Grady and Marley--good friends now!

Dark Abstract, digital art

Got a little bit of time to play around with a small painting in Photoshop. It's not quite there, but that's the beauty of digital. You can obsess and change your mind ad infinitum. I pulled myself away from the computer to see a good, but depressing, movie I've been wanting to see for a while, "Who Killed the Electric Car?" It's really sad how narrow corporate interests repeatedly trump the greater interests of America's citizens--and the world, for that matter. Everyone in this country needs to see this movie because it answers all the naysayers who contend that electric vehicles aren't practical. And it's a real eye-opener how successful these cars were and the facts behind why the "plug" was pulled on them. The hopeful finish of the movie highlights the growing number of people concerned about the environment, along with the high price of gas, and the movement toward energy independence that's forming. I don't believe government and corporations are going to be able to tamp down this growing demand, especially not with the promise of hydrogen vehicles. We've been disillusioned too much the past few years and most of us are hurting because of the unbridled greed that has become our country's motto. This site provides some facts on plug-ins, background about the movie, the movement and good links to other sites. I hope you can check it out.

Cat Blog Celebration!!!!

I won't bore anyone, including myself, with trying to recount the drudgery of the day--painting, cleaning rentals. Suffice it to say, I'm glad it's over. One day I hope to be able to paint a picture instead of door frames. I'm loving this blogging stuff more and more and Google is fantastic for providing such easy to use software. I wish I could handle developing my website as well. Anyway, I got a book from the library to try and understand the details of blogging better. I'm still not sure of so many things, such as linking--is it through the buttons on someone's site or by mentioning it in your post and linking with the button on the post? Are they both the same thing? So many questions. But one thing I did find out is that I have a "cat blog" according to the expert, Seth Godin, quoted in the book "What No One Ever Tells You About Blogging and Podcasting" by Ted Demopoulos. According to Mr. Godin there are three types of blogs: cat blogs, boss blogs and viral blogs. I got the impression that cat blogs were inferior because they're "personal idiosyncratic" blogs that most people wouldn't be interested in. Yet some people "watch stupid sitcoms on TV," therefore, some cat blogs are very popular. Go figure. Seeing the number of cats I've posted on the site, I felt an inferiority complex sneak up. But I came to my senses and said screw it, I'm going to do what I want, say what I want because no one is really looking anyways (but I guess that's what he was talking about.) To the few who may stop by--thanks and Hi!--I hope you won't be too harsh in your judgement of a newbie cat blogger. So in celebration of the anonymous cat blog, here are two new pictures of Grady. Yipee!! The pineapples are from our garden and the second picture shows how happy Grady is sleeping in Marley's bed (just look at that smile!)

Spent most of the day working on rental agreements, stopping by the downtown rental about leaking plumbing and trying to figure out how much/what color paint to get and whether to clean or replace the carpeting in the rental in Winter Park. How I wish we could get out of this rental purgatory, but it certainly isn't the right time now. We called two local carpet companies that have been around for as long as I can remember and were shocked to find out they were out of business.

We don't eat out very often, but we were talking to a woman in the neighborhood and she was telling us about all the established restaurants that have gone under. I think things are a lot worse than anybody is letting on. God, I hope Obama is smart enough to get us out of this (if we're smart enough to elect him.) It's hard to believe how close the polls are after almost eight years of ruinous "leadership." What will it take for our country to wake up???

On a more positive note, maybe what we need to do is print up our own funny money. Why should Ben Bernanke have all the laughs? I ran across a cool site thanks to Martha Marshall's wonderful blog. Check out this great site and play around for a while. I also like Martha's idea of taking pictures of some of the arrangements in a furniture store and Photoshopping (I'm guessing) her small paintings into the scene to see what they look like in a large format. Pretty clever.

