Monday, May 18, 2009
Slow start Monday
I did a google search for myself today to find out everywhere I am on the web and every time I do this I find something new about myself. I applied to be in a book a year ago or more and I thought I was denied, turns out I was wrong or they sent the wrong letter because I am in it and one of the featured listings. WTF seems like a pretty important thing for me at this point in my career to know about so I am glad I decided to Google. I also found that I went back 19 pages deep which seems like a good thing to me, now just to do the same for general art term searches. I will update later hopefully with a few completed pieces and to say how the cafe turns out. Bye Mom I will give a call as soon as I hear anything!
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Wow have I been bad about Posting
I started the beginning of a put off project this weekend because Ali is in Dallas and I wanted to surprise her. Theproject is refinishing a desk we bought last summer at an estate sale for $35 and it is a huge wooden desk. You could land a plane on it, and it has a door on the right side where you open it and in the inside is a flip out shelf where you could store a very heavy typewriter. I am at the dilemma to keep this element or exchange it with a couple of shelves for cds and what ever. The varnish is coming off fairly easy with sanding because I don't want to use and stripping chemicals because I know the dog will somehow get to the desk and lick it, plus that crap is just nasty stuff. This desk has some really great dove tails and other details which means sanding will slow down quickly cause I will need to pull out the dremel for a bit and hand sand at the end. I also do not have a belt sander at the moment and really need to invest in one or borrow one hopefully to speed up the large flat surfaces.
I am ready to start another series of paintings of birds I have finished one for a present and have four more canvases to go. One of them will be for a long over due wedding present so three will be available to purchase.
[caption id="attachment_287" align="aligncenter" width="400" caption="Love birds on green with bird house"][/caption]
*Note - WB Mason commercials should rank up there for the dumbest series of commercials ever!
I took a bunch of new photos of Rockefeller State Park yesterday, but only a little over a hundred because my battery died, Bixby was trying to kill himself, and I had to carry his ass for about a half mile because I thought he was dying. He only knocked himself senseless and has fully recovered thank goodness. I have to say that like many others Bixby and my 2009 has sucked so far so it has to get better, right?
Ok that is all for now so keep on going it will get better I promise!
Friday, April 24, 2009
I am back
Yes yes I said I would start blogging again daily, and then a bunch of stuff began happening and I broke my promise. I apologize to everyone who waits daily for my updates. So, I grind my teeth apparently and had to have a night guard made that I am supposed to wear whenever I can especially at the computer. Of course I am not wearing it right now that would require me to go to another room and get it. O.K. I went and retrieved it because my last sentence sounded pretty lazy, but now I can't whistle at my dog and I am positive this makes him very sad. The big exciting news is that I am no longer unemployed and will begin another new career position on Monday. I am happy I will have income again, but still really upset that I made a really bad decision by leaving my teaching position in NC and moving to NY because now I will make far less again while still paying twice as much in bills, plus the state of New York now officially owns me, oh yeah and can I say I really loved teaching!
The other big thing that happened is I am finally getting my flat files so I can store all my paper flat and nt in portfolios. I won them on ebay for the price of $63 and they are 55" x 45" and five drawers. These files probably sell used at a store for $600 easy, but ebay is still pretty good when it comes to pick up only items because you have far less bidders. I do have to drive to New Jersey for a two round trip, but I rather do that then spend a fortune for brand new pieces or have to build them which would cost me a lost in time, frustrations, and money still. I can finally forgive Yoshi for missing the opportunity of getting a set of flat files in Grad school because he needed to buy a crappy office chair. Which does remind me I still would like to find a free office desk, and hopefully I can refinish Ali's desk this summer. We bought this monster last summer and have just never had the opportune time to sand it and stain it. I will get it done I swear! That is all I have to say for the minute except to remember stop by the store pages and check out all the new items I have in there.
Sunday, April 5, 2009
Progress
I think I have made significant progress this weekend rebuilding my website and store. I of course have lots and lots of items to still add to my store, and I think many of you will keep coming by as items are added. I personally like the fact that I can offer archival fine art prints at a price that everyone can afford from the high school student with a bit of allowance to the elite CEO buying a birthday gift (hint hint elite CEOs). OK I know elite CEOs do not scour the Internet themselves for gifts they have teams of people to do that stuff while they are laying out in the Bahamas or are in Vegas for a retreat while their company is tanking.
