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Snowbird Arts ~ my studio in the Kokosing River Valley
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Blog
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| Wildlife photos updated |
| 09.03.05 (4:48 pm) [edit] |
Darling Friends-
Just another note to let you know I've put up another note at the other place ---
http://snowbirdarts.typepad.com" title="http://snowbirdarts.typepad.com" target="_blank"http://snowbirdarts.typepad.c...
Miss you all so much.
Linda
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| Wildlife, and Studio Life |
| 08.26.05 (7:14 am) [edit] |
Darling friends- Come visit me -- I miss all of you from here. http://www.snowbirdarts.typep... I was sad to see that t-blogs "recent blogs" column has once again filled up with porn. (Bring back the online drug sellers?) I think of you often, and I still stop by to read your new entries, when Bot-a-Blog sends me its notices. Warmly:::Linda
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| weblog has moved! |
| 06.10.05 (12:38 pm) [edit] |
A note to let my tblog visitors know that this is the final post in this location. The new weblog is located at:
http://snowbirdarts.typepad.com/" title="http://snowbirdarts.typepad.com/" target="_blank"http://snowbirdarts.typepad.c...
Administration here at tblog is a bit of a mystery, so it might be a while before I can actually close this weblog. But please do visit the new weblog, and also the new website which is:
http://www.naturefineartandphotograp hy.com" title="http://www.naturefineartandphotograp hy.com" target="_blank"http://www.naturefineartandph...
This is the new hub website for all things Snowbird Arts.
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| Moving soon |
| 05.26.05 (4:13 pm) [edit] |
I hate to say this, but it looks like the time has come to move the Snowbird Arts weblog to a different host. I have good friends in the tblog community, so I hope you will check on me after my move. And of course I will keep the doors open here for a while. No doubt it will take me a dog's age to accomplish this, as absolutely everything internet seems to take me much longer than I expect.
Meanwhile, if you stumble across the beginnings of my new weblog elsewhere (and I'm by no means certain where that will be just yet), just give me a little time to get the curtains in the windows.
Linda
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| technological head-banging |
| 05.19.05 (3:15 pm) [edit] |
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This post will be short, that's for sure.
The studio's first e-book is published. I'm pretty excited, I have to admit. I've even had my first sale of the little ol' book -- but I can't collect the money because I have been trying for two days to code the payment page properly.
God, send the day when I will have an assistant who can do all this.
Til then, I have to do this coding whether I'm good at it or not.
The face-to-monitor time was so extensive in recent weeks that I ran straight to the yarn shop the moment the PDF for the book was in final form. I've been making a baby bonnet for a niece ever since, hardly able to put the thing down. It's so concrete, so predictable. You make a stitch, it's right or it's wrong and you can see it right away. Not like publishing to the internet or to PDF, opening the document and saying to yourself "what the heck is that?"
I put out the studio's newsletter two days late, hoping to include the download/purchase page for the e-book. Alas, the newsletter went out without a link to said page...
That will be the next day's work. Again.
But, golly I sure am excited to have the thing done, and looking so nice, too.
Linda
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| almost too tired to blog |
| 05.04.05 (7:24 pm) [edit] |
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Phew... I'm now in the last week of this 16 week marketing class for independent artists. And yes, it has gone real well. But holy smoke, what a lot of time at the computer. More than I like to spend. It's been two weeks since my last photo shoot -- and then back to all this coding and copy-writing stuff. Honestly, it isn't so bad when it has to do with my own work, which I love -- like those chefs who love their own cooking, and so they don't mind cleaning up. But it is such tedious work that when I do it for days on end, without the creative work of painting or shooting, I begin to get all flat inside.
My hat's off to all those people who code and program and webdesign for other people.. Anyway. To subscribe free to the (admittedly) very nice newsletter for the studio - cleverly entitled The NewsFEATHER - click here [url=]http://www.naturefineartandph... [/url]
Dang, you *better* click there. It's so squeaky clean, double opt-in, you have almost fifty chances to NOT get it. I worked hard. It's nice. It's got good artwork and photography in it.
And I'm grouchy, tired, and I need to paint and take photos. So do what you're supposed to and sign up.
=8-)
And I'm not *quite* done with the course work. There's an e-book about to be published as a result of all this, but I now have some changes to incorporate from the results of the Focus Group I ran on the little book.
