This year I was using one of the pieces that I study each month for my Loring Art Calendar 2013. February is for Dmitry Kabalevsky. I was working on one of his works, the first piece of 24 Pieces for Children, op. 39. Very easy tune. After I started to play it I was listening other works by Kabalevsky, he wrote wonderful works.
First of all, Happy New Year to all my subscribers and visitors! I wish you all a wonderful year. I have not been drawing (nor posting) lately but I have been playing piano (and flute, but it is a different post). So the motif for my Loring Art Calendar 2013 will be one of the pieces that I am working each month. January is for one of my favorite composers: Béla Bartók. I am studying Mikrokosmos, Sz. 107, which consists of 153 progressive piano pieces. The score corresponds to No. 5 Six Unison Melodies (V).
I also want to thanks Carl D’Agostino for his kind post with a couple of my sketches. Please visit and follow his blog I Know I made you smile.
I run my eight marathon tomorrow. I want to improve my personal record on five minutes. I already wanted to improve it on my last marathon and I was not able to do it. It is easy: I must run each kilometer in 5 minutes and 20 seconds. My training pace is under 5′/km. My pace in the latest 10 km race was under 4’30″/km. My personal record in a half marathon is 1h43′. According to these numbers, training tables and tests, I can do it.
So, what is the problem then? I have to maintain that race pace during 42 kilometers and 195 meters (or 26.2 miles). The initial 10 kilometers are easy. I run between 10 and 14 kilometers in each training at least. Even the first half marathon is easy. The main problem arises around the 30-34, the glycogen starts to run low and your body does not obey your brain. We call it the wall. You try to control that moment, you have an arsenal of things that you can apply, but you never are really ready for it. I have seen Paula Radcliffe cried like a child in the wall. Moreover, your brain starts to generate all kind of negative thoughts and you perceive pain in almost all your body. Your brain is lying to you (or not?).
The shoes, watch and the rest of the equipment is ready. I have also decided where to take the glucose gels. And the most important, we have decided the points in which my girlfriend and me will meet: each one of her smiles during the race refuels my deposits for several kilometers more.
All kind of positive thoughts are welcomed. I will need them.
I upload some of my sketches on Flickr. One of its most attractive features is the map: you can geotag your photos –in general, all your material– to show where they are taken. Unfortunately this map can not be easily embedded on websites, thereby I have been maintaining my own urban sketches map in Google Maps for the same purpose.
Each blue flag on the map represents a different sketch. When a flag is selected, a thumbnail of the sketch and a link to the blog entry are shown. There is also a zoom in option, so it can be explored the area where the building, landscape or urban element is located. And even the street view can be used when the link view larger map is followed!
Vinyl Eraser has been nominated for several awards recently. I am very honored for it. I want to say a big thank you to Debbie Addams and Kellie See.
It was nominated for the Hope Unites Globally Award by Debbie Adams. Thank you, Deb. The award was produced by Connie Wayne at A Hope for Today promoting hope, love, peace, equality, and unity for all people.
And it was nominated for the Kreativ Blogger Award by Debbie Adams. Thank you again! Probably I am or at least I try to be a creative person.
Finally, it was also nominated for the Top Recent Commenter Award by Kellie See. Thank you, Kellie. This award was created by Cindy L Riemersma.
I don’t know how to decide which blogs should be nominated for which award. I love and enjoy every blog that follow and visit and all of you, my usual visitors and commenters, are very encouraging to me. I am not an artist and my job is not related to the art community.
As I wrote in the about page I started to draw when my girlfriend, who is my muse and the most important person in each activity in my life, gave me one of those Faber Castell boxes with pencils and crayons. It was on December 2010. Previously I never drawn. I had used oils and ink for technical drawing in my school days but I was not able to make a simple doodle. I enjoy drawing and exploring new things. I guess that is important.
So, please, visit the blogs that I have mentioned above, the authors are great artists and writers and also all of them are art related blogs with fantastic pieces of art and texts that authors share with us. All of them deserve the Hope Unites Globally Award, all of them are absolutely Kreativ bloggers, and almost all of them are usual commenters in this blog.
Update: Here is the list with my nominations for the three awards. Congrats to you all!
Some days ago Vinyl Eraser was awarded the Sunshine Award by Cindy L Riemersma of One Mind Many Detours. She has a nice blog, in which she shows personal experiences as well as wonderful ideas. Visit her blog and enjoy her reflections.
This award comes with the typical list of questions. I will try to answer them briefly although each one suggests me a different post. For example, it is not a good idea to ask about favorite colors to people that works with colors!
Now my nominations. The rules indicates that the award must be passed on ten blogs. I have recently nominated many blogs, thus I will pass it on new ones that I have not nominated before. They are only five blogs.
Vinyl Eraser has been nominated twice for the Liebster Blog Award! Thank you very much to Kellie See who runs one of the most creative blogs that I follow. Kellie is currently studying illustration and publishes her exercises and thoughts on the blog. Check out her latest post where she experiments on different mediums for drawing and painting. Very, very interesting blog. I love it.
And also thank you very much to Melody who nominated this blog for the award on the same day. Melody is studying for a Master’s Degree in Teaching Early Grades and runs the blog 30 Minute Art. The idea is simple: she has been able to find 30 minutes in her schedule for art that uses to draws, write poems, and even produces videos! She always puts a smile in my face with her posts.
Concerning the Liebster Blog Award. It is a chain award, so when you get it, you must pass the award on to more bloggers, in this case five bloggers. The Liebster Blog Award is given to bloggers who have less than 200 followers in order to generate some traffic for them. Liebster is a German word that can be translated as beloved or nice. The rules for accepting this award are as follows:
These are my nominations (it is really hard to choose only five blogs, I have tried to select blogs with less than 200 followers that have not received this award previously):
This morning I read a couple of tweets that made me smile. Last week we were at the Museo Sorolla. It is a really nice place and they have several of Sorolla‘s most important works. As it is painting-related I did a tweet with a reference to @MuseoSorolla. It seems the guys at the Museo Sorolla read it and replied.
@vinyleraser Thanks!! Hope you enjoyed it!!
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Museo Sorolla (@MuseoSorolla) February 01, 2012Now, the second tweet. My previous post includes a Stockholms Stadsmuseum sketch. I publicize my posts on Twitter. As you know it automatically generates a tweet with the new post title and the link to it. They also replied although this time the tweet did not contain an explicit reference to @StadsMuseet! Surely they use searches with the museum name.
@vinyleraser We're happy to see both your and Ninas artwork! Hope you get a chance to come visit us in Stockholm!
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Sthlms Stadsmuseum (@stadsmuseet) February 01, 2012Both situations occur commonly. People replies the comments or citations in social networks or blogs. It is part of the business. Surely you all have similar cases. Nevertheless, today it made me wonder how the social networks are changing the communication between all of us. Food for thought.
