I imagine a large part of the attraction of letterpress printing is to do with the physical handling of the type, and it being a hands-on process. But the argument made by designer John Bonadies for LetterMPress, a proposed virtual letterpress app iPad, is that it will  ’give designers, artists, students, lovers of type—anyone—the ability to produce their own authentic letterpress designs and artwork’ when wood type and vintage cuts have become sought after and rare.

I’m not sure if letterpress artists and printers will regard this as encouraging the preservation and recognition of the aesthetic qualities of letterpress, or as an undermining of the art. But it looks like an app I would find attractive.

(via Laughing Squid)

I had a brief trip to Melbourne last week for the opening of my daughter Anna Madeleine‘s new exhibition Mind Games and Paper Planes at the Brunswick Street Gallery. It was a good night, with heaps of people tramping up the stairs to the various rooms and exhibitions. Do check it out if you happen to be in Melbourne in the next few weeks, it’s on until 20 May.

At the moment I’m entranced with drawing on my iPhone, mostly playing with the Brushes and Paintbook apps. My full set of iPhone drawings is here.

With Brushes I’m presently evolving some strange creatures in a strange environment. Above you can see the Hedgehogerus surprised,  the Hedgehogerus nest and fairy, the two-toed Chubbachubb, and the double-pouched Schweep.

With Paintbook I’ve been making some very simple two-tone faces of (mostly) imaginary people. Here are a few favourites:

It seems as if there is an exciting new field opening up as people experiment with what can be achieved on such a small screen using just your finger. David Hockney has already had an exhibition of his iPhone drawings, and The New Yorker recently drew attention to the phenomenon by featuring an iPhone drawing by Portuguese artist Jorge Columbo as it’s cover illustration. But you get a better feel for the range, quality and some sense of developing community among artists using iPhone apps, at Flickr, for instance in the Brushes gallery.

I always meant to do a post on the Institute of Figuring when I first came across it a few years ago, but now you can just watch Margaret Wertheim herself  explaining the beautiful maths of coral, crochet and hyperbolic geometry in this great talk at TED.

My daughter Anna’s new photographic work, Plastic Surgery, is on at the Canberra Contemporary Arts Space in Manuka until Sunday. The images are photographs of the human body form manipulated in different ways in graffiti art and fashion design in the urban environment. They are printed large on aluminium foil which gives them an industrial brash feel.

Anna also has a new website, Anna Madeleine, where you can catch up with some of her stop motion videos and other photography. The cool images drawn and printed on maps from her previous exhibition, Unchartered, are there too.

I snapped this beautifully decorated facade of Cine-Theatre Girondin from the tram in Bordeaux. You can see it in more detail if you click on the largest size at Flickr.

Some of the things you can do on the iPhone just seem like magic to me. This image is drawn on the iPhone screen with my finger, using the Brushes app. It’s taking me a while to get some finesse, but the Brushes Gallery pool at Flickr is ample proof that it is possible.

(btw, Ocarina has been the most jaw-droppingly magic app for me so far.)

When I was there, aside from the coffee drinkers, lots of people were sketching, a bunch of boys were playing football, and some other kids were playing an elastics game.