Days of Shades

Sometimes someone pays to to paint something.



acrylic on board, 12"x12"

I just spent an enjoyable half hour talking to the buyer in the parking lot at my work (because art deals, like drug deals, should go down in a parking lot. In cash). She said she was a patron of my art; I told her she was The Patron of my art, as far as I could tell -- other people have bought my work, but the only other people with more than one painting are my aunt'n'uncle (commissioned nursery art, again) and my parents (who're storing the stuff that's too big).

Really, I've been very lucky. Not only did a gallery downtown agree to show my Sheep in Space a few years ago, the one person who totally fell in love with them happened to visit the gallery at the right time and happened to be married to an orthodontist (orthodontists make bank). She bought about half the work I had up, then commissioned me to do a painting for her then-on-the-way first kid's room (a black sheep, white sheep, and little gray -- well, violet -- baby, to match their family). This is the second commission, for kid number 2, in which she stretched my artistic limits by asking me to paint them on the ground.

They don't even have helmets. It is not the natural order of things.

We're playing at the Shelton Timberland Library tonight at 6:30, in our firstest ever public gig (we've played for weddings and private shindigs so far).




There's a brand-new section for such musical activities at Skellington Art.

I've been blaming my lack of art productivity on my recent house purchase. A related factor is the garden — I've spent a lot of time working myself to exhaustion clearing ivy and blackberries out of the yard. I'm finally to the point where I can start putting plants IN, though, and I'm afraid of putting them in the wrong spot...so today I pulled out my sketchbook to draw what's there now and decide what should be there next.

Sitting in the sun with a pencil and cup of coffee, birds singing on the feeder, and my attention focused on that one visual task, I remembered something that is ridiculously easy to forget.

( I really like drawing. )

(X-posted from Skellington Art. Hopefully it will show up on the skellingtonart feed, which hopefully you're all reading, but I don't entirely trust the reliability of the feed and I want to get people's reactions to this.)

Finished Josie's comps yesterday, which felt very good. It's amazing what you can accomplish when you actually have a whole day to work instead of half an hour here and there.

I still have to work in the collages for the twins, but I took Monday off so I can stay home and do that.

I have a plan for a painting series, and there are some more sheep in space I need to finish up, AND I ought to work on illos for mom's book.

Still busy, but no longer behind on a deadline. It's all good.

I got a teensy package of tiny mechanical bits in the mail today - a small reverse clock movement. I'm resisting the urge to take it apart and see how it ticks, that being a shroedinger type situation with at least a 50% chance of stopping the cat clock dead. I have a use for this not-a-clock.

Tonight, I shall endeavor to make Wool Cycle spin slowly backwards. If I'm successful, I'll have one more piece to bring down to State of the Arts gallery, and my first ever kinetic artwork.

I think it may have been bluwyngz who suggested it move (she certainly named it), so many thanks.

In related news, another painting sold from the gallery last month, but I'm not sure which one. Going by price, it was either Chillin', Ewe're It, or Sheep Are Not Alone.

I'm very much enjoying mucking about mechanically for a bit, even if my tools are X-actos and illo board rather than wrenches.

I filed my taxes two months before the deadline! And, due to my pathetic failures as a small business owner*, I'll get just over $600 back! This is excellent.

Were I much, much more tax-savvy than I am, I would have a new goal: To someday receive a tax-return of $666. I was so close.

*My small business only provides me with supplemental income. It would have been enough to pay for CS3, but it couldn't withstand the death of Lu Tze and purchase of the bits that made Gonzales.

Yesterday I had lunch with Riley of VillageMediaWorks.

Today I had a long chat with Wolfgang, stellar pianist and a frequent client.

None of us have any real, paying work at the moment. Things are slow, people watch their wallets, and web development, concerts and lessons, and art and design are all secondary to rent and groceries. So there's a lull; something we're all aware of.

The cool bit?

We all see opportunity here.

Nothing you can force, nothing that screams immediate riches. But we have a breathing space free of obligation, time to regroup, make new, local connections, re-affirm previous relationships. I'm always enchanted by the idea of building stronger local economies, networks that aren't doomed to sink when the nation's shopping malls do.

Wolfgang's been wanting a web presence. He has to wait to start it, waiting on more concert dates and a slightly more certain future. Until today, I didn't realize my luck -- if he wanted to move forward when he first talked about it back in October, I would have watched someone else get a job that was beyond my capabilities, calling for an updateable backend, music, and video. But now there's the potential of working with Riley, who's been doing recording, videography, and programming for years (but isn't a designer). There's a chance for a pretty cool combination, here.

Oddly, I think that this wouldn't have happened without the lull in business. It's hard to think bigger when you're moving from concert to concert, job to job.

I've circumvented oddness with LJ and zenphoto produced URLs from the ZenPhoto end. BONUS: Cruft free URLS!

Let's try this again...
Muskox
Reindeer
Polar Bear

They're available as 8.5" x 11" prints. $8 for one, or $20 for the set, plus shipping ($4 in the states, ask me about elsewhere). Until I get something more official set up, that'd be paypal to sarahATskellingtonartDOTcom, with a note of your address and which you want.

I've got a very nice printer and print on high quality matte paper. The 8.5x11 prints will be sized so that the image fits in an 8x10 (I can trim the print to 8x10 if desired).

I've posted the last three years worth of News Years card animals over at www.skellingtonart.com.

Muskox (2009)
Reindeer (2008)
Polar Bear (2007)

Hie ye hither!

Trying to get my new website up and running resembles nothing so much as a game of endurance whack-a-mole.