Hello Merry Makers, Holiday Happy Hoppers and Christmas Carolers,
Yes I still am alive and functioning. Just keeping it down low and resting as much as I can get away with doing. Still working 40 hours and doing a couple commissions, hopefully get them done before Christmas.
I have a few colored boxes available on etsy. Specifically
"The Life" http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=17078941
"Buffalo Magic" http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=35014599
"Honey Bears" http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=35015494
The rest of the pieces are pyrograph small items. Most under $12 http://www.aurakiss.etsy.com
I am really trying to stay positive. The holidays always make me want to sprout gray hair and run screaming in the night. I am not sure why but I haven’t really enjoyed the holiday since I was young.
Wait I will take that back I am sure there was one or two in there that were pretty decent. There was that one year before I was married. I bought candy-canes and taped them into a pattern that read Merry Christmas on the side of a guy’s house. Did it while he was away at work.
I am honestly trying to save money to try and build a shop/garage/apartment err something. Anyway I need to draw up building plans. So if anybody knows a cheap/free architecture program that isn’t too difficult to use... Link me up.
That’s all from me for now. Going to go work on portrait box.
Happy Holidays.
I meant to write this last week, or was it the week before last week? Sometimes it all just runs together. Work, artwork, sleep, work..occasionally interrupted by human interactions, eating, bathing and chocolate.
So this weekend is the Annual Park City
Art and Craft Show!
This hubalub will be held at the Park
City Civic Center – 19 Second Ave. SW Park City Montana!
That would be the building north of the
high school.
It starts at 9am on Saturday November
14th then closes at 5pm.
On Sunday Nov. 15th the doors open at 11am and
close at 5pm.
Sunday will have Chili and Cinnamon
roll for $3.
Raffle items will be drawn too!
Vendors will have the following things:
Jewelry- beaded, macramé, stones
and glass
Stained glass items from night lights
to Christmas décor
Handmade re-usable Christmas wreathes
Bird houses and feeders made from
barn-wood
Leather items- belts, purses,
billfolds, cell phone keepers
Bath soaps, good smelling things,
candles
Jewelry boxes
Fine art paintings
Gourmet chocolates, candies, cookies
knits and crochet clothing, kitchen
items, blankets
Quilts
yes I will be there...
Lately everyone seems a little down. I don’t mean just on deviantart either. Coworkers are a little crabbier than normal. Club members are less motivated to do things. Family members don’t really want to go outside, even when it’s nice. Not even the dog wants to get off the couch without a fight.
So I want to show everybody some people that I think need a little pick me up. Just a kind word if that is all you have to give. If you can give more, maybe commission a Christmas gift all the better.
SpikedPyro http://spikedpyro.deviantart.com/ Is an amazing wood pyromaniac and paints on feathers. I have learned tons about wood burning just by viewing her amazing outlet cover plates, and light switch covers. I would never dream of trying to paint on a feather but she does a fantastic job with it. Check her out!
Sidneyeileen http://sidneyeileen.deviantart.com/ This person is a great minimalist, painter and creator. I still have no clue about how she can make just a few lines actually resemble something recognizable. It takes great concentration and at the same time the ability to "let go". Her knot work makes me want to weep.
CanastaClaw http://canastaclaw.deviantart.com/ A really sweet person who has a very interesting vision of the world. She writes and has a very loving personality.
Draco-samhain http://draco-samhain.deviantart.com/ This girl has some really varied but perfessional things going on in her gallery. Everything from sculptures, plushies, traditional arts and digital art.
HeartshapedCreations http://heartshapedcreations.deviantart.com/ My oh my! Just what I want..if I didn’t own clumsy teenagers and irritating shelf climbing cats. I envy anyone that can go from 2-D to 3-D without help from a computer. These adorable little sculptures need extra love.
Jshapeshifter http://jshapeshifter.deviantart.com/ Stop in and say hi! I am not sure if he is completely recovered from his last little mishap but he has some things listed in his journal that he might need a little pick-me-up. This guy’s gallery is full of huge, life-like sculptures that make my breath catch in my throat and go ewww! Beautiful and creepy all at the same time.
