At the Musee d'Orsay

As I'm labeling my way through the pictures I've taken the last few years that I'm behind on - primarily pictures from trips, I've mostly kept on top of the shots I've taken in NYC - I've got a developing issue. The sets that just random pictures of places are the easiest to label (I can label them all things like "Typical Istanbul Street Scene" or "Graffiti in Prague" and leave it at that) whereas the pictures I've taken at museums take a lot longer to label and tag as I transfer the information from the original museum label. Still, I'm trying to start tackling those sets. One of the first that I've finished is a set I took at the Musee d'Orsay in 2010. There are some really lovely things in their collection, though at times it's not an easy environment for photography - some of the corridors are narrow, and the lighting isn't always so great. Still, in two visit there (one in Februrary, 2010, the other in September, 2009) I did get some shots I think are pretty lovely, of amazing items.

The Adoration of the Magi, a tapestry by Sir Edward Burne-Jones


The Church of Auvers, by Vincent van Gogh

I'll admit, this is as much one of my "best" because of the episode of Dr. Who as for any other reason...

The Adulteress, by Jules Cambos


Art Nouveau Bowl


Detail from The Family, by Luc Olivier Merson


The Campaign of France, by Ernest Meissonier


Joan of Arc, by Henry Chapu


Well, that's all for now! :)

Work in Progress Wednesday, 2/15/2012

Well, I fell behind in my blogging the last couple weeks. I wish I could say I had a good reason, but the simple truth is that I haven't been doing much crafting, but I HAVE been spending a lot of time trying to get my head screwed back on straight. All in all, it's been a rough month and a half, but I'm really starting to feel like myself again, and with that - slowly but surely - has come a return to a desire to craft. Along with that, I'm taking a new approach to this blog. I will post three times a week, period. On Wednesdays, I'll talk about my current projects. On Friday, I'll talk about anything I've finished, and also just whatever other fiber-craft I feel like discussing, and on Sunday, I'll do a post about photography. I may do other posts occasionally on other stuff, but the goal is: three posts a week. I think, by not making it an "every day" optional thing and instead focusing on a "regularly scheduled" thing, it'll work better for the way that I approach work. ;)

I think it's one of those really hard things, as a crafter, to acknowledge and accept that sometimes we just don't feel like crafting, and that that doesn't mean that there is something wrong with us, or that we've failed, or that we're letting anyone down. It's a tough thing to accept, though - I know I tend to feel like, well, as long as I've got two hands with which I can keep doing this stuff, I ought to ALWAYS want to do it. But I don't. And I'm really focusing on telling myself that that's OKAY! ;)

Anyway, there are a few work-in-progress going on!

Paint Chip Collage


Last month, I got my bathroom repainted, which meant I had to go to Benjamin Moore. I decided ahead of time that I'd have some fun with it, and pick up some paint chips to play with. At first, I went about it in my usual systematic way (I should take one of each chip!) but then...no, I told myself, let's just RELAX, and have fun with it! So I grabbed every sample that appealed to me. Then, when I'd done that, I went through again and pulled out ones that I really, really loved. At the time, I was planning to do a rainbow waterfall with the chips, but now I have a different plan. In the next day or two, I hope to execute it (though I've noticed that I've been putting it off...I think the prospect intimidates me, what if I do a bad job, as if I have any one's standards to live up to but my own...wait, my own are stupidly high! ;) ) ...but I don't want to spoil the surprise. I hope to have it ready to share by Friday...though it's entirely possible it'll end up being next Friday, instead. :)

Dragonfly and Water Lily Cross Stitch


I've made a LOT of progress on my dragonfly and water lily cross stitch. I've been taking it with me to all of my meetings of late, and because it's on 14 count Aida, and doesn't involve THAT many colors, it's been coming together very quickly. There was one day, last week, where I made two ENORMOUS mistakes, but I ended up deciding to leave them, because one of the beautiful things about a project like this? Unless I tell folks, no one will EVER know the difference. Can you spot them?

No?

