The new Adventurer Name Generator (not to be confused with the Secret Mission Adventure Generator) is finished. Give it a spin - a new name every day for you, or someone you love, or someone you don't love very much at all.

Like the mission generator, every day you return, the names you enter today will yield different results. Results are particular to the day of the year, as well as the name, and if you keyed in every name in existence in a day's time - you would still not see all the results available.

Give it a try here: http://www.mykeamend.com/namegen

Cold... very cold. I'm probably burning up though. A bit dizzy, very hungry... no food in the house really, and it's too late for delivery. We have two cats, a bag of rice, and I am sure I can find something resembling soy sauce if I look hard enough. I am however trying not to use up my options.

I've read up on this H1N1 thing: Next stage: My head pops off and sprouts tentacles, and then we all have to deal with Kurt Russel until the end of the thing. In Grand Rapids... lots of shelter. I need only kick a Yeti out of his ice cave.

Right now I must go outside and start yanking distributor wires, as per the President's mandate on flu, second after "going back to school"...

... or so the dancing ad ladies on myspace tell me.

Summary (for those who want just the details without the explanations):

1) There is now an option to buy giclees unstretched and unmounted.
2) Shipping on these items has been greatly reduced as a result.
3) Gallery mounted giclees (no need for frames) are now available.

It started this week when I was taking into consideration the issue of framing. It had come to my attention that people tend to have the price of framing as a secondary concern when buying giclees - which could in many cases make a potential buyer think "later" in terms of making a giclee purchase.

So, I took to starting what is to be a rather in-depth tutorial on inexpensive framing, whilst also working towards a day when I can offer framing here... framing that is better and less expensive than what is available at most framing shops.

Later, while preparing for Steamcon - not wanting to ship huge heavy frames, yet still wanting to be able to ship ready to hang art - I decided to gallery wrap the pieces being sent.

"Gallery Wrap", is like my standard side-wrapping of giclees (where the staples are on the back of the canvas, not the sides), only a bit deeper. The end result is a nice, also staple-free side edge, which is about two to three times the depth of a standard mounted canvas - which is typically just over two inches deep. A gallery-wrapped giclee looks great on a wall without the need for frames, and saves the need for costly framing.

My side-wrapped canvases also look pretty good without frames - but the thick edges of the gallery-wrapped pieces make for striking wall hangings framed or unframed.


At the end of this, I decided I could go one further for potential buyers. I made it so that there is an option of buying the giclees un-stretched and un-mounted - for those who would love to have one of the limited edition giclees before they are sold out, but haven't the sort of cash to pay for the shipping and price of a stretched and mounted version.

Those who choose to order unstretched prints: You can have a 32x22 inch giclee stretched and mounted at Hobby Lobby for about $20 to $25 when you are ready. I will also be following up this week with a tutorial on stretching and mounting canvas and canvas prints (before then, you can see my progress on this tutorial via Flickr). You can purchase canvas stretcher bars online through Utrecht Art Supplies, as well as at Michael's Crafts, Hobby Lobby, and most any art supply store. Tools needed are a good stapler (not a desktop stapler, but an actual hand-held one), and recommended for those with human hand strength or less, would be a pair of canvas stretching pliers (also available at art stores).

I've been building on my ebay listings, please take a look, and if you would, please bookmark my shop. I'll be adding more through the week.

Currently available are originals and special hand-embellished giclees. I am going to try to add some of the metallic prints and other smaller prints through the week... Also, if you;d be more interested in the not-as-fancy hand-signed but not hand-embellished prints... those are always available at mykeamend.com (until sold out anyway).

http://shop.ebay.com/mykeamend/m.html

Modofly Artists: I've ten artists to choose from so far for the Long Island show - Any more interested parties? Just a Yes or No needed ATM

I spent too much of my time these last few days working out the intricacies of google-base compatible XML - reprogramming the stores, utilizing their rss feeds to make a separate page available - one which outputs the store's contents in perfect google base format.

An example of the output can be found here - though you'd have to read the source code of the XML to see all the google-specific tags, otherwise it just looks like a typical rss feed: http://bethalynnebajema.com/scriptorium/index.php?rss=true&action=google_base

Things yet to do (another day, some other week), is to make it so that it automatically assigns the right categories and subcategories as per google base's recommended categorization. That, however will require re-ordering the stores to fit their format - or perhaps some custom programming - different for each of the sites I am using this one.

