Well, not really. I think I’m beginning to figure this CSS (cascading style sheets) stuff out. This web site is FINALLY on its feet and I can start focusing on content now. What a relief. Eventually, I may even figure out how to get traffic.
How to become a tattoo artist
Well, I learned something today, and, frankly, it makes me kind of nervous.
Did you know there are virtually no actual tattoo training schools? Apparently, the most common way to become a tattoo artist is to apprentice another artist/studio. In other words, on-the-job training. To me, that’s a little scary. After all, tattooing is a little like surgery; someone is tearing up your skin and opening you up for infection and pathogens. What if that’s how doctors were trained?
I’m only concerned about this because I just got a tattoo and I’m finding dozens of different recommendations for after-care. What makes one set of instructions better than another, if the process is basically the same for every tattoo? Here are some of the recommendations from various tattoo artists and wearers:
- Use antibiotic ointment for 3 days
- NEVER use antibiotic ointment
- NEVER use petroleum jelly (a.k.a. petrolatum)– this is a pretty standard recommendation. Tends to lift the ink.
- Use A&D or Aquaphor ointment (both are petrolatum-based) for 7-10 days
- Don’t use lotions
- Use Curel or Aveeno lotion for 7-10 days
- Don’t rub the tattoo, pat it
- Rub the ointment in like it’s lotion
Fortunately (for me), Washington State is going to start regulating the industry. I don’t know what that will do for after-care instructions, but it would be really nice if people could get together and use science to maybe figure out what’s the best way to heal a tattoo while maintaining the ink.
… And another
Since April last year, I became extremely busy.
K and I decided 2009 was the year to buy a house, and so we did! We started looking in May, made an offer in July, and moved during August. It has a lot of pluses, but the biggest one for me is a semi-finished garage I’m using as a studio. My own studio! The house needs a lot of work (ever see The Money Pit?) but it’s going to be great some day.
Now that we’ve got rid of the mold in the wall of one room, re-plumbed the kitchen to bring the water shut-off valve inside the house (no, really! I kind of wonder how the inspector missed those two pretty important repairs), and pulled out most of the blackberry bushes, all that’s left is the dry rot (same wall as the mold), dishwasher that leaks and is wired in so Lowe’s won’t install a new one, crappy Pergo flooring in the kitchen, refrigerator that (now) makes ice but won’t dispense it, and redoing the wiring so the outlets are all configured correctly. Oh, and it would be nice if the doorbell worked. And we’ll need to repave the driveway.
Oh, well, at least it’s ours (and the bank’s).
No art came from my studio in 2009. 
I did, however do a presentation at the NWCS on Artist Trading Cards and ACEOs, which was fun, and, apparently, successful. A couple of people asked me if I had ever considered being a teacher. 
This year, if I can get around to it, I want to enter the Lynnwood Library Gallery themed show “It’s Not Easy Being Green.” I have permission to use the reference photo I like, now all I need is the time to work. My job is extremely busy, and what with the new commute, takes up a lot of my time.
And then a year went by
For those of you keeping track, it has been about a year and a half since I posted anything here. Several reasons: I’ve been busy, I didn’t want to take the time to update, I’ve been depressed, and I wasn’t sure I was even going to keep this going. Looks like I am.
Backtracking:
June 2007: I had a piece (Three Crows) accepted in the Lynnwood Arts Commission Library Gallery show “Orange Crush.”
July 2007: I sold L’École des Mystères at the Mukilteo show! I was absolutely stunned. My first real sale!
September 2007: Got the great new job at restaurant company. Despite a few stressful days, I LOVED it. I loved my boss, I loved the company, I enjoyed my work, and I liked my coworkers. I continued to work part-time for the old company doing some bookkeeping. I liked the extra money and I actually liked the work.
January 2008: Participated in a collaborative event with where the Collage Society created collages to go with poems written by members of the Cancer Lifeline writing group. It was a wonderful experience.
June 2008: Showed and sold Spinnaker at the Lynnwood Library Gallery themed exhibit “Mellow Yellow”.
August 2008: My daughter moved to Seattle! Now I get to see her fairly regularly.
October 2008: One of my kitties had to be put to sleep. He was 17 and pretty sick. It was an extremely difficult decision and I miss him terribly. I cried like a little girl for days.
November 2008: I got laid off from my terrific job. I was devastated and still feel very sad about it.
December 2008: Went back to work full time at present job, which is the former job I had in 2007. Nothing has really changed except the economy has affected us here, too, so the stress level is even higher. But at least I’m working.
