Digital Compositions

Here are two pages where I was trying to compose a digital painting from photos of my work.

1. Click

2. Click

For the Love of Pearl

Last summer I did not go to the beach that often, but one really hot day in August I went to the beach over by the lighthouse. When I got there the parking lot was packed, and I had to circle to find a spot.

The beach was full of people sitting on towels reading, sleeping, and getting sun. A couple of kids were playing catch with a football, and someone was flying a red kite. I always remember colorful kites, I guess because you have to look so hard to see them, squinting into the sun to catching a glimpse of color against the bleached blue sky. Someone had a radio on, and I remember the disc jockey talking about the temperature, and playing the Aerosmith song about summertime and it is hot in the city, and then something about sweaty and gritty.

I am not much for crowds, and I do not really swim when I go to the ocean, I get wet, but I do not swim around. So I went for a walk, right at the edge of the water, and after a while it was less crowded, there were less people, and the people that were out there were either walking like me, or had found a secluded spot to read. I came into a sheltered area where there was not any waves, and the ground felt more like dirt than sand. I was feeling into the sandy dirt with my feet, and I felt something sort of sharp and hard, and so I reached in with my hand and fished around and found an oyster. I thought, wow, I did not know that there even were oysters here! I thought it was only clams, so I became interested, and started to examine this peculiar oyster.

The strangest think happened then, the oyster opened up, and out came a solid gold ancient solidus, a Roman coin I had seen recently at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

I thought, holy smokes, this oyster must be sixteen hundred years old! I wonder how it kept that coin in such neat condition all those years, and then the oyster opened up its calcified little lips again, and out popped another gold Roman solidus coin!

I thought to myself this oyster is very special, and I need to find a good home for it, but I do not know how I can take it away from here and let it live. So, I will put it down, and then come back and retrieve it when I have an aquarium for it to live in. So I gently placed the golden oyster back in the water and down into the gritty soil. Looked around for any landmarks so I could be sure of where I was so I could find the golden oyster again.

I went home, and then to the pet store where I bought a salt water aquarium, and I filled it and placed soil and sand in the bottom of the tank, and then walked back to the same spot where I had found the oyster before. I started to look, and I looked, and I looked, everywhere for some Gulf oysters but there was no oyster to be found. I found a few ordinary clams, and saw a few small fish, and the seagulls were playing with a ripped bag of potato chips, but I could not find my oyster again.

Worked on it a little more

I realized I had given Laur too big of a chin, and repainted it. So this should be the final alla prima portrait of Laur.

Painting from Today

Here is the painting I made today, it is a portrait of Laurie. I wanted to paint alla prima (all in one sitting), hopefully it will get easier and I will have to use less brushwork next time I make a painting like this.

Luc Tuymans BBC Interview

BBC interview with Luc Tuymans, click here.

I saw Luc Tuymans once, in Chicago, he was showing one painting in a professors garage. I did not say hello to him, he was over talking with the professor. He had really expensive looking clothes on, that is all I can remember. Oh, and the painting was of something like an old fashioned astronaut.

I am painting all day today, I will post the photo of the painting later on.

Factory Outlet Stores

Artists are some of the cheapest people on the planet, and are always looking for a good bargain. I have learned to be frugal, and have started shopping for my clothing almost exclusively at Factory Outlet stores. I imagine that other artitsts and creative types are reading this blog, and you probably have the same money management skills I do... the kind you learn from having a limited budget.

What I like about Factory Outlets is that you can get brand name stuff at really steep discounts. Years ago when I first went to an Outlet mall they had a lot of clothes with little problems, like some crooked stiching, or a stain, but now Outlets have changed and have really nice new stuff, and you rarely see the problem clothing, but you still get discounts.

At efactory outlet stores you can find the best deals with minimal effort, they will show you where the factory outlet stores are located. The Outlet mall is a solid hours drive from where I live, and that is if I speed the whole way, with eFactoryOutlets.com you can find the closest factory outlet stores from where you live. If you are looking for something to do on a Saturday, then efactoryoutlet.com will show you where you can go to find the best deals!

