Update: November 21, 2021
Since I’ve gotten a few messages lately asking if I’m still alive (a not unreasonable question given our current pandemic era and my age), I thought it was well nigh time to answer in the affirmative.
It’s been very obvious that, with only a few scattered exceptions, I haven’t really been tending to my websites, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter for at least the length of our global infection. The “‘rona” is actually the least of my excuses. I don’t think I’ve contracted it, I have minimal contact with people, I’m vaccinated, and I wear a mask with little complaint (only when I’m heavily exerting myself). So, if not that, then why?
The biggest reason is just enjoying the excuse of taking a break from it all. I’ve been running sites under the cjcs domain for almost 25 years, websites in general for longer than that (back when it was just HTML — no version numbers, yet), and BBSes for a decade before the Internet went public. I’ve posted a lot during that time and been administrating for just about as long. It kind of gets old.
Speak of getting old…there’s me. I’ve got more than six decades in my skin. Staying on the cutting edge of new tech doesn’t seem as important to my life as it used to. So I don’t much venture away from the few social networks I mentioned above. With the newer venues, I know I’m not in the target demo and I’m OK with that. While I did start playing on computers over fifty years ago, they were very restricted and a far cry from being as powerful and versatile as even my phone is today. While I started on computers when I was still in single digits (a rarity back in the day), I didn’t grow up with computers like today’s youth have grown up with computers. As a result, staying connected isn’t as much a part of my perceived quality of life as it is for more recent generations. Again, that’s fine, but it does mean I don’t get particularly anxious if I’m not posting new content.
As I watch the content of others, especially on YouTube, I can’t help but empathize with the tyranny of staying current. During the height of one of my other blogs, I was posting 3-to-5 500-1,500 word articles every day. It was all about getting visitors and ad revenue. Eventually, I’d pretty much said everything I wanted to. Since I didn’t want to just repeat and repost, I pretty much stepped away. Sure, when I watch various YouTubers, with their play buttons in the background, and enough money flowing in that they can really up their content game while still earning a living, I get a little envious. But then I think of all of the time and effort it takes to plan, record, and edit the content (or manage employees) — and that’s without even adding in the threat of copyright strikes.
In terms of my own content, I do want to post more articles and videos more frequently (I don’t think life will permit me to be regular with it). Articles are easier than videos. Writing is my natural communications medium. I did it before I made money from it, and wrote even more once I was experienced at the professional level. I do get muzzled a bit by the reality that the Internet never forgets. One needs to be somewhat mindful of the intent and perception of their words. As a result, my draft-to-published ratio is 4 or 5 to one at this point. It really should be higher, but I’m less driven to poke the bear in a blog than I might have been a few decades ago (not that I was a magnet for controversy in any case).
As for videos — honestly, the handwriting thing overwhelmed me. Never mind the equipment issues/expenses that cropped up. The fact is that handwriting is not my area of expertise. I did grow up in an age when handwriting was still important, but I’ve always felt like I was overstepping whenever I posted a handwriting video. I do have that skill but I’m not convinced there are others better able to teach y’all. Maybe I’m wrong. Regardless, I also have the issue of having very little room to make these videos — I’ve damaged equipment because of it. It’s also why I don’t really do speed paintings — I just don’t have the room to set up the cameras to do it.
So, I’m left in a quandary about what to post, especially with videos. At the moment, I have no plan. I might just post miscellaneous videos from time to time. (And this is on the CJ’s Creative Studio channel; on my personal channels I’m even more at a loss.) When time allows and/or I have interesting enough content, I’ll post something either here or on the appropriate social network. I suppose a FAQ for some of the more frequent handwriting questions might not be a bad idea.
That’s pretty much it. I’m not dead. The sites aren’t dead. In fact, there might still be a bit of life left in all of us.
Update: September 1, 2020
Well…. I don’t know if you’ve heard, but 2020 has been an interesting year.
The pandemic, of course, has thrown a monkey in the wrench works. As you can imagine, I had plans for business growth this year. By March, that had come to a screeching halt. It wasn’t because I couldn’t open up a brick and mortar store. It was more the case that when people don’t know where the money is coming from in a week, month, rest of the year… buying art stuff isn’t exactly on their priority list. Being a creative has never been easy even in the best of times. And yet we persist.
For me, the biggest blow came in July when by primary computer up and died on me…taking one of my hard drives with it. Since this was the machine that I did pretty much ALL of my work on — art previz, videos, business, etc. — its loss was keenly felt. Needless to say, even with our current limited situation, I needed to get a replacement. More importantly, I needed to recover my data. I’m ashamed to admit that after over two decades of not having a major, hair-pulling data loss, the past few years have seen me get a little comfortable and lax in regards to data backups. I had them, just not as recent as would be really helpful.
