No Strings Attached

Posted By Kathleen David on December 15, 2010

This is one of those days that it is very cold but the wind will take any heat your body provides and whip it out of you. I put out our recycling today and I thought my face was going to fall off because it froze.

It was almost an indoor day except last night Caroline started coughing so hard that she was upchucking. So I have to wait until the Doctor’s office opens and call for an appointment. Pete took care of her last night to let me sleep and now I am taking care of her and letting him sleep. The cough comes in fits. She is not coughing and then it will start up with a vengeance. So I have to bundle her up well and get her to the office where I hope that they will at least give her something for the cough since standard cough syrup is doing little good.

So that is going to be most of the day probably which is fine because she needs to be able to get some sleep. Currently she is drifting in and out of sleep on the couch across from me. I am hoping that she gets some more rest considering how rough her night has been.

I have had to lock up Fig and the other cats because they kept piling on her and Fig kept attacking her feet. None of them are happy about this right now but they will get over it and probably forget within ½ an hour of being let out again.

I am grateful for any rest my daughter can get now.

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Posted By Kathleen David on December 14, 2010

And yes, I do listen to Morning Edition. My radio in the kitchen is tuned in to the local NPR station unless I have it on the local sports station which usually happens on Sundays.

It is snowing this morning. There is a light coating of the white stuff all over everything. Nothing to stop us from doing anything we need to do. It was easy to get Caroline out of bed this morning. I went into her room and I could tell she was awake but pretending not to be awake. All I had to say was, “Caroline, it’s snowing.” And she popped right out of bed to the window to see the snow.

When you dream, do you reuse sets? I don’t mean a recurring dream but using the same place twice for two totally different dreams. I apparently have a permanent theater somewhere in my brain.

Fig is growing in spurts. One day her head will look too big for her body. Then her body will catch up but the legs look very short. Finally her legs will catch up with the rest of her and it starts all over again.

So now a number of teams are out of the playoffs and are only playing for picks and spoiling it for the rival team. Makes the last few games rather exciting. I do find it interesting that the Jets have two bad games and everyone is jumping all over them with “same o’ Jets” chant. They aren’t out of it. But when they are winning, they are lauded as a Superbowl shoo-in. New York fans are rather fickle when it comes to the Jets.

I bowled pretty well last night. Each game was at least 20 pins over my average. The last game was a squeaker but I managed to string enough strikes together at the end that we won by 10 sticks. If the other anchor had gotten 2 strikes and count, they would have had it but she didn’t.

A lot to do today and most of it is inside which is good. I might uncover the walk unless it uncovers itself after this snow shower ends.

So Cliff Lee goes back to Philly. I am betting that the Yankees are scrambling today to figure out what they are going to do with their bullpen.

I am grateful for heat that works.

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Posted By Kathleen David on December 13, 2010

We had a day planned in the city with various things we wanted to see. When we awoke, the rain was pounding the house sideways so we quickly revised Plan A to Plan B. Then a phone call from our lunch date moved the Plan into the C mode which turned out to be the right call all the way around.

We were suppose to get together for lunch at a BBQ place in Time Square called Virgil’s which is no Fat Matt’s but it is pretty decent BBQ. Caroline was excited because she has been watching Tower Prep with us and wanted to ask Paul about the show since he created it. (If you are not watching Tower Prep, I seriously suggest you give it a look. It is very good. Sort of the Prisoner meets 90210. The young actors are really good and I expect that we will be seeing much more of them as they grow up. The mystery of what is Tower Prep and why they are there is quite engaging.) And she wanted to ask Misty about a magic trick she saw that she thinks she has figured out but figures she would ask a real magician to see if she is right. The weather was to blame here because their evening flight was cancelled so they were on a plane back home right at the time we were suppose to have lunch. I would much rather have them home safe than stranded for who knows how long in NYC.

Once seeing the weather, we decided that the train was the way to go. So we looked at the various schedules to see when we could get in from a couple of stations since there is more than one branch to the LIRR (Long Island Rail Road). We figured out that the station further from the house would give us more flexibility getting to and from the city.

The train ride was the right call. The rain was horrible but we got into the city on time. We had lunch at Lindy’s and then went to see this years Macy’s windows. They had the usual Miracle on 34th street on one side and the other side was almost like a puppet show of “Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Clause” with some video elements. They have come up with a way to get people to move along with drawing the “curtain” at the end of each vignette. It worked pretty well.

Then we went to Madison Square Garden and saw Cirque Du Soleil’s Wintuk which has been playing during the holiday season for the past 5 years. It was magical. Caroline was able to see the whole thing due an open seat in front of her. I really enjoyed it. There were some limitations since the ceiling is much lower than the tent but they did very well with what they had. Caroline loved the dogs. I enjoyed the puppetry and pageantry of the show. As I have said before Cirque is a touchstone for me and this was no exception. The final trick to the show was making it “snow” inside the theater not just the stage. It was (according to Caroline) AWESOME! Yes, you did feel like you were in the middle of a snowstorm. A fun time was had by all.

The trip home was exciting as you could feel the wind buffeting the train cars. When we got to our destination, the wind was again blowing the rain sideways. We carefully drove home which was much more exciting that we would have liked.

I am grateful that we got to see the magical Wintuk.

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Posted By Kathleen David on December 10, 2010

I moderate a community on live journal that is for artists and commissioners to warn others of bad deals, ask for advise with problems, discuss various aspects of the art business, and (once a month) praise both artist and customer for superlative service. I have been there for a while now and being a moderator I read through every comment to make sure it follows the rules of the community which aren’t that complicated but do need to be followed.

