Road Gear: Rand McNally Road Atlas

Atlas deployed on the northwestern side of Mt Shasta during my most recent road trip to Vancouver, BC

The Sketchbook Project 2015 is back on the road.
See mine and more in Chicago this weekend.

Chicago, IL

• Chicago Loop Alliance
• 310 S State St - Chicago, IL 60604
• August 22-23: 12:00 — 4:00pm

RSVP

Road Gear Sketch: Power Strip

I pack a power strip on almost every trip I take.

On the Edge trip as captured in Van Horn, TX: 

In the car en route to Vancouver helping charge the extra camera battery:

Right now in NYC!

The Sketchbook Project 2015 is back on the road.
See mine and more in Seattle this weekend.

Seattle, WA
Olympic Sculpture Park
2901 Western Ave - Seattle, WA 98121

Thursday 8/13: 5 - 8pm
Friday 8/14: 11am - 3pm
Saturday 8/15: 11am - 3pm
RSVP

Road Gear Sketch: DC/AC Converter

Put back into service on my latest road trip up to Vancouver, BC:

The Sketchbook Project 2015 is back on the road.
See mine and more in the SF Bay area this weekend.

Oakland, CA

• First Friday Art Murmur
• Oakland, CA 94606
• RSVP

San Francisco, CA

• The Yard at Mission Rock
• 3rd St andTerry A Francois Blvd - San Francisco, CA 94158
• RSVP

Road Gear Sketch: Laptop

My laptop was the hub of my media downloading during the 2014 trip. All my photos from the iPhone and the point and shoot, the lame Narrative captures, and the Brinno time-lapse videos went onto the laptop (and then got archived onto an external hard drive).

Here is my "office" on Block Island:

Some view, right?

The Road Gear sketchbook is back in Brooklyn for the month of July.
Check it out at:

Brooklyn Art Library
103A North 3rd St.
Brooklyn, NY 11249
Open 11am-7pm every day

Road Gear Sketch: iPad and Waterlogue

As described previously, I used the Waterlogue App to create artwork for the On the Edge: US show held last year. Last year my phone was too old (and full of stuff) to update to iOS6, which was required to run Waterlogue [now it's iOS7]. My iPad came to the rescue. I had to go through a very convoluted process to get the images onto the iPad for processing (more on that later) and it was well worth it.

Watching Waterlogue "paint" is hypnotic. Here's a sample for your viewing pleasure:

The Road Gear sketchbook is back in Brooklyn for the month of July.
Check it out at:

Brooklyn Art Library
103A North 3rd St.
Brooklyn, NY 11249

Open 11am-7pm every day

Road Gear Sketch: Narrative Clip

Such high hopes for this device. Such utter failure.

I knew, days after getting it, that it wouldn't work for the road trip.
[I thought I wrote about it here, but apparently not. Maybe on Facebook? Nope.]
It arrived on March 5th. I was leaving March 27.

Here is a section of captures from my first road test on March 6th, during my morning commute:

not good

On March 14, I went to Plan B and ordered a Brinno Time Lapse Camera (more on that next week later).

During my trip, I made further attempts at utilizing the Narrative.
Here I am wearing it in New Orleans:

Here are the sorts of captures it took:

I wore it on the left temple of my sunglasses while driving:

In North Carolina, 4/13/14. The last day I bothered to use it.

The Road Gear sketchbook is back in Brooklyn for the month of July.

Check it out at:

Brooklyn Art Library
103A North 3rd St.
Brooklyn, NY 11249

Open 11am-7pm every day

Road Gear Sketch: Camera

Meet the device that didn't fail:

Here it is in situ, in an easy place for grabbing and snapping. 

You can also see my mobile lunch (guacamole and carrots) and the iPod. 

I "may" have been driving when I shot this photo. 

The Sketchbook Project Tour has landed in my hometown, at LACMA, no less.

Los Angeles, CA 
Friday 6/26: 4:30pm - 8:30pm 
Saturday 6/27: 3:30pm - 7:30pm 
Sunday 6/28: 12pm - 4pm 
Los Angeles County Museum of Art 
RSVP

Road Gear Sketch: iPhone

Page 2 of my Road Gear Sketchbook (edited copy of post from my Sketch blog):

I wonder why I didn't put this first in the sketchbook. I relied heavily on my iPhone. 

For navigating especially:

Ha! "327 miles" 

This was my first long trip using the Maps App. The directions cracked me up when I saw them. 

Not so funny was my ETA that night. 

The phone did have moments of nav fail. After a particularly frustrating episode in Eagle Pass, Texas (lack of bandwidth while looking for motel), I started writing out any route directions:

Then there was the sad moment of breakage, in Cut Bank, MT:

Next rest stop for the Sketchbook Road Tour, lifted from The Sketchbook Project's Facebook page:

Our Mobile Library will be popping up at South Austin Social on June 19th -21st.
Events are always free and open to the public! We hope to see you there!

