Blake is on the phone right now; a meeting for work. I have to be super quiet but all I want to do is blare A Tribe Called Red and glitter my uterus. You heard me. GLITTER MY UTERUS. Then I have to glitter some BLOOD for my EXTRA SPECIAL, ONE-OF-A-KIND PAINTING. WHY AM I TYPING IN CAPS?

But seriously, I really want you guys to listen to Electric Pow Wow by A Tribe Called Red. Here’s the link again. Listen. They combine pow wow music with fucking dubstep or whatever and the result is nothing short of brilliant. Plus they’re Canadian so they’re extra super awesome.

So this painting I’m working on is coming along fucking fabulously. All I have left to do is glitter the blood (I’m using fine glitter for the blood and flaky glitter for the clots haha), sign my name, paint the sides, slap on some varnish and she’s done. BUUUUUUUUUUUT – and this is going to take an awful lot of effort on my part – since it’s part of a pair, I don’t want to show you guys until both of the paintings are finished and all I have done on the other one is a basecoat so far. If I had more room to work, I could do them both at the same time, but I don’t have the space for two 30 x 30 inch wood panels. Right now my work surface is my coffee table and as it is, when I’m done glittering the blood, I’m going to be moving the one painting onto the treadmill (which is messed up, more on that in a bit) and then using the coffee table for the other. ALTHOUGH, now that I think about it, I may be able to use my easel for the one I haven’t started yet. I’m not sure how this crackle paste stuff works, if it’s really good and pasty I could use it with the painting being upright but if it’s liquidy in any way, it’ll run and I can’t have a runny, cracky uterus. Realistically though, I’m not sure I can draw a uterus upright. I work with stuff vertically and I don’t know if I’ll be able to change perspective. I kinda don’t think so. (I have no idea how people paint upright. It feels so unnatural to me.)

I can’t remember if I mentioned this before or not but when I was reading about Jackson Pollock, Wikipedia said that he was unique in that he used his whole body to paint because his canvas was on the floor and he could get at from multiple angles. I do that too. My leg muscles ache when I’m finished painting for the day because I’m squatting and my back hurts because I’m bent over the canvas/panel. I’ve dislocated two toes from squatting to do the tops of these big pieces. It’s hard to explain. Maybe when I start the other painting, I’ll do a process video. I’m not sure how to edit a video, though, which is why I’ve never tried doing a process video before. That’s at least a day away though, the lighting in here sucks during the evening, which is when I would be starting the second one. I’ll at least think about doing it, I guess. Like I said, my main worry is editing. I have no idea how to do it. I would need to add multiple segments together and cut the ends off them, speed the video up, mute it and I guess add music.

Another thing I was thinking of maybe doing was doing streaming video of me painting but I’m nervous about that for a couple of reasons: 1) trolls, 2) I don’t know where to do it. Also I don’t think I’d be a very good hostess. My friend Belinda used to do streaming while she painted and I liked to watch her but she’s a chatty person and would talk to us while she painted. I don’t think I could do that, plus my computer’s on the other side of the room so I wouldn’t be able to see the chat.  SO I’m thinking maybe streaming would be a bad idea. What do you guys think? And if I did it, where should I do it? (Don’t stay Stickam. I hate Stickam. MFC?)

~*GROCERY STORE & DINNER BREAK*~

We just got finished with having dinner. I hate about 1/4 of my steak and about  cups of green beans with butter. Now I’m eating 2o0 calories worth of sour cream & onion Crispers, which are only 10% of your daily intake of sodium. I’m 500mg below what a person’s daily average should be (2500). YAY ME. I’ve noticed that sour cream & onion flavoured things are lower in sodium than other flavours of things. Like mini rice cakes. Cheddar cheese ones are like 8% of your sodium per day and sour cream & onion is only like, 4% or something like that. I wonder why that is? Also, who knew I liked rice cakes?

While we were putting away the groceries, I took pictures of the dogs who knew there was food around:

Hoover Dog.

Lucky Dog.

Blake also bought me pink daisies, behold!

And now I’ve completely forgotten what else I was going to say in this post…oh yeah, the treadmill. Or as I like to call it, the dreadmill. The track is fucked up, like when Blake uses it, the track goes off to one side like as if one side’s stretched longer than then other or something. We got the extended warranty so they can come and fix it, it’s just a matter of actually getting it done.

Blake and Wes have started geocaching. There are a surprising amount of caches in our town and so far they’ve found two of them. I have no interest in finsing caches, but Blake said I could be involved in the making of them which I’m a little bit excited about.

I think this Sunday, which is one of my two days off, we’re going to go to Stouffville to get some fucking amazing homemade Ukrainian pierogies from the Sales Barns and then possibly Stouffville Pizza too because I just want them dammit and if I’m gonna blow my diet one day, I might as well DO IT. I just wanna go. Get food. Come home. Eat. And eat some more. And then do some more eating. And while I’m at it, I might as well eat.