While I was waiting on a machine to arrive so I could start work again, I set to the task of recovering my data. One drive wasn’t affected, so that was 100% saved. Another, critical drive, wasn’t easily readable so I’d have to do recovery. After six days, I got about 98% of the files with the rest being corrupted. Fortunately, nothing I desperately needed was lost. A third drive….well, that was toast. Another seven days of scanning yielded only 0.8% recovery. Fortunately, this was the most expendable drive, so I didn’t cry any tears about it.
So, with September starting, our “new normal” becoming “normal”, and me once again being a minion of our robot overlords, it’s time to get my focus back on creation. Unfortunately, one of the consequences of being old is having a lot of “life” things that need attention — many of them not all that optional. It doesn’t leave as much time in a day as I had when I was thirty years younger. Even so, that’s not reason not to press on.
I’m finishing up my previz for a quick piece of USWNT Football start Megan Rapinoe. As it’s not based on any copyrighted works, I might actually be able to make money on it in much the same way I couldn’t from the Alex Morgan painting. I’m hoping to be slapping paint on canvas in the very near future.
I reactivated my Patreon page. For now, it’s just a donation tier. Until I understand what the community would like as perks, and figuring out how to provide that, I think it’s safest to keep things really simple for now.
Oh…the flute practice is on-going. Because it’s chile season in NM, I’m having to take more days off than I’d like due to fatigue, but I should be back to daily practice soon.
Update: July 28, 2019
I think it’s fair to say that it’s been quite a while since I last posted an update (four months, in fact — since March). I’m going to lay a hunk of blame on the month of World Cup (women’s edition)*. I’ve been a women’s sports fan since a little prior to the 1968 Olympic Summer Games in Mexico City. Through most of the 80s I was a sports photographer specializing mostly with women’s sports — which resulted in me also being a women’s sports activist as I was trying to get those photos sold as well as trying to get press for deserving, if largely ignored, sports and athletes. So…when a major tournament like the World Cup presents itself — especially when the games are available to view — I’m going to be distracted and my workflow will be disrupted. As the United States Women’s National Team #USWNT won the whole enchilada (mmm….enchilada (stacked, not rolled)), I consider it time well-spent.
Springtime and early-summer chores and some sundry dental silliness have also taken a bite out of my usual schedule. C’est la vie. So, all of that out of the way….
We left off with my having completed View From the Stone Doorway. I then started some practice/experiments with canvas stretching and gessoing said canvases. I’m not a stranger to either activity, but I wanted add to my knowledge and maybe see if I could have some improvement on my established techniques. Also, since I need to stretch a custom canvas to fit a mis-sized frame I got sent, I wanted to get comfortable with stretching canvas again — it’s been a few years.
After peppering the stretcher bars with several rounds of tacks — enough so that doing it again was going to be problematic, I gessoed. A lot. This canvas ended up with a silly amount of layers when all was said and done. But now I had this canvas just sitting there. Seemed a shame not to splatter some paint on it in an artful manner. The canvas itself is small-ish and not one of the mainstream sizes. I wanted to match the aspect ratio of current HD TVs, so I used 16″ and 9″ stretcher bars. This left me with a longer than usual canvas — just the sort of thing that was asking for a similarly long subject. I turned to one of my favorites: the sexiest rocket (er…missile, actually) yet made, the Saturn V. I chose one of my favorite NASA photos and chose to interpret it using painting knives. It was a lot of fun.
That is to say that it was a lot of fun until it came to photographing it. You see, the painting, Apollo 4 with Moon, has a noticeable texture which, when combined with gloss varnish, doesn’t lend itself to problem-free photography. Round after round I ended up with glare and specular highlights so profound that they couldn’t be fixed no matter how much Photoshop I threw at them. When I finally cobbled together the things I needed to both polarize and filter an ad hoc lighting setup, I finally solved my very vexing issues.
Needless to say, I’m going to have to design and invest in a new lighting setup for future in-house art photography. I’m not going through that mishigas again.
Since then, I’ve been updating online stuff with the new offerings. I’ve also returned to a long neglected painting, Stolen Moment. I started this in 2008 and it was meant to be a purely airbrushed painting. I’ve mentioned in the past my woes with my airbrush area not being climate controlled, and this was about the time when I decided to shift over to using a hairy stick, instead, for the majority of my art.
