Monday, October 13, 2008
Saturday, October 11, 2008
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
A new technique

I had originally started this one back in 2003. It was one of my Oil Pastel pieces, but I wasn't happy with it so I put it in my collage bag to use pieces of it on something else. It was in there for a couple years until one day I used a hot glue gun to outline the color blocks of it.
Then it took on more of a batik look and I thought it had possibilites, but still wasn't sure what I wanted to do with it. My sister was visiting me recently and pulled it out to admire it and oohed and aahed over it. This gave me a fresh viewpoint of it so then it was very easy to add the acrylic colors to it to finally finish it off.
I'm not planning to sell this one because it has been more of an experimental art piece. Nor do I know if I will make more of these in the future. I thought I might try using some beeswax to make outlines on a piece of paper, then put color over it and iron off the beeswax to see what that looks like. I still enjoy doing experimental techniques a great deal.
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Monday, July 28, 2008
A recovered ACEO

I had mailed this ACEO (Art Cards Editions and Originals) off to Somerset Studios almost a year ago along with ACEOs from another 7 artists from my collection. I JUST got them all back last week along with a nice little rejection letter from Jenny Doh that this material is not fitting in with their current subject matter. Or something to that effect.
When I did my mailing last year, I sent in two different sheets of ACEOs for their consideration. Somehow the batches got separated and sent to different divisions at Somerset Studios. The other batch was also rejected and had been returned to me within 3 months. I wasn't expecting to ever see the rest of my submission and had thought my original artworks were lost forever.
Although I was disappointed that the ACEO subject matter had been refused by Somerset Studios, I must admit that I was pleased to get my art collection items back! It was only a cost of $100-150 for those other artists' works, but I bought them because I loved them so much.
Now they are safe and sound again. So if you plan to submit anything to Somerset Studios, be prepared for a loooong wait. They must have a humongous backlog of submitted artwork to look at by now! Everything was in perfect condition when it was returned, so they obviously value our work. Nice!
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Sunday, July 20, 2008
6:30 am on a Sunday??
While the TDF officials struggle valiantly to eliminate doping and addictions from their race, myself and many others like me continue to watch faithfully. This has been my favorite sport for years and years and many of my other blog posts have contained info on the race. The highs and lows of this sport become an emotional involvement for me.
I can't even explain why this sport is my favorite. It all began with a little 3-day bicycle race called the Red Zinger in Boulder, Colorado back in the 70's. When Celestial Seasonings sold the race to Coors, I was incensed and indignant. How could a beer company be good for the sport?
Over the years, Coors pumped vast sums of money into this Colorado based race until they finally pulled their sponsorship around 1988 or 1989. By then I had moved from Colorado and was no longer following the race day by day in person....standing out in the hot sun for hours waiting for my favorite racers to pass by. The race had grown to 11 days and I was expecting the US to embrace the sport and make it a national pasttime.
Well, that hasn't happened. We do still have some large races here in the US, but no longer in Colorado. I will never ever forget those summer vacations when I was at each and every stage of the Coors Classic, screaming my lungs out and shooting thousands of photographs. Those were pleasure moments that I will take with me to my grave.
Cycling has grown in popularity here in the US, largely due to Armstrong's success in the sport. Many American companies have sponsored teams in the TDF in the past 20 years. I'm ever hopeful that it will continue to gain followers in large numbers and more races will spring up around the country. Television coverage now has made a huge difference and many thanks are owed to Versus for making this possible.
Friday, July 18, 2008
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Florida 59
This painting was completed and videoed last weekend, however today I made some changes to it and photographed it. One of my YouTube friends said this: "You captured the feel of a tropical night with the warm gulf winds!"
I was thrilled to hear this because when I was making this painting I was trying to capture the view as it would be from a balcony with this palm tree just a little removed from the balcony. You are almost looking down on the palm tree because of the height of the balcony. So when he made that comment above, I knew I had depicted the image in my mind. YAY!
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Viacom vs Google
$1 BILLION dollars. And Viacom won. What is interesting is that this is a similar situation to what Napster went thru years ago with people's copyrighted music downloads being free and all that. Napster said they couldn't be held responsible for what people did and the courts disagreed. So why Google thought they could pull a fast one and do the same thing, I don't know.
The $1 Billion is chump change for them, so that isn't even a biggie. They should be policing their website more frequently and ensuring that people aren't copying other peoples' videos and music and stuff. The bitch is that very often those types of videos will get Featured on YT's front page! And they get millions of views. Maybe now they will act more responsibly towards peoples' copy rights.
The bad news is that because of this and the court ruling, YT now has to turn over the private information of all of the YT users. This has people up in arms since it's a complete violation of our privacy. People are boycotting Viacom's tv channels and such and raising a huge ruckus on YT.
But from my viewpoint, we have long ago given up our privacy rights when online. It's very simple apparently, for people to capture your info and hack your computer and do whatever they want to do with that information. A friend of mine was at his computer the other day and noticed that the cursor on his computer was moving when he didn't even have his hand on the mouse. And it clicked on something! So he emptied out his computer and had to redownload all of his programs and stuff again.
I think this happened to him once before, if I remember correctly. And supposedly I had a trojan in my computer in the past, too. there is always going to be a risk involved in these activities and you just can't escape it. I have a router and other gizmos hooked up to shut down my computer should anyone try to enter, but nothing is foolproof.
Heck, eBay had a huge scandal last year and videos were showing up on YT proving that hackers had busted their system.
Besides, I just don't get too worked up over these political situations anymore. I'm too tired to care most of the time! LOL




