Paint Stains

Since starting to do Portrait Days on Saturdays at the Maad Market since October/November last year, this is the first month I'm going to miss out because my allergies are bad, I'm tired after the last hectic week, and a little bit worn out at the format of the portrait drawing/painting thing.

I dunno if this journal is read by anyone who's been at Portrait Day at the Maad Market -- if so, have you seen my work there before, and why do you or don't you think my work is worth paying for? It's just 8 Singapore dollars a pop, and that's very, VERY low. Even though the entire exercise is fun, the $ reward for the time spent there is very little, and quite a blow to the ego, esp when some of my best watercolor work is done there.

(If anyone does want to comment here to take me down a notch, go ahead. It doesn't matter.)

How Not to Display Your Artwork on the Web

Every conceivable and worthy piece of advice is covered. It is a righteous, if scary, rant for an online artist to read, so much so that I found myself grabbing my chest while reading in case the upcoming thou-shalt-not would describe one of my sins. I think I'm OK, but I have done some dumb shit before, and my bio and some other pages probably could use a clean-up.

That said, I have been to those sites which take over your whole screen with no escape (and without asking) and/or that display thumbnails the size of ants, and yeah, those sites are annoying. Glad I'm not alone in thinking so...

And oh,

Happy new year to you! ;)

Two pictures are drying on my desk right now, waiting for further watercolor work. But since there's been precious little updates on the Surreal Botany project on my blog, consider this, well, me announcing that we're THIS close to getting the art done for the book! That's 10 left out of 48. What actually surprises even myself is that I do have 38 plant illustrations done already. The past few weeks actually gave me some days where I was able to complete 3 or 4 of them in a day, so 9 to complete before this Friday (when we're leaving for Kong Kong) is looking doable, although I stupidly left the "hard" ones for the last... you know, the ones with the architectural and historical details. (THOSE writers should know who they are...)

Another MAAD Market went by this weekend with yours truly in attendance on Saturday, feverishly splashing up watercolor portraits alongside other artists from OIC. Things started slow, but we got swamped, I think, from 3:30pm onwards, and it was non-stop after that, and it was pairs of people nearly the whole day through. That means actually drawing and completing 2 people in 15 minutes flat. That doubles the work compared to a single portrait, people! Be kinder to the artists, and purchase more pieces when you do that -- credit cards are accepted... all to make it easier to support starving artists, y'know? :)

And alas, I brought a lot of pieces home (as opposed to getting them sold) this time. It ain't a big deal, but even if I say so myself, most of my results were pretty good looking and it sucks only slightly that I just have to bring them home to put them in my "If I ever want to be a courtroom artist one day" portfolio. Haha!

Two plant paintings finished while typing this up. Which means only 8 plants left to go!

As aaronace just posted on his LJ and reminded me... October 20 is 24 Hour Comics Day. Crap on a cracker, I'm 11 hours into Oct 20th already and got other things to do. :(

Maybe next year (yet again)...

Anybody I know doing this?

Tee hee.

Finished two botany pictures yesterday, one of which was hilarious.

Monday, converted the US dollars in my Paypal account to Singaporean dollars. And closed my local bank account that was a US currency account. The bank officer was flabbergasted.

"You want to convert your US money to Singapore dollars today? But the exchange rate is so terrible!"

"It's not going to get better anytime soon," I said. And yes, I should have done this months ago, because I freakin' saw it coming. Anything I earn now in USD is worth less and less here. I'm not typing a sob story or anything, just a statement of fact. The US dollar is heading downwards measured against most of the world's currencies.

Saturday morning: had to go to Ikea the second time in 2 days to make an exchange. Buying new furniture is a last resort when I can't find something second hand - like a map chest. It also irritated me that I'd looked for months for something, and when I finally caved in to buy the Alex, the box we picked up on Friday had a badly chipped board - the last board I removed from the flatpacked box, to boot. Punishment for buying new furniture, I bet.

