Predictive Analytics: continuing a series emphasizing extrapolating, visualizing (and painting) unanticipated outcomes

Getting caught Greenwashing

Watercolour, crayon and Photoshop™

©2023 Charlene Brown

According to the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance (July 24, 2023), ‘greenwashing’ is about misrepresentation, misstatement and false or misleading practices in relation to environmental, social and governance (ESG) credentials.

Unfulfilled ESG promises lead to shareholder groups, such as university pension funds, divesting their holdings and to consumers switching brands and boycotting products.

This predictive data visualization is my interpretation of the rise, fall and rise again of stock value (orange line) and product sales (pink line) related to specific marketing events (identified by * in the painting) – a ‘green’ marketing campaign, getting caught ‘greenwashing’ a product or company policy, followed by honest damage control and policy change, over a six-year period. 

 

Paint Every Mountain: compiling a small book about hiking and painting

Winter Sunrise at Lake Louise

Watercolour and crayons

©2023 Charlene Brown

The third of my ‘2022’ projects that I’ll be working on for the rest of 2023 is a small book about hiking and painting in mountains all over the world.

Part of the book will be devoted to winter watercolour painting en plein air when the plein air is too cold to do much of anything with actual water. Beginning with white (and, in this case, neon pink) crayons, then finishing the painting in some nice warm place, is the answer.

There will also be a section on achieving other effects with white crayons (and a cautionary tale about where you obtain your white crayons), as well as special uses for purple (my personal favourite), and ‘neon’ orange and green.

Creative Archaeology: continuing ‘Time Travel with a Bag of Crayons’

Antikythera mechanism

Watercolour, crayon, marker

©2023 Charlene Brown

An intricate mechanism, considered to be the world’s first analog computer – dating from the first century BCE, was found in 1900 in a shipwreck near the island of Antikythera in Greece. The recovered fragments of what became known as the Antikythera Mechanism are in the National Archeological Museum in Athens. 

In 2019, I reassembled these fragments and overlaid the result on a sketch I made in 2007 at the Posidonius School in Rhodes. There are many theories as to who designed and built this ingenious mechanism. Our tour guide on a shore excursion from a Black Sea cruise was a firm believer in the hypothesis, based on x-ray computed tomography and notations about solar eclipses, that it did in fact originate at this location in Rhodes.

I recently updated the 2019 painting, after hearing about a more complex version of the Antikythera Mechanism appeared this year under a new name, The Dial of Destiny.   This surprisingly intact and polished machine, now credited to Archimedes, is newly capable of time travel and was found by Indiana Jones, of all people!

Graphic Novel: completing ‘By-election in Exceptional Pass’

I have occasionally tried to add people to my landscape paintings, solving the problem of not being very good at it by placing them as far away as I decently could.

I had one of my grandsons, an art student at Concordia University at the time, draw the people for my first graphic novel, but he’s a professional artist now and doesn’t have the time (and I can’t afford him). And it’s taken weeks to summon up the nerve to add people to the graphic novel I’m writing now. 

Drawing on a smart phone screen by an engineering student on coop assignment as a cell tower inspector, to illustrate the inaccessible position of a tension meter on an anchor cable.  (The top of the 400’ tower was easier to get to than that meter.)

Finally, inspired by the above spontaneous drawing on my granddaughter’s blog, I decided to go for it.

I can hardly do anything but phone people on my smart phone, so I didn’t go so far as to try it there.  I used a full-size computer, guiding the Photoshop brush tool with a mouse, and have convinced myself that the resulting stick-people-wearing-clothes are appropriate for the stylized background paintings.

An illustration near the beginning of the graphic novel I’m writing 

Picking up where I left off...

 

Cover illustration for a Graphic Novel

Watercolour, Word™ Photoshop™ InDesign™

©2022 Charlene Brown

Since a horrible afternoon four days after my last blog post, on August 21 of last year, I have been overwhelmed by the sudden collapse, rapid decline and death of my elderly cousin who lived here in Victoria.  She was not my closest relative but I was hers, as she had no brothers, sisters or children.  Although she had several cousins, I was the only one living in Victoria.  Plus we were dear friends.