Mdoyle http://mdoyle.deviantart.com/ This person of youth, extreme talent and few-very few- too few- views. His nature, animals just puts me in awe. Stop in once, twice or three times. It would be great to see his page views sky-rocket because his art deserves it!
Anotherdragon http://anotherdragon.deviantart.com/ If you feel over-whelmed by visuals in the outside world and just want to relax. Sit back, click on this person and read, read, read to your hearts content. Her writing is surprising and yet easy to digest. Great grammar and lovely plots complete her gallery that is spiced with interesting photographs and a few drawings here and there.
Now outside deviantart we have a whole new section. These people are actually selling things that look good, taste good, or feel good.
WisdomPathArt http://www.wisdompathart.com/ Is an artist that promotes a real sense of harmony in her paintings. The smooth flowing lines are reminiscent of Georgia O’Keeffe but with her own sense of hard color.
SweetExpectations http://www.sweetexpectations.etsy.com Montana based chocolate candy dabbler. I list this site selfishly.
GrizzlyMountainSoaps http://www.grizzlymountainsoaps.etsy.com I am suggesting this Montana based company because I really think home-made soap is a neat product. This company package their product beautifully and there are some wonderful names and scents available.
Asianexpressions http://www.asianexpressions.etsy.com Hint hint! Glorious silk kimonos for both men and women! Beautiful patterned fabrics with a handmade Montana touch.
SidneyEileen http://www.sidneyeileen.etsy.com Of only it were that easy to get skinny. Yes she sells prints and makes corsets.
Now as far as I am concerned I am plenty busy. I am saving my artwork painted wooden boxes and wood burned boxes for the local arts and crafts show. That event is November 14th and 15th 2009 at the Park City Civic Center. After that event I will put what is left up for sale on etsy. I thought about doing ebay again but I honestly did not like selling my artwork there. I felt like I had to make the minimum price too high just to cover the price of the advertisement.
So in the meantime please keep your heads above water, smile at least three times a day if not more and don’t forget to breathe. Chocolate helps.
I went into Billings today and met up with a friend to go shopping and goof off almost all day long. He ended up buying the Libra and Gemini boxes, a necklace box and all three egg decorations. I was just going to give them to him cause he is a friend. He wouldn’t go for that situation so I am going to have to find another way to show him my appreciation. He really likes chocolate so I am going to have my daughter make up a bunch of sweets for him.
Speaking of which that is what has been keeping me busy. Besides my own projects, work and all the other standard mundane, my daughter has been trying to open her own at home business. She makes beautiful looking and tasting chocolates. I am urging everybody to at least go look at her site please. You don’t have to buy but even a comment about her photographs of her goodies would be inspirational to her http://www.sweetexpectations.etsy.com
So if you go look at her chocolates and want to comment about her descriptions, photographs but don’t want to sign up for an account you can comment here too. Those out there looking at this journal might catch something wrong in her ads that I might have missed. THANKS!
So today my daughter and I cored, peeled and sliced about 3 gallons of apples and put them in the dehydrator. Now it smells very applesauce-y in the house. I need to work on some wood burning but I have to wait until nobody is cooking anything. I don’t want the smoke from the wood to ruin the taste of any foods.
This new thing has really put a damper on my artwork. I had to wood burn and finish the Zodiac series over in my father-in-laws garage. I really want my own shop. I picked this thing because the place that makes them is just over on the other side of town. http://www.bisonshed.com/minicabins.html I like the one that has a double door and a single door with two windows. I figure it would cost about 3K total building, insulation, delivery and electrical. Then I started thinking it would be at least another grand to have a cement slab poured.
I write all this out but then in another week I will change my mind and want something else to use as a shop. Like my own garage..yeah that would be kewl cause then I can park my car in it. See what I mean? Anyway I have two projects that need to be finished and three commissions that will keep me busy and out of my daughter’s kitchen and dining room. I guess they no longer belong to me. Actually that is not so bad. I don’t have to clean it anymore and only cook when asked to help.