The Perils of Procrastination

I was too tired to post anything yesterday after visits to the radiologist and the lab for blood work. It looks more and more like I might have to have surgery--not a happy thought. But, of course, I'm trying to banish this dawning awareness from my mind and focus on anything but health problems. I'm an expert at procrastination and I keep my skills sharp by working at it every day. On another subject, thanks to Diane Clancy for turning me onto an interesting site called MaraZine which offers a digital altered image workshop. Rima has a sort of contest where she presents a photo and anyone interested can participate and digitally manipulate it in a program, such as Photoshop, and then present it online for critiques and comments. Some of the bloggers who link up to this site are really talented and inspirational, too. The picture above is done from her photo of a lily pad. Don't ask me how it came about, because I can't possibly remember what I did. That's one of the elements of the "contest." You need to be able to explain how you came up with the image--steps, filters, etc. Since I'm a newbie at digital arts, I find this challenge could be a great learning experience. I hope to be able to slow my mouse down and focus long enough to actually write down the steps in case I come up with something good ;-)

Seamus, 16" x 12", acrylic on gallery-wrap canvas

Finished the portrait of Seamus. I can't say that I'm 100% satisfied with it, but I wanted to take something into the art meet-up tonight, so this was the closest I could get to a finished piece. I obsessed over it to a ridiculous degree. I might work on the face some more later, though--it seems to be going flat all the time. Perhaps some gel medium might give me some of the texture I'm looking for. Well, anyway, I like the background. We had a pretty good crowd at the meet-up and a lot of people showed their work--everything from abstract to super realistic. They seem to be a nice bunch of people and we had some good discussions about art happenings, techniques and how to actually sell some of our stuff. Bob Boynton is apparently making it and can hardly keep up with the demand for his paintings. It must be nice! He highly recommends ArtistsRegistry.com and YourArt.com for exposure. Next month's assignment is to do a piece on something laying around the house. Hmmmm! That could be anything from my dog to a spatula. I'll have to start focusing.

In between running all over the state to go to new doctors, visit rentals, etc. I played around with another abstract collage in Photoshop. It sure is fun, but I felt that maybe I should try some real paints and ween myself off the computer for a change. I'm trying to finish a portrait of Seamus in acrylics and it's driving me nuts. I just can't seem to get the brush strokes (and color) quite right on his face. I vow tomorrow I'm going to finish it one way or another, even if I have to paint over it--which would really finish it!

More interminable photoshopped drawings/scans/whatever. I swear I'm becoming addicted to my scanner and Photoshop. It can compensate for a world of sins with one's artwork (I think!?)

Anyway, my eyes perked up when I saw Rachel's latest blog and her link to Barbara Sher's interview on "scanners." I thought, wow, someone is going to validate my obsessive feelings toward my scanner. But, it was even better than that. Sher has a thesis that many of us are "scanners" in the way we approach the world. We scan for things that interest us and move on when they no longer do, sometimes to an obsessive degree. I always thought I had attention deficit disorder, as do many others like me. But rather than being marginalized, as society tends to do with people who find it difficult to concentrate upon one specialized business field, a style of art, etc., she puts scanners into the category of the "Renaissance person." Look what scanners like Leonardo Da Vinci and Benjamin Franklin, whose minds were open and inquiring throughout their lives to various and sundry things, contributed to society. Thank goodness Benjamin Franklin didn't put on the blinders and decide early on, once and for all, that he was going to be a tax accountant and that was that. Rather than feeling guilty about not being able to focus on one's so-called chosen path in life, scanners would do well to go with the flow and enjoy their distinguished company. I certainly would never kid myself that I'm anywhere near Da Vinci/Franklin calibre, but I'm not going to beat myself up anymore about not being able to concentrate upon one style of art. I'm also going to go back and listen to the rest of Sher's radio interview later (a casualty of this scanner being called to another area of interest today!)

I've been playing around with the computer and trying to resolve some of my paintings. I kind of like the way this turned out. I don't know whether I could do the same thing in paint, but it does give me some ideas. It's not like a commitment on canvas and remorse when it doesn't work out and the inevitable painting over the sorry mess. I almost feel guilty that I can do so many different things and not commit. It's the perfect situation for an indecisive person like me.
Now that we're in the digital age, I suppose the old rules of art don't apply and it's not necessary to have the literal hand of the artist, by brush strokes or pencil, in the work to be considered art. But, I must confess, the look of beautiful paint on canvas or wood, rather than pixels on paper, will aways be my first choice to hang on the walls.

We spent all day at the rental in Melbourne. The hardest part was picking out blinds--that took an eternity at Lowe's. It wasn't so much a problem of indecision, but the way Lowe's seems to use complicated methods to work out figuring the total bill. We must have spent over 3 hours there. It's not the first time we've gone on a Lowe's marathon. The same thing happened with windows we purchased a few months ago. I thought we were going to have to set up cots in the store and take a snooze before they figured it out.