Unfortunately, I hadn’t painted anything significant with brush and acrylics since moving to the New Mexico high desert. The paints dried out so much faster than they had when I was in a more humid, closer to sea level environment. I managed to slap on an underpainting, but decided that until I got a handle on how to use the materials in this location, it would be best if I just tucked the painting away until I could do it to my satisfaction. Then other works and life events happened. So, after years tucked away in a box, it’s now sitting proud on my easel.
My plan is to retain the background elements as airbrushed. In fact, I airbrushed in some missing areas before starting on the main subject. My only real issue is dealing with the paint not adhering like I’ve gotten used to. The support is clayboard, and I’ve been painting on gessoboard and gessoed canvases for the past several years. It’s not a disaster or anything, but it does require a slight change in technique.
So, this is what I’m going to be working on for a while. at 73.5 x 58 cm (29 x 22-7/8 in), it’s bigger than what I’ve been doing recently. Still, a lot of it is pretty darned straightforward, so I’m hoping it goes relatively quickly.
* Until they call the men’s edition the “Men’s World Cup”, I’m not inclined to also qualify the women’s edition. For the foreseeable future, to me they are both World Cup.
Update: March 28, 2019
It’s been a while since the last update. Fact of the matter is there’s really been only one significant update item, and I’ve pretty much just keep getting distracted away from mentioning it.
Work on “View From the Stone Doorway” was completed. WooHoo to that. I hope the Muses are pleased since they are the ones who compelled me to paint it when it was just a pristinely gessoed canvas. It’s 51 x 40 cm (20 x 16 in) on stretched canvas. I still have to finish it (isolation coats + varnish) and then I’ll get a good photo of it and upload it to the store (which, come to think of it, I need to do that last bit with the rose painting as well).
The finishing has been awaiting the clearing of my prep & finish space as it currently has some canvases being gessoed occupying the space at present.
This is fortunate as this is the time of the year when I’m most pressed with household duties that pull me away from committing art. Early spring demands a lot of attention and it generally my least creatively active time of the year. At present, I don’t even have a subject ready for then next piece. As I’ve mentioned around social media, I continue (as always) to do studies, but none of them have as of yet grabbed me by the throat and demanded they be imaged in paint.
In the works are women’s sports subjects, some rocketry, and a landscape or two. I do have a test canvas that I need to slap some paint on with abandon to see the results. I also have another canvas I need to prep that’s an unconventional size (21 x 17) due to a frame I received being miss-sized (the seller told me I could keep it). And I have a stack of Ampersand boards (my favorite supports) just begging for random acts of art.
I continue to think about how best to use the various media I have available to me to connect with all y’all. While I now once again have the equipment necessary to resume making videos, an honest assessment (trying to avoid a repeat of the grand tripod collapse of 2018) says that I simply don’t have the room to consistently do videos safely. I’ve even had trouble trying to finish up the Vulgar Cursive series because of the mandate that I not put a tripod on the dining room or kitchen tables. I tried to convey the importance of communication by the modern artist, but, alas, my pleas failed to hold sway.
This has led me to consider two related avenues: vlogging and podcasting. Both have some aspects that entice me, but I do worry about having enough interesting content that doesn’t take too much time away from creating art to develop. I very much want to talk about creative writing, my views on art, and more. The podcast is more attractive as the mics are almost always set-up anyway. Then there’s the issue of what platform to host the podcast on. But, like I said, I don’t want to commit to it unless I feel I can consistently produce content for it.
In the past few months I have undertaken a personal hobby I’ve wanted to pursue for a while. I’ve been practicing playing the recorder. As a side benefit, I’ve been really annoying all the dogs in the neighborhood because of it. Oh, the barking makes for delicious accompaniment.
I started playing the guitar when I was around twelve (yes, they’d invented guitars by then). Up until a few years ago, when I tapered back from it for no specific reason, I played just about everyday for 40+ years. When I was in high school, I started learning how to play the flute. I enjoyed it quite a lot, but when I moved back to NM almost 30 years ago, I lost track of it. Even if I found it, I don’t think I’d want to spend the hundreds of dollars it would take to get it refurbished back to good playing condition.
So, while I might not be someone who compulsively listens to music, I’ve always found some bliss in playing an instrument. Since I’ve always loved the flute, but not its expense, I bought a soprano recorder several years ago. The fingerings are similar, so I figured it would shorten the learning curve. It wasn’t until this year that I decided to give it a good honest go. I’ve subsequently also bought a larger, alto recorder so I can practice on something a bit less shrill. I’m also contemplating a tenor recorder so I can return to the flute-like note-to-fingering correspondence I’m more accustomed to (the alto recorder uses the same fingering but starting at F instead of C).
