Posts Tagged ixnay

68 results.

It’s another… Post of no consequence!

by on April 14, 2014 at 6:00 am
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Hullo thar, everyone!

I’ve been racking my brains for the last few minutes desperately trying to come up with a post to accompany today’s page but, sadly, nothing of any real consequence or import is forthcoming.

So I’m just gonna let this one go, informally, uncelebrated, as I sit here basking in the glow of my fan-heater (it’s still a bit chilly here). I’ve been preparing all day for something I’ve got to do tomorrow, and now I think I’ve earned the… I’m not sure if it even has a name. One part orange juice, two parts cloudy lemonade, a dash of grenadine syrup. It’s quite pleasant to drink and to look at. Kinda like  a non-alcoholic tequila sunrise. read more

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Well, that went reasonably well!

by on April 11, 2014 at 6:00 am
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Another week, another experience!

All this week, I’ve been trying to sell my paintings at work, to my ever-tolerant colleagues. I’d set it up as a blind auction, so that I could garner some information on how best to price my artwork. The conclusions I have come to are as follows:

  • It’s a lot more difficult to sell art than I initially anticipated!
  • Many people, while they may appreciate a painting and have kind things to say about it, may simply not be in a place where they want to purchase one.
  • When you have no cachet, as an artist just beginning the journey, your work is worth a lot less than what you might envision in terms of real money. That does NOT mean that your work is any less VALUABLE, but you’re not going to make all that much more than cost + time if you want to start building up your reputation and credibility.
  • You may have to be prepared to let a painting go for a little less than cost + time, if it’s going to generate more business or goodwill; ye olde loss leader. Just be sure that you’re not being taken advantage of, and I suspect that’ll be a completely separate lesson.

Having learned all of these, I have received two bids for two of my paintings, which is nice! I shan’t announce the details, as I believe to do so would not be proper, but I now have a baseline to gauge my pricing around; My 8×8 in pieces should go for an average of £50, so I now have real data to refine my pricing model. read more

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Happy Burns Night!

by on January 27, 2014 at 6:00 am
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Fair fa a’ yer sonsie faces! Saturday was Burns Night, which meant all over the world, people joined together in song and supper, with haggis and poetry aplenty!

Burns night is one of those cultural events that, on the face of it, might seem to be a touch stereotypical, and is very easy to bury under swathes of tartan and heather. But to Scots, it’s so much more than tradition – It’s about celebrating national pride, of revelling in the things that make us Scottish, and getting together with pals old and new for an old-fashioned  good time. Haggis, neeps and tatties, whiskey, and the poetry and songs of one of Scotland’s greatest sons. Hell, if you can manage to squeeze a ceilidh in there, you’re all set! read more

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Homage and Duplicate – The Thin Line

by on January 24, 2014 at 6:00 am
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As always, I’ve got a few creative projects on the go at the moment. Key, of course, has been the art style experimentation in the comic; I’m quite pleased with the results so far, and I hope you’re enjoying them, too! Parallel to this, I’m cleaning up the first Mei Wu for publication in print, am rewriting the synopsis for my script submission, and am (etrenally) reworking the opening and tone of my novel.

In addition even to that, however, I’ve been working on a little something else, more like written doodles than anything. It’s a mixture of short stories and ‘found footage’ style scraps, set in the early days of faster-than-light travel. I intend it to be a love letter to the novella, ‘Roadside Picnic’ by the Strugatsky brothers, and the S.T.A.L.K.E.R games it inspired, with characters exploring a devastated post-human colony ravaged by a mysterious alien waste-product. read more

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A blast from the past (at long last!)

by on January 17, 2014 at 6:00 am
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When I was younger, back in the heydey of the CD-ROM, when PCs were creeping into homes and Mac was still a plasticky beige nerdy brand, my father bought me and my sister some edutainment software. “Just Grandma and Me” and “Arthur’s Teacher Trouble”, produced by the very aptly named ‘Living Books’ company. I remember them so very well.

