PRETTY, HUH?
purely for organizational and submission purposes, an actual portfolio site.
Still need to add a bio and an artist’s statement; that will have to happen tonight when I finish up this drawing.
I’ve been collecting photos of clients wearing/enjoying my work lately- there should be a big post up of all those pictures soon!
So I finished the dahlia painting last night:
I’m framing a few romantical-style things for a show in feb at my friend Cyn Rudzis’s gallery- That’s a theme show about wild hearts.
Then, I sent out a few taxidermy pieces to the curious gallery wunderkammer show in portland! Those pieces will be in the gallery area, and for sale.
Also the dahlia painting is Sold. Prints of it are already available (click the image for those)
ignore the text on it-
it’s about 80% high saturation and medium value,
about 20% black or white (low chroma, high and low value)
I’m not saying it’s a masterpiece but it works for this as an example.
The Pareto principle (also known as the 80–20 rule, the law of the vital few, and the principle of factor sparsity) states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.
This rule is not exact- it could be 70/30 or 90/10. But the basic meaning- that a large majority of effects stem from a small minority of causes, holds true in every field- including art and tattooing.
In making a picture, you can apply this rule at every stage of the process. 20% of the canvas will attract 80% of the attention, so finding your focal point and putting your best work right there is a good idea. Leaving the other 80% a bit more loose can help with this. Most people look at faces or figures first in any piece of art-so spending more time on these than on the wall behind them is best. In a landscape, the feature of interest should get most of your working time. If you do that part right, and the rest has some harmony with it, you’re golden. Abstract art is this principle, standing alone.
I have been told to make my values work this way too. 80% of the piece should have similar values, with 20% having either high brightness or low dark, whichever is stronger against the rest. So a daytime snow scene might be in high key throughout, but then has shadows or rocks which are very dark against it, and which account for about 20% of the scene. You could do this with color, or a particular level of detail or contrast, too.
You probably make 80% of your paintings and drawings, with only 20% of the colors you have, with 20% of the brushes you use.
Then there’s the boring marketing part, too.
Right now I’m working on two things. One is a series of for paintings, each a hare. Each in a different season. The other thing is this dahlia in an antique jar next to a window.
Whenever I work with colors i don’t like, i end up working very slowly. I can’t sit there with them for very long. For example, the teapot i painted recently was all in subdued grey and reddish brown, and black. I love those colors so i finished that painting very quickly.
I don’t like magenta and it’s usually not in my palette and so this flower which should be very simple and already done has taken me extra days.
Knowing how I am about this, i can predict on advance that the winter and autumn hare will get painted first and quickly, and I’ll have a great time, then the spring hare will come next and be fun, but take a little bit longer, and the summer hare may feel like a neverending task, all that green! And take as long as the other three put together.
But it’s important that they all are done the way I’m imagining them, as a set, or i won’t be satisfied with them.
At least it won’t be a magenta hare.
My partner, Hawkins, likes magic. He has a vast library of books on it, and is really interested in magic. Not “wizard” magic- stage magic. Magic tricks. Cards, rabbits in hats, Penn and Teller…that stuff. You know, the Tony Wonder kinda thing.
He has this book, which he bought in the fall sometime.
an “all right” book on magic.
Tonight, as we were reading before bed, he remarked that this particular book was full of very helpful notes. One that explained a trick, and another without which the trick in the book couldn’t even be done. “Whoever owned this before was awesome,” he said. I asked to see the book- every page had highlighted notes, little margin scribbles, every page. I flipped to the front to see when the book came out and saw this at the top of the page, as well as an embossed monogram “JMH”
why I’m even making a post about this.
Now, I’m curious as hell about everything. So I turned to the internet and searched.
this guy.
“Wow, he was in the Army, and he had a lot of family. Hey he did magic as a hobby and liked books! Sounds like you!” I said. “I guess that’s why they sold the books, he died in June.”