Did odd chores today

I worked as a security guard for a little while when I got to New York, I liked the job, but the guy who scheduled me to work moved to Baltimore, and someone I did not know started to schedule me. If you have never worked in security then you probably would not know that it is a really low profit business, and the big companies that have started to dominate the market, largely because insurance is too expensive for small companies, have really minimal management. So for every hundred or two hundred guys you have out working as a security guard you probably have one scheduler who works out of an office and one guy who works as a supervisor and drives around to the different sites and checks up on you. So when you get a new person in a management position things are going to be going crazy for the first six months, and I did not need to headache of dealing with this new guy who screwed me over on the first time he scheduled me to work.

So, anyways, today I turned in my uniform this afternoon, they had sent me a collection letter saying that if I did not turn it in I would have to pay 250 to a collection agency.

After my scheduler moved to Baltimore and the new guy started working, he did not know me at all, and the first place he sent me was a parking garage in a bad neighborhood that was undergoing partial reconstruction. I was covered in dust, and had people yelling at me about how traffic was not moving fast enough. It was an eleven hour shift and I was wrung out by the end of the day. The new guy had told me I was going to an office building, and I inferred from that I was going to be inside. That was the last day I worked as a security guard. I finished the day, but I lost interest in the job after I realized I could not trust the new guy.

I have been thinking about what makes painting interesting to me. I have spent a lot of time wondering about narrative, because I never seem to be good at making a narrative painting, but I am really good at making a striking image. So, where should I locate myself in contemporary representational painting? I used to be really interested in Gerhard Richter, and I really like the blurry black and white photo paintings. I also liked Gregory Gillespie's paintings. So I have started to think about Giorgio Morandi and Luc Tuymans, I asked someone really knowledgeable about these two painters and they said that both of them paint alla prima, which means they make the whole painting in one sitting. That appeals to me. I think I am going to buy a few books of both of their paintings, and start knocking out some killer one day paintings. It is a challenge to finish a painting in one day, and if the painting stinks you can just wipe it off and start over the next day, and all you lose is one day not the two months. I sometimes spend months making a painting that often as not, is not that great.

So I am going to use oil paint and I am going to try and finish one painting tomorrow, and it is going to be based on an image, not constructed around a narrative. Hopefully it will be awesome. I know writing on this blog everyday, as a daily activity, has made it much easier for me to write, and I can write much longer posts in much shorter time than I could when I first started on it.

Oh, one more thing, I received the current issue of The Believer in the mail last week, and it came with a great DVD called the Perverts Guide to Cinema, and the DVD is worth the price of the magazine. The Perverts Guide to Cinema is a psychoanalytical tour of some of the best films ever in Western movies. The narrator gets into Freuds concept of the id, ego, and superego in a very interesting and complicated way.

Handicap Accessible Van Dealers

I have always been curious about vehicles with ramps and hydraulic lifts, they are fascinating to watch and a really helpful invention for all types of people.

It is great what technology can do for people who may have some trouble getting around. Now people who have trouble climbing steps or getting into a vehicle with a big step up into the interior of the vehicle can use a handicap accessible vehicle as an easier way to get around.

Someday I am going to be very old, and I assume I will be using one of these vehicles to help me get around. I love to see companies which have been created to help people, so I am happy to pass the following link along for mobilityworks. Here is a link to great site that can help you find the best handicap vans. The site has a lot of information about handicap accessible vehicles, as well as ways to search for a vehicle you may want to purchase.

1984 is Set Free

I was searching for free stuff, and I found a complete copy of 1984 by George Orwell. Click here to read it, now I may search for Fahrenheit 451.

Here is a picture of Ray Bradbury and the first family looking happy and proud together.

New York Real Estate

I have been looking for a house on Long Island, and I have noticed some prices have come down lately. Long Island and the greater New York area have some really pricey houses and buildings, but the area also has more staying power with their prices than other areas of the country. I saw a news story two days ago that said the average price of a residential building in Manhattan more than doubled since the 1980s.

