Nixie clocks, bpNichol and Little Nightmares

Above: Check out the Nixie Clock that my friend Parki made from nixie tubes (old vacuum tube displays). The clock uses the Make Controller's Ethernet capabilities to go online and check what the time is via Network Time Protocol. Read all about it in this Making Things post, where the clock is currently being featured. See Pull-Pull-Twist-Turn for info about Parki's other projects.

The Alphabet Game: A bpNichol Reader

I've posted an interview with Lori Emerson, one of the co-editors of The Alphabet Game: A bpNichol Reader on blogTO. I first grew curious about bpNichol when I discovered that the street behind Coach House Press in the Annex is called "bpNichol Lane" and read that an employee at Coach House regularly waters the word "LAKE." Not only did bpNichol write for Fraggle Rock (anyone remember that show?) but he also won the Governor General's Award for Poetry.

More acrylic paintings

I've some more paintings up in my Etsy store: one 6" x 6" painting and two tiny 2.75" x 2.75" paintings. All three are part of my Little Nightmare series. Click on any image below to see the corresponding Etsy page/info. I've also tweaked some of the prices in my shop this week.

The mini-paintings (if you'd like, I can include a magnetic strip to turn these into unique fridge magnets):

Mini Snowdance 2.75" x 2.75"

Mini Monster Family 2.75" x 2.75"

Little Nightmare: Snowdance (acrylics on 6"x6" canvas board)


Please note that I'm only shipping until this Friday. Any orders placed after that will be shipped in the New Year.



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Monster squirrels!

I'm starting to paint on slightly bigger canvases, as I've mentioned before. The Monster Squirrel above was done a 6" x 6" canvas board. I'm gradually doing real-life paintings of my Little Nightmare series. I like the idea of testing out ideas digitally in Corel Painter first to fiddle with colours and composition, then attempt them with real paints and a canvas.



I've been pretty busy lately, but I find that my acrylics painting helps keep me from getting too stressed...one more reason I'm not taking commissions, at least not yet. Right now it's pure FUN. I keep some of the paintings but there isn't room in my office for most of them, so then I post them for sale in my Etsy shop. I've sold 34 paintings through and outside of Etsy so far.

I learn as I go. Thanks for the encouragement and interest in my art, everyone! I've also just discovered WetCanvas, an online community for artists. I'm mainly interested in the acrylics board and the "general art business" board. All my experience has been in freelance writing so far, and I still feel pretty ignorant about art sales. Some fascinating discussions, and highly informative.

I'm also thinking offering some of my paintings with pre-cut matteboards (am I using that term correctly?) to fit, like this one:



My local art store doesn't seem to have pre-cut matte boards for square paintings, so I might have to order those online.

I also love the 4" x 4" x 1.5" canvases that Jeff picked up for me. Here's my first attempt ("Perchance To Dream"):



Because the sides are so thick, the paintings can stand up by themselves -- making them easier to display and also extending the canvas space I have to work with:



Anyway, the paintings above are or were all for sale in my Etsy shop; you can click on any of the images above to see the Etsy page for that item. I'm also getting into the habit of lowering the price on one or two items a week.

The line-ups at the post office are getting long, so I'm only going to be shipping orders that are placed by December 14th (this Friday). Any orders placed after that will be shipped after January 3rd. Sorry, but I -hate- line-ups and will happily sacrifice potential sales later this month to avoid them.

I'll be posting another small batch of paintings in a day or two after I finish some touch-ups.



Above: layering gesso over a painting that didn't turn out. I was experimenting with doing portraits of some of my nephews and nieces, but the portraits turned out horribly. Yet another reason to avoid commissions for now! In Corel Painter, it's easier to fix mistakes, plus I'm finding it way more fun to draw cartoon portraits than realistic.

I just bought a tube of Liquitex modelling paste and tried it out for the first time on the weekend, tinting it with acrylic colour. It's smelly but REALLY fun to work with. I'll post some photos of my first experiment soon.



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Cats, sleeping babies and painting

Above: this curious cat belongs to our friends Doug and Jen; I took the photo in low light conditions with my Sigma 30/1.4 lens. We were visiting D & J recently to see their new baby. I held her (the baby, not the cat) in my arms for a while until she fell asleep. There's nothing more peaceful than watching a baby sleep, in my opinion; the rest of the world just falls away. It's been a while since any of my nieces or nephews were this small, and I found myself just staring at her the whole time, marveling at the tiny fingers, the small movements of her mouth as she slept.



Paintings in progress.

Last night I discovered the best time to go holiday shopping at a toy store -- dinnertime! At least our local toy shop was almost empty, and it was packed with people earlier in the day.

I went to Cafe Pleiade (currently my favourite restaurant in Toronto) for dinner afterward as a treat to myself, then went home to paint. It's been a busy week and I've been letting myself get sucked into the whole pre-Christmas crazystress: too much to do (in terms of workstuff and Christmas-stuff), and not enough days.

So I decided to take some selfishtime for myself and do some painting. I'm still finding acrylic painting incredibly relaxing and totally absorbing.

One major difference between painting digitally and painting with real life acrylics is that you have to let paintings dry between layers, and that takes time. I found this frustrating at first but now I'm finding it one of the relaxing aspects; the process forces me to take my time, to pace myself.

Which is why I usually work on multiple paintings during a session. While I'm waiting for the white to dry on one painting, for example, I could be adding white to another.

I'm starting to move up to 6" x 6" canvases instead of just flat 4" x 4", mainly because our local art store is out of 4x4 canvas boards. Painting on a bigger canvas is more fun, I find, because I don't have to paint with such tiny strokes. Hm...I'm already eyeing 8x8 and 10x10 canvases now. :-)

The girl with purple hair is painted on a new canvas shape I'm experimenting with - 4" x 4", but 1 3/4" thick. Jeff found this, and I asked him to get a bunch because I was so intrigued by the shape. You can stand the canvas up to display it instead of hanging it, though you can still hang it if you want.