Well I am babbling so hopefully I can write something interesting later.!
Have a great week everyone.
Back Ground for excerpt:
I have been reading this book "Atlas Shrugged" for quite some time. The paperback I bought has well over 1000 pages right now I am halfway through. I must say this book has me looking at the world in a totally new way. For someone that hates politics and could barely understand them. I can now see how things that are said or done on all sides of the political arena affect the other parties.
I am not saying that I am a conservative, republican, capitalist but I firmly believe by Ayn Rand’s philosophy that I am a producer. I like making things. I like figuring out how things work. I like watching science channel and discovery because it shows me more of those interesting inventions.
This book has moved me in very interesting ways. I see repetitions or mirrors between what is written in the book and what has happened and is happening in the United States today. In some ways Ayn Rand seems to be precognitive to the issues for the recessional problems going on right now. At times it has left me speechless.
Other times I have felt sorrow for the characters in the book. When it is obvious that they put their heart and soul into creating something wonderful. A beautiful invention only to be forced to scrap it out and take it down.
I have also felt at times a great civic pride. My parents are both oldie and goldie (they are the same age as my husband’s GRAND parents) so I was raised with a very different outlook on life. My parents are both firm in their convictions and very old world. My Mother was raised in a cabin with no indoor plumbing. My Father went to a one room schoolhouse and remembers listening to the bombing of Pearl Harbor on the radio. Those times created a very civic minded, yet capitalistic mentality.
Oh how can you be both a civic leader and a capitalist?? It is so very possible. You don’t have to give your money away to improve your community. You just have to know how to produce, and have the ability to show people that by giving their $20 THEIR OWN LIVES improve. In all honesty nobody really gives a shit about their neighbors if those neighbors don’t interrupt their own personal lives one way or the other.
Imagine going to an old man’s home and saying. Would you donate $20 for new sidewalks? If I know the old farts around this town it would be HELL NO let them walk down the middle of the street like they will anyway. Imagine saying instead would you donate $20 so we can pool the money and get a sidewalk put down the whole block so people are not walking on your lawn and making trails. OH YEAH! Thats a good idea. (That is a civic minded capitalist).
I saw my parents work, live and prosper in this area and saw how others (looters and moochers) use and abuse my parents as being business people. I can see and relate to the characters in this book. They move me greatly.
I honestly believe this is a really good book to read. I asked many people over the last few weeks (at first I was only reading maybe five pages a day) if they liked the book or not. One acquaintance said that he liked the book when he was in college but his viewpoints have since changed since his wife has crippling diabetes. I am not sure what circumstances in his life changed his view.
On the other hand I have another friend who is single, in his 50’s with many physical disabilities. He still likes the book. Perhaps it is a personal point of view. I would recommend this book to anyone motivated enough to read the entire thing. I would highly recommend it to Juniors and Seniors in High School.
ON WITH THE EXCERPT:
"Francisco's Money Speech"
by Ayn Rand
The following is an excerpt from Atlas Shrugged, © Copyright, 1957, by Ayn Rand.
"So you think that money is the root of all evil?" said Francisco d' Anconia. "Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can't exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is that what you consider evil?"
"When you accept money in payment for your effort, you do so only on the conviction that you will exchange it for the product of the effort of others. It is not the moochers or the looters who give value to money. Not an ocean of tears not all the guns in the world can transform those pieces of paper in your wallet into the bread you will need to survive tomorrow. Those pieces of paper, which should have been gold, are a token of honor--your claim upon the energy of the men who produce. Your wallet is your statement of hope that somewhere in the world around you there are men who will not default on that moral principle which is the root of money, Is this what you consider evil?
"Have you ever looked for the root of production? Take a look at an electric generator and dare tell yourself that it was created by the muscular effort of unthinking brutes. Try to grow a seed of wheat without the knowledge left to you by men who had to discover it for the first time. Try to obtain your food by means of nothing but physical motions--and you'll learn that man's mind is the root of all the goods produced and of all the wealth that has ever existed on earth.
