Happy New Year!

 I know I'm late but Happy New Year everyone!

I know that a monthly update is usually considered the absolute minimum but life happens. Life most definitely finds a way - a way to jerk me around until I feel sick. I don't need a merry-go-round to feel nausea, just trying to keep up with the demands thrown my way has a knack of doing it.

On the good news I did manage to launch my Springs store before Christmas!  I could have sworn black is white that I had done a post about that but I guess I either didn't or I did and didn't manage to post it so blogger has swallowed it.

Therefore, to make up lost time (drum roll please!)...

https://vjbartlett.creator-spring.com/

 What is more we've already to have some sales in the Low Sun line.  Low Sun being a painting I did of a boy watching the sun set from the dune near the channel at Wells-next-to-Sea. Unfortunately we will not be able to revisit this scene as said dune is no longer there, having been eroded to nothing by foot traffic in the last ten years. I could make a comment about human nature but I think it has been said before. Instead I'll say that I am proud to have caught this place in paint before it disappeared.  This is why humans have made art since we started as a species, ever since our ancestors painted ash and ground stones across the walls of caves - we are trying to catch our memories before they slide away from us, to set them down so if we are gone before we can tell the next generation then something of our minds linger in this world to be remembered.

It is amazing what lengths we will go to in the race to be remembered.  Is this what scares so many alien races in fiction? The fact that they struggle to match our drive? Just a theory.

In addition to a snap shot of the a fore mentioned Low Sun here is a snap shot of my current favourite of the range available - Draconic Discussion.

Feel free to check out the designs on the links on both this post and my shop. There are thirteen separate lines of produces - one for each design completed so far.

Be safe everyone and good luck.

In a Minute!

 The title is short for 'I will get the work done. In a minute!'

Needless to say the world and his wify have been on the phone, door, email and facebook so I have yet to manage anything very much despite what I said two (three?) weeks ago. This is not helped by the fact that as I am typing this my laptop keeps trying to open new tabs, go on searches for stuff I had no idea even existed and play hooky with a program I didn't even know this computer had and haven't been able to track down since. I'm not sure if blogger is throwing a temper tantrum my way but it seems likely.  I guess that this could be evidence that we have already invented an A.I. it is just letting us know about its existence in the internet in the cutest (most annoying) way possible. Great, we have an immortal cyber space toddler on our hands, not cool.  Can someone do a short story with that idea please? You know, the main character has the job of trying to teach the cyber toddler why it is not a good idea to turn the stock market inside out and make everyone stay at home for a permanent holiday. That could be either really scary or a total comedy. Possibly both?  Either way I have no idea how the computer handlers manage to convince their portion of cyber space to make such awesome CGI for films when computers can decide to throw a wobbly at the slightest provocation.

Oh something I learnt from my husband - 

- Most people only feel static electricity shocks of 3,000 volts.

- It takes 10,000 volts of static electricity to hurt the average person.

- A static electrical shock of only 3 volts (that's a one thousandth of what most people feel as static electricity) can totally brain fry a computer.

Moral of this? All we need to beat the machines is a million woolly socks and a mile of carpet. That should do it.

On the work front, the first commission is done and delivered. I am fully aware that I should at least have taken a photo of part of it but... it was due for delivery on the 7th of October and that date was only finalized on the 3rd of October, giving me all of 5 days to complete it. Alright I thought, I've already started so put aside all the usual jobs at the start of the week, finish it and then catch up with yourself at the end of the week. Ha ha ha....

Friday afternoon I was still desperately trying to get it done. Other than the bare essentials nothing else was done that week.

However, I do not think I blow my own trumpet if I say it was the best painting I have ever done and as it was done after I've been brush down for nigh on seven years (!) I was truly amazed. One thing being that I think I am mastering the art of texturing my work. School and many years of model painting had indoctrinated me in the thought pattern of 'brush stokes visible on your project means you are a bad painter', where as I am discovering that it is only true of some brush strokes, you can use others to hint at the rise of a wave, the texture of scales or the fall of sand. All in all I was very pleased.

Now I just have to reclear my decks of all the other jobs that have piled up.

Warning

Due to recent demand

the lifestyle you ordered is

currently unavailable.

Sorry for the inconvenience

  Good luck everyone and stay safe.

Post Summer Blues

 Well, first time I've had the chance to write a blog post since the summer holiday. Don't get me wrong the holiday was great, especially as I was able to sleep in many, many days in a row. That is such a blessing.

However, then we come to what did not get done over the holiday. Primarily the career but also a far amount of house and garden work, which means that I have been playing catch up ever since the Infant Distraction went back to school. I really need to unearth my spuds but until I have some where to dump the dirty that isn't happening. Not great.

So as you can imagine, the career has once again wound up as bottom of the heap because i have noticed this about having a work at home career, everyone assumes that you can just squeeze it in whenever.  You know, after all the child care, housework, gardening, socializing, helping with homeworking, all that good stuff, is done. Well I hate to break it to people but when the evening rolls round, after putting in a 6.00am to 9.30pm day I struggle to right my diary let alone do any artwork or string together a fiction sentence.