Friday, June 19th 4:00-8:00pm (Opening party hosted by Citygram Mag!)
Saturday, June 20th 12:00pm-4:00pm
Sunday, June 21st 12:00pm - 4:00pm

South Austin Social
409 Jessie St
Austin, TX 78704

FRIDAY NIGHT PARTY:

COME ENJOY SOME FREE BEER FROM ST. ARNOLD'S BREWERY, LIVE MUSIC, AND DELICIOUS EATS AS YOU PERUSE THE SKETCHBOOK PROJECT’S MOBILE LIBRARY.

WHILE YOU’RE THERE, CREATE A PAGE IN CITYGRAM’S COMMUNITY SKETCHBOOK, WHICH WILL HIT THE ROAD WITH THE TOUR THIS YEAR.

See all tour dates here on Facebook

Road Gear Sketch: iPod

The Sketchbook Project is a crowd-sourced collection of artists' sketchbooks that is housed in Brooklyn. I've submitted a variety of sketchbooks to their collection and my Road Gear sketchbook is the most recent addition.

I sketched all the electronic gear (plus some other must-haves) that I used on my On the Edge US road trip last spring. I'd been posting these on my Sketch blog but realized that there's more to the story and the story belongs here.

This first sketch I think I did last May at my mom's house.

I have more than 6400 songs on this old iPod, it has traveled many, many miles with me.
For the Edge trip, I set it on "Album Shuffle".
Here is the first song that played:

One of the most amazing moments of aural synchronicity was in St Augustine, Florida:

The sketchbook is currently out on a road trip of its own, riding in the Sketchbook Project Mobile Library with about 4500 other sketchbooks.
It's in Miami this Saturday and Sunday!

Saturday 6/13: 12:30 - 4:30

• Perez Art Museum
• 1103 Biscayne Blvd - Miami, FL 33130

Sunday, 6/14: 12:00 - 4:00pm
• MDC Museum of Art + Design
• 600 Biscayne Blvd. - Miami, FL 33132
See the full schedule here.

Gear: Still Waiting

LINKS/ 

Very soon, my new little time lapse clip-on camera will arrive. Since I last posted, the company had to change the name to Narrative due to potential legal actions. I'm looking forward to road testing it!

Update: Argh! Pushed out until 12/16. Oh the anticipation!

2nd Update, 12/14: Now pushed out until 2/17. WAY too close to my departure date.
Must figure out a Plan B STAT.

3rd Update, 1/25: Relieved that ETS is the same as last month.

Gear: Memoto Lifelogging Camera

LINKS/ 

I think I've found my camera for the trip:
I just bought preordered the camera for my trip:

[photo + logo grabbed from Memoto's press kit]

I first learned about the Memoto on Kickstarter last October. It sounded like a really cool concept: a tiny digital camera that takes a photo every 30 seconds with geolocating and cloud storage. No need to offload anything to my laptop or an external hard drive! No need to convert data-heavy video files! The option to share road photos while I'm on the road! Yes, sign me up! At the time, I was too broke to pledge the $249 for one. But I never forgot it. It haunted my road trip visions.

So today I pre-ordered a graphite grey one (I'd love an orange one, but am being practical and thinking about window reflections). As soon as it arrives, I'll take it for a test drive down PCH, from Point Mugu to Santa Monica. Stay tuned!

Note: I have received no compensation from Memoto for this post.

Greetings From: 90066

LINKS/ 

Big new project! [originally posted here on 6/10/10]

I've told some of you about the Big Road Trip that I'm plotting for 2014. I'm calling it "On the Edge" and just now registered the domain on-the-edge.us. After I figure out the "Name Server" stuff, I'll have linkage.

I plan to circumnavigate the US by car on State Highways as close as possible to the perimeter of the contiguous 48 US states. (I might actually have to start earlier, since I want to be in South Carolina in March when my Mom is there). I'm going to crowd fund it on IndieGoGo and need to figure out what kind of artwork I'm going to generate out on the road for donor rewards and such.

The California coast provides a good stretch of highways that are conveniently close to my abode, so I'm using them to perform experiments. Part of my concept is to tape the entire journey out the passenger side window. I obtained a cheap webcam that I can attach to my laptop to directly download the video to my hard drive. I gave it a test run when we drove to Encinitas a few weeks ago.

Reenactment of setup
(hope it's obvious webcam not on!)

On Friday, I was stuck with a long Dr visit wait and took along the laptop to try to see what art I could come up with. I scanned quickly through the footage and found this bit with a slice of the Pacific:

The screen grab from the video

First idea: sketching from screen grab.
Verdict: too drab, needs color.

Next idea: Repaint image in Corel Painter
Verdict: LIKE!
Note to self: next time, attach the Wacom tablet -- finger twiddling on laptop is DIFFICULT

I feel like I'm off to a good start.
Next, I need to spray paint the webcam black to cut down on window reflections and make some kind of rigid platform to hold the laptop.
I'll try it out on Oxnard to Santa Monica on PCH/CA 1. Stay tuned!