Yesterday was my Birthday, and it was a wonderfully emotional day for me. I've never had a Birthday that was as wonderful as this one. The Picture above is from yesterday, I am wearing my new shirt Madison got me for me. You can't see it to good, but it is full of skulls and is really cool. She also got me a really nice tri-pod for my model shoots, which we have one coming up this week, and I will share some pics in the next blog if the models don't mind. One of them, Madeline, is going to be a regular Model for me. So you will be seeing her in a good bit in my work, like Suzi and Jane. I will be introducing you to her this coming week.
While I had the camera out, I took a few pictures to show you kind of how I have things set up, and I will be taking many more pictures in the near future. I still need some more shelves and some of those artificial trees. But I will get them soon. The biggest problem I have now is how to get a hook to stay on a concrete wall without falling off when I hang a painting on it. I tried to liquid nail the hooks to the wall, but that doesn't hold good enough to hang a painting on. I know, I hung one, and in the middle of the night it came crashing down, destroying a 100 dollar frame. Luckily the painting didn't get hurt at all.
This next pic is where my computer is set up, which is about 10 foot to the right of these pictures.
When you set here every week and write a blog, you never really know if people are reading it or not. I mean you can put a tracker on it to let you know who is reading it and from where and the amount of times they check it out and all, but after hearing from all of you, you really inspired me to keep doing what I am doing and take it even more seriously. On the same note, just on Facebook alone, we hit 1000 followers this week. Another milestone. Now there are more than that actually, but that's just from Facebook.
As I keep telling my friends, your not wasting time being on Facebook. Because of it, I know when I start the convention trail in January, that at every town I go, I will have Facebook friends there to hang out with and to meet in person. I also conduct a lot of business on FB, meet new clients, and sell prints via Facebook through my website. But the main thing is the friends I have made. Each day, my friends on Fb encourage me, show me love and friendship. They make me so happy that I got back the will to live, and they all had a lot to do with that. Evil people had been slowly tearing away my heart and soul for several years, but now I am reclaiming what belongs to me, and I am looking forward to the future no matter where it takes me, because now I know people do love me and care. They look forward to my next piece of art, and they spend their money on it, when right now, most people can't even afford to eat.
It all started with Madison and the kids. For a very long time, I had no one that was real. All I had was snakes surrounding me, tearing me down. Telling me I was an As*hole, and that people hated me and my art. And after you hear something for so long, and no one tells you different, you start to believe it. Madison changed all that. She helped me to open my eyes and see things for what they where. She helped me deal with all the pain I had been dealing with, and she started helping me get rid of the anger that was inside me, and encouraged me to see the Therapist at the VA. An over this last year, together we have built Wicked Kitty Studio LLC. Madison is the owner of the company, and WKS owns the rights to all the work I do. She handles most of all the business, or I have to run it by her first before a decision is made. This protects me, my art from all the thieves and crooks out there, and I don't have to worry about any of the paperwork, ect. I just do what I love to do, the company provides me with everything I could possibly need to do my art the way I want.
I felt like I needed to tell all of you about these things. I consider 99% of you friends and family, and now that I know that you are really reading this and giving a hoot about us, I feel like you deserve to know these things. I would also recommend to each of you once your work is getting notice, protect yourself. There are just some flat out evil people out there that will try to trick you into signing your rights and art away. Just last week, some fellow I don't know much about wanted me to let him have the rights to use the painting I just did for Horrorbound. At first he acted like he had some money to work with, and then it went to he didn't know how he was going to pay his rent this week, and he was begging people for money on FB. But he wrote to me, after I told him I had to run it by Madison, and said to me " We don't have to bring her into this" after I told him that she was the boss. So, I sent him a polite letter that said, "No Deal" He had the nerve to write me back, and demand that I explain to him why I would not let him have the rights to my art. Of course, I just blew him off for the joke he is, but the point is, you will be dealing with people like this throughout your career as well, so always have someone to talk over important decisions with, because (at least in my case) we can get excited and want to do something, but in reality, your gonna get scr*wed, and the con artist is just setting you up.
Now on to what i want to share this week. Because I felt so bad earlier in the week, I still haven't found the disk I need to do alot of the things we will be covering, but since I decided to go back to my roots myself, and get back to basics, I made a Masters training Palette. Here is a picture of the palette and the Value scale that I used for it. I will explain it all better after the pics.
On this Value scale, you will want to click on it to enlarge it, then copy it to your files to print out.
While I was waiting for the paint to dry, I super glued the 2 pieces of glass together, mostly around the edges, where I know the duct tape will cover it. After the paint was dry, i used a glue stick to fasten the value scale to one side of the palette, and then I took super glue again and glued the glass to the card board where you could see the value scale through the glass as in the picture above. I put about 10 books on top of this until the next morning (Probably and hour would have been fine, but it was getting late) The next morning I took Duct tape and when around all 4 edges, and applied it as in the picture. This is to keep you from cutting yourself on the edges of the glass. Now you have a great palette. It is large, so you can have several mixtures at once, and the glass makes for easy cleaning with a razor scrapper and a little turpentine.
To make this you will need:
2 sheets of glass the same size and to suit your needs. You can go smaller or larger. Your preference.
I piece of cardboard cut to the size of the glass
Gray paint
3 tubes of super glue
1 value scale
Duct Tape.
This palette will help train your eye in mixing the different values of color. Now in a lot of commercial art or comic art, you see only 3 values of a color. This is save time, ect. But if you want to be a "Real" artist, you will want to work hard on learning the different values in a color and how to mix them. Having the scale under the glass of your palette will help you to do this. This is something we will be covering much more as I teach you the "Riley Method" Take pride in this and hold it dear to your heart. You are being taught history handed down from one generation to another, that started with Leonardo Da Vinci. Take great pride in that. Only a handful of living people know this method, and I will teach you all of it as I finish learning it.
I hope all or you have a awesome week, and I really appreciate from the bottom of my heart all the Birthday wishes. Bless you all. "May the Darkness Comfort You"
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