blah blah, same ole

It is 73 days til the start of the PPBA Show/APA National/ABA National. So let's see, how many drawings per day do I have to do now... AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACK!!! I feel like I am working a bazillion hours but not making a dent, and I don't really understand that. Maybe my time estimate is off a little. I remember years ago I used to keep really good track of the hours I spent on drawings (I have a rough idea now but it's a little too depressing to figure it out for certain) and I used to sit down and work for up to 4 hours at a time. FOUR HOURS! That incredible. After an hour now I'm in dire need of a break. I don't understand why that has changed--if it has to do with subject matter and deadlines (in which case you'd think it would be the opposite) or maybe I've just gotten cranky and more fidgety with age?? :-) Or maybe it's just that there are too many distractions here--the birds, the horses, the endless stream of email that goes "purrrt!" when it arrives in my inbox and gets my hopes up that it might be something good and then turns out to be ads for pharmaceutical products that I really don't need... Then again all those same distractions were here back then too, so, huh, I dunno... I just really need to focus.

Oh yeah, and my left eyelid is twitching again. This'll go on for days at a time sometimes. It's not really noticeable to anyone else but it drives me BONKERS. And then there's the major knot in my back from drawing... (no, really, it is! I know another artist who gets the same problem!) I really can't think of a truly ergonomic way to draw though, at least not the little detailed fiddly stuff that I am doing. Oh well, at I'm not on my back on a scaffolding working on a fresco, right!?

And yes, I would like some cheese to go with all this whine. :-D

edition done

Well, I finished up editioning a series of prints from the etching plate I've been working on. I will post the image eventually. There is sooooooooo much updating that needs to happen on my website (all the plaques and paintings I did for the Auburn show, etc) that it's gotten a bit overwhelming.

I'm totally exhausted again, I really think there's "something in the air" in the print studio that wipes me out. Well, truth is there's all sorts of brain-cell-shrinking chemicals in there (the very same ones that make me walk in the door, take a deep breath, and say "ahh, I love the smell of the print lab!" Only fellow printmakers would sympathize with that, anyone else would think I'm nuts). And maybe it's just that the studio is on the third floor, but it is mildly disconcerting that I haven't ever seen a bug in there. There are bugs everywhere, right? Ought to be some spider webs on those high ceilings? Nope, not a one. Weird. Oh well, artists don't need brains anyway, right? :-D (oh no, not true at all!)

You know what, I'll just take a picture of the prints now. I'll deal with posting a GOOD pic some time down the road. There is an edition of 20 prints in dark brown ink on cream colored paper, and an edition of 4 in white ink on black paper (print # 1 of 4 is sold). Those are pretty interesting, but I think the "regular" ones will have more appeal at the horsey type shows that I do. We'll see! I have not quite settled on the prices yet. I'm thinking about changing prices all over the place (going UP). Though certain family members are fairly adamant about me already being overpriced, I really disagree with that, and a lot of the artists I show with have hinted that it might be time to raise prices. I mean, people can sell their "limited edition" offset lithographs (don't get me started!) for hundreds of dollars each, so why am I busting my butt to make originals and then pricing them at a fraction of that cost? Sure, a lot of that is name, and I certainly don't have much of a name, and I can count my "following" on one hand, but I sometimes wonder if higher prices would command a little more respect. I dunno, it's a sticky issue, and probably not one I should even be admitting in public, but hey, that's the point of this blog, right? Airing my issues! :-)

Anyway here's the pic.. I have them all out drying (etchings are printed on damp paper) on the dining room table, but I couldn't fit them all in the frame even when I stood on a chair and held the camera over my head.

busy busy

I think I finally have the store done, except I keep tinkering around with it and adding/deleting/rearranging things. But I have "Chains and Leather" (Percheron horses) and "My Foot!" (cat) on there now. That takes a long time! Shop shop shop! The "holidaze" are just around the corner! And here's a special promotion! (geez don't I sound cheesy trying to market things?) ;-)

FREE Shipping Promotion - starts Nov. 15
Free Super Saver Shipping on orders over $50*.
Coupon: FREESHIP
Offer Date: Nov 15 - Dec 6
*Excludes bulk orders.

