Me again in france with my Japanese hat

 

In Kyoto there was an area of museums we ended up going to a lot. The neighborhood was marked by a gigantic Torii Gate, those famous red gates often seen in sequence, these singular, and a gigantic 100 feet high. Pictures of that iconic site certainly appeared here last Fall. The area was particularly beloved to us as a place curiously off the main tourist paths (though not as much as our own neighborhood!). It seemed to draw lots of Japanese people, particularly on Sundays, which felt like a family day. I'm not saying it wasn't a tourist area, but the museums were not world class and there were large theaters in the area, so it just felt more "civic life" than "famous Kyoto", though of course that line is blurry.

Also, there was an afternoon tea place there that made one of the best affogatos I ever had, with butter ice cream.

And we had a nice meal at an eel restaurant in the area too!

Once, walking around this part of town on a weekend, a festival of some kind was going on and someone was selling hats they made, repurposed out of other old clothes and materials. I bought one! I really liked it, but in Winter, in France, I stopped wearing it. Maybe the hint of Spring caused me to bring it out, and now I seem to be wearing it again.

Feeling a bit pleased with it I took a picture of myself (or seven) and made something of a drawing of it, a self portrait.

And so then, for today, here I am in my Japanese hat:

forty-nine

Clerkmanifesto is going context free for 100 days!

While I retire from 31 years at the Roseville Library, sell nearly everything I own, fly with my darling wife to Japan for 40 days, and then move together to France to start to build a life there, I present a less explained clerkmanifesto, a clerkmanifesto of snapshots and time travel. Below you may see old posts without introduction from my 4,750 post collection. You may see random photos, brand new or years old. I may write a passage about Japan as if of course you know I'm in Japan, I may make a simple observation or joke, but whatever it is, I won't be explaining it. You'll have to take it as it comes.

For more context you are welcome to read this longer introduction.

And if this is all too confusing I welcome you to investigate our thousands of fully explained historic posts from the past 12 years, though I'll be the first to admit, hours later, you may still come away a little confused.

Here, however it works, is what clerkmanifesto has for you today:

I'm not likely to get tired of these videos of old drawings of mine brought to life, thought this may be the last one from 85 and up, my show of Jewish people who were 85 years old or older. 

If you don't know the drill: click to engage the picture, enlarge it, and then click once more to play it.

forty-four

  

Clerkmanifesto is going context free for 100 days!

While I retire from 31 years at the Roseville Library, sell nearly everything I own, fly with my darling wife to Japan for 40 days, and then move together to France to start to build a life there, I present a less explained clerkmanifesto, a clerkmanifesto of snapshots and time travel. Below you may see old posts without introduction from my 4,750 post collection. You may see random photos, brand new or years old. I may write a passage about Japan as if of course you know I'm in Japan, I may make a simple observation or joke, but whatever it is, I won't be explaining it. You'll have to take it as it comes.

For more context you are welcome to read this longer introduction.

And if this is all too confusing I welcome you to investigate our thousands of fully explained historic posts from the past 12 years, though I'll be the first to admit, hours later, you may still come away a little confused.

Here, however it works, is what clerkmanifesto has for you today:

As I write this it is Tuesday, August 12, and I am sitting at the front desk of the Roseville Library, three days from retirement. But in real time, as you can read this, my wife and will have been in Japan for over a week! So one might say that I have largely succeeded in setting up clerkmanifesto to run for awhile. This is good. We are very busy as we completely dismantle our lives, live with almost no furniture, and continue the labors; bureaucratic, physical, financial, and linguistic, of moving to another country.

On the other hand, I have been making a lot of stuff here! And it's not like now that I am pretty well caught up I'm going to stop! And on top of that, while my wife and I will be busy getting ready, I will also be retired!

RETIRED.

I'm kind of thinking that will mean a bit MORE free time?

So I'll still want to put more things into clerkmanifesto, but I'll also want to keep space open to put in new things. Like what if I manage to have images from, or meditations on Kyoto? What if I want to tell you something from an airport we're trapped in somewhere. What if a fit of cartooning comes over me!!!!

Where will I put all of that if I've already booked out clerkmanifesto for two months before even leaving the country?

The answer to all this is... I guess I'll just cram it in. I think I'll prepare every day's post well ahead of time, and get as far ahead as I can. But also, if in my travels and relocation I have new things to add, it might just get crammed in as a bonus rider on the post of that day.

I like this plan. And I think you'll do okay with it too.

With that, here is the last of the portraits from our estate sale that were pulled out from the previous estate sale seven years ago. They are all gone now, but you can see one here, very slightly augmented and cleaned up with AI (we'll say a 2 on a scale of 10).

This is the same picture, as above, brought unnervingly to life. Click on it to engage, click again to enlarge if you like large things, then click a final time to play it...

We jump forward in time once again to bring you a live post, so to speak, from Clerk Manifesto. This one comes to you after my darling wife and I have been in Kyoto for about a week. It follows the pre-prepared posts you’re reading above, but this is something of a bonus, or extra content, or contemporary content, as added below this post above.

I’ve been taking a careful measure of photographs, usually allowing for a few brief sessions each day, a minute at a time, to take what pictures I can. So I haven’t been conducting anything like a comprehensive photographic study of the city. But I’ve taken what photos I’ve managed to shoot and added my usual frills and personalizations. It’s a good solution, because it allows me to quickly capture interesting places, while also accepting the hurried nature of those photographs, and the many ways they fall short of capturing what things are really like.

This is my way of giving you more of a sense of what Kyoto looks and feels like in a more spontaneous, natural, and candid, albeit slightly ridiculous way. I have a lot of pictures like this. This, we can just say, is another sample with more to come as the days go forward:

thirty-eight

 

Clerkmanifesto is going context free for 100 days!