The big news of the day and I am still scratching my head about it, and guess I will find out if it is real and if I want it to be real will be Monday. But here it is, I think I was hired to be the main assistant for an antique photography dealer who mainly does consignment work, and runs his own auctions and has auctions onArtFact.com a little spring up after eBay Live was canceled. There are mainly things about this position that make me cringe and the main one being I have no idea how stable of a position this truly is, and I would be free-lance again. For those who do not know about the New York art job market and the I9 world, let me tell you it becomes the worse way to screw artists unless they truly have a lot of business and this employer happens to be short term of just one of a number of clients. I could not get unemployment because I worked for Minagawa Art Lines too long as a free lance artist even though I was required to show up everyday on time, and ask in advance for a day off. Not really free lance at all, and just a way for the owner to get out of paying unemployment insurance and extra taxes for me. This place is a very tiny operation and really does seem freelance, with hours being what I feel I need them to be to do the job, but not before 11am except in extreme circumstances. If I take this job, which might not be stable, and I could be out of one again quickly, then I have to find another free lance position or part time job and sell artwork (hint hint people get presents for other people already). Notice on the giclees that you order different sizes now, and soon I am going to start offering framing once I can get the right deals through a frame distributor.
Today we might go watch Ali’s younger sister Carly play in her tennis match, but we just don’t if she is playing yet because I guess the coach leaves them waiting as long as possible. The univerisity is in Connecticut about an hour and a half from where we live, so it is not so bad and it is supposed to be a nice day out. This also means that we shall be visiting the state park and letting Bixby stretch his legs, but hopefully not getting any ticks because the other day I had to pull a wood tick off them that was bigger than the end of my thumb. Being from Chicago we really didn’t have these issues and now I am scared out of my mind that I am going to get Lyme’s disease, and we have to check each other and the dog as soon as we get home. Problem is that the deer ticks that carry this stuff are so tiny and look like flat discs, and so they are impossible to find on Bixby. Well I hope everyone has an excellent Sunday and I will write again soon.
Monday, March 30, 2009
My weekend devloping bryankite.com
So a majority of my weekend was spent working on my web business items, updating and fixing them such as ArtFire. Working on my ArtFire webstore made me realize I really need to start exploring what I can have my blog become beyond the blog. The wordpress format that can be run off your own database open a world of opportunities for having a pretty dynamic website, and once I started exploring it I am wondering what to do with Dreamweaver. I found a Plug-IN that makes having a commerce store that works like ArtFire or Etsy super easy and there is a free one (e-commerce) or you can upgrade for $25 or the full full one for a total of $40. I have not upgraded yet because there is one other one out there for a $55 price tag that one guy said was much better. That one guy might work for the company and so I need to research before I pay for anything.
Anyways, for those whoo have been to my site before I hope you like the changes because I had to take a starting theme Prosumer made by Nurudin Jauhari which I really like his starting theme , but insted of the content being surrounded by a column on each side. I wanted the content to be bumped to the left with a two column structure next to it. This wasn't really a big necessity for the blog or about pages, but the store page and its parts it was hard to focus on the product. I am no pro at CSS because I haven't messed with it enough or had the need to do much with it until now. With the plug in for mozilla Firebug it became much easier to understand the calls and how Nurudin wrote his perimeters. There were many issues such as designing a custom template to have it now load for any reason, than after a million searches just happen to stuble upon a little blog about a bug in WordPress 2.7 templates. You need to load or activate another theme and than go back to the theme you were workign with and the templates will show up in you page attributes section. If you have this problem slow down,let the new theme sit for at least a minute than reload the original theme and let that sit for a minute, and than go ahead and change your page attribute template.
I do hope you enjoy my hardwork and come back often for updates that will be arriving in the stores, and to see my ratings and findings about commerce plug ins. If you see where I can impprove things for you visually please just chime in and leave a comment to me, I however do not need any Viagra at this time than you spammers.
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Saturday
I also updated things on Etsy as well and began putting items into imaginary digital frames because they inspire and I must say they do look good. I have also decided to update my static website and make it into a store that is more in a list mode. I have also decided to focus on selling prints of my original work this way anyone can afford to purchase and get them framed. I also need to thank printsy for putting me on their blog this week for recognising their members with work on Etsy.
Friday, March 27, 2009
New Treasuries
I made another treasury today and you should click HERE and check it out!
I am also in another Treasury and hopefully this will lead into some form of a sale.
I did call the consignment lady and had to leave a message on her machine, but I also tried to email her and the address bounced so that does not seem good. Also, found out to be a substitute in the great state of New York you have to have certification. My question is if you have certification why are you not teaching? Usually it is maternity leave or can only work a few days, beyond that I am confused. Oh well, not sure what I can do here but cross my fingers and hope someone says well you are supposed to have it, but you are so great Bryan that we decided that you do not need it.
