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.

"All in all, the experiment was a brilliant success, though it ran for a shorter time than desired.

Ultimately, the machine had to be shut down prematurely, else we might not have had enough crew to make it comfortably back to port. Over forty Russian tribesmen bravely gave their lives to science this day - a terrible tragedy as they will surely be expensive to replace.

Also lost was an entire crate of ether, carelessly dropped from the edge of a berg in the midst of today's activities - a tragedy on so many levels.

Nevertheless, we saw many wondrous and splendid things this day: creatures and landscapes from the aether danced and swam about us through the air, and we saw the laws of our world temporarily suspended by those of the aether world.

It leaves me to wonder: How closely does the placement of their world correspond with ours? Are these same creatures to be found elsewhere on our planet, or would we perhaps find other inhabitants should the machine be tested in new locations?

What sorts of variants or unique beasts might we see in other locations such as Beijing, Hong Kong, Indonesia, London or perhaps even New York City?

Needless to say, I am beyond eager to see!"

- Professor Aden M. Kemy, Miskatonic Archivist





This giclee, commemorating the event is available while supplies last, in three limited editions of 50: A giclee on Canvas, an archival pigment ink print on heavy metallic stock, and a fine-art rag paper print. All of which 24 inches by 24 inches - the size of the original painting by Myke Amend.

First available, is this limited edition giclee on canvas, printed in archival pigment inks on 200-year archival canvas, coated in a UV-protective and scratch-resistant coating, stretched and mounted for framing.

It comes with a watermarked hahnemuhle certificate of authenticity printed on fine art rag paper, with a matching and serial-numbered hologram on both the back of the giclee print and the certificate. All giclees are hand-signed and numbered in paint (see the signature on the image) and also signed, dated, and numbered in archival ink on the back of the mounted print.

It can be found here: In the Store

That pretty much sums up what my time between home renovation, web work, and commissions has been like (this is the product of my goof-off time).

There are more pictures and descriptions of what I am working on at my flickr account, but basically, they are just going to be some seriously sturdy prescription-lensed brass goggles.

My Friend Amanda (invader_zins ) makes these jewelry things - she has always been so kind as to help promote my things when I have sales and such - but since I rarely wear jewelry myself, I rarely have many things to say about it unless it has tentacles or bat wings or both.

I saw this, and instantly thought of violetsrblack, but being engaged and all, I should probably say no more about that, and absolutely nothing about the gardening tools involved, and oh my god how the hell do I get out of this sentence ...alive? Oh! I am just going to put this skully thing which caught my eye into an open post because I think someone on my list would probably enjoy it.

The Chiropterothopter is an aether-driven mechanical aparatus, made for the collection of blood samples from would-be targets; It is a handy tool for spying, scrying, cursing, or assassination - so easy to use that even a mere doctor of ancient metaphysics would say is only somewhat difficult.



Larger images can be seen at the Etsy listing for this item

This replica is lovingly Hand-Crafted. It involved many, many hours of work, and a lot of good materials. Don't let the low price fool you into thinking this is a low-quality item, as it is a personal favorite - very detailed, and a completely unique, one of a kind, something you'll never see again item. It has been a very tough couple of weeks, and this is the most insanely under-priced item in a large sale to make ends meet.

The piece does come apart - wings detach - revealing mechanical insides to the creature.

Coffin: The wooden coffin is gilded with gold leaf, and the legs are solid brass. The interior accents are made of brass bits, clock parts, and ceramic polymer clay.

Figure: The figure is meticulously crafted in intricate detail piece by piece. It is made of brass, clock parts, and polymer clay. Accents are done in hard enamel paints.

This piece is not a toy, it is a sculpture, a work of art. It has tiny parts which children (or adults) can choke on. Do not eat or look directly at the item. Do not eat photos of the item. Do not eat your monitor.

Beth evicted herself from the desk the other night so I could paint in some warmth - since it is many months running still with no sign of relief from the cold.

I've been making much better progress since, especially with my computer being in the basement (not so tempted to obsess over ad campaigns, client invoices, and item view counts).

I put the painting down for today, as she needed to get some sleep, and understandably so.

I will show you pictures soon. Some of which will not be fuzzy pictures of my nether regions.