"But you say that money is made by the strong at the expense of the weak? What strength do you mean? It is not the strength of guns or muscles. Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think. Then is money made by the man who invents a motor at the expense of those who did not invent it? Is money made by the intelligent at the expense of the fools? By the able at the expense of the incompetent? By the ambitious at the expense of the lazy? Money is made--before it can be looted or mooched--made by the effort of every honest man, each to the extent of his ability. An honest man is one who knows that he can't consume more than he has produced.'
"To trade by means of money is the code of the men of good will. Money rests on the axiom that every man is the owner of his mind and his effort. Money allows no power to prescribe the value of your effort except the voluntary choice of the man who is willing to trade you his effort in return. Money permits you to obtain for your goods and your labor that which they are worth to the men who buy them, but no more. Money permits no deals except those to mutual benefit by the unforced judgment of the traders. Money demands of you the recognition that men must work for their own benefit, not for their own injury, for their gain, not their loss--the recognition that they are not beasts of burden, born to carry the weight of your misery--that you must offer them values, not wounds--that the common bond among men is not the exchange of suffering, but the exchange of goods. Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men's stupidity, but your talent to their reason; it demands that you buy, not the shoddiest they offer, but the best that your money can find. And when men live by trade--with reason, not force, as their final arbiter--it is the best product that wins, the best performance, the man of best judgment and highest ability--and the degree of a man's productiveness is the degree of his reward. This is the code of existence whose tool and symbol is money. Is this what you consider evil?
"But money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver. It will give you the means for the satisfaction of your desires, but it will not provide you with desires. Money is the scourge of the men who attempt to reverse the law of causality--the men who seek to replace the mind by seizing the products of the mind.
"Money will not purchase happiness for the man who has no concept of what he wants: money will not give him a code of values, if he's evaded the knowledge of what to value, and it will not provide him with a purpose, if he's evaded the choice of what to seek. Money will not buy intelligence for the fool, or admiration for the coward, or respect for the incompetent. The man who attempts to purchase the brains of his superiors to serve him, with his money replacing his judgment, ends up by becoming the victim of his inferiors. The men of intelligence desert him, but the cheats and the frauds come flocking to him, drawn by a law which he has not discovered: that no man may be smaller than his money. Is this the reason why you call it evil?
"Only the man who does not need it, is fit to inherit wealth--the man who would make his own fortune no matter where he started. If an heir is equal to his money, it serves him; if not, it destroys him. But you look on and you cry that money corrupted him. Did it? Or did he corrupt his money? Do not envy a worthless heir; his wealth is not yours and you would have done no better with it. Do not think that it should have been distributed among you; loading the world with fifty parasites instead of one, would not bring back the dead virtue which was the fortune. Money is a living power that dies without its root. Money will not serve the mind that cannot match it. Is this the reason why you call it evil?
"Money is your means of survival. The verdict you pronounce upon the source of your livelihood is the verdict you pronounce upon your life. If the source is corrupt, you have damned your own existence. Did you get your money by fraud? By pandering to men's vices or men's stupidity? By catering to fools, in the hope of getting more than your ability deserves? By lowering your standards? By doing work you despise for purchasers you scorn? If so, then your money will not give you a moment's or a penny's worth of joy. Then all the things you buy will become, not a tribute to you, but a reproach; not an achievement, but a reminder of shame. Then you'll scream that money is evil. Evil, because it would not pinch-hit for your self-respect? Evil, because it would not let you enjoy your depravity? Is this the root of your hatred of money?
"Money will always remain an effect and refuse to replace you as the cause. Money is the product of virtue, but it will not give you virtue and it will not redeem your vices. Money will not give you the unearned, neither in matter nor in spirit. Is this the root of your hatred of money?
"Or did you say it's the love of money that's the root of all evil? To love a thing is to know and love its nature. To love money is to know and love the fact that money is the creation of the best power within you, and your passkey to trade your effort for the effort of the best among men. It's the person who would sell his soul for a nickel, who is loudest in proclaiming his hatred of money--and he has good reason to hate it. The lovers of money are willing to work for it. They know they are able to deserve it.