...I also have to migrate the rest of my original studio website to my new host --- the new host provides a ton of integrated tracking and reporting, which is just about the only thing that makes internet marketing worth a hoot. I mean, it's no use putting a ton of effort into talking about what you do, if you have no way to know if anyone is hearing it. (Unless you're not talking to be heard...)
So, less than articulate Linda says again...
"anyway"
I've got a schedule now that is supposed to make sure I keep up to date on the website, the original artwork, the product development, and the weblog. So it shouldn't be too long before I put up a MUCH more coherent and cheery post, describing what it's been like to get this e-book published. And maybe even something faintly entertaining about migrating a website.
Just imagine.
Linda
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| Photography tactics |
| 04.17.05 (5:39 am) [edit] |
This is Rooster. He's a Japanese button quail, and the star of the studio's upcoming e-book. The book is about keeping button quail, and it has been both a labor of love and a childbirth-style labor of learning. I've been taking a long and very detailed, very individualized course in converting part of one's product set into 'internet deliverables'. And this little e-book will be the first offspring of that process. Developing this, and a long-overdue newsletter (http://www.naturefineartandph...) for the studio has left me little time to make weblog entries.
I had been planning to photograph the circus this week, and still may manage to do so. I have not heard back from their media office regarding my request to photograph backstage, but even if they decline I may simply buy a box seat ticket and go early and stay late -- and snoop a lot.
It's always hard to decide whether to wear the photo ID and look professional and self-important, or to shuffle through in my soccer-mom sweatshirt and jeans, smiling and taking pictures. (Thank God for digital SLRs, because the smaller, lighter camera is not the dead give-away that the huge film SLRs are.) The latter works better for national political events. I don't have a prayer in the press areas as a freelancer, but I can talk my way into all sorts of places to "take a picture for my kids to see". In less formal settings, or in what are essentially business settings (like performances or sports events), the 'member of the press' thing is a toss-up. Once I've introduced myself as either a professional or a soccer-mom, I'm stuck with my appelation -- and its results. Once I've been told "we have our own photographer on contract and no other photographers are allowed", I can't very well shuffle in as soccer-mom and try again.
The more I think about it, the more I realize I'd really *better* get down there and photograph that circus one way or another. There won't be another chance for months, perhaps the whole year.
Linda
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| missing gone ones |
| 04.02.05 (3:33 pm) [edit] |
The Pope's death brings all other deaths around, somehow. It is an odd feeling, to think of those we knew -- either knew well or those who simply seemed familiar -- and know they are not here. If not here, where then? It is easy enough to declaim intellectual or spiritual concepts, but much harder to say in a knowing way, "oh, of course, here", or "here".
Dying is a mysterious thing.
I remember very clearly my first encounter with death. My cousin was killed in an auto accident when he was 19 and I was 15. We had grown up together. I had never seen a dead person, and I was very much afraid to approach his coffin where he was laid out at the funeral home. My great fear was to see him dead, lying inert in a box, which we could soon close on him forever, leaving him alone in a hole in the ground.
When I looked into the coffin, an enormous wave of relief swept over me. My cousin was not there.
Certainly, I saw the clear resemblance between the cousin I knew and the object laid out in the coffin. It took only a moment's reflection to realize that this was my cousin's dead body. It was something utterly unique that had belonged to him.
But it was not him, and that caused it to appear peculiar to me. In the past, I had always seen him when looking at this body. Now I did not see him. It was a puzzling thing. Certainly, in the past, I could not have imagined thinking of my cousin without thinking of his face or his voice. Now, no one would ever hear his voice, and his face was uninhabited. What could have become of that inhabitant? Without him, the face was nothing in particular, barely recognizable as anyone I knew.
All of this was hard to deal with, but at least I could see for myself that the cousin I knew was not going to shut in a box and left in the ground alone.
So. Carol Wyotilla? Not here. Not sure (at least not 'sure' in the conventional sense) where. A curious, mysterious thing. A relief that a good old man's sickness is over. Strange that someone even I remember as vigorous is no longer so, and no longer at all.
This thing, this dying, this missing gone ones, makes those who do the missing sad ones.