I plan to add a gazillion more things at some point but time is pretty tight right now. Ideally I'll get a few more things on in time for Christmas orders, but I'm not sure I can get it done in time.

I've been working with Shylah (horse) a lot, and hopefully will be able to ride her around the time she turns 3 (June). She's doing REALLY well, but is still so small and narrow-shouldered that she doesn't fit (well) into my saddle. I need to take some action pics of her in the round pen, she's a darn good looking horse (err, pony?)

I have applied to be a vendor at a show up in Northern CA in late April. It's a horse show. There was no real application procedure and no deadline given, so that made it pretty tough to know how to apply, but I gave it my best shot and hopefully will know within the next few months if I've gotten in or not.

Pretty pics I took today:

Ooh, cool!!

Black t-shirts coming soon!!



I am still working on rearranging the store and I haven't had time to add more images yet.

an accurate prediction

As expected, I was not capable of remaining upright and awake for the duration of the day, so shortly after getting home from several hours of printing, I did indeed zonk out. Gosh, what a shock.

The auction was uneventful, although I did get there a little later than I normally do and had to wait a half hour to unload the birds. Now I just have a couple of halfway decent BBRed cockerels and a few pairs of Brown Reds to sell...for now...maybe more in a few months. I'm keeping more than I usually do so that I can show about a gazillion of them at the National meet(s) in January. That is going to be so much work. Oh geez, I'll give myself a headache thinking about it.

So anyway, after dropping off birds I headed over to the print studio, got there at 8am.. I had some problems with the etching plate--lines I thought I had successfully scraped/buffed out were worse in places. I'd never done much with scraping a zinc plate before, but I now know there is a very specific way to do it! I didn't expect to be able to pull a lot of prints from this particular plate. It's so finely etched and such a subtle variations in tones I really thought it would wear out and lighten up pretty quick, but it totally held up til I reached the end of my paper supply....and I wished I had more paper! I am debating getting more and going in again to print more. I have 13 good prints (7 bad ones) but I think I could print more good ones. I always feel obliged to get as many prints out of a plate as I can. So, hmmm. Then again, I've never sold out an edition, so I'm not sure having a larger number of prints would even be beneficial. The higher the number of prints, the lower the price will be. I hate pricing art. Some people say I overprice, some say I underprice. Maybe I really should just double everything!!! ;-)

Anyway, I got home around 2, and decided to see how my bed was feeling around 3, and then the next thing I knew it was 5. And what did I dream about for those two hours? Printmaking. Over and over and over and over I saw my hand inking the plate, buffing off the ink, wiping it clean, over and over and over. Holy crap. As if I didn't see that enough in real life today, I then had to take a nap and dream it all over again? No wonder I'm still tired, that's like I did another two hours of printing!

Sleepy time.

the chicken wrangler

It is perhaps one step down from the romanticism and intrigue surrounding the cowboys of the old west, but the chicken wrangler is nonetheless a force to be reckoned with. Dressed in frayed jeans and an old sweatshirt, various barnyard remnants stuck to her shoes, her hair twisted up into a bun (which inconveniently manages to get snagged in the netting covering certain coops, gaaa!), she ventures out just after sundown with her trusty flash light and gingerly picks "the chosen ones" off of their perches, taking care not to disturb the rest of the sleeping flock. It's a thankless job, this chicken wrangling, and one that can only truly be understood by fellow chicken wranglers (they're out there...).

There were twenty-seven birds to wrangle this evening, and I'll be off to auction in the wee hours of the morning. Being "the chosen one" in this case is not an enviable position, but a necessary thing in the chicken world. It means more room for the good ones, the hopefully-soon-to-be-champions who will be shown in the upcoming months...and hopefully kick some booty! :-)

And then after dropping birds off at the auction I will go work in the printmaking studio, where I will print the edition from an etching plate I started several months ago. There is something about the studio that just drains me. Even if I don't do anything strenuous, it's like an energy sponge. So despite my best intentions to come home and work on Standard drawings all afternoon and evening, I am predicting now I will zonk out on the couch for a least a while! But hey, I do have to get up at 5am...