"Let me give you a tip on a clue to men's characters: the man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it.
"Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper's bell of an approaching looter. So long as men live together on earth and need means to deal with one another--their only substitute, if they abandon money, is the muzzle of a gun.
"But money demands of you the highest virtues, if you wish to make it or to keep it. Men who have no courage, pride or self-esteem, men who have no moral sense of their right to their money and are not willing to defend it as they defend their life, men who apologize for being rich--will not remain rich for long. They are the natural bait for the swarms of looters that stay under rocks for centuries, but come crawling out at the first smell of a man who begs to be forgiven for the guilt of owning wealth. They will hasten to relieve him of the guilt--and of his life, as he deserves.
"Then you will see the rise of the men of the double standard--the men who live by force, yet count on those who live by trade to create the value of their looted money--the men who are the hitchhikers of virtue. In a moral society, these are the criminals, and the statutes are written to protect you against them. But when a society establishes criminals-by-right and looters-by-law--men who use force to seize the wealth of disarmed victims--then money becomes its creators' avenger. Such looters believe it safe to rob defenseless men, once they've passed a law to disarm them. But their loot becomes the magnet for other looters, who get it from them as they got it. Then the race goes, not to the ablest at production, but to those most ruthless at brutality. When force is the standard, the murderer wins over the pickpocket. And then that society vanishes, in a spread of ruins and slaughter.
"Do you wish to know whether that day is coming? Watch money. Money is the barometer of a society's virtue. When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion--when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing--when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors--when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you--when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice--you may know that your society is doomed. Money is so noble a medium that is does not compete with guns and it does not make terms with brutality. It will not permit a country to survive as half-property, half-loot.
"Whenever destroyers appear among men, they start by destroying money, for money is men's protection and the base of a moral existence. Destroyers seize gold and leave to its owners a counterfeit pile of paper. This kills all objective standards and delivers men into the arbitrary power of an arbitrary setter of values. Gold was an objective value, an equivalent of wealth produced. Paper is a mortgage on wealth that does not exist, backed by a gun aimed at those who are expected to produce it. Paper is a check drawn by legal looters upon an account which is not theirs: upon the virtue of the victims. Watch for the day when it bounces, marked, 'Account overdrawn.'
"When you have made evil the means of survival, do not expect men to remain good. Do not expect them to stay moral and lose their lives for the purpose of becoming the fodder of the immoral. Do not expect them to produce, when production is punished and looting rewarded. Do not ask, 'Who is destroying the world? You are.
"You stand in the midst of the greatest achievements of the greatest productive civilization and you wonder why it's crumbling around you, while you're damning its life-blood--money. You look upon money as the savages did before you, and you wonder why the jungle is creeping back to the edge of your cities. Throughout men's history, money was always seized by looters of one brand or another, whose names changed, but whose method remained the same: to seize wealth by force and to keep the producers bound, demeaned, defamed, deprived of honor. That phrase about the evil of money, which you mouth with such righteous recklessness, comes from a time when wealth was produced by the labor of slaves--slaves who repeated the motions once discovered by somebody's mind and left unimproved for centuries. So long as production was ruled by force, and wealth was obtained by conquest, there was little to conquer, Yet through all the centuries of stagnation and starvation, men exalted the looters, as aristocrats of the sword, as aristocrats of birth, as aristocrats of the bureau, and despised the producers, as slaves, as traders, as shopkeepers--as industrialists.
"To the glory of mankind, there was, for the first and only time in history, a country of money--and I have no higher, more reverent tribute to pay to America, for this means: a country of reason, justice, freedom, production, achievement. For the first time, man's mind and money were set free, and there were no fortunes-by-conquest, but only fortunes-by-work, and instead of swordsmen and slaves, there appeared the real maker of wealth, the greatest worker, the highest type of human being--the self-made man--the American industrialist.
