.gallery scam.

These were originally supposed to be submissions for a gallery show, and then I did a bunch of math.

The show is fairly open - any piece can be submitted, so long as it is flat, and 6" square. Easy enough. The submission fee, per piece, is 35$, which is a little high. Apparently this is to cover the cost of framing, except they keep your "framing fee" whether your piece gets in or not. Assuming you submit the max number of pieces, for the greater chance of showing at all, you're already 140$ in the hole, not counting any materials you used to create your work. After submission, if your piece does not get in, you do not get that fee back. Worst case scenario, none of your work is chosen, and you just spent 140$ on someone elses frames.
Next worst case scenario, one piece gets in. The gallery is also taking 50% of all sales. That's high - all of the galleries I've worked with have taken 30-40%. This is on top of your entry fee. So if you price your one piece at 300$, you make 10$ (150$ for the gallery, 150$ for you, but you already spend 140$ on frames). Minus shipping if you're not local to that gallery. And a 6" square piece is going to have to be pretty spectacular to sell for 300$.
Assuming best case scenario and all 4 pieces get in, you need to factor 70$ starting price just to cover the framing (35$ to the gallery, 35$ to you which you already spent on the frame). Any money tacked on after that has to be thought of in halves, so if you would like 50$ for your piece, you need to add 100$ onto the price. Already your piece is pricing at 170$. which is still really high for a piece that is only 6" square. You're close to 5$ per square inch at that point, and that is a rate for artists who probably don't need to submit to juried shows anymore.
The best part is that you have to decide your price at the same time as you're writing your 140$ check to the gallery, so you don't even know what your financial hole is going to be yet. But the gallery will let you keep the frames for any pieces that don't sell, which totally makes up for it.

This is not a gallery show. This is a scam to rip off artists and sell frames.

I'll be selling my pieces, framed, on my etsy store instead.
60$.
They'll be listed tomorrow for any interested parties, along with some customized Field Notes.

.the monster at the bottom of the stairs.

Meet Sherlock. The now almost 9 month old lab-hound mix puppy my Other and I adopted from Great Plains SPCA back in September. We hadn't intended on adopting a puppy - I was looking for a nice, calm, older, seasoned dog - but the Mister fell in love with this floppy face and I've brought so many cats home over the years I couldn't say no.

I refer to him as the Monster at the Bottom of the Stairs, because he's a puppy with all of that crazy puppy energy which I was totally unprepared for, and because he's not allowed up stairs for two reasons. He's still not fully potty trained, and that's where the cats lives now.

So this dog has taken over our lives.

And I've spent the last two days home with him, sick with some kind of bug that made it almost impossible to get off the couch, and it's not all bad because he's a very good nap buddy aside from peeing in his sleep sometimes. Because our new puppy is now a bed-wetter.

And our nice calm lives, which neither of us thought were very orderly, have become chaos revolving around a whirling land seal goat shark ball of chaos that eats rocks and bobby pins and wants to be friends with a cat that wants to murder him.

And we're both exhausted and nothing is getting done anymore.

So, that's fun.

The Astronaut and the Sea

The hubs and I worked on out first collaborative illustration project ever (that we ever finished I suppose) last month in order to put together super awesome pocket notebooks as holiday gifts for friends and family.

Naturally, we ordered way to many for friends and family, and so now the excess books are up for sale on my etsy site.

Despite the quantity showing on the site at any given point and time, we actually have about 150 extra of these gorgeous three packs up for adoption - unfortunately my brain can only handle so many packages to the post office on a given week so I'll be listing them in smaller batches; and I'll be sure to make a new listing with a different title when we get down to the final bunch.

Pictures below. Link above!

.pigment+palette.

Like everyone else everywhere, I've gotten into subscriptions boxes - fist with one I provided items for, then LootCrate for my Other, and NerdBlox for me. 

I've been side glancing the various art supply subscription boxes out there for a bit, checking out [ast boxes and reviews, and Pigment+Palette seemed the way to go. Artist themed boxes, and most of the past boxes looked like they had a decent amount of quality items, and the box they come it looked fun and useful - black with a magnetic closure.

I received my first box yesterday (the 21st Edition) and .... disappointment.

The first thing, the box. Not as advertised.