On that note, sleepy time!

(sometimes it occurs to me that keeping a blog really is kind of strange... who on earth reads this stuff? They are addicting though aren't they? And mine's relatively "normal." (yeah, how scary is that if I'm calling my own chicken and art ramblings NORMAL)... I clicked on the "view random blogs" button the other day on the blogger home page...criminy there is some freaky stuff out there...and people say some mighty personal things!!!)

ha ha, whoops

This is what it looks like when I am trying to shoot a little video to show how bored the horses looked, and then a bee lands on my arm...

(probably requires a pretty fast connection to view this)

click here

ps--no, it didn't sting me, but at the end of the video I think Gwen is giving me a funny look! ("are you nuts??")

fun with horses

I was outside waiting for the chickens to go to bed yesterday evening (some had gotten out because bonehead Nellie (dog) made a hole in the wire while attempting to retrieve an egg, so I let the whole group of them out, then had to wait til they went in for bed so I could shut the door). While waiting, I decided to have fun with Shylah's mane.


She's not quite at her full winter yak hair mode yet but she's close. I don't know if it's a breed trait or just her personal history, but she seems to gear up for winter in Canada every year... which is slightly overkill for a place in California where we don't even get any snow. I'm sure Gwen wouldn't mind if Shylah went back to Canada! And, all that hair hanging off her belly makes her legs look even shorter than they already are. I wonder if she'll grow more. I've been thinking she's a bit bigger lately, but every time before that I've measured she's been the same as before, so I think I'll just let myself believe she's bigger and not get proof that she isn't. Even if she stays pony-sized, she's an awesome horse. Hopefully she will at least fill out enough in the shoulders that she can wear my saddle!!

Doggie Tales

We got this postcard in the mail the other day about a lost Jack Russell Terrier, with a pretty hefty amount of reward money. Yesterday I was walking up the driveway from the road and off in the far corner of the neighbors' field I saw a JRT! I was thinking "pleeeeease let this be the same dog!" Not that I really could have accepted a large sum of money just for happening to stumble across a dog, but it wasn't the same dog anyway. I walked out there and called the dog, and she came running up to me. I didn't recognize her as one of the locals, so I brought her to the house, snapped a leash on her, and called the phone number on her tag. Turned out she lives maybe a quarter mile away, and probably would have gone back home if I'd left her alone, but I didn't want her to go out on the road. So her owner came and picked her up, and now I've met another one the neighbors.

***

There is a gigantic, mostly deaf, obese, old black Labrador that lives in the neighborhood. He's not neutered. He's a nice dog, doesn't mess with my birds, and will come over to "help" if the farrier or vet is here and the gate happens to be open. Certain other neighborhood people don't like him much. Actually they hate him, because he wanders all over, craps in people's yards, and in his younger days would search far and wide and be very destructive toward fences and kennels in search of females in heat. Even in his old age, he still wanders. There is one person in particular who really bears a grudge, I think because the dog ripped up their fencing years ago to try to be around the female dog they had at the time.

They have a new female dog now, and I find it somewhat hypocritical that they don't keep her very well contained (she's something of an escape artist)...or spayed. So every now and then when I am sitting in the front window area working on my art, I see this female wiggling around the field out front, flirting for all she is worth with this ancient black lab. He'll prance around in his stiff-legged way and wag his tail a lot, but that's been all he can do these last few years....

...Until a couple days ago. And let's just say that if the old guy isn't shooting blanks, there may be puppies before too long... Wouldn't that be sort of like karma?

November already?!

Criminy! Time is flying, this is just ridiculous! Less than two months til Christmas! Less than three months til my "deadline." OMG, there's something to really stress about. I will not have all the work done by then, but I've known that for quite some time now. I still have to get as much done by then as I can though. I may need to stop sleeping... I drew til 11pm last night. I work weird hours.

I read in the paper today that Michelangelo started work on "David" when he was 26 (hmm, kinda puts things in perspective...). I'm sure I learned that in art history too, but I've forgotten most of what I learned in those classes.