Not much else is going on here, so I am going to sign off for now.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Sunshine is coming
I am having a sale on Etsy this weekend for 25% off of everything so if you are reading this you should go to my store now and buy something. You will get a quality piece of art, and it will make me a bit happier about life. Tomorrow I am going to try to overcome my wimpiness and call a consignment shop about selling in the store, she advertised in Craigslist a while back and I keep writing it down on my to do list and yet I never do it. I also need to call a friend of a friend's girlfriend who is a vice dean and says she has advice for me. This was told to me through a mutual friend, but I have never talked to this girl and I am terrible about cold calling people and saying that Nick told me to call you. I had a job in high school at this place called "The Survey Center" my brother in law and my sister both worked there and I still think it was the worse job I have ever held. They paid real well, but you had to call people and convince them that even though they just got off work they should hang out on the phone with you and answer a survey that might take an hour. I felt so awful and then the people who want to do this are completely off their rocker or feel so bad for you that I then feel even worse. I lasted two months by taking bathroom breaks every 2-4 minutes, seriously I would just go in there and sit on the lid of the toilet and count.
I am heading to bed and I hope some of you visit my store and buy something, hint hint!
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Tuesday the real beginning of the week
Here are some pics of my printing
first the press
Next the ink slab, block, and brayer
last the prints drying
I also spent a good part of yesterday morning retaking photographs of my paintings to show what they look like in a room, and the sides. A woman on Etsy recommended it plus she said the backs of the paintings too, but I can not imagine why you need to see the back so I said forget about it. OK I am going back to printing after I look again for jobs, anyone want to hire a print shop technician I am ready to move where ever you need me. Bixby my dog said he is packe dan dready to go!
Saturday, March 21, 2009
Saturday
Just another Saturday of chores and maybe a little fun time by going to the gym and taking the dog to the park. I started off by finishing up the dog’s haircut which really looks like a hack job, man I am going to feel sorry for my kids if I ever have some. The 40 year old virgin is on and it is at the part where he is getting waxed, and the best part is when the waxing lady starts getting into it and calling him names. Any hoo I am trying to create my own frame strips and staining a thin pine runner with graphite powder, some black ink, and brown ink mixed into water. The color looks good but the wood warped and I am hoping it settles down after it dries. I have to sand the edges and stain it again before I am sure how this is going to work. I will update or you will see my paintings with some nice framing strips on them. All right back to the chores and maybe I will check in more later.
Oh yeah prices have been lowered on my paintings in Etsy!
Friday, March 20, 2009
Friday, you ain't got a job you can get High
The next is a sunbird, well orange bird on green background and is much larger at 18" x 24". It is not huge but can make a nice visual on a wall by itself.
Apparently Linda Miller wanted to let me know she has the lowest prices on Viagra.
I also learned yesterday on a critique board that my banner I use is not flashy enough and I should make a new one. The people have spoken to me and I shall get to it when I have a chance, but first I must look for jobs, carve wood, and give myself and the dog haircuts. I hope everyone has a great day!
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Hump Day
Flickr Me
Getting in helped me determine when I get a source of income again I am going to purchase the Baby Press. It seems to take good impressions and since my studio is in my basement it will be perfect. Then (look Ali I remembered) when I open my educational print shop I can get bigger presses, but for now it would just be awesome to be able to print again.
I did finish another painting yesterday, a little 12" x 9" that I have not documented as of yet. I am planning on finishing a larger one today, but I will see because it is another day with a lot of little stuff to finish. I will leave it here and be off to the land of Home Depot, on my quest to find perfect quarter rounds.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
St. Paddy's Day
I think it came out pretty well and it began another series of simpler paintings while working on the bird drawings, and soon will start a series of woodcuts that have NO birds in them. The other small paintings and this one are listed on Art Fire and 1000Markets right now, and will go up on Etsy when there are enough people online.
Not much has happened beyond the standard normal affairs. Saturday went to a dinner where the host was on an Atkins diet and found out that I don't like whipped cauliflower or blood meat soup with broccoli. The steak was good, but I could have used a couple of beers. Seriously the "We hardly ever drink alcohol" gets pretty lame, or "You are going to drink the whole beer by yourself?" , yes I have been asked that by certain individuals here in New York. Which leads me to let everyone know the Ecuadorians love the Irish. Happy St. Paddy's Day!!! I love the Irish, in fact my Mom's family comes from there, but at the same time FUCK all the Irish living in America! Your family came here how many generations ago? If you showed up in Ireland they are going to call you a Yank, and will never see you as a fellow Leprechaun. I do like the Irish though especially when they are passed out in doorways, it makes for an amusing sight. You want to see this? If you are in the south suburbs of Chicago go to a town called Oak Lawn, take a left from 95th st heading South onto Ridgeland Avenue, and right after the train tracks on you right hand side (West) is a bar called the Fiddler's Elbow, and if I said the name I would have to do a jig while grabbing my elbow , rules are rules, and in this bar you will meet some real working Irish right off the goddamn raft they made and sailed to this country. I brought my friend here once who has no Irish blood, and he had a shoe thrown at him within five minutes of being there. He also for some dumb ass reason ordered a Corona in an Irish Bar? They were all confused and offered him a non-alcoholic beer thinking that was what a Corona is. I tried making him go dance for being such a dumb-ass and ordering that crappy beer, that stuff sucks.
OK, that was my ode of a paragraph to the Irish and my drinking.
I am going to go and take care of stuff, so I can get in the studio so Piece until tomorrow!
Friday, March 13, 2009
Friday and Technique
Friday you used to mean so much more when I worked for the man, but now it is like any other day and that is a bit sad. I have to say that it is harder and harder to keep getting up at seven with Ali because I am not driving or commuting anywhere, but if I didn’t that would be a bad routine to start. I just got done making my list of “Things To Do”, and every time I start with like four things on this list and it ends up being like 14. Most of the time it is a lot of stupid little items that I put on the list to make me feel accomplished, but still those things add up to a lot of time. The studio is of top importance today, and calling Tom Reed but he may have gone to the SGC conference because it was in Chicago. He usually hates conferences, but maybe he went to see and hang out with his Chicago friends, but I will call Island Press and see if he is there.
I started painting finally on the new painting. I am getting slow at taping and cutting out my stenciling of areas. I work like an idiot and most artists would probably say “What the hell are you doing Bryan Kite?” and I would respond that it is cheap in the sense and it works for me. This is my process of airbrushing and painting. I first draw out all my items on tracing paper (I like to have them for other things just in case) and then copy them onto Xerox transparency sheets because they are far cheaper than stiff acetate, but a little harder to work with. I than cut out the tracings so I can have the negative area for stencil, but I do hold onto the positive in case I need more over spray at the end. I do this process so that the stencil will leak a bit (overspray) onto the background of the painting creating a bit of a halo. I than airbrush the stencils, and than begin the process of masking taping over the images I just made. I use the cheapest masking tape there is that actually has a rubber based adhesive because it is fairly transparent. The problem here is do not leave this tape on your painting for a long period (72hrs) because that adhesive begins to bond otherwise it peels off pretty nicely. I than draw with a sharpie over the masking tape because I can just barely see through the tape. I than very carefully use my x-acto blade to cut out the positive areas and peel that away. I than tape over all exposed areas of the background preferring to use a better quality tape here, but not always depending on what I have available or how broke I am feeling. I am than ready to paint (I shall insert a picture here in a bit for everyone) and I first put down highlights using white, and than some darks with blacks just to start pulling the three-dimensional form out of the flat shapes. I than pause and begin to decide what color combinations everything will be because this will help me when I am laying down the color. I than move to begin laying down the most delicate of the colors first such as yellow or orange, and move down the line to colors that the least corruptible. I keep doing this building up color in many layers and developing dimensions through tints of the colors, until it is ready to be untapped. This is the best part because it always looks different once the background is revealed again, and than I add lines with a liner brush to make certain areas pop out.
I will add photos to document some o f my explanations, but that will be later today.
Thanks,
Bryan
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Thursday - been gone for a while
The last couple of days have flown by so quickly and Tuesday and Wednesday were expected to be light on my things to do list. I can hardly even remember Tuesday, I did start a painting and cut new stencils, but after blogging in the morning I cannot tell you too much about that day. That always makes me so paranoid that I am getting old and senile, yes that may be the worst way to die - Alzheimer’s - that scares the crap out of me.
Wednesday I was set answer a few email than straight into the studio for an all day affair. Than I received a return email from my Mother who was talking about me returning to school and I realized I had not been paying attention to my calendar, and guess what the application to the program to obtain my teaching certificate was due this Sunday. So, I spent the entire day printing out all the parts I needed, creating a small web page portfolio to put on a cd, and writing the statement of why I want to be a teacher. By the time I was done it was time to pick Ali up from work, and I had rented Australia for a date night because we needed it. Although I have been the one mainly cooking because I am now working from home, I promised to make my tortilla dinner. All this entails is whole wheat tortillas, refried beans - made spicy, onions and peppers flash cooked in my homemade spicy olive oil, cheese, spinach - flash cooked. This then gets folded on top of itself with salsa (we each have our own kind) on top, fresh tomatoes, sour cream, and Ali made guacamole to finish it up. It was quite good I have to say, and than we watched Jockeys, which I do like but it is as bad as, an MTv show with the commercials and showing what you just saw when returning from the commercial. You basically watch only 8-10 minutes of actual fresh show in a half hour show. Than we watched Australia and I shall review my reactions for you in the next paragraph.
