30 December 2011

Life of Art SitRep #99 Bring on the luftballons!

Every week, I work towards creating a life of art for myself. This is the zigzag filled journey.

Play along in the comments with your own pursuits if you'd like. (That's where I'll cheer you on.)
*******
Whoa, that song came out in 1984. Alas, I am likely dating myself for many of today's blog readers. Anyway, 99 life of art sitreps feels like a real accomplishment even though 100 seems the more significant number. I like the nines.

This week, I

  • Shot 55 photographs of xmas tree and mantle.

  • Added 4 new designs to my Rocklawn Arts shop: White Circles on Blue, Black and White Rectangles, Feisty, and Black and White Gingham Pattern (this one should show up in the store soon):
    White Circles on Blue Black and White Rectangles Feisty 
    Feisty necklace
    Feisty by RocklawnArts
    Browse more photo pendant designs

  • Made 21 Specialty Mugs, a new offering that includes espresso, bone china, and jumbo mugs.

  • Rearranged store a bit and changed store intro links. Changed top picks from cases to calendars.

  • Added links to links file for all of the case types individually. E.g., iPhone 4, iPhone 3, iPod Touch, etc. instead of them all lumped together.

  • Removed products from sidebar list that I don't carry: candy jars, pitchers, tea pots, pet bowls, photography. I know, photography doesn't seem right to remove but as far as I can tell, I can't actually offer the thing that would show up in that category. Strange.

  • Posted 45 products to promotional blogs.

  • Tweeted and FB'd some sales and a new design.

  • Watched most of 5 segments of the Creative Live replay of Fundamentals of Digital Photography with John Greengo. Bummed I missed the class on full frame vs. APS last week. Not sure there's enough info new to me to justify buying it though.

  • Watched "The Stylized Blur Effect," "Video Tutorial – How To Convert To B&W In Photoshop – Best Practices" and "Video Tutorial – Using The Crop Tool Within Adobe Camera RAW" Photoshop tutorials.

  • *******
    How are your pursuits going?


    A year ago on TTaT: The Digital Photography Book

    24 December 2011

    An xmas eve glimpse


    Several faves here. Note the mustachioed swimmer in the top left. Got him years ago at a shop in Tallahassee. Still amuses me.

    Merry Christmas to all who celebrate it! For those who don't, happy holidays or have a lovely winter/summer interlude!


    A year ago on TTaT: Peace on Earth, Goodwill toward Legos

    23 December 2011

    Life of Art SitRep #98 Misperceptions

    Every week, I work towards creating a life of art for myself. This is the zigzag filled journey.

    Play along in the comments with your own pursuits if you'd like. (That's where I'll cheer you on.)
    *******
    Felt like I didn't accomplish much of anything this week since I wasn't feeling well, but it's nice to look back and see I did get some things done (even if it's not as much as I'd hoped to do).

    This week, I

  • Wrote, recorded, edited, and uploaded Hoodie Holiday Rap song. Happy Holidays!

  • Tweeted some sales including:
    10% OFF All Items in my Rocklawn Arts shop!
    Code: HAPPYHOLIDAY
    Photographs & designs on Prints, Cards, Smartphone Cases, Mugs & more!

  • Made Orange Circles on Red and Red Circles on Blue product lines. Naturally the templates appeared in yet another sort order making final adjustments more difficult.

  • Made 4 new templates for the new Bone China Mug. Don't think I'll bother with the other new items though. Don't think most of my images would suit them.

  • Made large and small Notepad Square templates.

  • Blogged Green Circles on Red, Red Circles on Green, and Red and Green Rectangles.

  • FB'd, tweeted White Circles on Red.

  • Changed top picks from winter cards to phone cases.

  • Posted 39 products to blogs.

  • Added calendars and 3 more binders to my Rocklawn Arts lens.

  • Emailed about missing stamps in account. Finally got that sorted.

  • Watched ~1.5 hours of Fundamentals of Photography with John Greengo replays.

    Until the end of the year Creative Live is showing segments from their workshops every two hours for free. This is a great time to check out the site and get a feel for the classes they offer. They also have sales going if you want to pick up a course or a collection of courses.