And then guess what else is on Sunday? GUESS GUESS GUESS!!! I bet you guessed it!!! GAME OF FUCKING THRONES, PEOPLE!!! I’m only like, 1/4 of the way through A Clash of Kings though and there’s not a chance in hell I’ll be done before the season premiere. That said, however, Larissa on Facebook posted this and I thought it was awesome so I’m sharing it with you now.

And I think that’s all I have to say for now. I think I’m going to go read my book for a bit while my glitter dries, eat my Crispers, glitter my blood and go to bed. I wish you a happy tomorrow and sweet dreams whenever you get there. Truly.

PS. I got my US postage stamps from Zazzle for The 4 x 6 Exchange and they look awesome! Unfortunately we need $1.50 US postage for each envelope and I only got 45 cent stamps (and not enough for all of us + my mom’s 2 entries) so we’re going to have to get an International Reply Coupon for each one anyway meaning that there was really no point in me wasting my money to get the cool stamps of my work from Zazzle. The good news about that though is that I got to see Zazzle’s quality and I can say without a moment’s hesitation that I’m pretty sure everything I made in my Zazzle shop will print beautifully so GO TO TOWN.

PPS. Silver over at Camwhores who is an artist and gallery owner had some interesting things to say about my art crisis post from the yesterday. You should check it out. Basically she thinks I should stop giving a shit what other people think of my art.

Last night we went to Staples to buy Madison a 3-fold science project folder thing and Blake thought it would be a good idea to buy me a new chair because I’ve needed one for quite a while. Years.

My old chair, pictured above, was found in the garbage in 1997 and my ex welded the broken parts back together at work. I remember it was 1997 because that’s when I got my first computer and thus, needed a computer chair.

It was worn out when I got it of course, but I loved it and over the course of a decade and a half it got pretty…gross. Stains everywhere – to match the ones it came with – a hole in the seat, the arms covered in so much paint that they became hard and cracked. Obviously it was time to retire the old thing.

I like my new chair, though. It allows me to sit cross-legged, which I couldn’t do in my old chair, but I feel like I have to be careful with this one. Not get paint on it. I’m not sure that’s even possible, to be perfectly honest, but I guess I’ll try.

Right now Blake and Wes are out at Curry’s spending the rest of my paycheque. Nice, hardcover sketchbooks are on sale, 2/$10 so Blake’s getting a pair for me and Madison’s getting a pair too, for Easter. Then I’m getting another 30 x 30 inch wood panel for another uterus and then some paint for it from Michael’s and then my paycheque is GONE. I can maybe afford a pack of Fizzy Skittles and that’s like, IT. :o(

I was about to write “sucks to be me” at the end of that paragraph, but it doesn’t suck to be me. more than 3/4 of the world would be over the moon to be me. I have shelter, food, a bathroom, clean water etc. I’m extremely fortunate to live where and how I do and I need to remember that more often.  We all probably do.

Last night I was blog-hopping and I started at the Squam blog and kinda went from there and I thought it was kind of funny how most of the blogs I visited were all trying to figure themselves out. I can’t even think of an example off the top of my head and I can’t go back to their blogs because I didn’t bookmark any of them, plus I don’t want to call anyone out specifically, but they were all trying to be deep and like, I dunno, just deep I guess. And here I am, blogging about paint. Or a chair. Or glitter paper. Or any number of absolutely trivial things.

But the thing is, I think I’ve got myself pretty figured out for the most part. I did all that soul searching and trying to figure out why I do the things I do and all that crap YEARS ago and I heard someone once one call that “mental masturbation” which I kind of agree with, but reading these blogs made me wonder if that’s what people want to read in blogs these days. I know they did back when I was doing it a long frickin’ time ago and maybe that’s why so few people read this anymore, because I don’t spill my guts out the way I used to. Honestly though? I just got bored of that. I mean, I still do it to some degree but nowhere near the way I used to.

Not that I care if people read this, not like I ever did, I just find it curious how my readership has changed over the years and how it continues to change. And how it’s changing again, right now. For a while there, I had the Suzi Blu/art journalers reading along but I think I scared them away when I got sick and now I know they’re not coming back when I’m painting miscarriages on canvas. I don’t see myself being in the pages of Somerset Studio any time soon, thank GOD. Not that I expect to be on the cover of Juxtapoz any time soon either…

I’m babbling. That’s okay.

As I said, right now Blake’s out getting me art supplies and I’m a little worried that I keep spending ALL my money on art supplies for art that I know will never end up anywhere but on my own living room walls. The utilitarian side of me is really concerned about this. I’m also worried that the art I’m doing now, not being as safe and as buyer friendly as my girls, is….I’m afraid that my mom won’t approve. I normally don’t give a flying fuck what people think of me, for the most part, but it felt good when I was doing my girls, doing art that my mom approved of and that her friends could appreciate. I think that’s a large part of why I did them for so long, that and mental safety.