Saturday afternoon: I had very, very fun 5 hours at the Red Dot Traffic Museum that's between the business district and Chinatown here. It was an afternoon of doing quick portraits of people, with the possibility of getting your work bought if they liked it. (You're sitting to be drawn by several artists at one go.) It was my first time doing portraits from life in over 10 years. The challenge? Drawing and painting the pictures in 10 minutes, as opposed to 3 hours back when I was an art student. 10 minutes! hahaha (Results can be seen on my Facebook page, but you'll have to be on my f-list there to see this album. Hollar if you're there.) Really, it was a lot of fun. And very addictive - can't wait to do it some more. Pity it only happens there once a month!

Went down to a local cluster of copy shops yesterday, did not expect to come out with an armload of beautiful full-color prints the same day, but I did. Did not expect the guy at the shop to painstakingly ask me if the print colors were OK, but he did. Did not expect him to make adjustments to the digital files in order to get the results I wanted, while I watched, but he did. Was not sure he'd charge me for the adjustments, and he didn't. Was not sure he'd charge me full price for the "misprints" (seriously, they look fine) and he didn't.

To top everything off, you were allowed to -- nay, expected -- to bargain. And to ask for larger discounts for larger orders. (Seriously, I love this the most, and that nobody looks at a price list or uses a calculator.)

And then I went to a second copy shop after the first shop (just for kicks) and bargained some more even though I had nothing by that time to print. Heh!

I swear I nearly got teary some moments, incredulous that I could get this kind of speed and service again.

Ah, guys, how I've missed thee!

I know, I know. We hates spam. But the inbox is remarkably quiet now that I put a image verification script (read: human confirmation) on my site's contact form - and now it feels like nobody likes me or wants to recommend their new Cialis or Viagra supplier.

The craft fair (Art Market) this weekend was pretty fun! It all went by kind of fast - and though most of it was sitting on my butt for 15 hours (the length of the event) I still was knackered by the end of it, taking all of Monday to recover, then all of yesterday feeling sick. :P I wonder if this means I should never do this full time.

Exchanged lots of info with my neighbouring vendors. Made contacts and learnt stuff as far as the Singaporean market for art goes. People will buy prints, but they want small prints, and cheaper. Kids love pictures with mushrooms, but alas 6-year-olds do not have a lot of buying power at craft fairs. Foreigners really are likelier buyers than anyone else, if only because they may have more experience with craft fairs and what artists need to charge for handmade goods. And horror/goth sells, especially to teens. I ruminated a lot about this... I myself was not immune at that age, but damn if I want to paint depressing stuff anymore. And there is apparently a need for computer game artists here, but I have to admit, lucrative as that may be, I can't see myself working in that happily unless it's something like SimCity/Civilization/Caesar and that genre but I probably don't have the right art skills for it. Plus RPG is all the rage nowadays. (It's almost hard now to recall the time RPG and fantasy were not mainstream. Ah, Janet, you were always ahead of your time!)

At the same Art Market was a booth from Wanton Doodles, and their generous supply of 3M post-its. They were very doodle-able. They got 5 doodles out of me over the 2 days.

Also painted 3 ACEOs while there. One below, 2 more behind the cut. No apologies for the Cupcake Monster; I put all the blame on those evil little confections.



( More, more )

My art will be at the Colony Theatre for the month of March. Just me. All me. Yes. At a theatre showing indie films and 80s hits such as Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, and The Goonies.

So yesterday was pretty productive even if my body felt like 80% snot.

Being an utter cheapskate means I've been picking up empty picture frames for months from thrift stores, flea markets and the creative re-use center and the bulk of them run from $0.50 - $3.00. The real challenge is sometimes finding frames in good condition and are not terribly ugly and unsuitable. Among the bigger frames, $7.00 was the most expensive (23" x 28" or so) and I won't spend that much again. Most of the time I got frames that still had their glass.