A relative's car has been in the shop off and on for months now, last broken down state has lasted weeks. I am sure the mechanic feeds it treats every time it comes back to the shop. I should cut off his hands and feed them to the squirrel, but I won't, not today.

Well, the relative needs work transportation. We'd just lend her the car, but she is afraid of it - which probably has something to do with all the people it runs over. So, getting up at 6AM on a night's notice tends to mean being antsy over needing to sleep, and drifting off at 5:45. Beth tries to sleep, I stay up all night so I can get her moving, and ride with her or drive. I would just go in her stead - but my glasses are 8 years old, it is a long drive with a lot of turns, and I doubt I would make it back all that easily -if at all, though I would have a great excuse to not stop for cops: "Sorry young man, but I can't see a thing! [clipping my credit card to his ticket board and writing in a tip]. You'd better not have forgotten my egg rolls this time!"

I've decided to try to stay up the day and get to bed at a normal person hour, because I want to see what they are up to one of these days, as I know they are up to something. This schedule has really been making it hard to manage schedules, tough to get enough done - both of us, zombies through the day, managing nothing useful at all save for noggin-chomping and clawing at badly boarded windows. The neighbors hate us.

So, this morning, I have been treating myself to some world conquering... Risk II... 'not that exciting when you've tried every combination of generals, every handicap, every play option - more of a method of relaxing at this point. I still have Heroes 5 uncompleted on the other machine, never bought any expansions for it either.

I promised myself I would play it again when I had a day or two to sink into such things... it was new when I set it down... in 2005?

If I ever win the lottery, I'd be tempted to lock myself in a cabin for a few weeks with every RPG and strategy game I have missed over the last 20 years, every movie that has been in and out of theaters, a 200-lb brick of beef jerky, a man-sized wheel of cheese, and maybe even some of that water stuff - since milk and soda don't keep too well. I'd look like Grizzly Adams. I'd also have a bear, who I've already named "Larry". He eats furries, else he gets no desert. I guess I would have to get my caffeine through bleeding door-to-door missionaries dry with a pointy straw - the likes of those straws that we, as children, used for pinning shiny bags of fruit-scented sugar-water to the palms of our hands... every day at lunch... screaming, bloodily, "I LOVE SHINY FRUIT JUICE! YEAAARGGHHH!"

Meh. If I know myself, I'd probably end up spending it all on hit men and singing telegrams singing hitmen, a cask of amontillado, a bucket of mortar mix, and a clown suit.

On that note: I've noticed a lot of people, saying "Happy Birthday" to me and similar things, both real people, and internet models, even though my real birthday is not for at least another ten years. Still, it's the thought that counts - that thought being "buy me a pony!"... or better yet, buy yourself something shiny!

ettadiem.etsy.com

I've marked down a lot of prints and such - some by $7, some by $70, in limited quantities. Each item is on sale only for as long as those items are there.

This, because back-stock is allowing for these price cuts, because money is more nifty than back-stock at the moment. So, I am only marking down what I have on-hand really close to cost. Thus, Etsy is the best stage for this particular sale.

Badly injured Bay Area girl needs to get home from India for care, and close to family, friends. Please help bring her home. http://tinyurl.com/agn287

Stained - though not as much as my hands are.

There are some neoprene gloves under the clutter somewhere, I was in too much of a hurry to find them.

I am guessing there was a dresser casualty in the history of the house - there is at least one dresser with these exact drawer pulls, but these pulls were scattered between various boxes in the basement. The antique drawer pull as a handle made for a nice touch.

I realized at this point that my hinges weren't actually brass, nor was the latch I had picked out. So, I went poking around and found this site, which I may or may not use. I still have some price shopping to do, and things bought locally don't have shipping delays.

I have some decorative brass corners, which may or may not go onto the box - I think I may want something more decorative or more basic than what I have - and not the halfway ornate designs I have handy. I think I like CP-19 from this page

I also need to figure out how to make my stained finish glossy without the use of polyurethane. I am guessing there is some sort of wax I can rub and buff it with; I'll ask Craig or dial my dad when I get to that point.

This, turned out to be more work than expected, though I am sure I could make another one in half the time.I did some major overkill on the doweling, which is the main thing I would have done differently in retrospect.