I cannot tell you how fulfilling it feels to have gotten “Me, too.” out of my head and into reality. Finally! And to have it look almost exactly as I saw it in my head. It’s like having a toothache and the relief of finally having it pulled. Now, I can’t say I’m completely happy with “Me, too.” and I can’t exactly call it my greatest masterpiece, but I do feel a great deal of relief that I don’t have this pressure anymore, pressure that I put on myself, to get it done and out of my brain. Ideas plague me. They keep me awake at night, laying in bed working out the technical logistics of how to make an image work. Like how to use crackle paste to convey the idea of barrenness, which I’m doing in the painting I’m working on now. I don’t want to tell you the ideas for the two wood panels (not that any of you care anyway)  but I think that they are going to be amazing.

My big worry with them though is that they’re both pretty big, 30 x 30 inches and they’re meant to be a set. Not a diptych but definitely a pair, but the amount I want for each of them, when put as a set, make them pretty goddamn expensive. A little unobtainable. But I think they’re worth that and I wouldn’t sell them for anything less (as long as they come out as well as they look in my head).

Blake says I shouldn’t worry about stuff like that and I should just paint, but I’m spending my entire paycheque on this stuff, I have zero money left over after supplies, I have to worry about this stuff. But then Blake says, “so say you’re not going to sell any of these, don’t you have to get it out anyway?” and I guess the answer to that is a definite “yes”. I hate sounding cliche or like an “artiste” but I really don;t have much of a choice in the matter with these. With my girls, I would sit down and think “what can I create today?” and start pulling out materials and then I’d get inspired by the materials and that’s how I’d create them. With this series of paintings, which really needs a name now that I think about it, I wake up with the ideas or they just pop into my head when I’m trying to fall asleep. Then as I think about them some more and work them out in my head, they grow larger and clearer and then suddenly, like today, they’re totally in focus and it’s like I have to look around them to see anything else.

I would kill to not have to be working right now and painting instead. There is so much work to do on these wood panels and I feel a little overwhelmed. I know I haven’t bitten off more than I can chew, I know I’m capable of doing this, it’s just daunting. I wish I had a bigger studio space (although I’m grateful for the space I have now) and I wish I had assistants like Damien Hirst, who could do my basecoating for me while I work. Maybe I can convince Blake to help me with that when he gets back. Wes could help too and they could bond or something (which is what they’re doing now).

I’ve gotta say, now that I’ve worked out the details of these next two paintings, I’m more excited about them than I was for “Me, too.“. I think these ones are going to be better realized, a more concrete idea and even though I have no idea what to do with them once I’m finished, at least they’re on wood panels so there’s not a lot of damage that can be done to them in this house. The worst thing that could happen to them is they get covered in dog hair.

Anyway, I think I’m going to go sketch for a while in between e-mails. Sorry for babbling your ear off. Have a great weekend. :o)

I’m sad today. :o(

But yesterday was a good day. Blake and I went EVERYWHERE and I even got the “overshare” badge on Foursquare because I checked into 10 places within 12 hours. Apologies to anyone who follows me on Twitter because of all the 4sq spam. :o/

First, in the morning I had to get my blood drawn, which I already posted about. Because I’ve been really good about avoiding salt and drinking only water, I had 3 Diet Cokes yesterday. One with my McBreakfast, one at Great Canadian Bagel, where we went for dinner, and one when we got home. It was GLORIOUS. Oh lover, how I have missed you!

Then yesterday afternoon we had to go to H&R Block to get our taxes done and that was really boring. BUT I touched Blake’s penis in the cubicle, which is my new favourite thing. Just poking his penis in public places. I TOUCHED HIS WIENER AT H&R BLOCK! How funny is that?

After that we went to Curry’s where I bought a 30 x 30 inch wood panel that is so bloody beautiful I could cry. I have BIG PLANS for that monster! I already started applying gesso to it and I plan on working on it most of today. I also got something called a “gessoboard” which is a wood panel that has a professionally sprayed coat of gesso on it. It was pretty expensive though, $20 for a 12 x 12 (I usually get three 12 x 12 inch canvases for like, $15 I think), but I thought I’d try it out and see how it flies. Oh and I got a pink Sharpie posterpaint marker! A big fat one! No reason, I just wanted one since they came out. They’re oil-based now so theoretically they shouldn’t run when I varnish over them!

Then we went to Michael’s where I used a 20% off my total purchase coupon to buy paint for my new projects, which I’m going to show you now because they are beautiful.

This cantaloupe colour is so fucking gorgeous I cannot even stand it and it was on CLEARANCE for $1.49! Can you believe it! I got 3 of them because it takes 2 to coat a whole big canvas and this colour is going to be the background for the 12 x 24 inch canvas that I’m going to start painting soon. I think this might be my favourite colour of the year. I thought the orange sorbet glitter paint was amazing, but this may be better.

These are my beautiful browns! The one on the right, acorn, is going to be the background colour for my wood panel and sycamore bark is going to be the colour for the sides. You can’t really tell the difference between the two in the pic but sycamore bark is darker than acorn.

This pink is so light it’s almost white but it’s got a hint of cream in it too. It’s going to be going on my wood panel too, with the browns.

And finally, my pink carnations. These were on sale for $1.49 too, so I got 2 of them. I don’t have a project in mind for these but I figure you can never have enough pink paint – or at least *I* can’t, anyway.