Only had enough energy when we got back to take a quick nap, walk the dog, did (a little) yoga, showered and watched Bill Moyers. He had a piece about the mortgage melt-down in Ohio and it was grim. It's hard to believe the market is rallying for some of these banking stocks when they're "only" reporting losses of $2.5 billion this quarter (Citigroup). William Greider from "The Nation" was on discussing the problems with our country's financial system and how it has collapsed under greed and deregulation from the 80's. He said the three major religions of Christianity, Judaism and Islam all consider usury a sin, yet there hasn't been much pressure on Congress by the religious community to rein in these banking practices. There's much ado about gay marriage and abortion, but nothing about the greedy parasites who are really ruining the country. And Congress, having been bought and paid for by the banks, gladly leaps like an outraged puppet to the smoke screens offered by the church and that enables them to continue to do nothing about our real problems. I'm not a particularly religious person (I consider myself spiritual), but what he said makes sense.

As the broken system implodes, taxpayers are being called upon to bail out these "can't fail" institutions. Yet, as Mr. Greider points out, they are being bailed out at no cost to them. There are no stipulations that they must change their behavior to get at our money. As usual, the American taxpayer is bearing the full cost of our wonderful system of "free market" capitalism, while the bankers sail off into the sunset on their lavish yachts to count their money in their offshore accounts. The question may be moot by now, but when are we going to demand more from our government?

Photoshopped Collage

I messed around in Photoshop with a collage I did recently, but got side tracked as usual by the latest catastrophe. Let's see, what was it today? Oh, yeah. Stock market, scandals, investigations, plummeting stock prices and my propensity to always seem to be on the wrong side of whatever fiasco is going down. Buy high and sell low isn't a winning strategy, but that seems to be the one I'm stuck with. I'm not even going to think about it anymore. Any money I may have left is going to go into a CD at the bank. Oh, yeah, I forgot--the banks are failing. Well, soon I won't have anything to worry about. Yipee!!!

Lake Mills Park in the Moonlight, 5" x 3", acrylic on masonite

Worked all day yesterday on the rental, so I didn't get to post. Not that there was too much interesting to talk about when you're cleaning walls and pools. Saw a pretty good movie last night though called "Max." It was about Hitler when he was a young, aspiring artist who was trying to work something out with a jewish art dealer (played by John Cusack). It was kind of odd seeing a depiction of that side of him. You could certainly see he was mad and filled with hate even at that early age, but he had other artistic ambitions which seemed to be thwarted by his lack of vision. It was strange to see him in front of his canvas struggling to put down a dab of paint, paralyzed by fear, and identifying with and understanding that fear. Cusack, upon hearing some of his hate-filled speeches, told him to paint his rage, but he could never produce the courage to do that on his canvases, instead painting pretty little pictures of countrysides (kind of like the one I did above.) The movie ends on a bit of irony and we all know the real story of Hitler. However, taking something else from the movie, I'd like to be able to do what Cusack says and paint my emotions, whether rage or happiness or whatever it maybe, and do away with the drive to paint pretty, bland little pictures. I've wanted to for so long, but somehow can't get over the fear (the fear of what, I'm not sure.) Tomorrow will be a new beginning in my search for truth and vision in art.

Today was harrowing and our plans to work on the rental were postponed due to the latest insurance crisis. We spent most of the morning on the phone trying to find out why, after paying almost $3,000, we didn't have insurance on our two rentals. Citizens Insurance had sent us a notice over the weekend that our binders on our new policies were cancelled, as of 6/15, because our premium had not been paid. When we tried to call the agent in Largo about it, who had cashed the checks, both of her phones were disconnected. The way things go, we figured she had made off with our money like countless other crooks you read about in the news around here. We ended up calling someone with the state fraud investigation office and they were going to open a case. Eventually, around noon, the agent's phone rang through and Jerry talked to her. She said her office had been hit by lightening and it took out phones in both offices. She had no idea why Citizens claimed they never got the premium, because she insisted she had sent it with all our paperwork. I know Citizens is trying to offload a lot of their policies and maybe this is one way they're trying to do it. Nothing would surprise me. Check out the latest article in Time about Florida: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1821648,00.html Survival here is becoming tougher and tougher. Anyhow, we didn't need that kind of scare right now, but we finally got new binders. I was so fried after all that, I went to bed for almost two hours. I did stay up late last night, though (3 a.m.), reading blogs. There are so many good art blogs around and it's fascinating to see how other artists communicate, both with images and words. I'm going to add a couple of good ones to my blog that I found last night. There just aren't enough hours in the day to keep up with everything (and battle insurance companies.) Tonight I'll have to force myself to get to bed early and make up for all the lost painting and cleaning time tomorrow. Who needs to do artwork when you can fulfill your creative needs by cleaning other people's mess? :->