Also December: Daughter married her sweetheart. He is a GREAT guy and I’m really glad she found him. They are blissfully happy.
January 2009: K & I adopted a dog. She’s a beautiful yellow Lab. She’s gi-normous, but very sweet.
So, still working (thank the gods), still making art, still hanging on and rolling with the punches.
Contemplating a different new job, and a show
So K was working at this cool place where we got decent health insurance and restaurant credit (gift cards, nice places! 
). Then, wouldn’t you know it, she got a job offer from the City– finally. So she had to decide: take the City job with less pay, farther away, and higher insurance copays, or stay at the job with the flexible hours, much better pay, decent insurance, great boss/coworkers– where the work itself made her want to commit suicide?
She took the City job, natch. So far, she’s doing ok. We’ll see. We both decided that she’d kick herself if she didn’t take the opportunity, since she’s been trying to get on there for two years now, just not necessarily in that job. Thing is, she asked me if I wanted to give the restaurant company my resume. I said sure. The job is in IT, which would be cool; basically you sit at a computer all day and help code restaurant Point-of-Sale computers. I know, there’s more to it than that. But she loved the company and the people, and just didn’t like the work. We decided awhile ago that we should have just switched jobs!
Anyway, I have an interview with the restaurant people on Friday. Hey, they offer insurance and food! What could be better? Plus, I wouldn’t have to cross a bridge to get to or from work. Doesn’t sound too bad, until the bridge is up and you’re waiting.
Ok. Tomorrow, I deliver one of my pieces (Mandala #2, Sea) to the Edmonds ArtsNow NWCS Fall Members’ Show. Yay. I also had two pieces accepted into the Mukilteo Lighthouse Festival (L’École des Mystères (The Mystery School) and Forgotten Music, which started its life as Purple Prose and has been imaged and cropped and enhanced in my CafePress.com store (HINT, HINT) and has become Music Squared and Unavoidable Delays, which has absolutely no reference or significance but just sounds pretty cool. Been taking photos lately, too, and some of them are not bad.
New job’s keepin’ me busy
I’m working 4/10s (4 ten-hour days)now through the summer, with one day a week at home alone as a “studio” day, which is great; it’s really nice to know that at the end of my week I will definitely have time to work at my “other” career.
Been busy with that, too. I entered three pieces in the the Northwest Collage Society Members’ Show, had two accepted, and one actually one a prize. Can you believe it? I’m stoked. No, I’m not on the web site yet, because I haven’t had the chance to send them a JPG and a bio. I just got some lights so I can take better pictures of my work. Some of the people in my office building like the work of mine they’ve seen, too, so I’m going to get a portfolio together.
Here’s the criterion for whether or not you’ve found your ideal work: Would you pay someone else to let you do it? If you can say yes, congratulations, you’ve found your calling. I love art!
Check out two of my favorite contemporary artists:
You know what opinions are like
Observations about art (specifically art for sale on eBay):
- Most “digital art” turns me off. If you took a fantastic picture and used PhotoShop to punch it up a little, than I believe that’s art. If you sliced-and-diced a couple of digital images so it doesn’t look like a photo anymore, that’s doodling. If you take a picure and reverse the colors into color-negative, that is not art. It is doodling. Yes, I know I have digital art on my Gallery, but I don’t for one second take it seriously, and I will most likely be using those enhanced photos as reference to do actual paintings. Just my opinion.
- Art (on eBay) that is categorized as “brut”, “folk”, or “primitive” should actually be categorized as “I never learned to draw.” Do a search and you’ll see what I mean. “Outsider Art” usually means the same thing, but it often shows a lot more skill than the others.
The job interview I had last Thursday (the arts job) went very well, I think. I got a really good vibe. I could be wrong. After all, they haven’t called me back. I sent a nice thank-you letter to the lead interviewer. I would have sent one to everyone on the panel, but there were six of them and I could only remember five of their names. I thought it would be crass to leave one person out, so I just asked the lead person to thank the panel for me. I probably won’t get this job, mostly because I really, really want it. Oh, well.
I’m trying to finish my current collage because I’ve been in the mood to paint, and I can’t get out the paints until I get all the collage materials put away. Believe me, collage requires a LOT more space than painting. Not quite as much as printmaking, but close. The collage is going pretty well; I’m satisfied with the composition and the execution, but now I’m working on the finishing. Paintings are pretty easy to finish; either varnish them or frame them under glass. Collages require a little more thought. For example, I don’t want the finish on this one to be the same across the image; I want part of the image to be matte, some texured, and some to be more satin-finished, and possibly some gloss. This means I have to apply different acrylic mediums to different portions, and I probably won’t be able to varnish the finished piece and will need to frame it under glass, which has its own set of problems. I wanted to start working on Claybord so I could varnish my collages and not worry about glass, but I didn’t think about varying the finish. Decisions, decisions.