After Michael’s we went to Great Canadian Bagel where I got a BLT, which is only about 400 calories according to my tracking app. It was absolutely delicious and I cannot WAIT to go back! I’ve only really discovered bagels in the last few weeks when we had coupons for free ones and I’ve decided that “everything” bagels are one of my new favourite things ever. I would kill for one right now. (I had watermelon, blueberries and a honeycrisp apple from France for breakfast – ooh la la! But now, 3 hours later, I’m starving…)

After that I sat in the parking lot while Blake went to Future Shop to get more blank DVDs so we can watch more movies that he downloads. I really really really want to see My Week With Marilyn and now I finally can! He also looked for a wireless thingy for our Blu-Ray player so we can stream movies instead of burning them but it was too expensive.

 Then we came back into town (our town) and we stopped off at home because my 30 x 36 incher was out on the back patio after I was varnishing it (it still needs a couple more coats) and it was looking like it was going to rain so Blake thought it would be a good idea to bring it in before we went to the grocery store, pharmacy and bank which turned out to be a good idea because 10 minutes later it started raining.

So we brought it in and then we headed back into town to do more errands. I sat in the car while he went to the bank and the pharmacy because those places are boring and if I went to the pharmacy I just would have spent more money, probably on hair dye (I’m trying REALLY hard not to dye my hair until it all grows back in – right now my new hair is only about 4 or 5 inches long).

After those places we went to the grocery store where I got fruit for breakfasts and I got lots of low-sodium snacks like rice crackers and rice cakes and these cheesy breadsticks that I thought would be a good addition to my veggie & cheese plates that I often have after dinner while I’m reading. As it turns out, I can have like *40* mini rice cakes, depending on the flavour, and still have it be low-sodium and low calories! And they taste pretty good! I’m a fan!

I also got more gherkins because I fucking love them, and I can’t remember what else. But it was a good trip!

And then we came home.

I showed Madison my paint but she wasn’t nearly as excited as I was about it. Today she’s going to the movies to see The Hunger Games with her class. They read the first book in class so I guess that constitutes an educational class trip or something. *eyerolls*

Anyway, that was my day. I’m gonna get started on this wood panel before Cheryl gets here to chance my dressing and speak of the devil, she’s here! Talk to you guys later!! Have a great day!!

PS. We also got the glitter paper for our party invitations! Gonna start making those soon, Deanna, e-mail me your address!

Please please please be okay. <3

I woke up to a very sad scene. :o( My dogs had killed a bunny in the backyard. I cried a little bit and then I went outside to take care of it. And of course take pictures. Here it is:

Poor thing. :o(

I’m told by the neighbours that it didn’t suffer but still, my dogs are dickheads. I can’t believe they even caught it though, my dogs are fat, lazy bastards and bunnies are pretty speedy little things. Maybe it was sick. (They say a cat can’t catch a healthy bird, so maybe the same goes for dogs and bunnies?) Oh well. Nothing can be done about it now. I grossed Madison out by picking it up with my bare hands and putting it in the garbage bag. I don’t see the difference between picking up a fresh carcass and picking up a live bunny, personally.

This morning Blake made me “the tomato thing” that I love so much because I’m trying to eat big breakfasts/lunches and have my meals and snacks get smaller as the day goes on because that’s what my doctor recommended. One of my Twitter friends asked about “the tomato thing” so here’s the recipe (it’s a Jamie Oliver recipe from “Jamie’s Food Revolution“, which I highly recommend because it’s awesome & we use it a lot):

Cherry Tomato Sauce With Fresh Pasta

1.5 pints of grape or cherry tomatoes
4 cloves of garlic
a small bunch of fresh basil (we buy the frozen cubes and use 2 of them)
1 lb of fresh lasagne
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
olive oil
2 pats of butter
1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
4 ounces of Parmesan cheese

Cut the tomatoes into halves or quarters. Peel and slice the garlic. Pick the basil leaves off the stalks and put them to the side. Finely chop the stalks. Cut the lasagne sheets into 3 or 4 long strips and put to one side. Grate the Parmesan.

 Bring a large pan of salted water to a boil. Put a large frying pan over medium heat and add a couple of lugs of olive oil and the garlic. Add the butter and let it melt. When the garlic starts to brown, add the tomatoes. Give everything a good stir, then add the basil stalks and half the leaves. Add the vinegar and season with salt and pepper. Drop your fresh pasta strips into the pan of boiling water and cook for 3 minutes. Drain in a colander over a large bowl, reserving some of the cooking water. Add the pasta to the frying pan with a splash of the cooking water and half the Parmesan. Give it a good stir. Taste and add a little more salt and pepper if you think it needs it.

Sprinkle the rest of the Parmesan and the basil leaves, tearing any large ones up.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

This stuff is sex on a plate, I could – and have – eat it every day if it wasn’t so carb-o-licious. Definitely one of my favourite  meals.