  • *******
    How are your pursuits going?


    A year ago on TTaT: Life of Art SitRep #46

    21 December 2011

    Hoodie Holiday Song

    You know how it is when you get the first line of a song in your head, so then you have to write the rest of it?

    Um...me neither? Let's chalk it up to an illness-induced delusion. I've been under the weather for about a week, finally getting in to see my doctor yesterday. (She was running an hour late, and I had a morning appointment! My blood pressure was so ridiculously high by the time I got in.) Anyway, though I wasn't feeling physically much better, I did feel about 10 times better mentally for having an answer and a course of action. Wrote this little ditty and thought of you all.

    Enjoy!


    (Runtime 1:01. You'll probably need to turn up your sound.)

    For the record, I do still have one more gift to wrap. When I thought of wrapping it last night, I wrote this song instead, and then today I made this video. I should really stop procrastinating. S'all right though, I take it as a sign I'm feeling a little better, enough to have some fun.

    I hope you all have lovely, fun, restorative, and refreshing holidays!


    A year ago on TTaT: A Holiday Treat: The Prom: Take Two (part 2)

    17 December 2011

    Georgia O'Keeffe: Nature and Abstraction

    Georgia O'Keeffe: Nature and Abstraction48. Georgia O'Keeffe: Nature and Abstraction by Richard D. Marshall

    My rating: 5 of 5 stars


    Fantastic collection of paintings by Georgia O'Keeffe. Really a beautiful book.

    Of the essays, I liked the first best. So if you're interested in knowing more, I'd suggest reading that one, looking at the pictures in the other two, and then reading the chronology at the end. Also be sure to read the quotes by some of her paintings, well worth it and have pointed me to another book I want to read.

    It was in that first essay by Richard D. Marshall that shares the name of the book that the obvious occurred to me: just how much I've been influenced by Georgia O'Keeffe's work. When I was young, I suppose I sort of latched onto her as the only famous female artist I knew, and, bonus, whose work I loved.

    I sought out her paintings in museums all over the country. My family went to a great retrospective of her work in DC around 1986 or 87. Seeing her work in books can be misleading. Sometimes the scale really matters. The last image in that exhibit was one of her immense "Sky Above Clouds" paintings. My parents were waiting for me to get through the exhibit and my mom commented that everyone's face lit up when they entered the room with that last huge painting.

    Side note: Even at 13, I was making my parents wait for me to finish looking at art.

    In 1992 during October break from college, I went on vacation with my parents to New Mexico. It was my first time in the Southwest, and I kept thinking, "the hills really are the colors she painted them." In addition to the local museums with her work, we drove out to Abiquiu to take a peak at her house. (Pretty sure at the time it was privately owned.)

    I even painted an homage titled "Left side of a triptych with skull."

    But looking at my other paintings and my photographs now, I see more of her impact and perhaps things we have in common. Like the way I tend to photograph flowers or make abstractions out of architecture. My interest in the details and forms of things may have developed in part from looking at hers. Or my interest in those things may have been why I was drawn to her work in the first place. Either way: neat.


    A year ago on TTaT: Life of Art SitRep #45

    16 December 2011

    Life of Art SitRep #97 Barcode FTW!

    Every week, I work towards creating a life of art for myself. This is the zigzag filled journey.

    Play along in the comments with your own pursuits if you'd like. (That's where I'll cheer you on.)
    *******
    This week, I

  • Shot 40 photographs.

  • Created 4 new designs, wrote product descriptions, and added them to my shop.

    Quite proud of my design Double Rainbow Barcode. It actually spells out "rainbow rainbow" with an alpha-numeric transposition if you assume the start and middle reds equal "r." (Because as we all know UPC-A codes are only 12 digits long while "rainbow rainbow" is 14.) Yes, I got my geek on for this one, but I like it so much better because I did. :)
    Double Rainbow Barcode


    And then I got my groove on with shape and background color layers to make White Circles on Red, Blue Circles on Red, and White Circles on Green.
    White Circles on Red
    Blue Circles on Red
    White Circles on Green

  • Made new templates for colored circles on background color product lines. Don't need to resize anything, just add background color and uncheck templates boxes where needed. Of course the new templates posted in a different order which is a bit of a pain, so I wrote out the new order for which items need background color added to them. Think this approach is still faster but not quite the time saver I hoped it'd be.