One thing that seems to come up time and again in deals gone bad is that there a lack of money for refunds for work that was never done. Another is new artists who get in over their heads too fast by taking on too much and then finding out that drawing for themselves is fun but drawing for a client might not be as much fun.

My first suggestion for artists who want to sell their services to other people, know your limits. If it takes you say 2 hours to pencil and ink a drawing then how many can you reasonably do in a day? Not 10 because then you would be working 20 hours straight. 5 maybe but that is 10 hours out of your day. 4 would be an 8 hour day but do you want to draw for 8 hours? 2 would be about 4 hours and could be done along with everything else you need to do. And yes you can start another project while waiting for approval for the pencils from the client but you still have to spend the time to either redo the picture to your client’s wishes (remember they are paying you for this) and you still have to ink so it is still X number of minutes per drawing no matter how you slice it up.

Another issue that flares up a lot is that the money is spent before the product/service is delivered. I know there are exceptions to this especially if you are up front with your clients that you are going to spend the money for X. But do you get paid for a job at say Subway before you work the hours? Not even CEOs get paid before they do the work. They get paid afterwards. Personally I put the funds in escrow until the project is done.

The only monies that are spent are those to buy the materials for the project and I spread the cost of materials that I use for more than one project over several like a box of polymer clay or closed cell foam. It seems that some people have this idea that they use one client’s fund to buy lots of materials so that they have them for the next project. Yes art pencils are expensive but a box of them should last you a while and you shouldn’t charge everyone for a new box of pencils unless you are sending the pencils to the client with the drawing. And clients are not stupid. They figure these things out.

If you screw up, admit it. Don’t get defensive and hostile towards your clients. Is it their fault that you bit off more than you could chew? You didn’t know your limitations? Also don’t go to ground leaving your clients very frustrated that their inquires fall on deaf ears. (Yes, I know there are clients who are e-mail happy and pushy but that’s a whole other entry.) Admitting that you screwed up and offering to make amends for your error will go much further than blaming your clients for your problems and not understanding your problems. Life happens and it happens quickly. We all get blind sides by things that we don’t account for. I remember when one of the X-book artists sprained his thumb while playing catch with his kid. They had to get someone else to finish the book because he couldn’t hold a pencil. He got paid for the pages he did and the roughs he had done for the rest of the book but not for the finished pages he didn’t do.

Also taking on more work when you haven’t finished your previous client’s work just to get some cash flow going is a big no-no. I really don’t care what others have done, it just doesn’t work on so many levels. Finish what you started and clear the decks before starting on new projects. Yeah, you really don’t want to finish that badge for X because they are being a pain in the behind but do it so you don’t have to deal with X anymore.

When you take money for art, it is expected that you will deliver on your promise that you made when you took the cash. The promise is spelled out in your terms of service which I highly recommend you work out before taking money from strangers. Don’t become another name of shame in my community. It takes a lot to work your way back from that.

I am grateful for artists who see the business side of the equation as well as the creative side.

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Posted By Kathleen David on December 9, 2010

I kept saying that I was going to put up pictures of my art. Well yesterday I finally got around to doing so. I limited myself to things I created within the past year.

If you care to take a gander at it, you can find them here

It is a mixed bag of things I created for sale and things I created for swaps and the like.

A few short explanations for some of the items in the photos. I belong to a Yahoo group on the net that have swaps once a month. You can choose to participate in one or two per month or decide to pass for the month. We create ATDs which are like Artist Trading Cards but with a twist. They are the size of ATCs but they are paper dolls in some form or ATD (Artist Trading Dolls). The other is a paper doll based on the theme of the month. The group is called ATC-Artdolls on Yahoo if you care to look or join.

I also belong to a Harry Potter crafting group on Yahoo called HarryPotterCrafts which is tightly run to just discuss crafts which can be hard but we do it. I did some swaps with other members this year. It is interesting to see what we can come up with and the imagination with the packaging is amazing. You get packages that look like they could have easily come from Diagon Alley or Hogsmeade.

This year also found me finding what I think is going to be my niche in the art market. I stop making humans and started playing around with animal and animal like critters and mixed Steampunk into the mix with a dash of Zen for flavor. I will still play around with the Gawblin Boys and some of the other critters I created but I think I have found something that I am good at. I can only go up from here. Wendy commented that I seemed more comfortable with creating critters rather than people and I have to agree. I will continue to work and improve upon my human dolls but now I have something I am comfortable with.

The caterpillar was a commissioned piece and the owner is quite happy with it. Yes, I still do commissioned pieces. The Mo Willems characters were build for a puppet show we did at Field Day for Caroline’s school. They were fun to make but I had to rethink how I did some stuff to get everything done in time so they were educational for me too. I am proudest of the pigeon that Hobey Ford gave me the information to how to make the mouth open and close from a trigger. I had a hard time finding the spring steel but I did and it worked pretty well (OK it broke after the 5th show but we only had two to go at that point so I faked it). I tossed a photo of Caroline as Astrid in there because I had to make every piece of the costume from scratch and make my own patterns as well.

I also put up for the first time in about two years a bunch of photos of Caroline’s adventures in 2010. They can be found here. If anyone has or knows where there are photos of her at the DragonCon Masquerade, I would be interested in seeing them.

Today is all about the cleaning. I finished a number of projects so I need to pick everything up, put it away, and figure out what I am going to do next.

I am grateful that I did so many art projects this year.

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