All I’ve been doing this week is working on my 30 x 36 inch painting. I don’t really want to talk about it though. Weird right? Normally I can’t keep a secret to save my life and this isn’t really a secret exactly, it’s just that I don’t want to talk about it quite yet. It’s really no big deal, honestly, it’s just jumping back into where I was in 2006 with both feet.

If you recall, it was in 2006 that I had my psychotic break and created “Camp Tampon“. But what I was doing right before that was, I think, a lot more interesting than cute girls on sparkly backgrounds. And I’ve kinda decided not to do cute girls on sparkly backgrounds anymore. I figure if you want those, the ones I did before are available on Etsy and Zazzle and those are good enough. Maybe every now and then I’ll add a new design for Zazzle but I’m not going to do girls exclusively from now on. They just don’t interest me as much as they used to.

I’m still going to do the colouring book, I’m just going to take my sweet ass time with it and just work on it in my spare time rather than making it a full-time job.

My friends The Perlorian Brothers linked an article about Damien Hirst on Twitter last weekend and I started reading about him. I’d heard his name before but didn’t really know who he was and the more I read, the more obsessed I became and the more links I clicked. I just don’t understand why the art world singled him out and said “yes, we are going to make you, Damien, the richest artist in the history of the world” when there are so many more deserving artists out there. (I don’t know of any because I don’t really follow the whole art world but I’m sure there are better out there because Hirst didn’t really impress me all that much.) I guess suspending a shark in a tank of formaldehyde is sort of interesting but wouldn’t it smell? Why would you want that in your house?

I got clicking around on Hirst’s Wiki page and stumbled upon the piece “An Oak Tree“, which Blake thinks is stupid but I think it’s kinda genius.

I just don’t understand how artists can make a living from their art. The concept completely baffles me. Like, how do you make enough money to pay rent and eat and stuff? Let alone make enough to go on holidays or travel or make appearances at plavces and stuff like that. I know how Hirst did it but I mean like, more normal artists. It takes me like, 2 weeks to make one painting! I could never make a living from them!

I have so many paintings planned right now, it’s ridiculous. They’re just popping out of my brain and I can’t even get them on paper fast enough. For the next one I actually need a 24 x 30 inch or maybe a 24 x 36 inch wood panel, which is going to run me about $30 + shipping which I totally don’t even have. I already spent my entire paycheque last week  on the piece I’m working on now. This art shit is expensive! I mean, with my girls it’s easier because I already have a stockpile of stuff for them but these are different because they’re large pieces so I need large substrates and I just don’t have those “in stock” because I’ve never needed them before. Plus, I don’t have anywhere to store them to keep them “in stock” because my house is so friggin’ tiny.

Oh well, as per usual I just have to figure it out.

Right now I’m just focused on the work. Everything else is optional or a bonus or whatever. I just want to plow through all these ideas in my brain and create art that *I* want to see. To hell with everyone else. If you don’t like it, don’t look at it, y’know?

When I went nuts, I was terrified of using my imagination because psychosis was so much like being stuck in my own imagination, which is a scary place to be, believe me. SO that was in 2006 and it wouldn’t be until 2008 when I would use my imagination again and that was when I took Suzi Blu’s class and learned how to make my girls. But my girls were safe and not at all what I would normally do if I weren’t so scared of my own mind.

So when I “went there” last week and started working on this 30 x 36 inch piece, I got really scared that I was manic and about to lose my mind again. I was crying daily, afraid that if I went nuts that I’d lose my job again, but still working on the piece while Blake assured me that I was okay and that I needed to trust the medication.

I think I kissed mania right on the lips though. I’m almost sure of it. I’m okay now and it’s passed, but I wasn’t sleeping, which is a bad sign and I was just having strange thoughts that I can’t really explain. Like, one day I thought it would be a hilarious idea to sit the kids down and tell them we were getting a divorce but then tell them later that I was kidding. I didn’t DO it. I just thought, for a brief minute, that it would be extremely funny to do this. That’s not a good sign.

But like I said, it passed and now I’m 99% sure I’m okay.

Yesterday Blake and I made a decision on the gardens. We’re not going to do the front yard this year (for those new to the fold, my front “lawn” was replaced with a wildflower garden in 2006) and in fact, we’re going to plant grass seed instead. The reason for this is because if I have surgery in the spring, I won’t be able to take care of it and Blake & the kids don’t want to take care of it for me. Plus we don’t plan on living here much longer and the house will be easier to sell with a lawn. BUT we are going to do veggies in the back yard because they’re easier to take care of, they have the added benefit of being food and it’s a much smaller garden.

We don’t have any money right now but I hope to buy seeds sometime very soon so I can start them inside and have healthy plants to plant in the spring.

Last year Ruggedo got me these awesome upside-down hanging things that you plant cucumbers or tomatoes in and they were pretty neat. They didn’t produce very much but we’re going to try them again this year with tomatoes instead of cucumbers to see what happens. I think tomatoes will do better, personally.

