New Art: “Life Illustrations”

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In my journal I’ve been doing what I call "Life Illustrations" in that I try to take one aspect of something on my mind and illustrate it in one image, distill it down so that the image is evocative for me later. I’ve done quite a few and many are too personal for me to share but I’ve taken a few from my journal and used those as sketches for a few small paintings and here are 2 of them:

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I’ve been quite disgusted with this whole steroids in sports controversy. What disgusts me more is that my tax dollars are going towards investigating it. I’d rather have my money spent on kids in schools than knowing is Clemens infact took steroids. Perhaps Clemens should pay for the investigation with a couple mill of the money he’s made pitching. I made a sketch in my sketchbook of this first. I’ll load up some pics of that later.

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I was discussing the idea of a carbon footprint with someone the other day and this image came to mind. You might remember this image from my sketchbook.

I’m putting both of these up on etsy, you can find them here.

Hump Day Prompt #2- Colored Pencils

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Hdprompt_2

The prompt is open ended and deals only with the
material, subject and content are up to you, but the
material is dictated.

Let’s face it lack of color can be, well, boring. There are
lots of things to add color. I use 2 or 3 media off and on depending on mood.
Colored pencils are about as basic as they come and come in lots of colors. Get
a nicer brand; Palomino, Prismacolor or 6mm Prang (trust me on this one- they
are *&*%^ nice!). Don’t buy Crayola colored pencils. They have a hard wax
base that doesn’t lend them to anything but not breaking. A nice colored pencil
will let you layer colors and create rich depth of color or lay on beautiful
thick layers of rich color, or just write in color.

Prompt #2- Use colored pencils to create a journal page. You
can write, draw or glue the colored pencils to the page but you have to create
some sort of image with them.

Leave a comment with a link to your blog with pictures of what you’ve done!

latest pages

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I’ve been hard at work in my art journal. These are  some of my recent pages. Most are in layers. First I toned the pages with a layer of gesso and acrylic. Then I wrote the entry in pencil or sharpie. Then I’d layer over the top of that with more acrylic and gesso. On top of that I may have collaged or sketched out an idea of what I wnted on the page. I would then block out the area with gesso if I wanted bright colors. After that I’d add layers of color, using thick impasto painting. In some cases I’d add some sharpie to outline an image. IN other cases I’d used colored pencil. On a few pages I used watersoluble crayons to tone down the pages or add a glow to an image. If I liked how things were going I’d go over the page with some matte medium, then I’d add a layer or 2 of glaze. I’d set that up with my heat gun and then add a little bit of stamp pad ink, I"d use a brush with a little spay of water and thin that out and move it around. Than finally heat set that and then burnish the page with some wax. BTW SOme of the pictures areadult oriented".

It works for me. HEre are some images, or head to my flickr account to see more pictures.

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eBay to Lower Fees

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Well, my art selling reader, or art buying readers, eBay has
announced that effective Feb 1, 2008 they will reduce some of their
fees. This is an exciting thing. They are lowering their listing fees,
offering gallery free as well as a few other positive lowered prices.
They pick the money they are loosing on that through raising their
final value fees. Here’s the break down:

Listing Fees:

$0.01 – $0.99 $0.20 $0.15 Lower fee!
$1.00 – $9.99 $0.40 $0.35      Lower fee!
$10.00 – $24.99 $0.60 $0.55      Lower fee!
$25.00 – $49.99 $1.20 $1.00      Lower fee!
$50.00 – $199.99 $2.40 $2.00      Lower fee!
$200.00 – $499.99 $3.60 $3.00      Lower fee! 
$500.00 or more $4.80 $4.00      Lower fee!

That’s
really not bad when you think about it, for those people who are
selling items under $10 it’s a good deal and for those selling above
$25 it’s even better.

Gallery Fees:

Starting or Reserve Price Current Gallery Fee Gallery Fee (effective 02/20/2008)
Auction-style Listings $0.35 FREE
Fixed Price Listings $0.35 FREE
Store Inventory Listings $0.01 FREE
Classified Ads Variable FREE

That’s an even better deal for anyone who used gallery.

Here’s where things get interesting:

Closing Price Final Value Fee Final Value Fee (effective 02/20/2008)
Item not sold No fee No change
$0.01-$25.00 5.25% of the closing value 8.75% of the closing value
$25.01 – $1,000.00 5.25% of the initial $25.00, plus 3.25% of the remaining closing value balance ($25.01 to $1,000.00) 8.75% of the initial $25.00, plus 3.50% of the remaining closing value balance ($25.01 to $1,000.00)
Over $1,000.01 5.25% of the initial $25.00, plus 3.25% of the initial $25.00 – $1,000.00 plus 1.50% of the remaining closing value balance ($1,000.01 – closing value) 8.75% of the initial $25.00, plus 3.50% of the initial $25.00 – $1,000.00 plus 1.50% of the remaining closing value balance ($1,000.01 – closing value)

The difference don’t seem too drastic but let’s do the math on a $19.99
item, pre changes and post changes and see what the changes really are.

$19.99 Item listed @ $0.99
Old:
listing fee:$0.20
Gallery Fee $0.35
Buy it Now:$0.10
Final Value fee:$1.63
Total: $1.85= 9.25%

New:
listing fee:$0.15
Gallery Fee $0.00
Buy it Now:$0.10
Final Value fee:$1.75

Total: $2.00= 10.00%

A
book sells for $54.50, I started the bidding at $9.99 used gallery and
had buy it now. Here’s the fees and how it all compares old to new.
Old:
listing fee:$0.40
Gallery Fee $0.35
Buy it Now:$0.20
Final Value fee:$2.28

Total: $3.23= 5.87%

New:
listing fee:$0.35
Gallery Fee $0.00
Buy it Now:$0.10
Final Value fee:$3.24

Total: $3.69= 6.71%

SO When you do the math, add it all up and figure out the percentages-
eBay is actually charging you more than they did before, but only if
your item sells. Also keep in mind that this doesn’t include PayPal’s
fee structure- add an additional 3+% onto your final fees for them.  Again eBay screws the lower priced
sellers. When I read the CNN article about eBay lowering their fees I
was stoked but doing the math  leaves me cold.

The real question is this: Did eBay really think that they could effectively raise their prices for sellers, market it as a decrease in fees and that no one would notice?  This has got to be some sort of false advertisement.

Hump Day Journaling Prompts #1

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Hdprompt_3

Recently a thread has been going about the blogosphere about
minimum tools for journaling art or otherwise. I’m going to jump on the
bandwagon and give my 2 cents as well as add some materials prompts. Each Wednesday (Hump DaY) will feature a new prompt about a material. The prompts will be open ended and deal only with the material, subject and content are up to you wonderful reader but the material is dictated.

The format will be a brief explanation with the prompt at the end.

Ultimately you really only need two things- a journal and a
writing utensil; that’s bare bones and I’ve seen some very smart stuff on Flickr
using just those 2 items. Be it pencils or pen you can do some fantastic work.

Prompt #1- work with one material- pencil or pen. Subject is
up to you- it could be writing it could be drawing, have fun.

Leave a comment with a link to your blog with pictures of what you’ve done!

 

On Etsy

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I forgot to point out that the painting "There is Love Inside" is for sale on Etsy. You can find it here.

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I plan on putting up some better pictures of it soon, these are far too bright.