While this makes it an expensive investment to buy a building on Long Island or NYC, it also makes it a better investment than other areas.

I found this large, and helpful real estate services company online, and it is the largest in the New York City area. Prudential with Douglas Elliman has over sixty offices serving communities from New York City to Montauk, you can buy a condo in Manhattan or a house in the Hamptons with Prudential real estate professional Douglas Elliman's New York based services. This is a great place to look for a way to invest in Manhattan real estate!

Ego

I know Freudian psychoanalytic techniques are largely discredited and that Carl Jung seems more important now. I have never been that sure why, but I guess that Freud was so fixated on strange ideas that they become hard to handle in the context of everyday life and just getting along and being normal. That being said I think artists can benefit from thinking about how they maifest their personalities in the context of ego.

Which means recognizing that you have drives, the id, and that some are acceptable and some are not. Many artists are beloved who make art about their unacceptable drives, two quick ones are Robert Crumb and Francis Bacon. Lucian Freud, Sigmunds grandson, has painted his daughter nude stretched out on a velvetish looking couch.

The superego is what is socially acceptable or enforced, like laws, or religious rules, or just generally accepted behavior. It is at odds with your natural drives, the id, and how you negotiate the two ends up being your personality.

So how do you talk, write, and paint about your secret drives without becoming socially unacceptable? Should you make art that recognizes the secret feelings that everyone has (admit it), and then becomed beloved by strangers and ostracized by your family?

Moving to a New Home?

If someone knows about moving, it is me. I have lived in three countries and four states in the last seven years. Massachusetts, Iowa, Kandahar Afghanistan, Lanse Aux Epines Grenada in the West Indies, Raleigh North Carolina, and now I live in a suburb of New York City.

I have moved by Greyhound Bus, Car, Airplane, and one way truck rental.

Moving by yourself is the hardest thing to do, I would prefer to never do it again. Next time I am going to hire someone to help me carrying the furniture and drive the truck. There is a really great way to find multiple competitive quotes for moving needs at Movingorbit.com, you just enter the location you are moving from, the location you are going too and then they send you a low quote in your email.

If you want to you can even use the Movingorbit.com to find a great moving services, and it always helps to submit to bidding sites, because the companies submitting the bids know you are a smart shopper, and they will send you a low competitive price.

The Beginning

Greta Songe, Carlos Ferguson, and Lee Ferguson made this awesome short stop motion film, it takes an unlikely turn half way and you are definately going to enjoy this.

What Happened Today, Stuff I am Thinking About

Today I went to Brooklyn and worked with another guy setting up shelves, and did some other stuff, then I headed over to Canal St and worked doing an art handling job. Then I went back to Brooklyn and changed out of my sweatshirt (it smelled), and put on a dress shirt because I had to go teach back on Canal St.

Then I headed over to Canal St, and I bought an apple and a large coffee. I went up to my classroom and I was there a half hour early so I sat down and mentally went over what I wanted to say to the class to get them started on the right foot for a new project. Sometimes teaching involves a good delivery, almost like a sales pitch, sort of here is what we are going to do, and you should want to do it and here is why. I always think of Tom Sawyer getting everyone else to paint the white fence by saying how great it was to paint the fence.

I listened to the Alex Jones podcast, the WNYC Radiolab on The War of the Worlds, and a Classic Tales Podcast that was titled something like The Blue Cross.

Then I rode the LIRR back home, and when I got here I was not sleepy at all so I decided I would watch No Country for Old Men again, but I may switch over to High Stakes Poker on the Game Show Network at 2am if I am bored. I really like HSPoker, because they have a lot of colorful people playing, but most of all because Gabe Kaplan is the announcer, Gabe Kaplan was Mr. Cotter in the 1970's sitcom Welcom Back Cotter that started John Travolta. He is really funny, he makes cracks about the guys playing and the other host, and anyways, I like that show.

