Here are some pictures from the tattoo convention, what a great time!
Thanks to my clients who sat so well this weekend, and everyone who bought some of my art, I really had a great time chatting with everyone and talking shop. xox
more after the jump.
"But I love my wife"
I’ll be there all weekend! Come say hi, and get some art!
Ink traveler’s facebook site for more info…
The world is a very grey and dismal place at times. There are deaths, horrors. We are all alone in these little bodies, floating around, disconnected most of the time- from each other and from the ground we stand on. Most people DO live quietly, desperately, working and thinking and amassing a thousand new worries each day.
Most people walk around afraid, nervous. Or angry. Or just focused on the task at hand, which for more people all the time involves merely surviving the vicissitudes of economy and thrift, of bad jobs or no work. Of struggle. Life is mostly struggle and concern for most people on earth, and for the rest it can be even worse.
It’s our job, as artists, to show people that there is more. I am not a religious person, nor even a spiritual one. I do not believe that there is a sky-man or any kind of conscious entity watching over us carefully, or interested in our problems. I do not believe. BUT- I do believe that the world itself is a being of grace, and by truly seeing it, and being within it, we can lighten our weight. This entails details.
When one is in a chain gang, there will be a beautiful weed sprouting in the ditch. When one has lost hope and is starving, there will be the smell of dry morning air, and the sunrise. When the worries about the future become too much, there is still the present.
I know this doesn’t make up for any of it. I also know that there are times for all of us when we realize our solitude, when we are alone and in pain, in the dark. Cold and possibly hopeless. In those times it is art’s job to expose the alternatives, to bring the world into us and that way bring us out of ourselves.
Art doesn’t have to be “good” or skilled or perfect or even beautiful to do this. It will be a different view for each artist and a different piece that speaks to each viewer. Sometimes the crude and the ugly do this much more effectively than the pretty and the sweet- actually for me, when I am alone and in pain in the dark, it is the reminder that others have been there as well that helps. And art that speaks this way is often NOT beautiful to look at.
I need to sell art to live- to pay rent. To eat. If I could give it away and not be homeless I would. But the necessities of the world insist that my work must be valued at a number. I know that for some the value of their work is low and their hours are long and hard; that they must do work which is difficult, upsetting, dangerous. I am lucky to be an artist, I am privileged in ways not many are. I love my work. That alone is a stroke of fortune.
People who hate their work but must do it deserve my best efforts, because I know that at times my work, seeing my work and interacting with it, is their release and their reminder. Artists have an obligation to try their damnedest to do that, and to do it as best they can every time.
I’m not even joking!
This was so fun to do.
Rainbows make me happy…
original post here.
This morning, at John Boy’s, a man walking in overheard my conversation with the cashier-“so the road is gone?” I asked. She replied, “yes, 34 is a landslide! but the alsea falls is open, but there are trees down.” The man walking by said, “Yes, the terrible loggers- the terrible loggers will clear that road.”
Twelve miles west of town, the road is gone. Four miles east- the road is gone. There is a side road, over the falls, covered in downed trees. The last few days have been interesting here.
“ORE34, 4 miles East of Alsea
Incident #: 121760
Closure
Crash/Hazard
Lanes Affected: (Westbound) 1 Lane , Shoulder (Eastbound) 1 Lane
Comments: A landslide has the highway closed, use alternate route.
Public Contact: ODOT/NWTOC Salem
Last Updated: 01/20/2012 07:43 am”
The first night, I thought it was going to snow. As the sun set, the fog settled in, and the first flakes came. I knew we were in for it, in a way I’d been waiting for it. By nine pm, the woods around the house were creaking, groaning, and shattering under the weight. It sounded like a gun battle. I thought, at first, that maybe the zombies had come- or that some neighbors were having a shotgun party. I got my revolver out, and slept.
In the morning, the snow was thick. Everywhere I looked giant limbs were lying in it. The trees had taken a beating, and a few of the deciduous trees were broken almost in half. The doug firs that shelter my back yard had lost a lot of branches- many of them on my roof. I went into Alsea, and the store had no power. My house had no power. My car slipped in the snow- then it began to rain.
It’s still raining now- not the torrent it was that day, but the usual Oregon dribble. The rain at first though was heady- huge drops, constant. When I first moved to Alsea the water was high, but now it was raging. In Corvallis the roads had flooded, and a friend of mine living in Monroe area said they were pretty much cut off by the flooding.
This morning they declared the county a disaster area.
In my town, there’s lots of washouts. The road right by my house is about ten inches deep in places. There are tree branches all over the place, and you can see where people woke early and got out their chainsaws to clean up a bit.
Since I am stranded here, for the time being, with the roads gone, I think I’ll probably do some art- at least until the sun goes down. The power has been on and off the last few days, so I’m hoping it stays running through tonight.