While I retire from 31 years at the Roseville Library, sell nearly everything I own, fly with my darling wife to Japan for 40 days, and then move together to France to start to build a life there, I present a less explained clerkmanifesto, a clerkmanifesto of snapshots and time travel. Below you may see old posts without introduction from my 4,750 post collection. You may see random photos, brand new or years old. I may write a passage about Japan as if of course you know I'm in Japan, I may make a simple observation or joke, but whatever it is, I won't be explaining it. You'll have to take it as it comes.

For more context you are welcome to read this longer introduction.

And if this is all too confusing I welcome you to investigate our thousands of fully explained historic posts from the past 12 years, though I'll be the first to admit, hours later, you may still come away a little confused.

Here, however it works, is what clerkmanifesto has for you today:

Here is another old charcoal drawing study from a long past art show of mine featuring Jewish people who were 85 and older. I suppose I still had this last drawing because it was one of my favorites. I'm pretty sure this was a study for a four foot high by three foot wide painting of this man, but that one is probably lost to the world. This drawing is cleaned up in AI and I'll put its AI alteration level at 2 out of 10. 

Following the image is the moving version of it.

To watch the moving image version of the drawing, click on it below, enlarge it (if you like), than click again to play it.

Live Photo of Kyoto:

thirty-seven

 

Clerkmanifesto is going context free for 100 days!

While I retire from 31 years at the Roseville Library, sell nearly everything I own, fly with my darling wife to Japan for 40 days, and then move together to France to start to build a life there, I present a less explained clerkmanifesto, a clerkmanifesto of snapshots and time travel. Below you may see old posts without introduction from my 4,750 post collection. You may see random photos, brand new or years old. I may write a passage about Japan as if of course you know I'm in Japan, I may make a simple observation or joke, but whatever it is, I won't be explaining it. You'll have to take it as it comes.

For more context you are welcome to read this longer introduction.

And if this is all too confusing I welcome you to investigate our thousands of fully explained historic posts from the past 12 years, though I'll be the first to admit, hours later, you may still come away a little confused.

Here, however it works, is what clerkmanifesto has for you today:

An old charcoal drawing of mine:

And then a live version which, if I recall, you'll want to click, maximize (or not), then click again to play. There is no sound.

thirty-three

 

Clerkmanifesto is going context free for 100 days!

While I retire from 31 years at the Roseville Library, sell nearly everything I own, fly with my darling wife to Japan for 40 days, and then move together to France to start to build a life there, I present a less explained clerkmanifesto, a clerkmanifesto of snapshots and time travel. Below you may see old posts without introduction from my 4,750 post collection. You may see random photos, brand new or years old. I may write a passage about Japan as if of course you know I'm in Japan, I may make a simple observation or joke, but whatever it is, I won't be explaining it. You'll have to take it as it comes.

For more context you are welcome to read this longer introduction.

And if this is all too confusing I welcome you to investigate our thousands of fully explained historic posts from the past 12 years, though I'll be the first to admit, hours later, you may still come away a little confused.

Here, however it works, is what clerkmanifesto has for you today:

Perhaps I wasn’t that bad a painter after all. 

When I was actively painting, I held myself in high regard, but after setting painting and drawing aside, I adopted a more humble view of my abilities. Now that I have become, by my own estimation, quite good at the almost absurd and extremely curious art of computer and AI assisted imagery (or whatever awful name suits it), I understand even better what it means to have real facility with something, to be ahead of the curve.

My painting and drawing were vivid and good, though not masterful, perhaps. As we prepare to leave, we’ve pulled out a lot of things from the back cupboards to get rid of, and although most of my artwork is long gone, I’ve found a few surviving pieces, especially from my show of Jewish people aged eighty-five and older. I used AI, of course, to clean up my rough photograph of one painting here, and I like the result. I am proud of the painting. I think I was a pretty good painter.

Maybe time allows for me more room to be just... really good?

So I’ll let you see it, and you can decide. If you’re among those who grow weary of all the experiments and the falsity of all my computer-generated “AI art” I present this particular painting as my bona fides, on the one hand suggesting that I put in all the proper time into training and serving the tradition in the hope it will allow me to now do whatever I want due to my historic stature. And on the other hand, well, I think the AI improved my rendition of the hair a little here!

I've added a video version which I find slightly fascinating. Remember to click to engage, full screen as desired, then play. There is no sound.

Variety pack, my co-workers

 

As so often has been happening in the current generation of photo generation and ai photo editors, I am chest deep in experiments. I am never entirely satisfied with how I end up showing these wide ranging collections to you, but I always love showing what I'm up to here, so I am ever fiddling with how to do it. I have a new idea for this go around: I will show you small related but more diverse groups of pictures. 

Today to start off, since it is what I started working with this round, I am going to show you a random selection of portraits of my co-workers done in various styles. I took some pictures of my co-workers to create some Moebius style sci fi versions of everybody, which seemed to go over well with everyone, and certainly pleased me. But I since branched out into a range of other styles, and while I might usually stick to a collection of the Moebius pictures in a first post like this, I will instead start with an assortment across various styles today to try and give you a taste of what the portrait range I'm working with is like.

I am also working with a lot of non portrait images. But we'll come to that later in addition to exploring these studies some more.

 

Portraits of Marcus

 

Here is a cartoon that I think best expresses my relationship with my friend Marcus:

You may note that I have turned him into a cartoon character, but that's not all. We have given him the full portrait treatment here today! He will be a muppet and Dr. Seuss illustrations as well.

And so with that here are some portraits of Marcus, including a few discussions related to yesterday's post: