:rewound:

Continuing with my recap of the past six months, when I stopped writing this weekly blog and intend to return to regular frequency again.

I'm not going to be that person to remind you of every celebrity death from last year on this year's anniversary of it, but I still have to admit that David Bowie's was a major one, and seemed to set the tone for the rest of the year. Yes, ultimately he was just a person, but part of my imagination wants to believe that he really just returned to his actual planet or state of existence. That thought led to the following illustration, and through deviantArt it actually led to a few sales, a first on that site for me. Still available here. Noting some people's best-of 2016 music lists, I can't help but realize that I don't buy full albums as much as I used to, but his final album, "Blackstar," still gets a lot of play for me, and of course we are still looking for new meanings behind the songs, was it meant as an epitaph, or did it just become one? Leonard Cohen seemed to go the same route by year's end.

I have been making slow progress on a new Homunculus doll, thus far dyeing her clothes and creating a new skin for her. As usual in this process so far, I'm not sure where it's going next yet, I'll be digging through all the collected odds, ends and bones to see what she'll become next. With this I'm finding that I need to work on several projects at once by doing a little bit on each of them. A little bit of doll work, then photo work, and maybe some further work on my novels, closer to their final drafts. I don't intend for them to languish in a box somewhere. I've had too many unfinished works as it is.

Speaking of bones, near the end of summer I found a pretty intact cormorant skull on a beach. Maybe a bit too intact, with some flesh and the eyes still attached. So per instructions I obtained from someone else who works with such things, I've been soaking it in a sealed container and emptying the disgusting results weekly, hopeful that I'll end up with just bone eventually.

In my travels I regularly kept all sorts of cameras with me, other than my large DSLR; a Holga, a Polaroid, and the smartphone has become a pretty regular one too, for the Instagram accounts, of course. Thus far I've not been very pleased with the Polaroids. The shots seem a bit too pale, I don't know if it's because of the film or camera settings, but truth to tell there's not much adjusting possible with the Polaroid camera that I have.

In one of my other lives, I DJ at a goth/industrial night called "Ceremony." In October, we celebrated 20(!) years of doing what we do, on Halloween as well, so we hit club capacity pretty quickly to say the least. To commemorate the occasion, I redesigned the logo a bit, and also made it available on t-shirts. I did a limited run of others in the past, but this being modern times, this one is available online through a website called Spreadshirt, so now I didn't have to print them myself, or lug around boxes of them, or run out of sizes. I also brought back the old design for one of our events called "Goths Gone Wild," the centerpiece of which was goths wrestling in black jell-o. No joke. I'm not sure how we got away with it.

I may use this site for other t-shirt designs as well, once they come to mind.

Since the start of this year I've been involved in an online course/group about improving one's portfolio. I still have a physical one, and going through it now what stuck out for me more than anything was that since I work in many different media, photo-based and otherwise, it's not very cohesive. So I feel that I need to create separate portfolios for each style. For now I'm focusing on the photo-based work, and so far there haven't been any new pieces. Definitely need to up production this year.

:like it, love it:

The last week was spent more working under the hood, as it were, than working on any new artwork. Still trying to chart my path in this silly creative life that I've chosen, or rather that's chosen me, no sense in denying that. But I have been posting my "calendar" photos, so far just on deviantArt, and did so one per day as opposed to all at once.

Sometimes it seems to me that "likes" are replacing actual currency for artwork (although I'm pleased that I have sold a few copies of my Bowie piece), which can be flattering up to a point. On a site like deviantArt, however, you can both see who liked your work and also what other artwork that they'e added to their "collection," and, well, it doesn't always seem like an appreciation for art so much as it is one for women in various state of undress. I suppose beggars can't be choosers regarding who likes your artwork, though, regardless of the reasons.

I still puzzle through finding a way to make my work more desirable, or more accurately sellable, without drastically changing what I create, or why. I honestly don't do what I do with dollar signs in mind, but it is a nice bonus. And of course seeing others succeed makes one think that you can do it as well. I think that's partly what's freezing me on my website redesign, I want to get it just right.