Moon Dreams

I haven't had much time to fool around with paintings. I've been writing letters to insurance companies for coverage denied for health problems and Citizens insurance for cancelled home insurance for payments not received (but checks sent and cashed). It seems like our lives are dictated by greedy insurance companies, greedy bankers, greedy politicians, well...everywhere you look the common denominator seems to be greed. Let's wave the flag for the American way! Maybe it should be updated in red, white and green (with dollar signs for stars.)

I worked on another Photoshop painting. This one has a collage background I did recently with Sean/Little Grey (but now I'm thinking he might look more like an Earl Gray). I must get back to that website with the Photoshop tutorials and do another lesson. This one is a recycle of layer masks, but it's still fun to do and I'm learning as I make mistakes (which is often.) I need to work some more on feathering his edges and blending him in. Maybe I might have time eventually to take out the Photoshop book and figure out how to do that.

Tomorrow will be extra busy with a trip back to the rental to work, finishing and mailing insurance letters, calling insurance companies, trip to Lowe's for paint and supplies, on and on.

My brother in Corpus Christi was very excited about buying a house and getting out of his rental apartment, which he had been in for 10 years. How time flies! I hope everything works out and I'm very happy for him and Debra.

Peacock, 2 1/2 x 3 1/2", acrylic on watercolor paper

I'm leaving this picture in because this is probably a Freudian slip. I was trying to upload the latest painting I did (Peacock) and inadvertently this came up. Perhaps it has something to do with the market melting down today and who knows what Monday will bring, but it won't be pretty according to the latest news I heard about IndyMac being seized by the FDIC. Jerry had a CD in that bank. Nothing is safe and we're heading over the cliff. What the hell is going on here?
(Breathe! Breathe!)
Okay. Now to finish this post. It would have been done earlier but naturally my computer froze up when I was almost done with it and I had to start over again. (I just love Dell/Microsoft!) Anyhow, in spite of the disaster in the markets today, today was good since I was accepted into the worldwidewomenartists.com group. I'm hoping that if I'm not living out of trash cans soon I'll be developing my art and creativity with the help of this fine group of women artists. I drug myself out of my cocoon and went to an art show at Creative Spirits Art Gallery tonight. This was a major accomplishment since my agoraphobia seems to be kicking in big time now. But it was nice and there was a very talented artist there, German Lemus, who did marvelous portraits of people and animals with very bright colors and active brush strokes. I would upload his picture of a lion, which I loved, but I'm afraid it'll make my computer crash like it did before. Maybe tomorrow when I'm braver I'll try. We finished the evening off with supper at the Thai Villa, which has been closed for over a month due to their trip back to Thailand. It was crowded and the food was great and we ate too much. All the kitties and Marley enjoyed the leftover shrimp.

Today was a bust! Spent all day at the rental working. Jerry got all the sprinklers fixed and I cleaned. On an unrelated note: I suppose some artists thrive on rejection, but seriously I don't know why I'm deluding myself into thinking I can be an artist or am an artist. If I had any sense, I'd be into painting what people really want--their houses. There seems to be much more reward in that. Yeah, maybe it's only monetary, but at least it's something (and it helps pay the bills.) We got a quote today for painting some of the rooms and I don't think even Rembrandt made that kind of money for his masterpieces. $130 for one coat of paint for an average-sized bedroom--no ceiling or trim. Another $130 for a second coat, etc. And I know they won't obsess like I do about cleaning the walls with TSP before they paint either. Some days are just plain hard to take. Oh well, I guess it'll be back to my true vocation--painting rooms with a roller.