Positive? :)

Well, one of the sections along the border, the whole thing is one row to the right of where it should be, and I had to make some other changes to not make it mess up stuff. That's the less obvious mistake. Can't imagine anyone would EVER notice. The other, well, it does look a little strange, but the stylized "stained glass" look hides it well - that lily pad on the bottom? I used the wrong shade of green for a rather large section of it. There was SUPPOSED to be another shade between the darker shade and the two lighter shades, but I goofed. But ya know what? Screw it. Just much too much to undo, so I went with it. :)



(close up on a section that DOESN'T have any massive mistakes. ;) It's a VERY simple pattern, but I do love the colors...

The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron
The other thing that I've been up to is that I'm still working my way through the Artist's Way, one chapter at a time, approximately one chapter per week (it's actually been taking more like 8 or 9 days per chapter, just fitting it in around my schedule). I can't say it's really "doing it" for me, but I've decided to keep at it because I do think I'm getting something out of it, if not as much as I want to. The further in I get, the more I've been modifying the program to suit my own needs. Earlier this week, I switched from writing my daily journal in the evening from writing it in the morning, and it's doing me a world of good. I wake up in the morning feeling fresh and ready, the issues of yesterday are out of my mind. When I write my journal in the morning, all I do is stir up all the mess first thing in the day, and it was leaving me feeling drained and sad. This way, I put everything to rest right before I go to bed, keep my thoughts from distracting me before trying to sleep, and wake up the next day with everything out of my mind. And I no longer get stuck setting an alarm for 4:30 AM so I have time to write before my earliest work days. Definitely a plus. :)

But in the end? My biggest objection to her remains her idea that creativity comes from an external source and flows through us. I don't think that AT ALL, and no amount of reading her work has yet convinced me. I feel so empowered because I believe that creativity is something WITHIN me, that all I have to do is let it have it's way, it's my own strength, my own abilities, my own empowerment. It's funny, because if I were asked to describe it I'd probably use very similar terms to Cameron - I could see someone telling me, "no, you're saying the same thing she is!" But I'm really not - she says that creativity comes from outside of us and we're just a conduit, and I say that creativity comes from deep within ourselves and is all our own. Still, I find her exercises interesting, so I'm going to keep at it, I think I can get SOMETHING out of it, and it's at least interesting stuff to think about. ;)

Read about what everyone else has been making this week, over on Tami's Ami and Crochet blog!!

My Growing Art Collection: New Pieces by Omar Rayyan and Stephanie Pui-Mun Law

I save money all year so that I can pay my taxes. One of the perks of this strategy is that I always end up with a little bit of money left over, and I usually take a percentage of that remaining money and buy myself something nice and expensive that I've wanted for a while. Okay, not always - last year, I spent every remaining penny to clear my credit card debt, but really, that was such a load off my mind that it might as well have been a gift to myself. ;) This year, I didn't have nearly as much left as I hoped, so I once again used it to clear "debt," but it was very specific - and special - debt. I had two expensive paintings that I'd been buying in monthly installments sent to the artist, but no longer - I've now paid them both down in full. I've already written about both before, but this time I've actually got, like, permission from the artists and stuff to share the images. ;)