"If you ask me to name the proudest distinction of Americans, I would choose--because it contains all the others--the fact that they were the people who created the phrase 'to make money.' No other language or nation had ever used these words before; men had always thought of wealth as a static quantity--to be seized, begged, inherited, shared, looted or obtained as a favor. Americans were the first to understand that wealth has to be created. The words 'to make money' hold the essence of human morality.
"Yet these were the words for which Americans were denounced by the rotted cultures of the looters' continents. Now the looters' credo has brought you to regard your proudest achievements as a hallmark of shame, your prosperity as guilt, your greatest men, the industrialists, as blackguards, and your magnificent factories as the product and property of muscular labor, the labor of whip-driven slaves, like the pyramids of Egypt. The rotter who simpers that he sees no difference between the power of the dollar and the power of the whip, ought to learn the difference on his own hide-- as, I think, he will.
"Until and unless you discover that money is the root of all good, you ask for your own destruction. When money ceases to be the tool by which men deal with one another, then men become the tools of men. Blood, whips and guns--or dollars. Take your choice--there is no other--and your time is running out."
The above is an excerpt from Atlas Shrugged, © Copyright, 1957, by Ayn Rand.
Originally posted on http://aurakiss.deviantart.com/
Cafepress site http://www.cafepress.com/alitastudio
Before I get going too far I must say why I have chosen this topic for my journal this week. I got to watch the movie "Watchmen" earlier this week. I was so overcome with awe at the figure of Dr. Manhattan in the movie that I seriously wanted to purchase a print of his nude figure from the movie. I searched high and low on the WWW.
What did I find? A few movie screen shots and a lot of articles on how awful it was to see Dr. Manhattan’s penis in so many shots throughout the movie. Apparently I must have seen the unrated version because these people were complaining about a measly 2 shots. The one I seen he seemed to only be wearing his cute little briefs in a few shots and the rest of the time he was doing the birthday suit special. Poor me..no poster for me sniff sniff. That’s okay I really don’t have the extra money to spend anyway.
So on to the rest. I love a good tasteful nude, in real life, on screen, painted, sculpted, photographed oh sigh. Its nothing to do with lust or love and truth is that I love a human nude just as much as an awe inspiring flower or building. Something about the light, shadow, color just grabs my eyeballs and makes my soul weep. Male or female a nude can transform the skin of the subject, the space around the nude and even the wall in which it is hung or displayed.
Nudes can be hard, soft, light, dark and catch it all as life in all its glory. I used to only think in nudes in the genre of women. Perfect and flawless in the curve of their lips, the jut of the hip, and even the soft tiny hairs that goose-flesh around the nipple. Then I realized that I was not gay because I liked viewing women, I was appreciative of the human form.
I started looking at men, shy oh so terribly shy about the evil penis. (Side note: Check out the articles about Fighting the ‘Evil Penis’ http://news.deviantart.com/article/52967/ ) So once I mostly got over the shy, I realized that it wasn’t just male or female forms. It was even the so called flaws I enjoyed. The things that made humans truly unique. The glossy silver spider webs of stretch marks. The odd mole or freckle.
Still having problems with tattoos. I understand the idea of tats, nor do I condemn those that get them. I just see the whole thing about tattoos as permanent clothing. A permanent distraction for what ever the person doesn’t or does want the viewer to see. So forgive me but I still enjoy something totally nude and tat bodies in my mind are not totally nude.
So I went back through my own favorites and picked the nudes that I liked best. These are ones that struck a cord not in my loins but in my mind. They tell me something and nothing but make me ache all the same.