 

Inside the box, two colored pencils, a woodless graphite pencil, a paint stick, and three samples of a new paper from Fabriano. 

The postcard has a print of a oil painting by Alex Krigbaum on it - so I suppose there's a connection to the paint stick there?

 

All in all, I'm kind of disappointed. Mostly because of the container - or if there'd been one or two items in there.

• The Krink K-80 Permanent Paint Marker on DickBlick is $8.79; though P+P has it's price listed at $11.00
• The Cretacolor Monolith Woodless Pencils on DB are $1.58 P+P prices them at $2.30
• The Creatocolor Studio Artist Color Pencils on DB cannot be bought individually, but you can get a Studio Set of 72 for $36.05, which breaks down to about 50 cents a pencil.
• A full sheet of the Fabriano Unica is listed by P+P at $2.30 each, and Fabriano paper usually comes in 22" x 30" sheets - my three samples are postcard size, 4"x6" - so you can cut 25 of these from a single sheet.

As far as I can tell, I received $13.22 in art supplies, for 18$ with shipping included. Throw in manpower, printing, shipping, and packaging - it probably works out even, but I wouldn't call it a deal by any means. The Paint Marker might be cool - I haven't played with it yet, but I'm drowning in color pencils, as I think everyone else who suffered through high school AP Art is as well. If you're wanting to try out new things it might be worth your dollars, but I'd personally be more interested if the things included were more unusual or if the box had been nicer.  I know I keep harping on about this box, but I'm always looking for storage for all of my nichey little bits I use in collage work - the box I received I'll re-purpose for shipping etsy orders but nothing more. 

I'll probably cancel.

.the littlest water bear.

.field notes.

I first came across Field Notebooks in July of 2013 when I was looking for a pocket size dance journal, despite the fact that none of my dance practice pants had pockets. But I wanted something portable and a little flexible and lightweight.

these are prettier on the back

I found Field Notes.

This was when the Nigh Sky Edition was out, and being a Science Groupie with a love of Astronomy, I immediately bought 3 packs (the "legal" limit) and began using them immediately. The use of them quickly expanded from dance journaling into note taking on everything that was going on in my life - grocery lists, to do lists, quotes from the radio, notes on ideas and projects, and on and on. It's a bit of a problem, now that I'm going through a notebook every 2-3 weeks, except that I can look back to any week in the last year and know exactly what I was doing on a given day - which is weird and also kind of neat.

I finally gave up all pretense just before the Two Rivers edition came out this past spring and got a subscription. Now, I'm not exclusive with Field Notes - in my stock of notebooks ready to be used I have Baron Fig, Scout Books, and a few other smaller brands that I've picked up on whims and also a dash of hoarding-type compulsion. (My partner tolerates me to hoarding 2 things - plants and books, and these are kind of books, and also very small.)

I have the graph paper all the way on the left, not that you can tell.

Along with my first subscription came a few of the staple Kraft notebooks that I have never been interested in (because the covers are boring) but I put them away in my stash figuring they were good for Modifications, if nothing else.

And then I came across this wine with this beautiful paper sleeve, and because I love my notebooks, and I love my wine, and the modification took shape in my brain.

Scissors and spray glue and another wrapper from a white, and a press test from my work, and voila!

Curious Beasts, Fushia White, & a press test

I used medical tape to secure the wrap, because Reasons.

...and I need more wine.

Much better now. I've been wanting a red field notebook for ages. Now I have the best one ever. And it's covered with monsters and skeletons!

.and monday.

I had intended to write a review of "An Iliad", which the Mister and I saw at the Spencer last night - because it was wonderful and someone there had told us it had gotten and awful review (which I cannot find) and some part of my heart wanted to remedy that by putting my own voice and experience out there...

Also, this hottie is basically the entire cast.

But instead I spent the day weighing the pros and cons of hiding hundreds of crickets in someones desk, versus a live tarantula. The jury is still out. I'm not 100% sure how much I want to get written up for....bringing a pet to work? (or is that harassment?)....or how much I want to torture a poor arachnid. Though the price is right - I think I can buy one for around twenty green things. And I do have a terrarium that people keep telling me needs a critter, on the off chance that the poor beast doesn't get smashed.

But "An Iliad" was wonderful, and I highly recommend you go see it.

.boycott tuesday.