Every year in August I go to Gencon, a gaming convention held in Indianapolis. I pretty much go for two reasons, and neither is gaming. One is to see all my dear friends who I see no other time of the year - Gencon, I often say semi-seriously, is my family reunion. The other reason, I go is to buy art. I've spoken before about my art collection a couple of times (here and here, specifically). I LOVE art, and I love owning original art, and since I can't afford Rembrandt, I content myself to collect the gorgeous fantasy art that I encounter as part of my hobby. I started small - my first original was $20, and my second was $5 - but I've gotten bigger over time. In 2008, I spent $900 on one piece and $600 on a second while at Gencon. But the real test came in August, 2009. That year, Omar Rayyan was the artist guest of honor, and as I was working my way towards his booth, I glanced over and saw a painting, and it was love at first sight. I couldn't take my eyes off it. It was a large oil, and I knew enough about the business to be able to make a ball park guess on how much money it would be, and I was terrified to ask him how much, because I knew how much I wanted it, and I knew that my credit limit was high enough that the temptation might be irresistible, but the timing was terrible to say the least. I was in the midst of trying to secure a mortgage before closing on my apartment, and about to leave for a three week vacation to boot, and anyway, when really is a good time to spend thousands of dollars on a frivolity - even a frivolity that one loves? But I couldn't not know. So I asked. And was told that it was $5,000. I actually debated buying it for 24 hours, but it was not an amount I could afford at that time. But it wasn't so out of reach that I didn't ask, before leaving, a few critical questions. What was the smallest down payment that he would accept? How could I get in touch later if I still wanted it? He told me $1000, that e-mail was fine, and he warned me that he'd be showing it again in November and if I really wanted it I might want to make a move.

As October came, I was still thinking about the painting. My situation hadn't changed. My closing date was coming up - it was 10/27 - and I needed every penny on hand to pay all the fees and such. I had promised myself I'd try to scrape together the $1000 down payment, but I just hadn't been able to. But I knew I wanted that painting, and so I contacted Omar, and I asked if he'd accept less with the understanding that in December I'd be able to hit the $1000. He said that would be acceptable, and in mid-October, 2009, I sent my first installment. I've been paying him every month ever since. And I'm glad I made my move, because he subsequently told me that when he attended the thing in November, one of his long-time customers had approached him and said they'd finally made up their mind, and wanted to buy the painting. If I hadn't made the move when I did, I wouldn't be the owner now, and that just breaks my heart, because I love it so very much. Every time I look at it, I grin like an idiot, ear to ear. ;)





I just love it. It's so Rembrandt (my favorite artist). I took down my poster of Sirius Black and hung the Man in it's place, and it's right next to my front door, so every time I leave the apartment, and every time I get home, and every time I walk in to the kitchen, I see him, and grin like an idiot again. My biggest challenge now will be not turning around and buying another. He's got at least two other paintings I would be interested in (one is the pendant to this one), and both are the same price. But while I really, really like them both, I don't love either the way I love "Man with Gold Earring."

The second has a story as well. Stephanie Pui-Mun Law (Shadowscapes) is the artist whose work first made me want to collect art. I remember scrimping and saving so that I could buy my first of her drawings, and being horrified that I was spending (gasp) 75 whole dollars for a piece of art work. How frivolous! How insane, when I was broke! And since then - that was, er, 2002 - I have bought at least one of her originals each year. At first it was drawings, but the last few years it's been watercolors (as my budget has improved). In 2004, I believe, she started working on a tarot deck, and from the start there were images in the deck that I fell in love with. My absolute favorite was the Lovers, followed closely by the Page of Wands (which, now that my taste has shifted a little, is now my favorite). She showed the Lovers at Gencon one year and I asked how much it was, but she said it wasn't for sale (a good thing, since that was when I still didn't have much $ for such things). And I waited patiently for the Tarot deck to become available. It finally did last year, and not long after she indicated that she'd be putting the originals on sale. I was dreading it a little, because I know how much her paintings go for, and I wasn't at all sure how I would scrape the money together. Still, I looked through the whole deck, ranked which cards' originals I wanted most, and waited until she finally announced the price list and the release day. The news was mixed. The Lovers was one of the most expensive pieces on there ($1500), and the Page of Wands wasn't for sale at all. So I modified my ranking and waited. Well, when the day finally came, the Lovers sold before I got to it, which was a mixed blessing - I love it, but the money really was an issue. I looked closely at what was still available from my most wanted list, and I finally settled on the Ten of Swords. I just love the color scheme. I finished paying for it out of tax money too - it was $760 total.



All in all, I finished paying for the most and third most expensive pieces of artwork I've ever bought, and I couldn't be happier with either. Now, I can't start saving money for this year's Gencon. ;)

Note that both images are used with the consent of the artists.