The ones that didn't, got measured. On Tuesday we went to Jerry's Artarama to get the glass cut for 3 frames, and also get a double-mat for the largest one. Glass ranged from about $7 (for 11" x 14") to $18 (20" x 25" stupid unusual size). In the future I'd probably thrift for standard-size glass, because I know I could have gotten a 11" x 14" frame with glass for less than $5 even if I don't need more frames at this point. No biggie. Jerry's also cuts mats at $5.50 per opening, not including the cost of the mat. (Mats were, however, on discount so I went at the right time.)

Jerry's was extremely fast and professional and they filled my glass and mat order on the spot. It took 20 minutes. No stupid questions, free and secure foamcore packing for the glass, and heck of a lot cheaper than Michael's ($10 cutting fee per mat, with a one-week wait for ONE mat the last time I checked with them). Glass wasn't as cheap at Jerry's as I'd have liked but combining new glass with thrift frames was definitely affordable compared with custom framing or even new standard frames (frequently more than 2 or 3 times what I was spending).

Matboard for mats that I cut myself were mostly picked up at Askew Taylor that was discontinuing their sale of mats. IIRC they were going for $2 or $3 apiece. Nice!

In the end the final count and tally might be about $90 spent over several months to frame (with mat, glass, frame plus hardware) 14-16 pieces. The 11" x 14" and larger pictures ranged from $3 - $18 to frame, with $23 being the outlier belonging to the biggest one (20" x 25").

Cost of framing is the downside of prepping watercolors and/or prints for shows (as opposed to ready-to-hang canvases), but I think I had a good handle on it. Paying full price for framing would have been like asking me to... I dunno, kill bunnies. Never going to happen, haha!

Made a run into Durham yesterday to drop art materials off at the Scrap Exchange, and then pick up more frames (for my Raleigh art showing at the Colony Theatre), spending over $13 at SE, more than I'd ever spent there before. The haul included 5 empty picture frames (3 large, 2 small), a box containing 80 empty slides (and me not knowing what I was going to use them for), 2 balls of colorful string and 1 spool of red thread , that was used yesterday to convert a shapeless babydoll dress into a mid-calf skirt. ( God I hope the fashion trend that spawned the original item never comes back.)

Wrote a column about spring cleaning in the artist's studio (will let you know when it's online), went through my drawer of mis-prints to see if anything was salvageable, and realized, DUH, of course it was ALL salvageable, because I had empty slides waiting to be used. Voila! "New" business cards.

I love the Scrap Exchange...

I sometimes worry that my art pieces look like they're coming from a person with multiple-personality disorder.



The next piece of art I'm working on is black & white, gothic and totally drama.

No, I literally mean stuff.

With the move in March, Jason and I have been sending 1-2 "M-bags" per week to Singapore lately, and I think the count is at 6 bags now, with books weighing a total of about 116 lbs. (That figure may be off by around 22 lbs if I forgot one of the boxes/bags, which I might have.) "M-bags" are a special deal the USPS offers for shipping printed material overseas, and costs a little over US $1 a pound to ship to Singapore. All we've been sending thus far is books. But it's still stuff.

And I am pissed at stuff right now. Tangible, heavy stuff. Hate that they have to have volume and mass. In fact, I'm getting to hate stuff.

I really am sorely tempted to join ktempest and have a buy-nothing year. In fact, if I contemplate paring down my possessions for the rest of my life, it's a happy thought.

I'll be auctioning my old old art soon.

I'm selling a HUGE Albrecht Durer print/illustration of Revelations. (Love his work, but not this one. It was a gift.) The print looks suitably old. Let me know if you know or are a Durer collector.

I'd love our books at Second Chance Book Adoption to all find readers who can appreciate them. Today has been a mixed day - packing and going to the post office really peeved me when I surveyed (for the umpteenth time) how much we're shipping to Singapore. But we've also a good book adoption day.

Jason's been the one pimping books on his journal. I think I should start pushing books on my LJ soon too. (I'll talk about MY books! Or the soon-to-be-formerly-mine books.)