I settled, for now, for making the output primarily Products:Art:Prints, and changing by hand the ones which didn't belong in that category.

Well, anyway - now you can find mine, Beth's, and our combined Ettadiem stuff within Google Shopping. Not that we aren't easier to find through our own sites, but hopefully this will bring in some traffic from elsewhere.

Engraved on Ampersand Art Claybord black at 5x7 inches, my hand was killing me by the end of the night for all the detail I put into this latest set.

Cheshire Cat

A strange and doubly-insane mechanical Cheshire Cat, in a life and death struggle with an angry Jacques Cousteau (Jacques Cousteau not included).



Larger view here (on Etsy)

I have a Special Plan for this World

This one is the cover for the upcoming September/October Issue of Gatehouse Gazette:



Larger View Here

Attack from Planet Moon

This one is, well, I have no excuse for this one other than just playing around:



Larger View Here

I am sure there are still a few things I'll need to fine tune - blue link text on one of the project wonderful ads, tiny blue button for the shopping cart - and I may want to add a bit of slight animation here or there to liven it up some (I am thinking some things should be popping out of the grammophones - links to regular/ideal spots within the site, notices, something - in a monty python fashion), organize things better... but for the most part - done, finally.

I also updated my twitter page to somewhat match.

Death and Resurrection: One of many amazing clockwork pieces by Thomas Kuntz to be featured here in the Archive....

Continued at the Miskatonic Archive (5 films, over 20 pictures, etc...)

Blog post on Automata at The Miskatonic Archive - a warm up for a coming exclusive with another such artist.

Cephalopod Attacks (fictional and in the news) on MykeAmend.com

New contest up:

Currently, the count is 210.

Be purchase ID 220, and win your choice of a 24x24 limited edition giclee on canvas of the Antarctic Experiment, or the original engraving "20,000 Leagues Under) (an engraving of the Nautilus).

If there is no #220 bu July the end of 8th, #215 wins, else #121, else #211. Basically, if only one person buys something between now and then - someone wins. Odds could be anywhere between 1 in 1, and 1 in 9 depending on how many participants there are.

http://www.mykeamend.com/new

I never know what to put in those subject lines.

I made a greeting cards section on my site in addition to the other freebie stuff (desktops, mission generators, time machines, etc...). It is really spiffy.

So go on, send monster spooky pinup pics to your grandma, send scary monsters to your 5-year nephew. That is after all why I made the thing.

...Or at least go check it out and tell me what you think. The new design for the site is a lot less spare than it was, and will come together into something very designy, eventually. I am still putting function before form, age before beauty, darkness before the dawn (yeah.. that is me doing that - so now you know).

Thank you,

- The Lock Ness Monster

Another of the mini paintings, done mostly for fun and to fill time waiting for another layer on an oil painting to dry, and finishes on the woodworking pieces to dry also.

Mishap #1 - Overtightened the tension wheel on the band saw, broke the steel piece that holds the top wheel in place. Will need to seek replacement parts.

I should never be allowed to tighten anything - it always turns out to be expensive. I broke the manifold in half on my Toyota, irritated at the workers at Autozone for not having the gasket or the tools I needed. I later broke a bolt off on the valve cover to the ford because I was irritated that someone in the parking lot was blasting their rap. I guess I sorta wanted to pound their head in with a wrench for thinking everyone wanted to hear their music, and channeled that thought into ruining my car. Pissed about breaking the bolt, I then went on to break 3 more of them.

Mishap #2 - Closing a can of wood stain, I hammered on the lid, and spattered stain everywhere without noticing. 2 hours later, I noticed that - for the next two weeks, I will have some new and ugly temporary freckles.

Mishap #3 - Broke a grinding wheel doing what I shouldn't have. The screws that came with my hinges were too long, and I wanted to make them shorter. The fastest flying part of the wheel smacked my in the head. Once I was done putting the screws in the book cover, I went upstairs, and saw what I thought was the cat nomming on invisible food. Then I went outside to see a guy on a bicycle trying to pick up a hooker.