As far as poker shows go, I have to say that the WSOP (on ESPN) peaked in 2005 with the Mike the Mouth Final Table, and has gone down hill rapidly since then, with the exception of some episodes of last years HORSE tournament. Mostly because it has become more of a soap opera format and less about the game, and they have neglected the main drama in favor of akwardly easy to understand big hands. The main drama is when someone is faced with a difficult decision, and you know the answer (because they show you the cards in a table cam) and you watch them think about what to do, I like it better when one of the guy gives a hard time to the guy having to make the decision. Some people are uncanny, if you watch the 2003 final table and see Dan Harrington make correct decision after correct decision it is like he is a god damned mind reader, that becomes so exceptionally exciting to me that I can barely sit still, I love watching poker players make decisions.

There is a new Sammy Farha book out about Omaha, which is a poker game, I won't bother explaining it, you can google it, but I read the first 10 pages in Barnes and Nobles and it is well written and seems like Mr. Farha's authentic voice, which I was interested to see because the book has a ghost writer. I bought two books put out by the World Poker Tour about 3 years ago, and not only was the advice crappy, but they were ghost written and they lacked personality. So it was good to see Sammy Farha's book seems like a real book that is pretty interesting. The funny thing about Mr. Farha is on television he seems like a wild gambler, an gambling maniac, but I heard an interview on The Poker Edge with Phil Gordon (an ESPN podcast) where Mr. Farha did not only not come across as a wild an aggressive man, he seemed thoughtful and almost deseperate to be understood, he had empathy, and he was sincere. I think great poker players have extra empathy, and that means they are sensitive folks, and in my mind sensitive folks are artists. Especially if they write books.

Trying to Figure Out Finances

I have been trying to figure out my finances lately, and there are a lot of resources on the Internet. It is hard to know where to look sometimes, and I think if you can find a site that lists a bunch of different opportunities then you can make a more informed decision.

One site that was pretty interesting said to apply for credit cards with zero interest rates, put your debt onto them and then make the biggest payments you can on the new cards for the promotional rate time period in an attempt to reduce your debt as fast as possible.

Basically I have student loans, car loans, and some other minor stuff I make payments on, and it is always good to be able to see what other offers are out there. If you can get a deal with a super low interest rate, or frequent flier miles, then it may be worth your time to check it out. Here is a website, creditloan.com, that has a personal finance archives which may be useful for you.

Fecal Face

Do you guys know about fecal face?

Sue, Laurs cousin, who designs clothes, told me about it. www.fecalface.com is a super hip west coast website that a lot of people look at... it has art stuff, and other random youth culture.

It has an unfortunate name, it sounds like an unsophisticated curse.

When I was a little kid and we would sit around and think of new ways to arrange curse words to make them more offensive. Because I am a working prof at a school, I do not think I should get into the specifics of the hybrid curse vocab, but suffice it to say that many involved incest, or genitals, and that fecal face is the Melba toast of the names we used to think up to call each other.

Phone Cards Save You Money

Calling someone from a foreign airport is a hassle, and expensive, if you do not have a phone card. I know because I tried to call the West Indies from an airport in Germany once, and as you can imagine it did not work out to well, and I ended up buying a phone card. Once I had the phone card then things went well, and the call got through, and I knew how much money I was spending.

When I lived in Iowa my cell phone had some crummy deal with roaming minutes, where when I went past 250 minutes of roaming time it was 50 cents a minute to call anyone anywhere. There are some great phone cards out there, and especially if you have some loved ones or friends in a foreign country or you travel often you should keep one in your wallet all the time in case of an emergency... What if you lose your cell phone?

I used to call Grenada all the time, probably once a day, because Laurie was down there. You can get calling cards for 6 cents a minute to Grenada, at getmecallingcards.com!

Giorgio Morandi and Luc Tuymans

Girogio Morandi

Luc Tuymans

I have been thinking about Giorgio Morandi for a few days now. It started when I was thinking about Luc Tuymans, because I read an interview with Luc Tuymans in Art Review (the British Magazine), and I was thinking that Luc Tuymans paintings are like a cross between Gerhard Richter and Giorgio Morandi. Sophisticated and slick sometimes, and clunky and awkward at times too, and using a muted palette.

