I had a lovely time with Juliette Powell tonight, authoress of 33 Million People in the Room, that I reviewed at WebMetricsGuru.com, maybe 5 or 6 weeks ago.

A couple of ideas “came to me” today; they’re not really new ideas to me, but worth writing down, all the same.

For one thing, I’m passionate about Art, and certain artists and styles/movements  in particular, and it’s been noticed by some of my friends, that I ought to talk about Art more, and even put myself in front of a camera and do it.

The idea started a month ago when one of my friends suggested it as we strolled through the Metropolitan Museum on one of my many visits – a week later, another friend went to the museum with me the following week and took some video of me, but we were soon interrupted by the museum guards who would not allow videotaping.

Finally, today, Juliette Powell met me at RAO and we succeeded and this is the result – judge for yourself – and I’d love the feedback – but tweet it at @webmetricsguru on Twitter as comments are disabled on this blog due to the excessive amount of comment spam I was getting.

One more thing -

Thinking that trusting with my gut feelings – having evolved my own approach – I ought to go all the way with it instead of holding myself back.

Been very busy lately – and couple of projects that I had to handle make it really hard to focus on painting, but one project may be a gallery space to handle artists – it’s  still young idea and I can’t talk about it, yet, but I’m hopeful.

Anyway – it’s strange how in my social network of friends I get many opinions about things like travel – and how some of my friends think a trip to France for me this spring is good, others think it’s bad, and I’ve tended to crowd source opinions, not to obsolve myself of making decisions, but simply to have the best set of opinions and facts before deciding.

I realized, as long as I’m willing to take responsibility for making my own decisions, there’s nothing wrong with getting several opinions; one of my friends who studies Reiki and lives in Germany, says a trip to France feels stressful, and recommends against it.   I didn’t seek that opinion, but I’d be a fool to discount it.

On the other hand, another friend suggested London, where I’ve never been, and the vibes seem better for a trip there.

My painting is about that decision making process – it’s about how I come to decide what to do, how to take action, and my feelings around deciding.

Oh, by the way, this is an iPhone painting, but I’ve been working on it for a few weeks, on and off.

Been sketching a lot – and enjoying mixing in different pen work and pencils – though I do notice my drawings often get very dark, like this one that I did of a garden nearby from where I live in Brooklyn:

I worked hard to try to get the color of the paper drawing as exact to my notebook as I can, and often I compare the two as I’m editing the settings.

I also did this larger sketch today in a larger sketchbook I bought recently.

Lately, I’ve been aware that I don’t need to cover the entire drawing, that I can leave some things out (see below):

It’s just deciding when to stop.

I also did a quick drawing of a model who I liked today at Brooklyn Artist’s Gym (but it was too hot to work much):

I have more drawings to post, but I’m ready to collapse – been a long day, and a hot one as well.

Interviewed this weekend by a well known blogger Anil Batra of  Web Analysis, Behavioral Targeting and Advertising  - decided to post the links to that interview (part 1 & part 2) as many of my art ideas are merged with my web analytics approach and my career.

Interview with Marshall Sponder – Part I

Interview with Marshall Sponder – Part II

Pretty happy with the interview – I put a lot of myself in it.