Linda
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| Singing up the grass |
| 03.28.05 (10:38 am) [edit] |
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(-from Little Owl's Journal-) I think this takes about two weeks. It is starting to happen now, as we are getting into the second week of songbird return. The grass has to be roused by bird songs. Redwing blackbirds have been first to arrive here for many years. Cardinals stay all winter, but begin to lengthen their songs in mid-february. This seems to cause maple-sugaring to occur -- maple sap is the only thing that rises at this time, and the red birds are the only thing singing. Shortly after the blackbirds return, the flocks of robins come but they say nothing. They gather in silent groups in faded berry trees or run together across brown fields, but make no sound. When the song sparrows can be heard in the early mornings, and when the titmice break out of their winter pipings and begin a song, then one hears the robins. This admixture of blackbird creakings and robin songs (which sound like other birdsongs played backwards), makes crocuses bloom and affects daffodils, causing their buds to rise. It also causes irises and flags to put up tiny leaves, but no buds. Diving ducks arrive at the pond, and begin waking up the small fishes. Fish taste better if caught when awake. These ducks are mostly canvasbacks, and some redheads. Diving ducks do not like to be stared at, and will lose their composure and try to run away while still in the water. After a few strides, they come back to their senses and begin to fly, which is much more effective than slapping your flat feet on the water. As I said, though, after about two weeks of bird singing, the grass begins to point upward and turn green in places. The pony and the donkey bite more quickly at the pasture with their ears foward, and they do not ask to come into the barn in the evenings anymore. It is best to be aware of these things, so that you can have sugar buckets ready, so that you can clear away the papers on the piano to make room for a vase, and so that you do not put grain in the feed buckets in the barn that only the raccoons will eat.
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| Hard at work in the Studio |
| 03.25.05 (9:18 pm) [edit] |
[image]SnowbirdArts_13182 83658.jpg[/image]
Yes, here's Linda, hard at work in the studio.
Well, ok, this is a photo I took on a recent gig. Isn't she lovely? This is a champion show cat, a Sphinx Cat. The longer I looked at her, the more I liked her.
Oh, the main website is still all taken to pieces -- again. But brother, has the dust been flying around here. I'm most of the way through an art product and marketing course that has me very pumped up, and I hope I will have at least a few of the resulting developments added to the website by the end of April.
Hugs and kisses to my neglected visitors -- I've missed you so. I promise to keep more regular hours on the weblog, as the intensive classes come to a close. They are scheduled to continue until summer break, but I'm going to try to me more regular about my poor dear weblog!
Linda
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| Snowbound birds |
| 01.23.05 (6:23 pm) [edit] |
These are button quail, also called Chinese Painted Quail. From left to right - Rooster, a natural brown male; Pearl, a silver mutation hen; and Aggie, a natural brown hen. They are each about as big as a plum.
These are my new 'kitchen chickens', the critter corollary to the kitchen herb garden. These pretty, ground-dwelling babies live in a large terrarium on my sunny enclosed kitchen porch. Button quail hens lay an egg per day, like a chicken does. 5 to 6 quail eggs are equal in volume to a large chicken egg. Unlike 'battery' produced chicken eggs, or even free-range or 'organic' eggs, one can be sure one's egg protein comes from happy, healthy creatures who are not besotted with hormones or medications.
I can't imagine why everyone who eats a meatless diet, or everyone who is health-conscious for that matter, doesn't have a pretty trio of these creatures at the kitchen door, to give eggs and add beauty.
Linda
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| If you don't like the weather.. |
| 01.06.05 (3:13 pm) [edit] |
...be careful what you wish for.
I'm absolutely serious. Here is last week's weather:
[image]SnowbirdArts_10143 46641.jpg[/image]
Aaaaand... Here is [i]this[/i] week's weather:
[image]SnowbirdArts_30742 6282.jpg[/image]
Over Christmas, the ice storm that created the first "lovely" picture left us without power, heat, or phone for 5 days, in subzero weather.
Yesterday and today, the weather that created the following ironic scene sent the same people to shelters again -- this time due to flooding. Unless, of course, you live about 20 miles north of here, because that's where the freeze line was this time. In that case, you got another icestorm just like the last one -- the kind that drop 60 ft trees on your house, as my neighbor experienced.
So, not only is one picture worth a thousand words, it's more printable, and won't get me kicked off the server for profanity...
Still praying for spring:::Linda
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| Good news |
| 11.29.04 (5:10 pm) [edit] |
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Oh, it is with great relief that I announce that the new website software now works. It will probably be another week before I can publish the results on the web. But at least now I can use the d_mn stuff.
I do find the rewriting process tedious, but at least I can intersperse it with new artwork, that will fill the new pages in a week or so.