THIS IS YOUR ONLY WARNING THESE ARE MALE AND FEMALE NUDE LINKS RANDOM
This is an oil painting nude by :iconsedai: http://seidai.deviantart.com/art/Silver-Chains-71500484
Beautiful big and small :iconpelicanh: http://pelicanh.deviantart.com/art/Clayre-Shy-and-Pixie-84366735
As a Mom I love babies so :iconwcaitlin: http://wcaitlin.deviantart.com/art/mothering-2-91319987
It says I long for evening :iconphotoleto: http://photoleto.deviantart.com/art/Evening-Sky-65429505
She springs from wood sculpture :iconangotti81: http://angotti81.deviantart.com/art/aurora-42888549
Acrylic nude by :iconzoranzoran: http://zoranzoran.deviantart.com/art/Room-With-a-View-36185404
Oh my touchy touchy :icongerhardt: http://gerhardt.deviantart.com/art/Swirl-Curves-and-things-like-62084605
Au` natural :iconRubiacaea: http://rubiacaea.deviantart.com/art/Sublime-nudes-soft-rock-104898481
And so the waters of youth :iconJogiART: http://jogiart.deviantart.com/art/Elixir-A-Male-Nude-99854950
Soft and fuzzy :iconzacshouse: http://zacshouse.deviantart.com/art/Male-Nude-41794452
Captured in watercolor :iconekirsopp: http://ekirsopp.deviantart.com/art/Nude-Male-with-Drape-77479713
I believe its acrylics :iconkkane: http://kkane.deviantart.com/art/Blue-Male-Nude-50782532
I thought it was real :iconmistweaversrealm: http://mistweaversrealm.deviantart.com/art/newmalefae9-128304355
Exactly how did you get that done? :icondanndeemann: http://danndeemann.deviantart.com/art/The-Comrades-Reward-w-model-72322558
Its kind of silly with ratty panties in chalk :icondaninjabear: http://daninjabear.deviantart.com/art/Chalk-Study-001-65014047
So thats my links and thoughts for today. Drop a naked link back if you so desire.
Have a Great Week.
I am so brain dead. I did another commission box with giraffes, sunset and a giraffe skin pattern wood burned on it. I was so anxious to deliver the work that I forgot to take pictures of it! I can’t believe I did that mess up.
I got gift art! FANTASTIC in real life. Sopchoppy photograph of a mountain in Glacier National Park http://sopchoppy.deviantart.com/art/Glacier-Mountains11-74289381 . It is absolutely gorgeous! I really was so thrilled to get it. His photographs are so clear, colorful, cropped just right and wonderful subject matter. They are great! Please go give him some love.
It made a bad couple weeks feel a bit better. I found out that I have to find the money to have my daughter’s wisdom teeth removed and at the same time I need to take my son for braces. His teeth are so crowded that the confinement is starting to make cavities. They told me if it is not taken care of the teeth coming out in different directions can cause cuts, infections and stuff in his tongue and cheeks.
I already knew that things are a bit tight but they always have been tight. I started doing some odd jobs on the weekends to make extra cash and along with the commissions I am sure it will all work out. I don’t want any money from anyone. I don’t even want any commission work right now because I have four on the schedule. Just letting people know ONE of the many reasons I am not doing journals or that kind of thing.
Now the Stop Smoking front. I still have not smoked, crave daily but not given in. 9 weeks now and 3 days and about 15 maybe even 20 pounds heavier. That’s another reason I am not on the computer as much as the past. When I sit at the computer I want to snack. I find it really hard to just sit down. Already just writing this I got up emptied the dryer, went to the store for cookies, played with the dog and had a long debate about the state of personalities in a workplace with my children.
I just wanted everyone to know that things are doing pretty okay. Just become a more active person.
Hugs to everyone.
Mugs, t-shirts and things http://www.cafepress.com/alitastudio
Sometimes its hard to find things to write about in my journals. Last week I simply put up one of the stories that I worked on recently. I write about one or two stories a week. That is not a steady thing so I can’t claim to be a writer.
I thought about writing about the economy but its just too depressing and makes me angry. I just can’t let myself be angry.
I thought about writing about the projects I worked on this week but since they are not at photograph completion thats out of the question. I can’t do any more work on the one because it has to dry for 10 hours so the triple gloss can cure. Actually I found that 48 hours is a better cure for it than the recommended 10 hours. At 10 though I can line it and gloss the bottom.
Guess thats all for now.
Hugs and happiness for everyone.