Like I said, other than a ton of yard work stuff, contractor arrangements, automobile chores, taxes, and other sundry tasks that take way more time than I’d like, there hasn’t been a lot to fill an update. When things start to return to a less hectic state in a few weeks, I hope to get back to a more predictable schedule.
Update: February 17, 2019
It seems this is the month of family dentistry. Between my family and myself, there’s been a lot of time with me in waiting rooms with still more to come. Appointments apparently don’t give a flying fig about trying to run a business. C’est la vie.
A lot of the art focus has been on the current WIP (about 40% done), a landscape-y thing that was more the notion of a Muse than myself. (Who am I to argue with a Muse?) I’m using it as an opportunity to try a couple of different techniques — techniques that I’m learning should perhaps be done better with some different brushes than what I have on hand. Still…bristles are bristles and I’m making do. Not being primarily a landscape painter makes me cautious about investing in yet more brushes that I will use only infrequently. Still… if I do many more trees and stuff, I might have to bite the bullet on this one.
Something different: I’m once again practicing the recorder. For much of my life, I’ve played guitar (not so much in recent years), and in my twenties I devoted a fair amount of practice to the flute. Wanting to play a wind instrument again, but not knowing where my flute is (or wanting to pay to refurbish the thing if I do find it), I opted to put a little more focus on the recorder. I’d dabbled a bit a while back; as a result, I happen to have a soprano (descant) recorder on-hand. So, that’s been eating up an hour or so a day. Seems old fingers aren’t quite as nimble as young ones, but muscle memory is helping me along. I do find the soprano a bit shrill, so I might ask birthday-Santa for a tenor recorder so the tone is more comfortable.
I am also once again researching affordable methods for transferring my old negatives and slides to digital. A big reason you don’t see many old images of mine is that I simply don’t have many available. I scanned a few a couple of decades ago when I had a few hours with a negative scanner — whose resolution is laughable by today’s standards. So, I have a few pics digitized. I don’t want to spend a lot of money on this, and ideally I’ll have use of whatever device after the transfer is done. That pretty much means either a scanner or a digital camera attachment. Given the spotty reviews of a lot of scanners, especially following OS updates, I’m sort of leaning in the direction of the latter.
That’s pretty much been it this week at the ol’ Casa. Except for the tooth stuff, it’s been pretty straightforward. That’s going to end soon with necessary home maintenance, which is sad as my wallet only just stopped crying from the abuse it received over the holidays.
Update: February 10, 2019
I got a little stymied by delays that were beyond my control this past week, but that will not daunt the undaunted. Or me.
I’m still waiting for the frames to get in. I’ve got four paintings awaiting on them, but it took a week longer to get the order filled after it was submitted than I’d expected. Now I’m waiting on shipping.
Speaking of shipping, I ordered from Amazon a few more things to make audio a bit easier …unfortunately, tracking indicates the package has disappeared down the shipping black hole. So, who knows when that will get corrected.
I did discover yesterday that something broke the email on my site. Given all the stuff I did during the update, this isn’t terribly surprising. I’m still getting messages routed by other means or available on the backend (e.g. messages via the contact form), but the direct sending (mostly admin stuff) isn’t happening and diagnostics haven’t revealed the cause. This appears to be an ongoing task until it’s fixed (after which, of course, it makes little sense to keep going on with it).
The new painting was started. I talked about that a little in Picking My Artwork Subjects. I have decided that given my lack of space, and relative lack of viewers, I’m not going to be videoing works in progress. If I had the studio space to keep equipment more-or-less set up most of the time so I could capture good images, I’d probably still do it. Since that isn’t the case, I’ll reserve the art videoing to specific topics and demos for the foreseeable future.
Good news is that I think most of my audio woes following the tripod incident are behind me…though I might need to order a few more rechargeables. I helps to continue to fuel the notion I have for doing some sort of podcast…whatever it might be. Short term might be some combo of blog/pod — either transcripts of the pod, or scripts for the pod — to get me used to it. I don’t know. Still working on it. No rush. Constructive suggestions are welcome.
I know that’s not it, but at the moment I’m drawing a blank. Starting last week and continuing at least through the rest of the month are mostly routine dentist trips for me and the fam. It does disrupt the schedule a bit…especially since it’s not just one isolated visit. Then all the fun spring chores and maintenance needed for the Casa. And taxes. Good times.