And I think that’s all I’ve got in me today. I’m kinda feeling “blah”. I decided not to go to the Game of Thrones exhibition   today in order to stay home and paint on my day off. I just honestly do not even care. I like the show, but I’m not a fanatic and props and stuff don’t really excite me. I know it was my idea to go but really, I was just looking for something cheap/free for Blake and I to do together and he doesn’t care if I go or not so I’m just not going to go.

So that’s that.

Anyway, happy Sunday! I hope you aren’t too hung over this morning! *bashes cymbals together*

PS. Blake and I finalized our guestlist for our anniversary party last night and we’re going to order the invitations soon soon soon. I’m so excited!

PPS. “Indigo Ocean” is now on my site and ready for sale!

~*PLEASE DONATE SO I CAN GO TO ART CAMP!*~

I’m listening to “Boys Wanna Be Her” by Peaches. Such a good song. Here it is if you don’t know it:

It was recently used in a car commercial starring sumo wrestlers, which made absolutely no sense whatsoever and it was a terrible ad since I don’t remember what kind of car it was. OH! Speaking of ads though, I want you all to see the Sasquatch ads my friends The Perlorian Brothers did for Hyundai! They are SO funny! They aired during the Superbowl here and I didn’t see them live but The Perlorian Brothers tweeted the URL during the game so I saw it then and laughed my ass off. Good stuff.

Oh and one more thing about advertising…The other day I got this e-mail from a marketing company saying that their client was interested in purchasing a text link from me  so out of curiosity, I replied with “who’s your client?” I didn’t even sign my name because I didn’t expect to really get a reply since I figured it was a form e-mail they sent to a lot of people. But I *did* get a reply and it was a Canadian pharmaceutical website that would pay me $70 to write a health-based post and insert one link to their website into it. I politely declined because I wouldn’t ever support a site like that, but I found it interesting that twice in the last little while, I’ve been approached by marketing companies for product placement in my blog. Does that mean my little piece of internet real estate is starting to get noticed? Why the interest all of a sudden? Fluke? Definitely strange. (And believe me, if I ever got paid to promote something in my blog, you would know I got paid to promote it because I would tell you.)

Speaking of product placement, they’re making Bottle Caps again and I couldn’t be more thrilled. These are Bottle Caps:

Bottle Caps are soft drink flavoured candies and they are pure awesomesauce. One of my favourites as a kid, they either stopped making them or selling them in Ontario for the longest time but in November-ish we went to this specialty candy store where I found a big box of them, the same as the one pictured. Then on Wednesday when we went to Clover to get my weekly Skittles stash (Skittles get me through my 9 hour shift on Saturdays – I liked Crazy Cores and Fizzy Skittles the best) and I saw Bottle Caps there too so I bought the box of them pictured, which I’m enjoying right now. The cherry ones are the best because they’re softer and they dissolve in your mouth, followed by cola, then orange, grape and root beer’s last because they’re actually kinda gross. The cola and root beer ones are really close in colour though and I always get them mixed up so half the time I’m expecting to taste cola, I’m surprised with the nast that is root beer Bottle Caps. Having said that, I love them and I’m glad they’re back. Thanks Wonka! Big fan over here!

The weekend was pretty mellow. Saturday I worked, which I do until 11pm and then we watch SNL together (Blake and I and sometimes Madison). Wasn’t Jack White fucking phenomenal on SNL this week? Holy shit is that man ever talented. We paused SNL halfway through to talk about life and the world for a couple of hours because lately I’ve been feeling really stupid. My world just seems so small. I can’t even comprehend big numbers like $36 million, like what a movie may gross and how much of that is spent on advertising. They pay so little in advertising compared to how much they profit and I used to think ad dollars were huge. But I can’t even comprehend how much money the Toronto Maple Leafs makes in ad revenue or how much one hockey player may make in endorsements. Those numbers just don’t mean anything to me. I never used to think a million dollars was very much money until Blake showed me that I would never earn a million dollars on my lifetime. And there are people making $25 million (*cough*JuliaRoberts*cough*) for ONE movie that took like, 2 or 3 months to film. $25 million fucking dollars for 3 months of work. How is that…? What…? I can’t even…! And like, we know someone personally who has that kind of money. I can’t say who but there is someone in our sphere of people who has like, $50 million and who is a total prick about it which is another thing I can’t even comprehend. If *I* had $50 million I would probably be extremely generous with it. Or at least with the interest of it. I would gladly buy my kids houses and educations and pay for big weddings and funerals. It’s like in the movie The Descendants (which I loved btw), I would give my kids enough to do something but not enough to do nothing. This person we know who’s like, super rich? Gives his kids next to nothing. Wouldn’t even pay for their educations in full. I just don’t understand that mentality at all. It is beyond my realm of comprehension. As Blake put it, this man buying his kid a house would be about as much effort as their kid buying him a Christmas present.

But even more than money, which I don’t think I’ll ever understand because I’ve never really had any and I probably never will, I just don’t understand how big the world really is. Like Blake’s dad lives in Vail, CO and there’s a mountain there and you can stand at the bottom and not be able to see the top. I’ve never seen anything like that before, not that I remember anyway (I went to Banff with my mom when I was 2 but that doesn’t count because I don’t remember). Something that big is literally beyond my imagination. I can understand the concept, I guess, but not the actuality. And that bothers me immensely. It makes me feel close-minded and small.

