Down Time With An iPad

I think that every now and then people, creative people especially, need to get away. In an age of never being turned off with cell phones, smart phones (well you'd think if they were so smart they'd leave us alone right?) the Internet, the need to just tune out is greater now than ever. I read once the most popular vacation sites are those completely cut off from the, well, the world, the entire world. There are those in the medical community who are concerned about all this "connectness." We never turn ourselves off. For the first time in decades the stress of modern living may have stopped our advance to longer lives. There are signs already that we may be dying younger.

After a few days of relaxing and recovering from a nasty illness of one kind or another, I've found out that at first I was bored, then realized I finally had time to read a book NOT art related in any way to art or crafts. Solving mysteries in Botswana brings back memories of simpler Peace Corps times.


While my art materials were far away, I still had my iPad. For the first time in a long time I launched an art program and started doing some abstract art I've been reluctant to do with real paint and canvases. My oh my. What fun. Make a mistake and you simply undo. Can't stand that color, a few pokes and another is in its place. It's ecologically PC and you can create, save, start another till you run out of memory. There is a freedom that is unexpected. You create with no more boundaries than your screen and it appears memory.

This is no work of art by any means. However, it represents several hours of playing around, blending, erasing, learning how the tools work and what those tools do.  Ironically these digital tools act exactly as the real thing. I didn't use and in this case waste a drop of paint.

So much for down time though. Or is it? Playing on my iPad is just that. There is no pressure to produce, there are, at least for now no great expectations to produce anything. It provides the luxury of experimenting, just seeing what happens without the daily pressure to create. Daily pressures often keep us in safe territory. We burn out because we are caught in a rut. The beauty of digital tablets is that you have the freedom to experiment, stretch your own limits and even venture into a direction you've wanted to venture but felt would lose your audience. Here you can try new ideas, settle certain stylistic techniques, and when confident enough move over to the real thing with a confidence you've already tried.

There will be plenty of downtime this week. Yet, when a artistic thought long hidden appears, I am not without resources. This was created in ArtRage but there are many others to choose from. It's fun, it gives you unimaginable freedom and tablets are more and more affordable. You definitely need to get away but to recharge some of us artistic types need to just play!

Alan

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