Of course I thought to myself "Great... I'm dead again", and went back into the basement to see if my body was there, but it wasn't. Turns out the cat was eating catnip, and I guess the guy on the bike trying to pick up the hooker, was probably actually a guy on a bike trying to pick up a hooker.

Now it is way too late for me to be running machines, and I am a bit tired anyway.

I am trying to decide whether I want to go downstairs and paint or nap out and work on this tomorrow. I have been feeling rather energized and just bouncing back from one project to the next. At this point, I have one overdue painting, one painting sketched out, and three small paintings sketched out. I also have a pair of goggles waiting on leather padding and straps, a wooden art box, this book, and a remaining 40 pages of children's book on my table.

And my web site... still lacking in the design department, but that will have to wait.

The new Adventure Mission Generator is now online and running.

I added this mission generator last year to the Miskatonic Archive in order to make my days a bit more interesting, keep the ideas fresh, or at least somewhat random. It was still in its beta stage back then.

Apologies to those who were damaged or killed in the mechanical breakdowns and malfunctions caused September 8, 2008, I do hope you are feeling better for this glorious day of unveiling  (click the image)



New to this mission generator:

1) Lots
2) A static image with text in the image, instead of text upon a background, this makes it compatible with most everything - no more stylesheets in LJ throwing it off, no more codemuching in myspace to throw it off.
3) A different mission per each name per each day of the year. No more having to type different names to get better missions... just come back tomorrow, if you survive.
4) The image generated is permanent, in other words, it is not going to change on your profile the next day. Yes, this means you must come back to get another one, but it saves you from proudly displaying a neat mission, and looking silly when another less flattering one replaces it.
5) It is an excellent merging of various types of server-side and client side code - since I am amazing, I thought it would be fun to make something of my wide assortment of skills and languages.
6) I really do not get to say that often about myself. If there is one thing I am incredibly adept at, it is anything algorithmic - which there was a lot of in this exercise. No randoms - same mission per name per day. Test results posted on your pages remain the same, even if I reprogram everything here.

Yay. I am happy with it.

 

So far I have managed to get about 65 items back up in the store, though my descriptions will need a lot of reworking once done.

Many of the newest items, a recent series of giclees, are in fact older items - engravings I forgot I had, which I scanned in, old images I had scanned but did not like the scans of, again, rescanned. So it was not just adding 64 items, but remembering which were missing, tracking down the originals or older scans, and figuring out how they would look best - if I was not already locked out of the decision by past limited editions.

Many of these engravings, I decided would look their best on fine art rag paper, for its rough-torn edges, fabric-woven texture. I also decided to make most bigger than their actual size, to show off detail, to make them look bold from across a room, to fill more wall space, and because at these sizes they look more like incredibly detailed block prints, which I am pretty fond of.

I still love the metallic prints of most of these, especially for the mid-sized print formats (8x10 and 11x14).

One last project with these is going to me to make copper plates of each of them - I have a feeling I am going to like that the most.

When I am done adding the prints of the paintings and digital work, mini prints, my comic-related stuff, the originals, and a few new things - I have a feeling the item count is going to be near 300.












From there I am going to have to go to all the places like 1000 markets, Etsy, the Miskatonic Archive, Ettadiem, etc - and synchronize pricing and size formats. For right now, though they do not have this recent series of giclees, they are the best paces as pricing goes - and it might be a few days before I catch up and edit those to the new standards.

I am also, eventually, going to need to find an easy way to unload all the things where I decided another size or paper type was better - or that there were too many options, etc...

This is a work in progress - oil on wood panel. You can see a closeup of the airship here: here

The airship within is done from an earlier engraving; I wanted to see how "the Sabiku" would look in something other than straight lineart, and I am glad I decided to do so. I have come to really like this piece.

It has taken me a while to do; An extended winter (and the resulting lack of ventilation), made me lean on the acrylics for quite a while, and I found that when I returned to oil panting I had developed a lot of habits and methods that were not oil-friendly.

Not that I am nearing the finish line, everything is finally coming together, I think I have at least some of my technique back.

If you have seen my art over the past year, you might say to yourself: "Wow - he really loves airships"...

