Tips for Cleaning Dirty or Damaged CDs or DVDs
We have “defective” discs returned more often than you would believe that are scratched and dirty due to mishandling. Here are some suggestions we found for care of your DVDs.
1. Handle discs carefully by the edges only.
2. Inspect the surface of the disc for damage or contamination, to see if it needs to be cleaned. Canned compressed air is excellent for removing dust.
3. If needed, rinse carefully in clean, warm water to remove any grit that could cause scratches when the disc is wiped.
4. If any debris or film remains that needs to be removed, clean gently with warm water and a mild detergent (e.g., dish-washing detergent), eyeglass cleaning solution, isopropyl alcohol or a commercially available CD/DVD cleaning solution.
5. Gently wipe dry with a lint-free, soft cotton cloth. Use a wiping motion moving from the center of the disc to the outside edge instead of wiping around the disc. If wiping does cause any scratch, an “inside to outside” scratch will cut across the data tracks around the disc instead of running along them and damaging additional data.
6. If any residue or film remains, wipe with alcohol and a soft cleaning wipe.
7. Remember to clean the case, too.
8. If a disc is still damp, store upright (on edge) to allow to air dry.
9. Insert thoroughly dry disc in appropriate disc drive to attempt to read data. If the disc isn’t readable, try a different disc drive. Different drives have different optical qualities with varying thresholds of error correction ability.
10. Data on the majority of discs is likely to be readable after following these steps. For those discs that still cannot be read, contact Susan at susan@ccpvideos.com.
From Behind the Camera: Choosing the right pigments
Integral to becoming who you are as a painter is finding the paints that help you achieve the look you want. The search can take years. It might help to know why some of the CCP artists have chosen the pigments they use.
Carla O’Connor is a shape painter. As part of her process, she continually alters shapes and edges. She can do so because she uses gouache on a coated surface. To her, transparency and color is secondary. She is able to adjust colors by adding any brand of watercolor to the gouache base.
In contrast, Jan Kunz is a value painter. Transparency and delicate transitions of value and color are important to her portraits. Jan prefers Winsor & Newton professional grade watercolors. After years of painting she knows exactly what to expect using these materials. Even with W&N she avoids the more opaque colors, such as cerulean, and is very judicious with ultramarine blue and the cobalt colors. Click here to download Jan’s pigment list.
John Salminen likes the gritty look of coarsely ground sedimentary colors for his urban landscapes. He has recently discovered that Stephen Quiller watercolors provide him the look he wants.
Robbie Laird uses M. Graham paints. They are honey based and explode into solution quickly. The high pigment content is perfect for Robbie’s intense wet into wet florals. Art Grahm has a selection of colors that are evenly distributed around the color wheel and make for logical mixing.
Judy Morris has made a study of pigments and their reaction to a variety of salts for her salt texturing techniques. She uses a combination of heavily ground and transparent pigments. Additionally she has developed several triad color schemes that require specific colors available through, among others, Daniel Smith.
Ratindra Das uses a lot of quinacridones which mix well with many colors yet maintain transparency. This quality is important to Das because he mixes most colors directly on paper. Chemical composition is less importance, but he does say that he has eliminated all cadmium from his palette for environmental reasons.
The list goes on and on but I think you get the point. And even though I’ve only addressed watercolor, the same is true with other media. Decide what you like then make it a point to find the materials and techniques that suit your needs.
Cheers,
Lynn
From Behind the Camera - Workshop Expectations
e-Newsletter: 060308
The expectations students bring to a workshop greatly influence the benefits they gain from an instructor. Students may overlook details of the process if they are intent on copying a teacher’s painting. A useful goal for a student is to try on a teacher’s technique and thought process, then permit the things that don’t suit the student to fall away. Here are a couple of examples.
Arleta Pech teaches how to build complex color using primary color glazes. This permits incredible control but is rather time consuming. I don’t have the patience to use her approach for an entire painting, but I find it handy when working in a smaller area that calls for a specific color. Her color building technique permits me to sneak up on my goal, and it’s perfect for days when I don’t feel confident with my painting and want a slower approach.
Mark Mehaffey’s mouth atomizer workshop addresses color bounce, the process in which a painter can create a relationship between two sides of a painting by echoing color. His demonstration made the importance of this concept clear to me. I use color bounce all the time when problem solving in my own work. I use a mouth atomizer only occasionally, but color bounce is a mainstay.
Virginia Cobb’s workshop focuses on acrylic abstract painting. I am a realistic transparent watercolorist, but I learned a lot from her philosophical approach to painting. We’ve all hit the wall of frustration and been ready to burn our paintings. Virginia teaches us to recognize this frustration as the perfect time to access new horizons and find new solutions to problems that would have previously stopped us in our tracks.
I don’t paint like any of the artists above, but I paint better because of all of them.
- Lynn -
CAROLINE JASPER’S COLOR TIP: Value is worth a lot!
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-by Caroline Jasper
Value is a significant color characteristic. Contrasts between darks and lights are key to visual impact. Through comparison of such differences our brains perceive objects and determine depth. Lighter things stand out against dark backgrounds. Dark ones show up better against light. Strong darks and lights together read as close; lack of value contrast reads as distant. Working strictly in black and white, without the distraction of color, it is easier to represent form and lighting. Since we do not live in a black and white world, painters must become aware of value differences among colors both in the subject and on the palette. Painting value studies prior to working in color helps to identify important darks and lights throughout a color reference. Test your color-value acuity. Take a black and white digital shot of your color work or convert a color image to grayscale in a computer photo application. If the image holds up well in black and white, it will present boldly in color.
Projecting vs. Drawing
To draw or project ones subject on paper…ah, that is the question?
I see nothing WRONG with projecting a photograph taken by the artist. Sometimes a very complex subject, that requires accuracy, requires one to project the image. Restless subjects, such as children, also require the use of photography. However, projection has major creative limitations over drawing.
Drawing helps one familiarize oneself with the subject, its structure, value patterns, and shifting planes. It also permits time to think about how one might manipulate color, edges, etc. to help express what it is about the subject that made one want to paint it in the first place. Drawing requires us to pay attention! It also permits time to simplify and exaggerate a subject and build, for lack of a better word, a ‘relationship’ with the subject that will continue during the painting process. Even if one needs to project an image, I think there is real value in re-drawing the image in order to move things around for the sake of improving design and making it our own.
Here are some additional “up sides” to drawing. You can take a pencil and paper almost anywhere; the more you do it the easier and better it becomes. One cannot help but have very individual art if it is drawn and not projected. There is an incredible sense of satisfaction in “pulling from your depths” an image. Drawing takes time and therefore helps us overcome the ‘tyranny of the clock’ (Art is not about creating production line items. “Quality” art takes time to develop and paint.) Finally, drawing provides more creative flexibility… you cannot project what is in your imagination.
Some art forms are built around photography (transfers in collage for example) but, generally speaking, (and I have heard this from many artists we have filmed) learning to draw well is essential to art, and I would add, a whole lot of fun.
~Lynn~