They were, at their very heart, interactive books on tape where children could follow text along to the dulcet tones of a narrator. They were obviously intended to help primary school pupils to read, but that’s not why I remember them. To me, the main appeal, and the reason I kept on going back to the programs, was in the interactivity. After each page had been read out, you could then click on various bits and bobs in the illustration. There were always so very many items that would spring to life, do a little animation, and play a little sound. What amazed me then, and still fascinates me to this day, was just how detailed these tableaus were, and how incredibly imaginative they could be. These events ranged from the simple (Radiator xylophone!) through the wonderfully bizarre and delightful (a tray of cookies that sang like a soul choir), through to the just plain brilliant (that recurring paper plane that had the awesome metal soundtrack). read more

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Don’t worry, Be Happy

by on November 2, 2012 at 6:00 am
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Hello all, just a brief blog-thing update today as I’m very very tired while I prepost this, having been delayed by an anxiety attack. I’m fine now, but I should probably go to bed and get some rest. I find I feel better when I’ve had a good night’s sleep.

Anyway, I’d like to say thanks to all of you for really taking an interest in Monday’s storyline and having a civilised discussion about the topics it addresses without it devolving into a flamewar. Not that I thought that would happen, certainly not here: I like to think Elf Blood readers are a cut above, and thus far your behaviour shines! read more

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Doing it on the cheap

by on October 8, 2012 at 6:00 am
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The other day, I noticed something in my Facebook feed that somewhat irritated me (yes, it’s going to be one of those posts but bear with me as it’s very important). A band, admittedly not one that I know but presumably somebody my friends know, had put out a call to their fans to produce a band logo.

What seems like a fun and lively way of engaging fans is, in reality, a rather more sinister symptom of a deeper problem permeating society. That is, that graphic design is SEVERELY underrated and undervalued. ‘Competitions’ like this are just the tip of the problem. It starts with people being offered band merch, which is already in stock and may be difficult to shift anyway. And the band can theoretically get dozens, hundreds of designs in for review before deciding on one, ONE, entrant to win. What they have done is to have absorbed many work hours from the lives of these people (whether or not they expect to earn money from their illustrations immaterial at this stage) and have expended a comparatively TINY amount of their own resource. read more

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Puzzling Behaviour

by on October 5, 2012 at 6:00 am
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Just a brief one today, but something I’ve been musing on. I’ve been playing Picross on my 3DS since just before I went to Cyprus, and by Great Mara is it addictive! For those of you not in the know, Picross is a puzzle game that’s essentially a graphical crossword; You’re presented with a grid, and given the number and size of filled pixel clusters  on each row and colum. It’s an interesting challenge, and makes for some excellent logical thinking opportunities. I freakin’ love it! read more

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Neurosis and the mind

by on September 24, 2012 at 6:00 am
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One thing that I’ve noticed and have been noticing recently is that, frequently, intelligence and/or creative talent may be accompanied by neurosis. This is by no means an exhaustive, statistically ratified study: More from observation of myself, my friends and my family.

Often, said observed person will suffer from near-constant self-doubt and lowered self-esteem, despite the intense effort and good quality of work they produce. It’s arguable that this inability to recognise one’s own success (not quite perfectionism, but often mistaken for such) is what drives such people towards making improvements in their skills and abilities. Unfortunately, as useful as this sounds it does mean that no matter how much success you have you can never really take joy in it. It’s a horrible state of affairs to be in, and no amount of conscious, rational thought can ever really override the internal feeling of self-hatred and fill that gaping hole of confidence. read more

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The Benefits of Rest

by on September 10, 2012 at 6:00 am
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Although I’ve been really busy during the last week, I’ve found that I’m actually getting more rest, ironically because I’m getting LESS sleep during the evenings. The result is that I’m actually tired enough to take a nap on the bus home from work which, thanks to the schools being back and peoples’ schedules reverting to normal, can take up to an hour. So I actually get a good proper chance to catch some sleep which actually makes me feel a lot better later on in the day. And if I get a decent amount of rest, I find that I’m less worried about life in general, I’m not as depressed about love or art or money, and I’m far more productive in the evenings. read more

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