Progress shot of Eshita: (click to see the finished work)


Harvest Queen: (pic that was painted as well as assembled from about 6 nature photos)


Also announced the move back to Singapore in March on my mailing list -- bummer news (unless there are people who think me and my work need to get off this continent, quick) and I am kinda miffed about the conventions/art shows I'll miss. It may be interesting to look into Australian cons (like I really need a work excuse to want to visit again) but most of all, if I'm now hooked into displaying my work physically and not just online, I got me some work to do finding venues in Singapore.

http://www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com/index.php/weblog/to_make_thee_scrub_thine_eyes_with_bleach/
http://www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com/index.php/weblog/more_paranomal_aauuuugh_my_eyes_society/

From there, on to http://www.changelingpress.com to discover the full potential of Poser and what it can do for book covers.

Not Dead Yet from Spamalot playing in my head as I can post here after my surgery and say that: It went really well! (Aside from the nausea and starvation I had coming out of anaesthesia because I couldn't hold down my food for several hours after.) So many things (about the care, speed of treatment, ease of getting necessary drugs and diagnosis, paperwork, and of course cost) were different this time from the last experience in Raleigh, that calling it the difference between night and day is an understatement. The contrast is close to, I think, the difference between the deepest depth of hell and a lower rung of heaven. Even physical pain was way less this time. So many things were different. It's just too much to even write about. Never again do I want to experience American healthcare. Not in the state it is currently. And I feel bad for writing this.

The patron saint of the hospital where I had the surgery this last time was St. Francis of Assisi. This surprise was very welcome on the day of my admission.

Meditation rocks. Just wanted to throw that in. I'm looking forward to the 2-day workshop with the venerable Thubten Chodron at the end of this month. She's in Singapore at the time as I - the universe really likes me this month! Her writing just clicks and has made a difference more than anyone else I've read before. For the past 2 weeks, I've stopped cussing at people. No more "F%^king George W Bush!" Starting to read DailyKos with more calm - which I always thought had to be impossible. Alas, I still do think people can be stupid, and I'm still occassionally cussing at electronics.

And now, it's something like back to work for me - got one art commission on the table, and some PHP work to do. I've got a library of script components I can now put together to make CMSs ... because I still can't find a free CMS I like - it's not like they aren't good (e107 looked terrific, trying it out) but most of their features and scripts are so bloated compared to how my coding style is developing, I can't quite commit myself to liking and committing to one. I'd spend too much time stripping it down, down, down.

Talking about which - I'm going to get to work. See ya later!

Art-wise

The con was pretty enjoyable. Part of it was having a con just 10 minutes away. The first day of the Con, we set me up in the Art Show and promptly came back home to nap. (I needed it!) The total space of 3 panels looked daunting at first, but it filled up quickly and some paintings were left off. Most of my pieces were originals (I have to display them somewhere, might as well be cons). I have to admit I was not very prepared in the area of prints - except for the Book Monster prints, all of which sold. (Nothing else did. The curse of the Book Monster!) Not that I'm complaining. It's nice to have at least one sure bet for cons.

Note to self: Make more prints. Learn, already.

Outside of the Book Monster, sales have generally been slowing on eBay too, and I hate to cop out and blame it on the economy, but I think it can't be avoided. I see the figures. They suck. Can I say it? I mean I am surprised and gratified to find anyone still spending their money on art when I keep in mind gas prices, inflation, stagnant wages, and etc.

But the con was very inspiring in terms of getting the motivation to paint. Really. Can't say that enough. It was great having time to talk with Patrick Meadows, who was very very kind!, William Nick Johns (his stuff is more vibrant in person than on his site, alas for online viewers), Daniel Trout (get your stuff online!) and Bob Snare (hmm...he's probably on DeviantArt somewhere).

I'm halfway persuaded to get a DeviantArt gallery but am still very afraid of the distraction it will bring.