  • Created 6 new digital designs. (3 more to add to my shop!)

  • Blogged a sale and Double Rainbow Barcode design.

  • Posted 51 products to blogs.

  • Tweeted and FB'd some sales and new designs.

  • Made sure ornaments were marked in xmas category and rearranged products in most folders in my store.

  • Added xmas cards and stamps to my store's intro.

  • *******
    How are your pursuits going?


    A year ago on TTaT: A Holiday Treat: Hamlet was my undoing, Part III

    09 December 2011

    Life of Art SitRep #96 Making up for lost time

    Every week, I work towards creating a life of art for myself. This is the zigzag filled journey.

    Play along in the comments with your own pursuits if you'd like. (That's where I'll cheer you on.)
    *******
    This week, I

  • Created designs for 5 new product lines, a new personal best!
    White Circles on Light Blue Purple and White Gingham Pattern 
    Check out the complete collections of White Circles on Light Blue and Purple and White Gingham Pattern products.

    Green Circles on Red Red Circles on Green 
    Check out the complete collections of Green Circles on Red and Red Circles on Green products.


  • Red and Green Rectangles 
    Check out the complete collection of Red and Green Rectangles products.

  • Remade Rainbow Planets necklace twice. First time [zig!] just shifting image to right a bit. Then I realized that if I really wanted to balance it better, I needed to revise the design for a square rather than rectangle [zag!]. I like how it came out:

  • FB'd, Tweeted, blogged, zblogged Purple and White Gingham Pattern. zBlog started giving me an error message and hasn't been allowing me to post, so I may just let it slip into oblivion. Not a big fan of WordPress, at least not the way I had to work with it on that site.

  • Tweeted, FB'd: Red and Green Rectangles, Red Circles on Green, Green Circles on Red, and White Circles on Light Blue links.

  • Took 5 photo booth shots of my stamps.

  • Tweeted several sales and FB'd two.

  • Posted 42 products to blogs.

  • Rearranged store a bit.

  • Watched Designing for the Social Web with Justin Seeley on Creative Live.

  • *******
    How are your pursuits going?


    Two years ago on TTaT: Heifer International

    07 December 2011

    It's another step, but...

    US will use foreign aid to defend gay rights abroad, Clinton, Obama declare: culture no excuse.

    I first heard about this on one of those news snippets on The Weather Channel this morning. My gut reaction: how ridiculous when most of our country doesn't legally support gay rights.

    It makes me wonder about the power of the almighty dollar though. What if there were financial incentives for states that have legalized same sex marriage and other gay rights? Would money be more important to bigots than their opinions?

    As for using foreign aid to encourage gay rights abroad, I hope it helps the worldwide LGBTQ community. But let's have more support and action at home too. How can the US champion gay rights elsewhere if our rights are legally denied so many places here without looking like hypocrites?


    4 years ago on TTaT: Finally, another book

    02 December 2011

    Life of Art SitRep #95 Rest and education

    Every week, I work towards creating a life of art for myself. This is the zigzag filled journey.

    Play along in the comments with your own pursuits if you'd like. (That's where I'll cheer you on.)
    *******
    Clearly hit a lull this week, but I think it's a reaction to pushing myself hard the previous weeks. Just need to get my head back in the game, as they say.

    This week, I

  • Shot 8 snapshots.

  • Watched Wordpress for Photographers workshop on CreativeLive. Made some changes to my zblog on the fly during it. Still not really sold on WordPress as a website platform. Do you like it or have another preference?

  • Did some research for a design I'm working on.

  • Tweeted several sales.

  • Blogged, zblogged Black Friday, weekend, Cyber Monday and Tuesday sales.

  • Reorganized store a bit.

  • Had my Rainbow Polka Dots on White binder showcased on Bebops' blog.

  • Posted 39 products to blogs.

  • *******
    How are your pursuits going?


    Two years ago on TTaT: Hiccups and epistaxis