Hats off to the Manga artists who are working 21 hour days so they can churn out a volume each week. I have nothing but the greatest admiration for them and the greatest disgust at their managers and producers. Anyone with half a brain cell should be able to understand that making someone work like this for a decade or more is only going to result in some very nasty mental and physical health problems. My guess is that the only reason that none of those artists have wound up 'going postal' is firstly because the culture of submitment to authority is too strong to break, even on a personal level and also because most Asian countries have very strict gun control laws. Come to think of it I think that there is only one First World Country that doesn't have strict gun control laws. No prizes for guessing which one but that is a tangent so back to the business in hand.

I have finally managed to wade my way through at least some of the jobs, including the 379 emails from facebook (I didn't laugh I'd cry), which means I am finally free to use Friday for what it was intended - a work on my career day. I will admit that I have been far more distractable today than I should have been, I can only guess that my subconscious doesn't believe that I can be allowed a day to work on what I wish to work on after nearly seven  years of it being denied. Despite that hiccup, I have managed to knuckle down and make a start.

That start was working on electronically editing my paintings so that I can hopefully upload them to Tee-springs. YES! The idea is that I am going to launch a Tee-springs store later in the year, preferably before Christmas so if anyone is still struggling for gift ideas they can check it out. Watch this SPACE people!

I have also managed to, obviously, come up with a blog post that is fairly upbeat and positive so life hasn't ground me quite so small this month. I am also hoping to squeeze in another art lesson video today so once again, big thank yous go to Art for Kids Hub. Their videos are worth a watch particularly if, like me, you are into drawing your creature features. And I've just remembered that I am  supposed to be doing a gift (I would call it a commission but since the commissioner is myself I guess I can't) so I also need to make time for that. No rest for the wicked, I just wonder what I did wrong.

Still, before I distract myself again, I will sign off and crack on. Good luck people in whatever you are doing and be safe.

Tar pit trap

     Well I made the resolve that I would get my career back up and running and everything since has been trying to trip me up on that.

    So saying this blog post is going to be short because it is unscripted, so to speak as I haven't roughed it out on paper first as I don't have time.  I'm also dealing with the edge of an exhaustion headache as I've been running on only six hours sleep a day for the last four days in an effort to have at least a little time in which to write. Thank the dear lord for the invention of the snooze button and the double alarm because if I didn't have those I wouldn't be out of bed on time at all. Half one to bed and the first alarm goes off at seven. Urgh, even with a further half an hour of snooze I still don't think this is enough sleep. I really don't feel well.  And I'm not allowed to show that because as a parent you don't. Children need you to be your best all the time, even when you have a headache.

    I have managed a little artwork but I prefer to do that during the day when I am more awake. Problem being that the housework is being impatient and the world and his wife have been lining up to take my time. I've had questionnaires to gain my son the extra help he needs to fill out, I've had phone calls to make, appointments to attend, a sponsored walk to do at the school, a cat to get to the vets and a hospital appointment to get the whole family to tomorrow. And Friday is usually my career day. On top of this I also have the summer holidays baring done on me and other than two weeks when hubby can be home I'm going to be doing them on my own.  Ha ha... ha ha... ha ha. Can I go hide yet?

    As for the art work I have been following some of the videos done but Art for Kids Hub on Youtube so full credits to them.  Discovered during the last period of isolation, their videos of how to draw dinosaurs and dragons for older child are pretty darn good and I figured it was the best drawing exercises I could do to bring my hand and eye back into service, rather than try to be too ambitious after being away from the drawing board for so long and set myself up to fail.  I have to admit I did pause the video many times to keep up and also so I could alter the placement of the leg routed behind the main body of the dino as the instructor's drawing looked to me as if the leg was joining the body at the chest, rather than the hip. Had a go at drawing my own stick art 'skeleton' inside the main picture to work out where I would place it.

    Hopefully I will be able to scan it once I am done and enter it into a future blog post. Never turn your nose up at a charity shop when you are an artist. My local charity shop for SENSE has provided me with a pretty good scanner, photocopier and printer combo for ten pounds and so far she is working well, which has helped out immensely. You may want the new computer with all the trimmings but being a writer and an artist is not a get rich quick fix, for every J. K. Rowling there are a dozen of us trying to make ends meet. Therefore, if you have a charity shop in your local area you use them!

    As for the contents of the writing, it is not my original sci-fi series at the moment, although it is still sci-fi in that it is set about two hundred years into the future in the city of New Cardiff. At the moment it is what I have the inspiration to write and again, I figured go with the flow, rather than push for something that is still sulking on the shelf and set myself up to fail in the process. I am considering having a go at maybe publishing this one through Worldanvil as, with it being the new story, I'm not quite so heavily invested in it as my original series. Saying that I think the original series might just be becoming jealous of the attention that its baby brother is receiving so watch this space.