I’ll post more as events unfold. Here’s the rest of the photos I took today, and a few from friends in nearby towns.
I’m going to post as many photos as I can find from locals, check back later as I will update here in this post. Click through for the rest.
I am totally against SOPA, therefore I have contacted my government reps to shout about it. I suggest you do the same. I’ll be adding this little plea to all my images today—but I won’t black out.
Content is king- and if someone reading this happens to like my picture and read it, so much the better. SOPA would pretty much put me under. I post my original works to sites which sometimes include violating images- while my work doesn’t violate any copyright law, shutting those sites down because of other people’s sins would punish ME, an innocent bystander.
I also feel that there are enough and proper copyright laws right now to defend original works. If someone “steals” my image and uses it commercially, I can right now, without any additional laws, stop them. Legally. SOPA is good for huge conglomerates who don’t want competition, but would absolutely DESTROY the small, lone, artists, those of us who toil away in relative obscurity.
It will take away the venues we use to sell our original works, and it will destroy our ability to self-promote. It will make us vulnerable to any jerk that wants to take us down- and enable censorship by the few. If someone finds a work online offensive, right now, they can flag it or ignore it. Under SOPA, they could report it as a violation, and it would be immediately removed.
The burden of proof is on the person accused, not the accuser- and this is contrary to ALL previous law and statute in the US.
If you are not from the US, imagine all your US viewers GONE. Unable to see you. As well as the sites you use that are from the US- GONE.
For our sakes, and for your own, stand against this utterly stupid law. You can contact your representatives through this site:
https://action.eff.org/o/9042/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=8173
and let them know how wrong they are about what the voters want.
I do not know enough about lettering to call myself any kind of expert.
seriously. (check out some of my art with lettering in it for verification of that)
I am sometimes shaky, I am often confused by fonts, and although I have done thousands of tattoos with text in them, I still struggle with the forms and shapes. I owe the little I DO know about lettering to B.J. Betts, who is well-known in tattooing as a real expert on this stuff- he has some books out, if you are a professional tattoo artist you should keep your eyes peeled for them and buy them. (but if you work in a shop or have been around a while you already own all his stuff…)
I learned to do lettering before I ever heard of his work- the way I learned was through calligraphy, and through sign painting. A combination of those things and Betts’s work has formed my meager abilities.
Here’s a walk through on drawing this stuff. If you’re a tattooer you will naturally make the proper adjustments to the text as you go in order to make it applicable to skin, so I won’t be explaining the precise tech needed for that. If you just want to add a tattoo to a painting, a drawing, if you are not a tattoo artist you can use this how-to to make script lettering … or if you are doodling reference for your tattoo artist to build you a tattoo from, you can do this to give them an idea of what you’re after.
This is a step-by-step for script, cursive lettering in a slanted style in which the letters are connected.
I will post a separate one for block or stylized lettering next.
My tools:
Liquid acrylic ink,
fountain pen
(with round nib- just what I prefer)
colored pencil
(for beginning sketch/marking symmetry)
standard black #2 pencil
tracing paper, paper that is easy for ink lines
(I am using a scrap of srches hotpress here)
The rest of the steps, after the jump.
Formerly known as Wardian cases, moss terrariums are pretty easy to take care of, if they’re put together right.
I’ve been making these off and on for years, and have a few well-established ones growing in my house.
They’re really nice for times when you want to see some outside nature but for some reason(such as cold or work), you can’t go hiking.Since I moved to Alsea, I’ve spent a lot of time in the woods.
I live next to the Siuslaw forest, which is one of the least-developed natural areas in the northwest.
It’s gorgeous, silent, and old.
The house I live in has its own patch of woods, which is its yard. I spend a lot of my days poking around there, growing things, picking mushrooms, and gathering moss. This is what I do with all that stuff, and it’s not hard to do yourself.
(here’s a supply list, and another, and another, in case you need to buy some of these things)
I had the chance to do a purple tulip today.
I LOVE these flowers. So much. She had a few stretch marks- she has been losing weight. Right now, in this picture, the tattoo is fresh and so they appear raised a bit, but when it heals they will be barely noticable. Stretch marks are easy to cover with tattoos, as long as the tattoo subject itself has some texture- like a flower, a branch. Something with varying contrast and color.
She sat like a champ, and her friend (one of my regulars) brought me some chocolate-marshmallow-peanut fudge stuff which is AMAZING. After this I did a smaller piece on a good friend.
What a great day.
human arm bone articulation. banned on etsy!
Apparently, despite many other listings of legal human bones, THIS one is unwelcome on etsy.
Their explanation? “Despite the fact that it is legal in your locale, etsy considers it to fall under the “illegal animal parts” clause of the TOS.”
In other words, the law is what etsy says it is.
Update: etsy has now included human parts as forbidden items, along with any thing that has “health claims”.
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