A lot of times, the problem with my projects is that I have no idea what I have in mind when I start them, they just sort of take shape as I go - and I figure things out through trial and error rather than looking them up previously.

I think I want to make it so it can be carried on leather straps, as an equipment "bag". It is big enough for an SLR camera with attached lense, but not extra lenses - I suppose I will also have to craft some equipment to carry in it :/

Not the safest way to go about this I am sure - but I am making my process up as I go.

I think I remember there being plastic guards on these things back in the day. I think, however, that my table saw might be from before "the day", so all is good.

There was only one guide, so I made due with a board I double-clamped to the table. Also, the other guide did not come close enough to the blade, so I put a piece of wood in there to space it where I needed it.

Hey... wait...

... In retrospect, I could have just chosen to cut from the other side.

In case you are wondering - the wood is a hard maple, very heavy, rather hard, and made out of maple... from a maple tree most likely. It is a nice quality wood, has a pretty grain to it like what you would expect to see on a violin or a bitchin' Les Paul.



These square clampy things come in handy.
... One of the few cases where I am pretty sure I am using a tool as it should be.



This is from a big heavy hardwood bonking mallet, and also from the hood of the car.

Both did not occur simultaneously... in case you were wondering.

I know you were.

Who knew that big wooden bonking mallets could hurt thumbs? Lucky thing I am right handed, or I would have hit my good hand.



It looks ominous... but it is just a box with some antique clamps.



A box top with clamps. The clamps are all biting it... rarwwwrr!



Viola! ... erm...

... this is what two days hard work looks like?

I probably could have bought one for just dollars somewhere.

Yay!



It actually opens! ... well, sort of. Soonish I will put some hinges on it.



I took a router to the lid part, around that time I realized it was way late for super-noisy machines. The box will have to wait.

So... what am I making the box for? I really have no idea. It would have been smart to think of something to make a box for, but now I have to go around looking for things to put into the box, or make things to put into the box.

For all the work I put into it, it should look awesome and open the gate to hell... but it doesn't - and I have no idea where I messed up along the way.

Next stages - more routing, staining, hinges, brass corners, handles.... some sort of nifty mechanical devices for the inside perhaps...

My Uncle is on life support. The doctors say he is gone.

He was only in his late 50s. Injuries from a near fatal car accident years prior. No matter "how" - It all ends the same.

There was time when he and my parents were so close, that he makes up the largest part of my memories from my childhood through my mid teens. Childhood memories include ringing horseshoes around his freshly casted leg, many a fun 4th of July, accidental bottle rocket warfare, fishing, swimming, and grill-outs. In my late teens through early adult years, I had many smoke breaks with him at his factory, or slipping out at family functions - close friends, shared bad habits. And as an adult - family functions meant he and I always sitting around in his office, discussing business related things or life in general. He was always the concerned and thoughtful adult male influence in my life, much more than just an uncle.

Until I visited my parents a few years back, my aunt and uncle made for most, sometimes all of my family conversations and contact.

Our close-knit family has over the years been reduced to seeing each other once every year or two, for brief hit and runs; Personal grudges, lifestyle differences, plain hard-headedness, busy schedules, distance - all factor in, as does my extended stint as the black sheep of the family... but no matter how the family was doing as a whole, I always found time for seeing him and my aunt.

A big part of the reason I really wanted to make it to Ohio this past December, was this - because we all felt it might be his last holiday season - but I was pulled away pre-emptively, and never got to catch up with him that one last time.

Distance has long served my protection against these feelings, for myself as well as for others - but in this case, it makes it sting more than anything has in ages. It has, for a long time, been hard for me to feel sorrow for those who pass away, but there are words never spoken, moments never shared, conversations in a smoky room over cold beer, never to be had.

The work I put into promotion is a necessary evil, but it keeps me from making newer and better things.

I try hard not to be one of those artists who spends all his time promoting in stead of oh... practice, learning, or most importantly: making things worth promoting.

... but it does not always work out that way for me - I have found that these last few months, too much of my time has been spent on promotion, resource-hunting, web-work, and shipping - and I would really like to change that if I can.

So, I spent a good part of the day making banners for anyone willing to put them on their profiles, blogs, in bulletins, wherever.

( info under the cut for those interested )