I’m probably not even making any sense. I just feel like everything is so much bigger than me and it’s not that I’m feeling insignificant or anything like that, it’s that my mind isn’t open enough to comprehend large concepts. Like I’m too stupid to understand. Like it could be explained to me until a person was blue in the face and until I saw or experienced it for myself, I wouldn’t be able to understand but because I’m nothing I’ll never experience things myself and therefore I’ll always be small and stupid and unimportant.

So that’s how I’ve been feeling lately.

On Sunday afternoon, we all watched the movie Hugo, which Blake and I really liked, and they all worked on their submissions for The 4 x 6 Exchange (still 116 slots left!). Madison and Wes finished theirs but Blake’s still working on his. He has today off so maybe he’ll work on it this afternoon. For the exchange we need to send self addressed, stamped envelopes but they have to be US stamps since the exchanged pieces are going to be mailed from NYC.  Well, the store I talked about in my post last week that I’ve been working on pretty hard is a Zazzle shop and they let you make US stamps out of your work there. SO, I made stamps out of all my girls – or at least the ones I had here to photograph – and I’m going to order one sheet of them to be used for the exchange. I’m pretty sure I’m going to go with “Strawberry Ice Cream” because she’s my 4 x 6 submission and I like that she’s pink.

(Just a note about the Zazzle shop, I’m not officially launching it until I can afford to order some of the products myself and see how the quality is, so if you order anything from there NOW, yourself, it’s at your own risk. I’m 99% sure I have my resolutions alright and everything on MY end should make quality products, but I have no idea how their stuff is so I can’t say for sure. If anyone does order anything, let me know how it turns out!)

Here’s Wes’ submission for the exchange:

And here’s Madison’s:

I think they both did a really good job but obviously Madison’s is better because she’s been practicing her drawing pretty consistently over the past several months and I think it really paid off in this piece. So way to go Madison! I gave Wes watercolour pencils to do his and I don’t think he really understood the concept. But it is what it is and I think he did a good job too.

All weekend I’ve been reading Gwenn Seemel’s blog because she is an art marketing whiz kid and has a ton of good advice for artists trying to make a living from their work. (She also has endometriosis like I do, which I found very interesting.) She’s a really different artist than I am, she’s really serious about her art whereas I’m more casual. This is probably because she needs to sell her work to eat and I don’t. (Well, I do, but not to the same extent she does because I have a part-time job that I love and my husband is also employed full-time etc.)  She does a lot of her work in series and she has gallery shows and stuff. I don’t do that, obviously. I’d like to do that, don’t get me wrong, I just don’t know how. She says you need to send proposals and applications to galleries and stuff if you want to exhibit your work there but I still don’t know for sure if I even want to do that. I like the idea of it, but I’m not so sure I like the reality of giving a gallery so much of my money when I’m not charging that much to begin with. The easy solution to that is to raise my prices, but I’m not selling pieces at the prices I’m charging now and once you go UP, you can never come down, which I absolutely agree with, so I’m not sure I want to go up unless someone really recommends it.

BUT!

One thing Gwenn does that I never thought about doing myself is payment plans. I don’t know what kind of payment plans she does because she doesn’t specify on her site, but she does them and I was thinking that that might be a possibility for me. I would do something like, 50% up front and then take payments say, once or twice a month for 4 months or something like that and in doing that, I would take that piece off of Etsy because I would consider it “spoken for” and when they were done paying for it (+ shipping), I would send it out to them. If they didn’t pay for it in full by the agreed upon time, it would go back on Etsy and I would keep the money they paid toward it. What do you guys think of that? Does that seem like a good, fair system? Because I do. But then again I suck at money so…the other thing is that I would need to make a contract for a payment plan like this but how do I get someone to send me a contract with a signature on it? I don’t have a fax machine. I have a printer that has wifi though could I make it a fax machine somehow?

The other thing Gwenn does that I’m considering is commissions. I used to be really afraid of commissions because I didn’t know my boundaries but as I’ve practiced over the years and I’ve gotten to know myself and my style better, I have a better idea of what my boundaries are and what would and wouldn’t be negotiable.  I’m also a more confident artist than I used to be and Gwenn says that is crucial to the commission process because I’m supposed to be the expert guiding the client through the art-0buying-making experience. She also has a really good article for buyers on how to commission an artist that’s worth checking out.

Reading her blog has really opened me up to the idea of commissions, I mean, as far as painting I’m not really doing anything right now. I have ideas but none that are critical as far as getting them out of my head and onto canvas and there’s no reason, really, why I can’t make my own ideas and a collaboration with someone else at the same time. It’s true that I only have so much space, but Blake’s said we can find a solution to that if necessary, and it’s true that I’m a slow painter, but that’s why you have a contract in the beginning so the client understands that it’s not going to be an overnight thing. I don’t know if it’s a good idea to take payment plans on commission work though, what do you guys think? I’m just thinking it would be a bad idea because say the person didn’t end up paying the full price by the agreed upon timeframe, then I’m stuck with custom work that I may not be able to sell because it’s custom. I got screwed on two commissions a few years ago and I’ve only begun speaking to the person who screwed me over because I’ve decided to just let it go. However, I don’t want a repeat of that, which is why there would be a contract and why I would need 50% up front.