Having been criticized over the time I have been painting for making images that seem old, I have become sensitive to using older or dead artists as sources to draw from, and have been spending years looking for cultural sources to look at, and things in my life to use as motivation. But I was happiest painting when I was thinking about other painting, and my mind was living with the medium, I was thinking in color and paint, the viscosity, the way an image almost could congeal by magic out of something that was walking a thin line between an image and a messy scribble. It was exciting. Having started painting alot again I am starting to feel that way again.

I was thinking about colors and getting so excited on my drive home from my class tonight I could barely contain myself.

I also think oil paint is alot more exciting than acrylic, because acrylics are too hard to rework after you put them down. They are great to use as a watercolor medium to tone pencil and ink drawings, but I do not think they work to make serious paintings. Serious drawings, yes, serious paintings, no.

Painting is a weird mute. It has to talk in symbols and feeling.

Luminous like the plexiglass storefront of a seven eleven when you drive by at midnight and nothing else is open.

フジサワ 新ピロエースCM ８０年代

Optical Illusions You May or May Not have Seen Before

Is it moving? No. But it looks as if it is, for 95% of us at least.

read more | digg story

Paintball Rocks!

Paintball is a really fun way to spend time. You can get a few friends together and head out to the woods, or find a paintball course, either way you are going to have a great time.

I have played paintball twice with my old National Guard unit, and once by going to a paintball course and renting a gun and protective gear, and it was really fun all three times. The paintball gear is completely amazing, paintball guns shoot with tremendous accuracy and can fire fast as well. It is pretty funny if you can hit a friend with a paintball, because they sting a little, and the friend usually yelps or complains and you can tease them about it. You end up playing for hours and it feels like five minutes, it is that kind of activity.

Three years ago I bought a paintball gun, and I used it in the installation of an Easter collaborative art show at the University of Iowa. I even built targets out of foam core, it was so much fun.

If you are purchasing on a limited budget like me, but want to check out paintball, here is good place to get cheap paintball guns.

I found a really great website that sells paintball equipment, called Ultimate Paintball, they offer the best prices with free shipping. Ultimate Paintball sells Tippmann, Spyder, Smart Parts, Dye, Empire, Draxxus paintball gear plus many more brands which you can find on their website!

They are even giving some proceeds to charity, and that is a good sign that you are dealing with a honest business, and that you can also do a good thing by using them to purchase your paintball gear because they are looking out for people and trying hard to do the right thing by supporting charity.

Looking at their website by clicking on the the links above, you can see that everything has substantial discounts on it, and that if you are looking for some new paintball gear you should do yourself a favor and check out Ultimate Paintball. They even make it easy for you to find what you want because they offer paintball gun packages at steep discounts!

Sasanian Coins

Sasanian coins come are from ancient Persia, which is modern day Iran. They date from the 3rd and 4th century, and they were contemporaries of the late Roman empire before it split into the Holy Roman empire and the Byzantine empire. It was before Islam, and their religion was called Zoroastrianism, which has something to do with a fire altar, which is why there is a fire altar flanked by two people on the back of each coin. If you are interested in learning more, and seeing the names of the rulers and dates on specific coins, click here.

Coupon Website!

I found an interesting site, Buywithcoupons.com, it lists discounts that are currently available in a very clear and useful format. I like to find stuff like this, because I hate to pay retail. I am always looking for deals, and have even been known to haggle if I think it will help. I am not really shy or worried about being embarassed if I think I can save fifty cents, but why haggle when you can get the coupons for free?

What I did today

I slept pretty late, got up around noon. Elmer and Abby, my two dogs, were licking my face and making little complaining noises so that I would take them outside. I got up and was wearing some bright pink swim trunks and I put on an orange fleece jacket, and there are construction workers putting in the floor in the bathroom next to my bedroom. So I walked out in this kind of loud outfit, with my two fluffball dogs in tow, and I prepped the construction guys, saying that I was bringing dogs out of the room, and they got nervous and asked if they were pitbulls, I say no they are a labradoodle and a schnoodle, which calmed them down and then they wanted to see the dogs. I went downstairs, and took the dogs out.