I hope to finish these this weekend and put some of them up for sale on my Etsy shop.



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Ex-"Weta Guy" looking for Facebook app testers

Shane McEwan (pictured on the right, above) is developing Facebook apps and is looking for testers!

Shane, as some of you already know, used to work at Weta Digital, and we "met" when I was working on my very first webcomic, Waiting For Frodo. Since then, I always clapped whenever Shane's name came up in the Lord Of The Rings movie credits. :-)



Wow. It's hard to believe that it's been SIX YEARS since all that LOTR frenzy. Jeff and I have been thinking about watching all three movies again, ideally the extended versions and all on the same day. It would be quite the time and eyeball investment, and part of me wonders if we'd really be able to enjoy the third movie after sitting for so long. Still, the idea is tempting.



Shane and I have kept in touch since he left Weta, and more so lately because of Facebook. I hope to meet Shane and his wife in person someday! But speaking of Facebook, Shane's apps thus far are:

Zazz! (mostly of interest to Australians)

reCAPTCHA: "Helping the World One Word at a Time...By entering the words in the box, you are also helping to digitize texts that were written before the computer age. The words that you see were taken directly from old texts that are being scanned and stored in digital format in order to preserve them and make them more accessible to the world. Since some of the words in these texts are difficult for computers to process, we are using the results of your efforts to help decipher them."

Life's Experiences: Shane's newest app, and he's looking for feedback/testers. Basically, you answer "yes" or "no" to a bunch of questions re: life experiences and find out how many you share with other people. You can add your own questions, too. Answers are kept private; just the aggregate data is shared.

If you're on Facebook, Shane would greatly appreciate you adding the Life Experiences app and testing it out; you can always remove it later. Please post any feedback and suggestions on his discussion board for that app.

Shane and I might be collaborating on a new Facebook app, by the way, which sounds REALLY fun and the kind of app that I'd want to add even if Shane wasn't involved. More info early next year, I hope!

Link O' The Day

Chocolate typography! (Thanks to Ray for the link)

Video O' The Day

Check out this video: Pay The Writer, featuring Harlan Ellison (warning: lots of strong language).

Thanks to Patricia Storms of Booklust for posting this in her blog recently. Read her great entry about it.

This is especially a problem in the arts, as she points out, not just writing. I often get this kind of request from strangers (e.g. "It won't take you long to write/draw this -- so I want you to do it for free"); I'm ticked off when it happens but mostly just saddened by the reality that a lot of people tend to undervalue creative efforts.

I'm lucky in that my friends aren't like this -- but then again, they wouldn't be my friends if they were. And when they do ask, I know that they're always aware of how much they're asking from me and are fine if I say no. Which I do a lot (saying no, that is) -- that took me years to learn.

And no, this mini-rant is not because of anything that's happened to me recently so if you think this rant is about you, you're probably wrong.

:-)



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Meeting Ryan Couldrey

Most of the people I work with live in other countries and often other timezones. It was the same with Inkspot. Even when my contacts work locally (i.e. in Toronto), our interaction tends to be online only. Even though I very much appreciate the convenience of e-mail, it's always great to be able to meet some of these people in person.

Last night I finally met Ryan Couldrey. Ryan interviewed me for blogTO at the beginning of this year and partly as a result of that, I'm now writing for the site. :-) Anyway, Ryan's just as cool in person as he is in e-mail, and I encourage you to check out some of his online projects, like:

Shuriken Diaries: his new webcomic (he does the writing). I like this more and more with each strip.



Photendo: his photo blog. You can also check out his photos and comics on his Flickr page, including his Larger Than Life set (hey, I might be involved in a photo shoot for this set!).

I also picked Ryan's brain about photography, including tips on how to photograph my paintings with the limited lighting equipment I currently have.

Speaking of talented friends...

I was doing some fact-checking with Jeff and Maya Bohnhoff for a GAfilk program book bio, and discovered that their current CD (scheduled for release next year, possibly in the spring) has a pretty impressive list of guest musicians! Tentatively titled "Moëbius Street," the album's guest musicians include:

Tony Levin (who has recorded with Peter Gabriel, King Crimson, Pink Floyd, Dire Straits, among others) on bass
Jerry Marotta (Peter Gabriel) on drums
Victor Gonzales (Santana) on bass
Scott Irwin (Avalon Rising) on drums.

If you're not familiar with the Bohnhoffs, you should go over to CDbaby and listen to samples from some of their CDS.

Aliens Ate My Homework, for example, has soundclips from their parodies.

Retro Rocket Science: Another great parody album.

Manhattan Sleeps (my favourite Bohnhoff CD) is a compilation of their original songs.



Woohoo! I can't wait. Maya and Jeff are the guests of honor at GAfilk, by the way! And I just noticed from a site announcement that the Super Secret Guest for the January convention is Peter Beagle, acclaimed author of fantasy fiction such as The Last Unicorn, A Fine and Private Place, The Folk of the Air, The Innkeeper's Song, A Dance for Emilia, and Tamsin.

Other GAfilk guests: Toastmaster - Brian Richardson, Interfilk Guests - Brobdingnagian Bards. GAfilk is the Georgia Filk Convention and takes place in Atlanta, GA on Jan. 11-13, 2008. You can find out more info at the GAfilk Web site.

Looks like I'm not going to the SCBWI conference in NYC, by the way. I'm saving up my money for the August conference in L.A. instead. My filk conventions this year: GAfilk and FilKONtario. Possibly OVFF, but that will depend on finances.

Thanks for all the tree advice!






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