“So his kids probably sold off his library,” Hawkins said. Then he looked thoughtful. “I wonder how many other dead people’s books I’ve got.”
I looked around at the shelves full of old, dusty books on every wall, and said “All of them.”
hourglass and burnt candle. two things.
Part one is here.
You can only get one tattoo at a time. I can only do one tattoo at a time. I know you have ten things you want to put into a tattoo- but that’s ten tattoos. And we can only do one thing at a time. Each important concept should have its own singular tattoo.
Most of the time, you can pick two things. One object and one word or phrase. Two objects. And a color or mood for the background. That’s the limit, pretty much, for coherent, cohesive art on the skin. How big or small the tattoo is doesn’t really matter too much, with this. Good tattoos have flow, and are good to look at. Adding too much subject matter to any one space usually ends up terrible.
You have six siblings and you want to get a tattoo that represents ALL of them. So you think of six tattoos, and then ask us to somehow make that into one tattoo.
NO.
You can only get one tattoo at a time! If you need a tattoo for each of your siblings, I am sorry but you will either need to pick one thing that represents all of them, or get six tattoos.
I’ll be back tomorrow morning! Got some scanning, and painting to do. Making progress on this one.
I’m trying something out
with formatting (more…)
Short answer? Pretty safe, with some exceptions.
It also depends what you call “theft”. For this essay, I consider theft to mean several things.
I’ll take these point-by-point.
First of all, I don’t consider someone linking to your work theft in ANY way. People who like your work are going to want to share it with other people, and this is good! You post your work online so others can see it. Someone linking to your site is a good thing. Someone sharing your work is good.
However, they may save the actual image file and repost it to their own site or page, giving you no link back, no credit for your work. And that is theft, in a way. To avoid this, you can watermark all your images.
A watermark is great, but it puts a lot of people off, if it takes up large areas of the image or interferes with the image content.
Unobtrusive but inside the image in a way that’s difficult to crop out.
There’s the first issue dealt with, mostly. You can also use google image search once in a while, to check and see who’s using your images. If you’ve watermarked them well, those uses will lead back to your site anyway. If the people using them are ethical, they’ll also give you credit and link back to your work.
The second problem- people printing out your work instead of buying it. The easiest solution here is to never upload print-resolution images online. This is simple enough until you want to use a print-on-demand service to sell prints or shirts, that requires your upload of large files. I use redbubble for this- because they keep the large-format file hidden from the net, and only show a smaller version of it to customers. Basically, don’t post large files online for public view. Only post images that are too small to print out.
The biggest problem, the worst, is people stealing your work and using it by tracing, or copying it, then printing it onto things they’ll sell. It happens pretty often, and it’s really upsetting. The only real solution for this is again, only post small images, too small to print. You can also be vigilant and search google images for your work, but that takes a lot of time away from making stuff.
I still have not solved this problem, if you have suggestions, leave me a comment! I would love to know how other people handle this.
As of January first, I’m taking no more commissions for specific art. all the things i make will still be for sale, i just won’t be working to order for a while.
I’ve come to realize that only rarely do I feel good doing commissioned work, i usually under price it and end up working nearly free… and since these last two projects I’ve got lined up are so fun and not shitty like that, i want to end on a high note.
Again- I’ll still be making things, and those things will be for sale.
At the end of january. I’ll be busy finishing off my kickstarter- the horror coloring book project ends then, and I’ll be either sending them out, or crying because they didn’t get enough backers! If you haven’t checked the project out yet, please do! And if you want the book, back it so it gets printed! And -please share the link, whether or not you can pitch in. The more eyes see it the better- there are only 25 days left for it to raise enough to go to press. (and unless some miracles happen soon, it won’t get funded. It’s only a fifth of the way there.)
After that, I’ve got some travel to do- a visit to Seattle, and to Oregon, to tattoo.
So I think my time for commissions is going to be limited anyway. I’ll possibly take commissions again at a later time, but I can’t say when.
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