Australia I have to say was a wonderful movie, and I believe it only received so reviews. I really didn’t think I was going to enjoy it, but Ali really wanted to see it and so I rented it. Quite a surprise, and many tearful scenes, one being about the young star staring down 15oo hundred huge cattle with his back against the Australian Grand Canyon. I am not a fan of Nicole Kidman as a person and I believe I am not only because she married that douche bag Tom Cruise, but also as an actor she always seems to be pretty good and I believe she is the person she is portraying.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Monday Missed
This slow down at least made me take the time to look at my compressor that I accidentally stepped on coming off a ladder and I broke the plastic switch. I got the switch to turn the compressor on, but now I can only turn it on and off by pulling the plug out of the socket. It is working though which makes me happy because I do not have to buy a new one. I than went and worked on the computer setting up another shop on 1000Markets which is pretty new like Art Fire, but it also got me worked up do to some crap I read by a Market (markets are really just groups of shops). This Market has pretty boring art works and the big acceptance to be in their Market is that you hope to one day be in South Western Art Magazine or already have been shown in it. It also came with this written lecture on how each artist can only paint and draw one way and that is how you know they are ready for such a prestigious magazine. Honestly this whole group and the people who run that magazine should be lined up and slapped, and than put them on the side of a highway where people could drive by and throw shit at them! The whole market's work looked like a bunch of figure 1 drawings, oh yes this elitist bullshit really pissed me off. Am I a hypocrite? Hell Yes! At least be an elitist for the fact of being good or not good, not spewing the crap that some long dead boys club professor told you. When you make a mermaid and it is done badly and you made it because you think mermaids are just such an amazing idea, guess what you suck and the work sucks. If you make a mermaid with skill (don't confuse skill with realistic looking it's a fucking mermaid for god's sake) and you do it because of its history in tattooing, for the kitsch, it says something about something than I will respect it. Ok that rant is over!
I should have put this before the rant, but damn I had to get it out because that actually kept me from a good night sleep. I have to give props to two people today who are out there promoting and I really appreciate their efforts. The first is Lanee a person who crochets, yeah I don't get the attraction of the process but many people do, she featured me on her blog and used the letters WTF in reference to a giclee and I was the main focus of it. Thank you for noticing my work on Art Fire!
The next thanks go to Amie Roman aka Ploverwing at Etsy who invited Ali and I into the Printmaking group on Etsy known as Printsy. They can also be found at Flicker, BlogSpot, and she can be found at inkteraction (which I had never heard of) and she let me know of a printmaking forum on wetcanvas. Plus she would also like to interview us and thinks that print makers are interesting enough to interview. I have been to many conferences and miss being able to attend them, and let me tell you that I think we are interesting in that we act like we have been locked in a basement, and are let out for one week of the year kind of way. I will do the interview with real information, I did have the thought of making an alter ego so people would want to read it, but that would be letting Amie's hard work down. I am off to paint today and start a new drawing, so Peace until tonight's update!
Sunday, March 8, 2009
New Treasuries
http://www.etsy.com/treasury_list.php?room_id=44663
http://www.etsy.com/treasury_list.php?room_id=44735
"She Dances"
Watercolor on paper
11" x 8 1/2"
2009
This is an abstract image made up of butterflies to form a dancer. It is from the series I have been working that takes smaller images that can be seen as positive or negative to create a figure or figures.
Other pieces in the series are:
"The Kiss" and "The Cleansing Ritual"
this piece will come wrapped in glassine an archival material for separating and keeping artworks protected while storing them. It will be shipped in the glassine packet inside a cardboard portfolio. I ship with USPS unless you request different. If you would like a different carrier please let me know and you will be expected to make up the difference.
Saturday, March 7, 2009
Really Short
I finished another piece and will document it tomorrow, but it is not a bird piece but a color study for a larger painting. I imagine I will end up doing at least three of these color studies in watercolor, and than get back to the large piece. Update there are still no jobs to apply for and I do need to make some money while I am writing and proposing a business plan. Any suggestions beyond gigolo are welcomed. Good night!