. My friend Linda had to go to the hospital because an infection in her finger turned nasty. Since she was on her own recognizance between the intravenous antibiotic infusions (8 hours apart) and they weren't making her wear hospital garb, we left her room and went adventuring in the hospital complex. I reasoned that if she got weak or tired I could find a wheelchair and get her back to her room.

We searched the hospital high and low for artworks. Abbott Northwestern Hospital is full of them. Linda started at the information desk by asking, "Excuse me I'm staying here and…"

Staying here?! You're a patient! You have an infection!

We laughed and laughed, as did the young woman behind the information desk.

"Do you have a brochure about the art in the hospital?" Linda asked after we had laughed ourselves out.

It turns out they didn't. We went off to discover them on our own. There are some wonderful pieces: prints, originals, and some constructions and sculptures. They all add to the feng shui and ambiance of this hospital. They even have a baby grand player piano in the large main entrance sitting area. It is very hotel like.

The views from the new wing where Linda's room was located are also fantastic. She was up seven flights. You could see across the city, way out to the suburbs. While we checked out the various patios and sunlit sitting rooms we saw the weather of the day change from sunny to stormy, to a dazzling post rainstorm brilliance. 

Along the way Linda took my photo in front of one of the many plants that decorate the hospital. She then applied ToonPaint, an app on her iPhone. I love it. I love all the other ones she had made previously.

When I finally get an iPhone this will be the first app I get!

Linda is home again and doing well. I'm less worried. But as I told her Thursday, "You're all trained in as friendship material. I can't afford to lose you."

I don't know that Linda will have time or inclination to write a brochure about the artwork in Abbott, but there's a lot of it there and if you find yourself in the hospital (which I hope you don't) you really should take advantage of it and check it out.

Note: Linda was not staying in the abandoned Abbott buildings you can find at this flickr site. It's fun to look at those.

Painting on the Computer

photoshop progress - part 1 from Lois van Baarle on Vimeo.

When my friend Tom stopped over the other day I showed him a time-lapse video (that seems to be by someone using the name Design—I can't see any other names even on the "about me" page) of a Photoshop illustration Danny Gregory had recommended.

After Tom and I had watched that Tom had me jump over to the video that starts this post. It's a Photoshop painting by Lois van Baarle. (Be sure to watch the second part as well to see where she ends up with the painting.)

I love both these videos first because the artists are obviously very talented, but second because you see in quick fashion the many little decisions each makes as their paintings progress. You'll see them redraw, rework, rethink. Creating a painting, whether digitally on the computer or with natural media on paper (or canvas or some other substrata) is a process, and sometimes the process changes in midstream.