For the time being I still have prints and such available through the afore-mentioned deviantArt, Fine Art America, and a few through Etsy. On the latter site I have available once again my Valentine's Day card design.

:ashes to ashes:

As stated last week, David Bowie's passing both stunned and inspired me. I had the ripples of some artwork idea at the end last week's blog entry, but it suddenly came to me while in traffic on Friday morning, of all time and places. Another reason why I always have something with me to write or scribble on.

It's not too difficult to see that outer space was often an inspiration or subject matter for a lot of Bowie's work. I had that on my mind, plus the not uncommon quip from some people that he didn't die, he just returned to his home planet. So it wasn't far from there to see him as evolving like Dave Bowman (whoa - is that name a coincidence??) at the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey (of which the title of his breakthrough song "Space Oddity" played on).

By far the easiest way would've been to just make a digital photo collage of the elements, but I wanted to actually create it from scratch. I drew the Earth directly in Photoshop, using my underutilized Wacom tablet. It was hard to stop from drawing more clouds at one point.

At first the biggest obstacle in choosing a Bowie reference was which look to use, as he was inventive with his appearance to say the least. But I ended up looking for a shot that at least had a profile that fit into my concept.

I wasn't confident enough with the tablet to draw it onscreen as well, so I went back to pencils. I chose to do white on black, the opposite would've worn a black pencil (and probably my hand) down to a little nub.

I combined the elements in Photoshop and added some effects. I'm pleased with how it came out, and how quickly it was done as well. Of course I could continue to work on it indefinitely, but as ever I have to learn when to say "enough."

I didn't create it with sales in mind, but a few people so far expressed a desire for copies of it, so it is now available as such (and other ephemera) on my deviantArt page.

The sad event inspired me to create, but it also inspired me to keep on doing so. It seems apparent that Bowie was well-aware of his limited time and worked right up until his exit. We should all aspire to be so dedicated with our lives, even if we don't know when our actual expiration date is.

:serious moonlight:

Any news this week has pretty much been eclipsed by the unexpected (to us) death of David Bowie. Mere days after his 69th birthday and the release of what is now his final album, he succumbed to a long battle with cancer that the general public was unaware of. He had actually been away for the better part of a decade, with all the public rumors and fabrications sure to go along with such an absence, then from out of nowhere he releases two of his strongest albums in years, which go on to become his epitaph, even more so now, and we listen to the words and look at the images of his last videos and think, now, well of course. For example people are theorizing that the dead astronaut in the "Blackstar" video represents Major Tom, which brings us to a conclusion from his first major hit song of decades ago.

I've pondered why one should be so affected by the death of one who's not a relation or even anyone I had ever met, but someone online today put it into focus; "we don't cry because we knew them, we cry because they helped us know ourselves." His life itself was art, and now even his death proved to be so, with the music, lyrics and images he left for us at the end. I can only hope to leave such a legacy or make such an exit.

It of course also reminds one of mortality. I still have so much to do. I am pleased that I pretty much spent the Sunday before I heard the news either working on writing or photography. As near as I recall I've never done any artwork of or inspired by Bowie, but ideas are swirling about. The fact that he so often referenced space and the moon is at the forefront of my mind now.

The aforementioned photography was shots from the late summer photoshoot that I was a part of. Again I think the shots as they are now stand fine on their own, but this year I want to get back to textures and such that I used to work with before on my photos.

The first half of the shoot took place indoors in a garage area, and it brought to my mind the old pin-up calendars that were most likely to be found in auto repair shops. For all I know they still make them. But I wanted to make my new ones look like the old ones, with faded colors and some damage. I'm guessing most calendars aren't treated as high art, least of all in a garage.

So I searched down some old images online, and used the match color adjustment in Photoshop. I also hunted down some damaged paper texture to overlay over them as well. You can see the before and after below.

Appropriately enough I chose twelve images to work from, here are a few more.