Art Collection: Latest Commission

This post pertains to two of my hobbies that I don't talk about very much. One is that I collect fantasy art - absolutely love it. I mostly get originals, and I commission at least a few works every year - usually of the same character, though this commission isn't that character (that's a post for some other time, but I'd have to get a bunch of permissions first...). The second hobby that relates to this post is writing. Specifically, I'm an aspiring novelist - I've finished three first drafts, one of which I've edited about half of, and I'm currently almost a third of the way through my fourth novel, which I started on 1/1/11. How do these two things combine?

Well, the novel that I've edited about half of is under the working title of just "Golden Age," and is based off of a table-top roleplaying game that a bunch of my friends and I played. It's ridiculously over-length, which is the main reason I haven't finished it yet, but the two main characters in it are very dear to me, both because of the game, the memories I have related to them, the friendships they reflect, etc. Right after I finished the manuscript initially, in August, 2009, I spoke to my friend Avery, who is an artist, about getting three commissions. The first two were sketches of the two main characters; she finished this for me last fall. The remaining was for a full digital piece of a scene in the book.

So, a little background. "Golden Age" is a book about super heroes active during World War 2. The two main characters are a woman named Marie who goes by the superhero nickname of "Enigma," and a man named John who goes by the nickname "Scout." Because it's WW2, there's a lot of patriotic type stuff going on in the background, and at one point Marie gets asked to be the model for the centerfold in "Yank," which is a monthly magazine sent to servicemen. She's always wanted to be an actress, and so she has no issues with posing a little risque. It ends up being a minor plot point at a later point in the story. Here's the original description I wrote for the image in the centerfold:

"A stiff breeze blew a skimpy dress tight over her body and tousled the carefully-done ringlets that had been put in her hair. Her whole body was extended, one leg up, as she reached for her umbrella, moments before snatched from her hands by the same breeze. The shot was of her back, but she glanced back over her shoulder, a moue of lovely frustration on her face."

This was also the description I sent to Avery when I requested my commission (along with an overview description of what Marie looks like) - which she sent me the finished version of yesterday!! But before that, here are two 'in progress' pics...

First, she sent me a sketch to get my approval on the general layout.


Then, she sent me a follow-up with the colors filled in.


And finally, yesterday, I got the image in my e-mail that made me absolutely squee with delight:

(you can look at a bigger version here.)

I'm so, so happy with how this turned out. (and also very excited that Avery gave me permission to share it with ya'll ;) ). If you like what you see, she's always open to commissions (though there does tend to be some delay on their getting done) and you can check out her other work on her deviant art account.

At some point I'll do some posts on other artists I like; I've gotten permission from a couple already about posting some of their work - I was going to do a pre-Christmas post about all of them but didn't end up getting the time, but maybe I'll do a monthly feature instead. :)

And in case it wasn't clear? OMG SQUEE I <3 MY COMMISSION! :)

Photography Print Survey Results!

I was waiting for a 24 hours period to pass with no answers. That still hasn't happened! It's only be 14 hours...but I didn't want to wait any longer. Anyway, I think the main consensus is pretty clear and not likely to change all that much.

So! Here are the results. 26 people took my survey!! Thanks, everyone! I was hoping for a minimum of 10 replies, so I was really excited to get so many.

To the question of how many prints I should do, there was no majority, but 10 prints received the most votes (7) followed by 5 prints (6 votes) - so I'll launch this experiment with somewhere around 10 prints.

In reverse order, the top vote receivers were...

11. "Snow Fountain" (10 votes)


10. "Squiggly Trees" (11 votes)


9. "Columbine" (11 votes)


8. "Angel in the Snow" (11 votes)


7. "Bee on a Sunflower" (12 votes) - tied with Water on a Lotus Leaf for top nature pic.


6. "Water on a Lotus Leaf" (12 votes) - tied with Bee on a Sunflower for top nature pic.


5. "Big Ben and Parliament" (12 votes) - the only foreign image with more than 10 votes!