I was reflecting this morning while listening to an article on NPR about the National Book Awards on how my love for art supersedes my love of writing. Writing, I observed, is very hard work. It is demanding. It takes months, even years, to complete a novel, especially a good one. But you could spend a year writing drivel, and you’d have lost a year. You didn’t learn anything. Writing has been described as “embracing the beast.” You sit down and face a blank page or a blinking cursor which demands you to suddenly be brilliant. I love the finished product, but I don’t like the process, which is, I’ve come to realize, why I’m not a published author.
Art is completely different for me. It’s easy, but challenging. Even if I’m not in the mood to work, within five minutes of taking up the project I’m immersed, engaged, involved; enthralled. I become the process. Unlike writing, I can see almost immediately when something’s not working. I can change it, or scrap it, and I’m out only a half-hour or so. Art allows me to be much more prolific. I turned out 31 works of art (of varying degrees of skill) in a month. Every piece I work on teaches me something new and valuable about the medium, the technique, and about myself. Books about writing bore me. Books about art amaze me.
I’m not saying that art isn’t hard. I’m just saying it’s a much more enjoyable occupation than pretty much anything I’ve ever done.
Funny aside: I told K that I was waiting at a stop-light near the house when some OCD guy walked up the corner and smacked the “Walk” signal button 15 times, twice. She said, “15? You counted?” “Yes, ” I said. She replied, “And you thought he was OCD?”
Reception coming up
Thursday night is an artists’ reception for the NWCS Holiday Show. I’m a member, so I’m going, although I joined too late to enter any artwork. K will be coming, too. She says I need to find out what to wear! I told her dress like she was going to work. If anybody knows about these things, please let me know what to expect. It starts at 5 and goes til 8; do we get there early? On time? Does it matter? Is it an open-ended thing; can you just drop in, hang and chill, then split? Do we stay the whole time?
I feel so ignorant.
The end of October
This October and Halloween have not been as enjoyable as past ones. I always seem to get sick in October, and this year was no exception. I never bought a pumpkin, and I didn’t decorate the house. I feel a little sad about that; what if this was my very last Halloween and I didn’t go all out to enjoy it? Morbid? Yes. But death sits always on my shoulder like a crow, waiting for me. I don’t know why I’m obsessed with death, but I have accepted that as part of my personality. Lately when I’m in the thrift store, I find myself thinking, “Here is where everything I own or create will be one day.”
I wish it was overcast and gloomy today. The sun is shining brightly and there isn’t even a spooky wind to scatter the leaves. Oh, well; I’ll just have to imagine it. You know, in a couple of years when I’ve really developed my artistic techniques, I’m going to do some of the most beautiful autumn and Halloween art!
I think I’m going to buy an ACEO/ATC every week. I love knowing that I’m going to get art in the mail.
I’m trying to decide if I want to order the Acryl-A-Miser palette which will allow me to keep my acrylics available to paint when I want to, which I can’t do right now. Problem is, do I really want to spend $11 in shipping? That just seems so freaking expensive. So I’m waffling. I don’t think I’ll be able to find it locally. It took me two months to find the Derwent Inktense pencils, and I still wound up spending $40 on them.
Well, Happy Halloween, everybody. May you get more trick-or-treaters than I will.
October: not so much fun this year
I was so looking forward to October. The first week, we had a heat wave. Then, the leaves took so long to change, some trees just dropped them all before they reached full color. K lost her job and health insurance, I got sick, then she got sick, Kitty is sick (major hairballs), our cars are acting up, and now drama with the kid.
Halloween’s in four days, and I haven’t even bought a frikkin’ pumpkin. Haven’t decorated the house. Why bother? I’ll just have to put it all away again in a few days. We never get any trick-or-treaters, anyway.
Only good thing is, I drove K down to an interview at a temp agency and spent the time while waiting for her at Daniel Smith’s (same area of town, more or less) and got the Derwent Inktense Pencils. Unfortunately, I was a bit short and had to put them on my credit card, which I will now not be able to pay off before interest takes effect. Oh, well. I so don’t care about that right now. The pencils are amazing.
I’m only one ATC behind for the month; it’s one I started on 10/20 and it’s taking a little while to finish. Otherwise, I’m on track.