But yes. I think once I get the pricing and the contract thing figured out (input seriously needed and considered here, guys, because I dunno wtf I’m doing) there will be a commissions page put up on my site and I will be open to other people’s ideas. I have no idea if I’ll actually have any clients take me up on it but I never will if I’m not open to it and I’ve had at least 20 people over the years ask me if I’d do a commission and I’ve always said no because the prospect scared me. NO MAS!

So that’s what’s been in my little Sunny brain all weekend. It feels good to get it out. Now I’m going to go work on my sketchbook for the Limited Edition Sketchbook Project since that’s due in 2 months and I haven’t even started yet. My theme is “The last word ever spoken” so I’m going to go back to my roots and make girls holding words. Right now I’m working on another “ennui” and then it’ll be “beloved” because to date those are two of my favourite paintings I’ve ever done and it’s super important that I include them.

Okay, I’m off! Happy Monday!

Edit: DAMMIT! I was having trouble checking out and this was the problem:

Hello Sunny,

Thanks for your reply.

Currently Zazzle Custom Stamps are only available for design or purchase at www.zazzle.com. Attempting to ship stamps outside of the United States will result in an error during the checkout process as we are unable to ship stamps internationally at this time.

We understand that this may be an inconvenience for you, however Zazzle currently only produces stamps in USD ($) denominations and our policy is geared to prevent accidental misuse of U.S. postage by Zazzle customers living outside of the United States. We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience.

Simply removing stamps from your cart should allow you to check out. Thank you!

This “defend and indemnify” stuff means that if some photographer out there decides that he or she does not want you using that photogs images as “inspiration” or otherwise and decides to sue you and Pinterest over your use of that photog’s images, you will have to hire a lawyer for yourself and YOU will have to hire a lawyer for Pinterest and fund the costs of defending both of you in court.  Not only that, but if a court finds that you have, in fact, violated copyright laws, you will pay all damages assessed against you and all damages assessed against Pinterest.  OUCH.  Oh, but it gets better.   Pinterest reserves the right to prosecute you for violations. Basically, Pinterest has its keester covered and have shifted all of the risk to you.   Smart of them, actually since the courts are still deciding whether the site owner or the user should be ultimately responsible.  Rather than wait for the decision, they have contractually made you the responsible one.  And you agreed.  (And by “you” I clearly mean “we”).

 

WHY I TEARFULLY DELETED MY PINTEREST INSPIRATION BOARDS

Thanks, Kim. This is some serious business, right here. Jesus.
I’m honestly not sure what to say about this, just read the article.

Charlie pointed it out to me this afternoon, but someone on Twitter just mentioned it too so I thought I’d link Mashable’s article on it.

Sometime recently, like within a day or two, Pinterest added a bit in their help section with some code to prevent people pinning your stuff. It says this:

What if I don’t want images from my site to be pinned?

We have a small piece of code you can add to the head of any page on your site:

[CODE]

When a user tries to pin from your site, they will see this message:

“This site doesn’t allow pinning to Pinterest. Please contact the owner with any questions. Thanks for visiting!”

So there ya go. If you don’t want anyone pinning your work, you can add that code so they can’t do it. Theoretically people could “right-click/save as” your work and upload it to Pinterest but why would they do that? I mean, honestly, why would they even do that? I could be wrong, but I doubt anyone cares that much, especially if the artist themselves have voiced disapproval of the act by embedding this code and having the pop-up tell them so.

I still think Pinterest needs to stop copying and uploading high-res versions of people’s work as their pins, I don’t see that as being necessary when a low-res version would do just as well, but we’ll see what happens.

As a fan of Pinterest but also as an artist, I’ll keep you updated. (Although the only people who pin my stuff are like, me and my mom haha)

Oh also, I’m no longer updating Chagrinterest. It was fun for the first couple of weeks but after that it was just tedious. People were sending us stuff that I thought was actually pretty legit and not in the vein I intended the site to be so I stopped updating it. I’m going to leave it up for a while and if someone sends me something exceptionally funny, I’ll post it, but I don’t see that happening. Sorry!

Why Photographers should Stop Complaining about Copyright and Embrace Pinterest

“I think Pinterest should do more to teach the pinning community how to properly pin things with attribution,” says Crittenden. “Did you know Pinterest saves a copy of each image that gets pinned, creating a duplicate and therefore competing copy of each image? The reason for this, I think, is due to bandwidth, and that makes sense. But I really wish Pinterest would save a smaller version of each image, more like a thumbnail, so it’s not a competing image and the pinner is forced to go to the original source to view a larger version.”

READ THE WHOLE THING HERE!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(Thanks, Scutterman, for the heads up on bandwidth! :o))