Brass Band, 2 1/2 x 3 1/2", acrylic on watercolor paper

I finally see the value of keeping a sketch book. My vow was to finish the portrait of Jerry and Seamus today, but the day slipped away and it didn't happen. I spent a lot of time on my website revising it. It's still not there, but I didn't have any emotional strength left to tackle that painting--plus it was way too late in the day. Yesterday I found a scrap of paper--not really a sketch book--but a sketch I did at the St. Luke's concert series. In order to keep my vow to the blog (I'm going to do it if it kills me) I decided to try and do something with the scrap since there was a show on Ch. 151 about Jazz. I really like Jazz and thought I could work on the sketch/painting while listening to the program. The program turned out to be a bust--all talking and commercials--so I retired to my art room and did this. These ACEOs are great. They're a way to work on art and not be so emotionally involved in a "painting on canvas" (i.e. potential "masterpiece"--ha!), but they're so small that you usually do have leftover paint and that needs to be used up, soooooo, it goes on the lingering canvases. Nice!

Butterflies, 2 1/2 x 3 1/2", acrylic, ink on paper

Finished this ACEO card and have several abstracts in process. I'm going to try and finish the portrait of Jerry and Seamus tomorrow, though. I have an Alice Neel book of portraits from the library and I hope some inspiration will rub off from it. Right now I'm struggling. Spent a large part of the day trying to find a new doctor that can do the treatment I'm considering. That was a waste, but what else do I have to do? (Ha Ha!) Tricare is such a pleasure to work with. You can never get a straight answer. From now on though it's all documented in letters, with copies to Bill Nelson--no more phone calls by the dozens and pleas to provide some help. Maybe that might help but I'm not holding my breath. Isn't this a great country where you have to fight for years with an insurance company to get the care you've been paying for all along?

I'm hoping tomorrow is a little better and I can post two ACEOs. I'll try and finish the one I started today and do another tomorrow. Wasn't feeling quite top notch and did quite a bit of research on treatment options before my dr. visit tomorrow. I hope he'll want to talk about options or steer me towards something or someone I'm more comfortable with.

Higgins visits the Garden of Earthly Delights

Hope to resolve this (in more ways than one!)

I spent quite a bit of time today on Photoshop (or at least attempting it.) I'm afraid I might need a Macintosh computer since my old Dell keeps crashing. It gets so annoying trying to do a little bit of graphics and have to keep rebooting the computer. I keep fooling around with this Higgins picture. I'm not sure why I'm drawn to it, but here's another. I also loaded a few more paintings onto Flickr and I found a new website called artcardswanted.com where I uploaded the three ACEOs I did the other day. I'm going to do a few more tomorrow since they're pretty fast and you can fool around with different things and not waste a lot of paint. Who knows, I may stumble onto something good. I'm hoping some of the paintings I can't seem to resolve might be helped by looking at them in Photoshop and trying a few things (like the painting above)

I'm really starting to like the program since I'm finally catching on (a little bit). Got another good picture of Little Grey (possibly Sean). He and Seamus were wrestling today and it was really cute. Next time I'm going to try and get a video of them with my camera. I've somehow never used that capability before!

Just had to share this site. I love this guy's work, Keith J. Hampton. He is unashamedly diverse in his styles, which I can relate to, and I really admire what he does with them. He shows an example of how he works with photographs on his more realistic stuff and it's kind of interesting how he uses Photoshop to simplify the design and help with his layout, but also his internal dialogue as the painting unfolds is insightful. I somehow thought only green artists like me had the type of fears, reservations, etc. he expresses as the painting progresses. I guess it's something that never goes away, no matter how successful you are. Another good link from his site discusses his process of creating a painting from a canvas with a good background but without a focal point or an area of interest (I can especially relate to this as I seem to relish creating lovely backgrounds with luscious layers of pretty paint that don't really seem to resolve into a finished painting). Check out his video here. I'm inspired to take one of my canvases out of the closet and try to finish it. I guess that'll have to wait until tomorrow since today was so hectic. Jerry and I took care of the lawn in the morning, took "Little Gray" (but I'm thinking of naming him Sean to go along with Seamus) to get his shots from Spay 'n Save. I would much rather give them a donation because they do such good work trying to save all the unwanted cats. They're remarkable--all volunteers doing it for the love of kitties. After that we drove to the coast to look at our house. The crazy people finally moved out! Yeah! I wasn't sure what to expect and was afraid to walk into the house, but, surprisingly, it wasn't as bad as I thought. A couple of days of cleaning and painting and repairs and it should be pretty presentable. The only problem was our keys didn't fit because they had changed the locks (without telling us, naturally). Luckily, they had dropped a key off with the realtor and we managed to get it from him, although it was kind of iffy since he had apparently locked up early. I banged on the door until someone came and opened up. I wasn't going to give up after driving 75 miles from Orlando. We'll plan on going back over on Wednesday to get some of the work done, so that day will be shot for anything else. The tenants were thoughtful enough to leave a couple of plaques with some biblical scriptures on them for us. However, they must not have bothered to read them because I didn't detect that they possessed any of the virtues extolled on them. A number of the neighbors came forward after they left and said "Thank God they're gone." It looks like the only spirit these so-called Christians spread in the community was an ill spirit. "Thank God they're gone" indeed, but I'm not sure that's the end of it after reading some of her hateful mail. (Shudder)