Then I went to Mama Santini's for lunch with Billy, my brother in law. I had a slice of BBQ chicken pizza. The chicken chunks are so big you have to eat them with a fork at this place. A friend of Billy's met us there, and this guy was pretty funny, cracking jokes, and we all had a good time.

Then I came back home, and Laur had gotten back earlier than normal from the Veterinary hospital she works at, and I hung out with her for a little while. Then I went and bought her some Easter presents for tomorrow, the stores were crazy packed, it was borderline violent because there was no room to push the shopping carts and people were getting frustrated about it and sort of pushing through the crowd.

When I got home I put on some nicer clothes, a pair of Khaki pants and a button up shirt, so I could go into the city for an art opening at Eli Klein Gallery, in Soho. The art was good, it was about shifting cultural identity in China, and both the artists were Chinese. They had really fancy snacks and drinks, and I got to meet a couple of people who I wanted to meet.

Then I came home and had a good conversation about what kinds of dreams we have, and was teased about wanting to make art that no one can like, and the less someone likes it the better it is.

Trusted Tours & Attractions

Urban centers are my favorite places to visit. I have always enjoyed walking around the busiest blocks, and being among the hub bub and crowds. Having grown up in a small town I was always impressed by the landscape of a city, and the sophistication of the people who live in them.

I live in New York now, but I have spent a lot of time in the Mid-West and Chicago is the center of urban activity there. I have been lucky enough to be in two art shows in Chicago, one was at the Big Ten Center, and the other was at Western Exhibitions with the art group Paintallica.

Most of the time I spent in Chicago was as a tourist. If you are looking for any family vacation ideas, you should check out Trusted Tours and Attractions.

The pizza in Chicago is good, it is different than New York pizza, it is generally thicker. They have good bookstores and good universities in Chicago.

Probably the best single time I have ever had in Chicago was when Laurie and I visited the Shedd Aquarium. They had a performance with dolphins and seals that was totally spectacular. I always feel like I am being treated to something special when I see big ocean creatures, especially when they are doing somersaults and catching props on the tips of their noses. The Shedd Aquarium also had a special exhibit of exotic sea horses and pipe fish. I still think about that visit to the aquarium all the time.

After the aquarium Laur and I went to a neat bookstore that had some hard to find art books, forgive me, I can not remember the name of the place. When we were inside I asked the woman working there what was a good local place to eat, and she told us about a local pizza place that had really good pies, and so we took her advice and headed over there. It was good too.

That kind of day can really live in your memory for a long time. I remember walking along with Laur smiling, talking, being excited about seeing interesting stuff.

Click this link for some great vacation ideas

I found a great tour company, you should check out their newsletter. When you sign up for the newsletter you can win an ipod Nano, the offer ends Monday March 31st!!

The News You Can Use

First, the Labor:

Have you ever built shelving? It is exhausting, I recommend hiring someone else to do it. I built 5 sets of shelves today. One really heavy 109 pounder, and four lighter wire frame jobs.

Besides the labor, here is some exciting stuff:

Diana Cooper has an article about her in the upcoming Art in America, and the Architects Paper. Pretty cool stuff, because that was the show I interned on. Diana Cooper is a really exciting artist who makes super awesome sculptural installations that are like gigantic colorful drawings. I think her work is the best. She has a show up right now, Overdrive, at Postmasters.

I am making a new painting too, I fell back on some of the ways I used to make a painting before I went to grad school, and I think it might work out well for me, because frankly my acrylic painting has not been doing it for me, it has to happen so fast, and I am a chronic daydreamer, so I am using oil on this one.

There are also some rumors about Paintallica heading off to the WEST COAST??!!! (Paintallica is a performance and installation group founded by Dan Attoe, Jamie Boling, ME, Jesse Albrecht, Cece Cole, Greta Songe, Brandon Buckner, and other folks who happened to be there for the chaos!)