4. "Harlem Meer" (13 votes)


3. "A Snowy Day in New York City" - the most popular of the snow images, with 14 votes.


2. "St. Thomas Church" (14 votes)


And the winner, the only pic to get 15 votes - that's 62.5% of my total survey takers, IS....

(drum role)

...

1. "Lady Bug on My Book" - most popular of the New York City life images!


There were a few surprises, too. For example, the sunset on the intrepid image, a personal favorite of mine, only got two votes. Only one image in the whole survey ("By Whatever Means You Can) got no votes.

Four people skipped the last question, but of the 22 who answered it, 21 said that I should do this (and the last said that I should do prints but not with these pics - guess they have high standards but thought I had potential!)

So I'm thinking I'll do a release with 12 prints - the 11 top vote receivers, plus one lucky winner, my "Snow in the Heights" image:

Though it only got 8 votes (and lowering the cap to 8 would cause four other images to make it) I've gotten more positive feedback and favorites on this image than any other I've ever put up (even though I don't think it's the best, go fig!) and people have actually bought it before, so I think I'd be remiss in omitting it.

I've also gotten two sources for prints with multiple recommendations: WHCC and MPIX, so I'll be looking in to both.

Once again, thanks so much for your help! If you haven't taken the survey and would like to, I'm still accept votes, you can take it at: survey monkey!

Fine Art Prints

Today, I got an e-mail from the Female Photographers of Etsy Team (of which I am a member). They're trying to get us more active and involved, which I think is awesome (my Etsy teams are one of my social media sources that has fallen through the cracks of late) and to communicate some news. One of the pieces of news was a change to the team policy: they want us to include Fine Art Prints of our photography in our shops as part of membership, as they say that this is the "bread and butter" of the sale of photography.

Oof. I don't sell prints at all. The entire time I've been selling photography (a year, now) I've only sold 3 8 x 10s. However, it IS something that has really been on my mind. So since I like the team and would like to stay, and have been thinking about fine art prints, I thought I'd go ahead and get moving on this. And for this, I need your help!

First, I know some of you are artists. If you do prints, where do you get them done? I mean, I could get photography prints at Snapfish, but I can't escape the feeling that I might be able to get much nicer looking ones. I thought at least I'd see if anyone can tip me off to a good source - fast, reasonably priced, offer a variety of sizes - or at least warn me against any bad sources.

Second, if you have, oh, 10 minutes, I've put together a survey. See, the big question for me, looking at the Prints part of this, is which photographs should I offer as prints. When I first opened the photography part of the shop, my thought was to sell cards, and then if someone requested a print, I would get it custom printed for them (this has happened all of once, by the way). However, I know that the extra step surely drives people off. On the other hand, I have NO idea if prints will sell, and I don't want to keep a lot of prints (and therefore have a high initial outlaying of money) and then have none of them sell. So I was thinking - maybe I should do a pilot program. Get some input from ya'll, with your awesome artistic sensibility, and select, say, 10 images that people like best. In order to pick these 10 images, I've put up a survey on Surveymonkey.

Click here to take the survey!

For example, here's one my favorites that I sold the card long ago so most of you have probably not seen:

(so that I don't have a post without a single image)

Thanks in advance for your help, everyone.

For the Love of Art

I'm super busy, but I didn't want to neglect the blogging entirely, so I thought I'd write a quick post about another one of the things near and dear to my heart.

Yesterday, I got to go to NYC Comic Con for all of three hours, which was the only way it ended up fitting in to my schedule. It was huge and there was tons to see and do, but I only had a few things I hoped to accomplish. One was to buy a book a friend asked me to pick up for, but the other two related to art. See, I collect fantasy art; I've probably spent right around $10,000 on original fantasy art over the past 6 years or so (most of it on one painting that I'm still paying for, but more on that later.) I had to pick up a commission (which I wasn't able to, dammit) and the other was to hang out with Echo Chernik, an awesome artist whose stuff I love.