Painted keepsake and music box sales http://www.aurakiss.etsy.com
Printed t-shirt and other gifts http://www.cafepress.com/alitastudio
I am without my home. I have a home, my teepee, and the Crows let me walk among them, almost as one of them. A ghost among mortals is all that I am. Because I am Blackfoot. I should have been killed along time ago during the Crows first raid into the Blackfoot hunting grounds. Perhaps it was because of my education among the whites the Crow elders decided not to take my hair. Or maybe it was because I managed to lay out two handfuls of their best warriors. Then a stone thrown from an overhead cliff took me down.
I managed to run away a couple years after my capture. Encountering some of my own people they called me Sta-Ai-Tsi-Nix-Sin, ghost story. The girl I was going to marry had found another. My own Father spat at me, turned his eyes to the hills. It was his way of saying that I was no longer part of their world. I stayed for many days and eventually gave up. No one would offer me shelter, talk, or accept me again. I went back to the backlashing Crow nation.
Then when the murders began eventually they came to me. Who better to talk to a spirit than one who was considered a ghost by his own people.
"Sta-Ai-Nix-Sin come and see hurry." The little Crow buck grabbed me by the hand and pulled. When I had returned from my Blackfoot brothers, I kept the curse they had placed on my head as my Crow name. "Feathered Deer is dead in the gully. He was one of our best scouts. You must talk to his spirit and find out who killed him." The boy grabbed my horse. So I rode and let him run ahead for a time to wean out his excitement.
"Ghost Story it is about time you showed up. Didn’t Barking Dog tell you that it was a time to hurry?" The senior Crow scout gruffed at me. "Such a man would know a murder is important but you feel more important than Crow?" Coyote was never fond of me and still throws insults at me randomly.
"I commune with the spirit of the dead as he raced past us to bid farewell to his family."
"Then you would know who was dead and who killed him!" Coyote spat.
I ignored him and went to climb down into the gully to examine the body. The young buck was still not even in his prime. Lean legs had twisted in his death throws. I turned him to see his face. The front of his scalp gone, several holes with blackened flesh on his chest and a long deep cut in the upper right side of his abdomen. The dirt, dried grass and sage was soaking in enormous amounts of blood.
"Feathered Deer says that a white man killed him in revenge for a wrong the brave had enacted against the white man’s family." I said slowly.
"Barking Dog told you the brave’s name! You are always a fraud!"
"Feathered Deer echoes that he is sorry for putting the liver-eaters revenge out upon his friends. He is not the first act of revenge nor will he be the last. There are at least four other braves going before him into the other world." I pushed my fingers into the boys death wound to feel his insides. "Perhaps you were with Feathered Deer when he created the offense, Coyote!" I could feel the cut on the boy’s liver, sharp and hard along the protective outer coating of the organ.
"No the Liver-Eater will not come for me. My eyes will be as the birds and I will see him long before he becomes visible. I will kill the Liver-Eater just as I cut out the heart of the Flathead squaw he claimed as his own." Coyote was visibly excited now.
"Get my horse Barking Dog."
"Yes Sta-Ai-Tsi-Nix-Sin."
I walked past Coyote and made a finger mark in Feathered Deer’s blood on his cheek.
It took me quite a while to complete this piece. I kept getting distracted by other works and projects.
So this piece is six inches long by four inches wide and about five inches deep.
Inside is a windup musical movement that plays "Teddy Bears Picnic" the windup key is on the outside back. Inside top is a wood burned silhouette of a walking bear. The inside has been lightly stained and varnished. Because someone is going to use this in their kitchen I also added a layer of triple coat gloss.
Front is the black bear at a picnic table, sides are a bear holding his foot and the other side is a cub on a tree. Back is the bear laying on a fallen tree trunk. Top picture is a momma bear and cub.
The piece is oil pencil drawn directly on wood and protected with a triple thick gloss coating.
Added extras are the 14 recipe cards with bear illustrations in the lower left corner and a top border with bear silhouettes.
Piece can be cleaned with a slightly moist cloth. Do not submerge in water.
For sale at http://www.aurakiss.etsy.com
on What is Motivated Moms?