Supergrafix ® and the camera obscura..

The camera obscura was a device developed in the 1500s to help artists draw more quickly and realistically – no coincidence that this was when artists were moving out of the phase when most of their representations were of a world that they nor we could see, namely, heaven, and were beginning to make more and more images of the visible world. The “camera” was actually a darkened space, inside of which a series of adjustable mirrors and lenses projected the scene in front onto a screen of paper or canvas, thus enabling the artist to draw what he saw. The device grew in popularity and shrunk in size. By the 1600s, artists like Vermeer and Canaletto were using portable cameras to help create their outdoor scenes.
Recently, I saw my young niece using a device named a Supergrafix ® . It works like this. You sit in front of a drawing easel over which is placed a contraption (of mirrors and lenses?). In front of this is another contraption where the aspiring artist may place a picture that he or she wants to copy. In the absence of a picture, the lens projects an image of the real world onto the drawing space - and this is the tricky bit.
Try as we might, we couldn’t place my large, lumbering frame into a suitable position in front of the lens for my diminutive niece to make a half-way decent portrait, but don’t let that put anyone off Supergrafix. Image capture is learned in time, I am certain. And big folk and little folk will have great fun honing their drawing skills, even copying pictures…

Why Blokus doth mock us...

If you have ever needed a distraction that caused the kettle to boil dry, and the cat to go unfed, the washing-up to pile in the sink, and dust to make swirly patterns on your furniture, why, friend, look no further than Blokus ®. No doubt the brainchild of a frustrated architect, somewhere, who failed to win a commission for a shopping mall, and is now laughing all the way to Prada, Blokus is the most enticing, brain-teasing, finger-twivelling outfit that anoraks (like me) ever did encounter.
On investigation (try Blokus.com) I discovered different levels and versions of the game; original Blokus, Blokus 3D and Blokus Trigon. Mine was Blokus Duo, where two players attempt to ‘block’ each other on a 14 x 14 square grid with variously shaped pieces orchestrated in miniature squares (domino, triomino, tetramino, pentamino). You must lay your pieces so that the corners of your colour – orange or purple – touch, but not the sides. The player who manages to lay down the most pieces, within the rules of the game, is the winner.
Blokus Duo is fun to play with an opponent, but even more fun to play alone, spending hour after hour pitting Orange against Purple – mentally, I was always on the side of Purple. Blokus has spawned conventions, championships, and many, many champions. You can even play it online – but perish that thought. I’ve said farewell to Blokus Duo. With an obsession like that, I would never put pen to paper again, ever…