So, in honor of the nice day I spent doing these things, I thought I'd give a quick tour of some of my art and favorite artists. :)

I've already mentioned Echo Chernik, who does wonderful art-nouveau inspired artwork. My favorites are her two rocket girls:


Because her works are digitally colored, originals are a challenge, but I've got limited edition canvas prints of these two, and I bought a concept sketch of each one, also.

Stephanie Pui-Mun Law is the artist who first inspired me to collect art. Her stuff is beautiful. Sketches by her were the first originals I ever bought, and I try to get at least one of her pieces each year. My favorite (that I own...) is this one:


Until pretty recently, the most expensive piece I had bought was by Wayne Reynolds. Wayne does awesome oil and acrylic paintings of fantasy-type things. A few years ago, I saw one of his that I LOVED while I was at a convention, but I simply didn't have the money. The following year, I decided that if he still had that piece, I would figure out a way to buy it. He did, and I did:


I've never bought anything big and fancy by Doug Kovas, but I buy something small every year cause I dig his style, and he's a nice guy to boot. No scans of any of the ones I own on his webpage, unfortunately, but here's one I've thought about getting:


Then there's Andy Hopp. He's a really awesome guy with a different and interesting art style. I love his illustrationso f the periodic table of elements, but sadly I can't find any scans! I want to buy the sheet that includes iridium, it's got dinosaurs getting hit by a meteorite...

I could talk about a lot more artists (I knew I'd immediately think of at least one I shouldn't have omitted, Laura Pellick, in this case...). I always buy my art at conventions, which means that I always buy directly from the artists, so I get to speak to them and to know them, and I really like so many of them, that it's kinda hard to pick! But I'm out of time, and I've saved my most awesome owned piece of art for last.

In 2009, at Gencon, I saw the work of Omar Rayyan for the first time. Hanging in his booth, he had a painting that I immediately fell in complete love with. I asked him how much it was, and he told me it was $5,000. I asked about down payments and payment plans. We talked it over, and I knew I had to wait, but he told me that if I wanted it, I should get in touch before November, when he would next be showing it at a show. I pondered it, and tried to scrape together the $1,000 down payment, but I wasn't able to. Despite that, I outreached to him and his wife Sheila (who is also a fine artist, same link as Omar) and asked if I could give a smaller down payment, and they let me start with just $200. I've been paying them $200 a month ever since then (plus some extra out of my Christmas money), and in less than a year, it will be mine! When I saw them again at Gencon this year, Omar told me that someone asked about buying the painting at the convention in November, so I really did only barely get it, and I'm so glad, cause I love it so much:

My favorite fine artist is Rembrandt, and I love this painting so much, I think, because it really is like a high-speed collision between Rembrandt and the fantasy art I love to collect and hang all over my walls. :)

I'm sure I'll be doing more posts about fine art in the future, but that's all for now. At some point, I'll also be adding some links to pages for my favorite artists to the side bar of this blog.

In other news: it's been a month since I started this blog. Wow.

Photography: Introduction to Zillions of My Pictures

Currently, the black sheep of my crafting family is my photography. It's gone from being in an exalted position where I put it almost number one (while always remaining entirely amateur) to being overlooked. There are a few reasons for this, but I think it boils down to two simple ones:
1. I got a new camera, and hadn't put in the work necessary to get comfortable using it.
2. My photography based cards on Etsy only sold to my friends.
The first should have been a spur - a new camera with nicer features, you'd think would prompt me to take lots of new pictures - but this upgrade has meant that I have a lot more control over my images, which is kind of intimidating, and just that I was so, so used to my old camera, that it's been hard to adapt. The second has definitely been a disappointment. It's the classic example, I guess, that just because I know I'm a decent photographer, and my friends think I'm good, doesn't mean that my stuff really stacks up to the competition - it's just so hard to stand out in this medium when everyone and their mother has a camera and many know how to use photoshop.