Panel-wise

Generally lots of fun. As mentioned, this is the first Trinoc*Con where, in almost every panel, the current state of things/the adminstration was bemoaned to general agreement. In panels like "Writing as Social Criticism" and "Satire to Reality", it was expected, but when it pops up everywhere else, at a con that IMO has been apolitical before now, I am pleasantly surprised.

People should be mad. I just wish they'd been madder at the end of 2004.

And in the rambling spirit of this journal, I might as well tackle this now...

Good vs Evil and Dragonlance

Oh shit, I finally said the D-word on this journal after, what, 3 years? I left the series pissed because the good vs evil battle in the last Weis & Hickman books (I thought) were getting completely unrealistic. I wrote anonymous (and highly rated) critiques on Amazon.com, ranting about the weak "Good" characters, and how the Evil side had all the strong, conniving, charismatic figures. The evil characters preyed upon ignorance, apathy, personal greed and seductive brainwashing to win, and they were all too bloody successful, and reading the most recent MW&TH books in the DL series were an exercise in frustration.

My epiphany today was... I get the same fucking frustration today reading the US news.

And... Anne Coulter is the Queen of Darkness.

In 1989, a group of international scientists, frustrated with piecemeal and isolated solutions to environmental deterioration, came together to draw up a set of principles to guide societies (citizens and businesses) in a whole-system approach toward social justice and sustainability. They came up with four "system conditions" that have scientific consensus:

(1) Nature cannot withstand a systematic buildup of dispersed matter mined from the Earth's crust (eg. oil, minerals, coal, etc.)
Right now these substances are being dispersed into the air and onto/into the ground faster than they can be reintegrated (not just buried) into the crust of the Earth. The buildup of the toxins from these dispersed substances continued unabated threatens the health and continuation of all life.

(2) Nature cannot withstand a systematic buildup of long lasting compounds made by humans (eg. PCBs, DDT, teflon, polystyrene)
Like the above, these cannot be reintegrated into the Earth's crust at the same rate we are producing them. Because they are unnatural, these take an even longer time to break down, and at the current rate, the amount of concentration of these unnatural materials in our environment, some yet lacking long-term studies on our health, threatens the health and quality of all life.

(3) Nature cannot take a systematic deterioration of its capacity for renewal (ie. deforestation, overfishing, the loss of fertile land)
The health and quality of life for everyone on this planet depends on nature's capacity to turn our wastes into new resources with processes that recycle everything. We have to allow for these processes to happen instead of letting nature deteriorate beyond the point of it being able to heal itself. The failure to correct the environmental detertioration in the long term means the loss of biodiversity and health for all living things.

(4) Conditions (1) - (3) can be improved by (a) being more efficient in our use of resources on this planet and (b) promoting justice for all people on this planet. Poverty frequently leads the poor to destroy near-irreplaceable resources for short-term gain. Global social stabiility and cooperation is needed to ensure everyone's long-term survival.

I had to retype and rephrase the above in some of my own words from The Natural Step and The Cultural Creatives (When will I stop talking about this book?!) because I can't believe how well The Natural Step (the overall name for the principles of sustainability, the group's findings and suggestions) condenses what is a huge topic of global environmental degradation into 4 easily explainable and demonstrable ideas.

That said, I'm going to try and make all my art producing from this point tree-free, and chlorine-free too, if possible. This week I finally got to experiment with the paper I got from http://www.greenfieldpaper.com, and their Hemp Heritage paper (25% hemp, 75% post-consumer recycled paper) is absolutely amazing. I've also been fighting the strong temptation lately to make my own paper from used paper, but I think my multi-purpose work desk (ie. the kitchen table) cannot only take so many tasks at a time. Ah well. Maybe when I can "expand my operations" into the outdoors during the summer, I'll try it.

Oh, and my site was updated this weekend. With my 2005 Holiday (take that, Bill O'Reilly) and new year card, to boot. It's also for everyone reading this, so here you go, it's...

( ...under this cut )