Mortgages

Laurie and I have started looking for a place to live, preferably a house.

Buying a house, of course, means we would have to get a mortgage. Right now I know that the lenders are being more strict with the people who are allowed to get a mortgage, and the amount of money that you have to put down on the mortgage has gone back to its historical norm after being at record lows for the last several years.

But I have also noticed that the Federal Reserve Bank keeps cutting their interest rates, which means that eventually mortgage interest rates will follow, and hopefully make mortgage payments more affordable in the foreseeable future.

If you are looking for more information about Mortgages click that link, and you will go to a free mortgage quote service.

Drawing

In my class today the topic of the difference between a sign and an observation came up. It is a pretty interesting distinction, because when most non-artists tend to think about stuff like a dog, an eye, a nose, they have a little picture in their head that they think looks like a dog, an eye, or a nose. But when you learn to draw you also learn to ignore that little picture you keep in your minds eye and instead focus on the form (light), and color. Someone may have a nose that looks like a potato, or eyes that are too close together, you can only see that through looking and learning to trust what you are seeing.

Just thought I would jot this down, because it seems like an interesting point for non-artists to read and consider.

(These two pictures were taken in Florence, where the Uffizi Gallery and Michelangelo's David statue are located)

Discount Projectors & Accessories

I am a teacher, and I use a projector every week. I use it to display images of relevant artwork as examples for my classes before they go work on their studio art projects. I wish I owned one, because I think they would be a great tool for an image based studio artist. You could take any image and project it to any size, and then work from it. I know one close friend who works this way, and have heard that several other prominent painters do too. I know for instance that Gerhard Richter starts his photo based paintings with a projector.

If you are interested in projectors, projector bulbs, projector replacement lamps, projector cases, projector mounts, and all the other accessories, look no further, I found a great one stop shop called PresentationMart.com. They sell projectors and projector accessories at discounted prices (often below suggested manufacturer discounts!), they carry all major brands, and they will even personally look for things that they do not currently have in stock for you, just give them a call or shoot them an email!

Landscape

I worked on this today. Started the drawing from life, its my neighboors backyard - sort of, and then I painted on it for a long time, and drew into the painted parts. It was a lot of fun to work from life, I think I may start working this way again, because it is more like solving a puzzle while working, and working from a photo is more like having the puzzle already solved.

Internet Outsourcing Solutions

If you are running or starting a business and looking for a new, innovative, effective hosting service I found a pro-business hosting company called Momentum. Momentum has a creative Internet Technology department that handles all kinds of business challenges.

If you are curious about what a team of Internet Technology professionals could do for your online business presence check out Momentum and their affordable managed hosting. Momentum has secure servers that will not let your web page go down, despite adverse conditions when other servers would normally stop working. They are the next best thing to building your own multi-million dollar data center.

Momentum will even help you design your website so that the site has the most impact on your audience.

Happy Saint Patrick's Day

THE INSTRUCTIONS OF THE KING
Ethne bore to Cormac a son, her firstborn, named Cairbry, who was King of Ireland after Cormac. It was during the lifetime of Cormac that Cairbry came to the throne, for it happened that ere he died Cormac was wounded by a chance cast of a spear and lost one of his eyes, and it was forbidden that any man having a blemish should be a king in Ireland. Cormac therefore gave up the kingdom into the hands of Cairbry, but before he did so he told his son all the wisdom that he had in the governing of men, and this was written down in a book which is called The Instructions of Cormac. These are among the things which are found in it, of the wisdom of Cormac:—

Let him (the king) restrain the great,
Let him exalt the good,Let him establish peace,
Let him plant law,Let him protect the just,
Let him bind the unjust,
Let his warriors be many and his counsellors few,
Let him shine in company and be the sun of the mead-hall,
Let him punish with a full fine wrong done knowingly,
and with a half-fine wrong done in ignorance.