Though I do love working in this strange fiction/science fiction/fantasy vein, and though the airships do make for a good mode by which to explore these worlds and a decent centerpiece - it was not my intention at first to do so many of them.

I often realized that my subject matter, styles, media and the like were all over the place: I might work digital one day, paints another, an engraving on another day, a sculpture, a wooden box, some brass trinket - one week would be horror pieces, another would be figurative art, another would be monsters, another devices - and my styles varied in more ways than media or subject matter.

This may sound interesting to some... but galleries however like unified themes when it comes to shows, and so do publishers.

Most anyone who saw a collection of my past work, had none of it been signed, would think it was a collection from at least twenty different artists... which I suppose, in some fashion or another I am... though I am not nearly as fragmented as I was several years ago.


And since I had a number of people writing me, wondering if I could do a commissioned painting of an airship in similar style to the one that started this all off, I decided, spur of the moment, that selling those commissions would be a good way to make it home for a family emergency - they all sold within an hour or two of putting them up, and I have been working on them ever since.

Having an anticipated collection and theme laid out for me is nice, because forces me to stay somewhat on target, but it also forces me to use my imagination and improvise in ways other than technique, media, style, theme, message...

It has been interesting - but I'll be glad when the last of these are done.

BTW - If you like this one as it is, I made 10 prints, because Beth likes this one as it is. There will only be 10 - I suppose that makes them very limited. The rest will be based on the finished piece. I don't want them around by the time the piece is finished, so I am also pricing these 10x10 signed metallic prints at $22 - and to add, their shipping is free with the purchase of any other item in our store.

You can grab one over on our Etsy Store.

I had a lot of running to do today, and no knowledge of the layout of this "city", let alone this strange "state" which flies the red maple leaf flag.

So, I printed out some maps and got on the road - but not before I ran out for the cat food I had picked up last night, heeding the not that said "please get cat food for cats" or something like that.

I only had time to go to Walgreens, which did not have the food they normally eat... which is the cheapest stuff that can be found at Meijer, in the orange bag. So, just to make sure they liked it, I grabbed one of the most expensive, most flavorful looking bags of food - and to be extra sure, I grabbed them some of that stuff that comes in a can and smells like sardines and fermented yack's blood.

I set out several cans of the latter, and headed on my way to Hobby Lobby, who I've found will stretch and mount my canvas for $30 or less, which thankfully has allowed me to drop prices on most of my giclees over this last month or so.

Then I headed off to the printers to pick up my painting and request some changes to the file they made for printing (they lost the bottom 1/8th of an inch).

I took a roundabout way, because all the streets in this "city" are closed till labor day. Every adjustment I made led to another closed street, and I finally just decided to fold space and time instead.

Given that I actually left the house tomorrow, I think I made pretty good time.

The proofs they had made, even with the missing fraction of an inch, looked very very nice, so it looks like printing is ready to go on those - and I will no longer need to wait for my prints to reach me from Texas or Canada.

I also now have a cute miniature version of the latest print - printed on canvas, but just 12x12 inches with a 2 inch border for stretching. I suppose this would count as an "artist's print" - which are worth a million dollars (if you are Andy Warhol, Henri Matisse, Todd Goldmann or someone else who cannot paint).

I am going to stretch it, hand-paint some stuff on it, and sell it for less than a million dollars... probably something more like $75 to $90 or so, unless I can get really bad and make a bajillion friends on myspace before it sells.... following in the footsteps Jackson Pollock outlined in his popular video "How to Suck for Lots of Money".

Anyway, my arrival home, which is usually celebrated with ticker tape, confetti, and burning humans in wicker baskets, was actually a bit more boring today, always.

The cats were waiting for more food, so I gave them some of the expensive stuff, then left the room, thinking they would now love me so much that they would refuse to talk to anyone else.

"Tell Beth that we would like some petting" they would say, even though Beth is only a few feet away from me. "Why don't you tell them yourself" I would say. "We can't," they would say "we're just cats. Oh... God wants you to kill some mormons BTW".

Anyway I returned downstairs to a disappointing sight. The bowls were still full.

Next to them was a little note that said "Deer humin - Ornj bag cheep stuff!" with a sloppily, terribly drawn stick man on a noose.

I think I am going to sell it for a million dollars.