Image by The Art of the Slideshow
We visit hundreds of blogs every day, and are often struck by bloggers’ creativity. Today, let’s take a look at how one blogger has been using slideshow galleries to produce on-the-go animated art projects.
Images help us tell our stories — and engage our audience. We recently highlighted post sliders and gallery styles as features that add visual punch to our sites, and talked about how the juxtaposition of images can create powerful narratives.
Some bloggers take the idea of visual storytelling to a whole new level. We recently discovered the work of Barbara, the New York-based artist-blogger behind continuousdrawing. Barbara’s elevated the slideshow into a medium for her art. She draws on her iPhone and iPad, then uploads her images to her blog, where she transforms them into slideshows. As the slides flow by, the gradual changes create a hypnotic, animated effect.
140309 sequence, from Barbara’s site, continuousdrawing.
We recently caught up with Barbara to chat about her innovative use of slideshows.
You have an MFA in painting and drawing. How did you make the transition to this digital medium?
About two years ago, when I started generating a lot of artwork made on iPhone and iPad apps, I wanted to arrange the drawings in sequences according to the app, and the idea of “animating” followed.
What made you think of using slideshows as a vehicle for your art?
As the drawings began to accumulate, when viewed in a grid on a webpage or gallery, there was a sense of a larger composition and a progression of forms. It was fun to look at a long sequence of stills in a slideshow on Flickr, and so I began to set up slideshows on my WordPress.com blog.
Can you walk us through the creation of a typical sequence?
Usually I draw for about an hour or less, and at some point reach a logical ending based on where the drawing takes me. Unlike regular animation, I don’t start with any particular goal in mind — I begin with the last drawing saved in the app gallery and go from there.
I use the WordPress app on my iPhone and iPad to upload the drawings in sequence from my photo library. Once the finished drawings are uploaded in a new post, I type in the slideshow shortcode at the top, and post. Since I am not editing anything it’s a very fast process and works well with my pledge to draw continuously.
Thank you, Barbara, for talking with us about your work.
If you’d like to see more of Barbara’s slideshow sequences, check out Trainboys Evolution, Zen Brush sequence 140305, and many other projects on her site.
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I think a personal way to use this idea might be to post age-progression photos of family members. Or of pets or even pet plants as they bloom or grow. Or garden produce. Hmm. Lots of possibilities with this idea. THANKS! 🙂
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WordPress has inspired many, while many are inspirations to WordPress. Interesting recognition.
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Art is a great way to convey ideas through symbolism. Many people see art and just see a picture. I see art and imagine what they are feeling, what time they live in and what gave them the inspiration to do the piece.
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This is interesting. After reading this, I immediately tried this to display my photograph taken in burst mode in my latest post. Kind of manual animation which is so cool.
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I love this idea of showcasing the progression of her work. I’m definitely going to keep this in mind for future use.
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Thanks for the tip! I just made a slide show on my blog as a way to show a time-lapse sunset photo series. It looks awesome!!
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Very creative. Thank you for sharing about this. As a very new blogger, I know I have a lot to learn.
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It looks like spot the differences to me…
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This is interesting. After reading this, I immediately tried this to display my photograph taken in burst mode in my latest post. Kind of manual animation, which is so cool.
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