Cairbry said, "What are good customs for a tribe to pursue?" "They are as follows," replied
Cormac:—

"To have frequent assemblies,
To be ever enquiring,
to question the wise men,
To keep order in assemblies,
To follow ancient lore,
Not to crush the miserable,
To keep faith in treaties,
To consolidate kinship,
Fighting-men not to be arrogant,
To keep contracts faithfully,
To guard the frontiers against every ill."

"Tell me, O Cormac," said Cairbry, "what are good customs for the giver of a feast?" and Cormac said:—

"To have lighted lamps,
To be active in entertaining the company,
To be liberal in dispensing ale,
To tell stories briefly,
To be of joyous countenance,
To keep silence during recitals."

"Tell me, O Cormac," said his son once, "what were thy habits when thou wert a lad?" And Cormac said:—

"I was a listener in woods,
I was a gazer at stars,
I pried into no man's secrets,
I was mild in the hall,
I was fierce in the fray,
I was not given to making promises,
I reverenced the aged,
I spoke ill of no man in his absence,
I was fonder of giving than of asking."

"If you listen to my teaching," said Cormac:—

"Do not deride any old person though you be young
Nor any poor man though you be rich,
Nor any naked though you be well-clad,
Nor any lame though you be swift,
Nor any blind though you be keen-sighted,
Nor any invalid though you be robust,
Nor any dull though you be clever,
Nor any fool though you be wise.

"Yet be not slothful, nor fierce, nor sleepy, nor cheap, nor feckless nor envious, for all these are hateful before God and men.

"Do not join in blasphemy, nor be the butt of an assembly; be not moody in an alehouse, and never forget a tryst."

"What are the most lasting things on earth?" asked Cairbry.

"Not hard to tell," said Cormac; "they are grass, copper, and a yew-tree."

"If you will listen to me," said Cormac, "this is my instruction for the management of your household and your realm:—

"Let not a man with many friends be your steward,
Nor a woman with sons and foster-sons your housekeeper,
Nor a greedy man your butler,
Nor a man of much delay your miller,
Nor a violent, foul-mouthed man your messenger,
Nor a grumbling sluggard your servant,
Nor a talkative man your counsellor,
Nor a tippler your cup-bearer,
Nor a short-sighted man your watchman,
Nor a bitter, haughty man your doorkeeper,
Nor a tender-hearted man your judge,
Nor an ignorant man your leader,
Nor an unlucky man your counsellor."

Such were the counsels that Cormac mac Art gave to his son Cairbry. And Cairbry became King after his father's abdication, and reigned seven and twenty years, till he and Oscar, son of Oisín, slew one another at the battle of Gowra.

You can find the website I copied this from if you, click here.

I made 3 drawings super fast

I was just snapping my fingers to a song by Dan Reeder and missing the beat pretty bad, and my wife called me a musical idiot. I made these drawings super fast.

Collaboration Nation Numero quatro

Collaboration number 4 from Jesse Albrecht, Dan Attoe, and me (Bill Donovan).

South African Hunting Adventures

I have always been fascinated by Africa, especially the wild life. It would be really exciting to go, especially if it involved being in the vast expanse of wild terrain. Animals from Africa really look like more interesting, extravagant versions of the animals I know from the Eastern and Mid-Western United States. Afghanistan did not have any wild animals I saw, well maybe a camel...

When I lived in Iowa City I used to walk three miles to go from the studio building to my apartment, and one evening I remember walking with my head down, staring at my shoes, just thinking, and looking up and being face to face with a deer that was a little taller than me. It was a frightening and also amazing experience, it scared the heck out of me too. The deer sort of huffed and stared, and I was thinking: wow I wonder if I am going to get mauled by a deer.

I would bet money that a African hunting safari would be a trip of a lifetime. Something to remember and think about. Your personal sense of self is really just your memories. Why not make a new one with T. Jeffrey Safari? T. Jeffrey Safari is staffed with proven professionals, and they have planned the trip to cater to the needs of the hunter.

Can you image standing face to face with some unbelievable creature that is three times your size?