Linda
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| oil sketch, angry cat |
| 11.28.04 (4:52 pm) [edit] |
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I must confess that this cat exemplifies my mood the past four days. My opponent has been software, though, not another cat. I won't say exactly whose software it is right now, because their staff are working like Trojans to get me up and running, and I do still expect that will happen. But it has me pretty frazzled because I've pretty much bet what remains of my holiday sales on running my website through this software. And of course the days are sliding away.
But I enjoyed this oil sketch a lot. The Artists' Oils brushes in Painter IX (which is what I used to make this painting) are working better and better for me, and the sumi e and new watercolor brushes are coming along too. I particularly like this cat because I think it retains some of the flavor of the inkwork I had so much fun with earlier this year. I'd be glad to know if people like it.
Linda
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| a quiet, thankful night |
| 11.24.04 (7:57 pm) [edit] |
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Darling ones, this is just a short note to let you all know, wherever and whoever you are, how much your lives have touched mine, how much you mean to me, no matter how brief our contact, no matter how small it may seem to you.
Every fingerprint remains. God bless you each and all.
Linda
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| still cookin |
| 11.19.04 (6:41 pm) [edit] |
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Working ever so hard and fast (though kind of all over the place) since returning from that retreat/conference. Lots and lots of practical things done, to get ready for the holiday sales season, but here is the evening's relaxation -- a digital sumi-e ink sketch of a stag I photographed in our pasture.
I'm pretty sure he is the same buck I saw as a youngster on the property two years ago. He's a big, meaty guy now. Very handsome fellow, very much in love when last I saw him!
Linda
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| Return to Earth |
| 11.16.04 (12:05 pm) [edit] |
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I've just returned from a 4 day conference/retreat sponsored by the nice people at Artellawordsandart.com. There isn't any way to adequately describe how enlivening and enlightening those four days were. I'm already feeling kind of backed up inside --- I can't imagine being able to work fast enough to accomodate all the inspirations that are coming to the surface.
As soon as I stop vibrating a little, I'll have more to write.
Linda
PS- if you visit artella, please tell them I sent you!!
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| briefly, then back to work |
| 11.04.04 (5:58 am) [edit] |
I'm having one of those 'nice problems to have', in that I have paid studio work that demands my attention.
I was fortunate enough to have ropeline access to the President a few days ago, and was more fortunate still to get some outstanding photos. There are plenty of Republican voters in our little town, and people are mobbing me for prints of the photos. If it were only a few people, I would certainly give them away, but I have a long list of requests for 8x10 prints.
I don't even have them on the website yet, but as soon as I do, I will post a note here.
Back soonish.
Linda Vining
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| CORRECTED link for Snowbird Arts Website |
| 10.26.04 (6:27 am) [edit] |
Urg. I blame the tblog posting engine.
http://www.snowbirdarts.com" title="http://www.snowbirdarts.com" target="_blank"http://www.snowbirdarts.com
That's the URL. I don't know it if will work as a link from here, but in the lefthand bar of this blog, at the top of the bar, there is also a permanent link to the website.
Linda
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| FREE AT LAST! |
| 10.25.04 (7:11 pm) [edit] |
...well, not exactly free, but at least I've managed to redecorate that ball and chain otherwise known as the Snowbird Arts Website,
http://www.snowbirdarts.com
I was terribly proud of the navigation bars, the cohesive design, and all that rot until my husband said, "real nice dear, but what happened to all the artwork?"
Well, so, ok -- the new interactive storefront is working and actually has a bit of product out on the virtual shelves.... And the navigation bars are good, and you can tell what's 'new' and when it 'newed' as soon as you hit the homepage. But, no, I haven't got the whole gallery back up, and the newest new features are described and linked to nice pages that don't yet have the new features yet (only their descriptions).
See what I mean about a nice new ball and chain?
But anyway, the website, the store, and the weblog now work together nicely, and together they make a set of places I'm happy to tend to every day. In the past, that's been the hardest thing -- not making the artwork, but finding the motivation to take the extra, thought-out steps of putting it out there in a form that people can enjoy and maybe take home.
So, I'm back, and hoping to keep a more regular schedule on the blog as well as nurse-maiding the website.
Looking forward to reading the weblogs of my favorite writers.
Linda Vining
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Linda's Mood of the Moment is:
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Please come see me at the weblog's new location?!!! I'm so excited at the thing that are going on in the studio these days! Love to each::::Linda Vining