Happy 4th of July!

Had a nice visit with Sherre and her friend Martin. Sherre brought over a present for Marley--it's his birthday today--and a present for the new kitty and we had veggie dogs, baked beans and potato salad. We were talking so much that I forgot to serve the watermelon and the pie that she brought over before they left to go to the museum. Since they were in town, they decided to go to the Morse museum in Winter Park to see the Tiffany collection of stained glass. It was open to the public today and it's something to see if you've never been there. We later watched some of the HBO special on John Adams, which was really good, and I hope to see the whole series some day. We saw some good fireworks in the neighborhood when we took Marley for a walk . It's amazing that he doesn't seem the least bit afraid of all that noise. Our other golden retriever, Smokey, would have been so scared he would have hidden under the bed. I hope to get back on doing some painting tomorrow.

It's hard to be inspired every day when you're exposed to idiots. I went to my ob/gyn for a test for an ongoing problem and he expressed alarm that my problem has grown and said I should have immediate major surgery. I told him that I'd researched other treatment options and wanted to discuss them and he, acting incredulous, wanted to know why I wanted to hang onto my female plumbing. As I tried to discuss rationally why I wanted to keep these parts of my body, what I'd researched and found out about the usefulness of them and why they shouldn't be thrown out if not totally necessary, he kept rudely interrupting me with "You don't know what you're talking about"--over and over again. As he examined me, he kept saying “Man, this thing is really huge.” “Man, you need to get rid of this.” Man? I’m no stickler for protocol, but shouldn’t a patient be addressed in a more professional manner? Needless to say, I left the office very unhappy and that unhappiness has gradually turned to rage. As I sit here, I have papers to file a complaint with the state (ha! a lot of good that will do) for the lack of quality care. Am I mistaken, but isn't every patient entitled to hear about all the treatment options for their medical condition? I don't want to hear about doctors being pressed for time, etc. I spent over 1 1/2 hours in his waiting room and never received so much as a "sorry" for the wait, so he could have spent a little bit of time explaining alternatives instead of using that time to berate me for legitimate concerns. I guess the ugliness really comes out when you question their god-given superiority (and it might cut into their revenue stream). I tell you what, he’s not getting within miles of me with a scalpel.

Higgins visits Matisse

Today has been pretty good so far. I've learned something new about Photoshop from Sue O'Kieffe's wonderful site Sacred Circle Mandalas. Besides the beautiful mandalas and soothing music, she offers all kinds of interesting tidbits including Photoshop tutorials. I've bookmarked it because it's one of those sites you can go back to over and over and discover something new and exciting--and also relax and meditate on. Anyway, here's the result from her lesson on Photoshop's Layer Masks. I can't wait to try her next tutorial tomorrow.

ACEO Hummingbird, swan and monkey, 2 1/2" x 3 1/2", acrylic on acid-free paper

Here are some photos of the ACEOs I did yesterday. I can't say that I'm really pleased with the way they turned out. They seem somewhat distorted. The hummingbird seems a little fatter than in the painting, etc. I don't know whether that's a problem with trying to shoot "macro" but I guess that will entail another google exploratory journey (and trying to figure out my camera—again.) I'm really turning into a mouse potato with all this stuff. Had to include some good pictures that Jerry took of our new addition.

Little Grey and Seamus and Little Grey on bench (must figure out a name for him soon!)