At first I was unable to write or paint anything I was so distracted by my ever-evolving responsibilities as her next-of-kin.  I did resume painting after a few months, but without much direction, and I have not written anything until now.

At this point I’m going to pick up where I left off on the unfinished projects in my 'Plan for 1150 Words in 2022' as if it had been written in January 2023.

Graphic Novel:  I have stylized some of my representational landscapes to use as backgrounds for the book’s illustrations.  People and conversation ‘balloons’ will be added to these stylized backgrounds.

Creative Archaeology:  I plan to re-interpret some of the photos and sketches I accumulated in past archaeology-related travel with the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria and the University of Victoria travel study program, to continue the series ‘Time Travel with a Bag of Crayons’ working with what I have found to be the only truly portable plein air ‘painting’ kit.

Paint Every Mountain: I will begin compiling a small book about hiking and painting in mountains all over the world, equipped with the same plein air bag of crayons painting kit.

Predictive Analytics: I plan to continue a series which had 14 entries when I stopped writing a year ago.  I will emphasize extrapolating and visualizing (and painting) unanticipated outcomes.

We should all switch from red meat to that other basic food group ─ chocolate

Agroforestry

Watercolour and crayon

©2022 Charlene Brown

Following years of drastic deforestation in the Brazilian rainforest, a small forest agriculture, or agroforestry, program has been started. Their best-known projects are shade-grown coffee and chocolate. In addition to food production, the main objective of the program is restoration of the land’s vital carbon sequestration capability.  

Because of climate change, it may be that tropical programs such as this will be needed in agricultural areas that are currently temperate. The gradual migration of plant species to higher latitudes and elevations expected with increasing temperatures is symbolically represented in this allegorical painting.

Unfortunately, existing agroforestry programs are not keeping up with the continuing destruction of the rainforest aimed at freeing up land mainly for the purpose of growing soy for beef production.

Another possible dual solution to problems made worse by climate change

Banff Firebreak

Watercolour and crayon

©2021 Charlene Brown

One of the unforeseen results of many decades of successful forest fire prevention in North America has been thousands of square miles of overmature, tightly packed, highly combustible conifers, particularly in National Parks – a perfect storm of wildfire hazards as climate change worsens conditions around the world. 

Beginning about a hundred years ago, firebreaks such as the one in this painting were cut to protect inhabited areas. This firebreak is now pretty well filled in, and can no longer be easily seen, and a multi-year plan to improve and expand it was launched in 2020.

The original break was a clear-cut on the north face of Sulphur Mountain, with no replacement of trees.  I understand the new one will extend over a much larger area on the west slope of the mountain, with some thinned clusters of trees left in place, and additional deciduous plantings, so that’s the way I’ve painted it.  Deciduous trees provide shade for groundcover as well as acting as fuel breaks because they ignite much less readily than conifers.

I first wrote about this situation and the beginning of a solution a year ago, on August 15, 2021. The part about deciduous trees may have been just optimistic whimsy on my part.  I hope not, but I have not been able to find any recent report of progress on the new firebreak. 

I’ll write about another possible ‘dual’ solution to climate-change problems in a blog post about Agroforestry next week.

Could this be a solution to two climate change problems?

Solar Vineyard in France

Computer-stylized watercolour

©2022 Charlene Brown

Solar Agriculture, sometimes known as agrophotovoltaics, describes the use of land for both alternate (low-carbon) electricity generation and agriculture.

In some parts of Europe, 2% of agricultural land is allocated to the installation of solar photovoltaic panels.  Sometimes the panels are raised high enough to allow access for farm machinery. They are generally mounted in single-axis rotating arrays.

Research to determine what crops will maximize the efficiency of this dual use of the land has been ongoing for some years.   It has been found that grapes adapt well to cultivation under solar panel arrays, in fact they benefit from the intermittent shade provided during extremely hot days and the partial shelter on cold nights at the beginning and end of the growing season.