However, on my very first blog post over on the Hive, one of my fellow users indicated an interest in seeing my pictures, and that simple comment has really renewed my interest. This makes sense - it was never far from my heart, I never stopped loving it, I was just frustrated and discouraged. But yesterday, instead of working more on my crocheting, I took the camera and went to one of my favorite places in the world to take pictures: the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I took some pictures, started to feel much happier with my camera (this process actually started last month when I went to the Brooklyn Museum of Art for the first time), and when I got home and continuing today, I've spent a bunch of time starting to do a lot of necessary maintenance on my Flickr account, stuff I'd been remiss about. The first step was to finally switch the entire collection from a Creative Commons Share-and-Share-Alike license, which hasn't made much sense since I started trying to sell stuff and had some other problems to boot, to an All Rights Reserved license. Then, I uploaded all the pics that had accumulated on my computer over the summer. Finally, I got some basic organization done. And now, I'm ready to share my Flickr account in general, and a few of the pics from yesterday in particular. :) I've had the added spur of this of wanting to get this done before Wednesday, because that's when I leave for a 2+ week trip to Italy with my mother. It can be safely assumed I'll take a few thousand pictures while there, so I needed to get prepared for that.

I started my Flickr account (username Unforth) in May, 2007, when I had accumulated enough photographs to feel silly just keeping them on my hard drive doing nothing, and had a few that I wanted to share with my friends. However, it really started to take off when I re-discovered my love of art over the following summer, and I started to post a ton when I then spent August - December 2007 in Japan. Now, three and a half years later, there are 38,530 images in the account, of which I've carefully labeled and tagged just over 27,000 (deceptive numbers, as many of the unlabeled photographs will ultimately be deleted); my main page has over 120,000 hits, and overall the account has 1,492,393 hits (I'm getting close to that 1.5 million mark!). I'll take photographs of almost anything, and I love to go to museums, gardens, and zoos, but I'd say the majority of the images are of art. I LOVE art of all kinds, and whenever a museum lets me take photographs, you can assume that I'll take lots, whether it's fine art, paintings, drawings, sculptures, decorative art, folk art, you name it. I have particular weaknesses for Dutch 17th and 18th century painters, pencil, ink and chalk drawings, arms and armor from anytime and anywhere, ridiculous Rococo furniture, 20th century American glassware and pottery, Baroque sculpture...actually, I can't list all my weaknesses, the list is too long. :)

I originally started taking pictures of art when I accepted that I would never be able to own a collection of Rembrandt originals. Photographing of art is a way for me to build my own museum, with items from the greatest collections in the world, and put them all in one place. This collection is for me. However, what's the point of uploading them if no one can use them? And that's why I'm so careful to label them thoroughly - every photograph I take of a piece of art, I also photograph the museum label, and accurately label the photographs so that people can find them and enjoy them as much as I do. Happily, I've now also accepted that I could collect art even if couldn't afford the finest of fine art, and I now have a modest collection of fantasy art originals that I love and have framed all over the walls of my tiny apartment.

Yesterday, I took a set at the Met, and because I knew I'd be sharing it here, I've already gotten in labeled (I'm usually lucky if I get sets labeled within a few months...). Some of the images that I'd say turned out best include:

St. John the Baptist in the Wilderness (Claude Mellan, French, 1629):


Standing Figure (Japanese, late 17th century):


Krishna Battling the Horse Demon, Keshi (Indian, 5th century):


Detail on an Incense Burner (Chinese, Ming dynasty, dated 1512):


Detail of a Tapestry depicting the Liberation of Oriane (from a set called "Amadis of Gaul," Dutch, 1590 - 95)


I would say that almost all of the best photos I've taken are of artwork. Unfortunately, there are all kinds of messy copyrights involved in museum photography, and so I can't market prints of any of these images until I work up the nerve to approach the museum staff and ask what would be involved in getting the necessary permissions.

I'm sure I'll end up talking more about photography, art, my art collection, selling the art, how and why art inspires me, and all manner of related topics, but for now, I think this post is long enough. :) Now, to get away from this computer and finish the baseball hat while I watch the Giants beat the Panthers... :)