Monthly Archives: June 2004

Personal Blog

Selling Art to Parents

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I’m making this entry friends-only because I know my parents read my journal and I don’t want to hurt their feelings, but I have to vent a little.

Okay, so, I give lots of art to my parents, both as gifts and just for them to display because I have a lot of glass and no place to store it. However, some trouble always arises when my parents ask to *buy* a piece.

I used to not let them buy anything I had that was for sale, but this year they were very insistent on wanting to buy some of my glass, especially from my senior show. So I sat them down and said “Okay, you can buy my art if you want to, but if you DO, then you CAN’T buy them as my parents. You have to buy them as a CUSTOMER. So, when I ask you to pay me, you can’t start pulling this ‘oh we sent you through college we payed for so much blahbity blah and you want to make us pay for this?” stuff

And they said “okay.” So I let them buy some of my work. Lately I’ve been mentioning getting paid, and there they go…”oh we are helping you buy a car we payed for your education blahbity blah and you want to make us pay for this?” ARGGGGG!! They do it in a half-jesting sort of manner, but I feel like they are serious in some way. It is even more frustrating because I had several people interested in the particular pieces my parents bought at my senior show.

The problem is, I *do* feel guilty for asking them to pay me because of all they had done for me. That’s why I made them agree to act like customers when they buy my art, not parents (that’s why I used to not let them buy my art at all). It is very very frustrating.

I’m half considering saying “Okay, if you guys don’t pay me by Conglomeration, I’m taking those pieces and selling them in the art show.”

I dunno, I wonder if Leonardo Da Vinci’s mother asked him for commissions, then guilt tripped him when he asked for payment >_< Any advice would be welcome

Personal Blog

Calling all PHP People!

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I revamped the personal section of my site. I’m trying to keep it small and compact, and there is as always stuff to be added. If anyone has a browser other than Internet Explorer 6 or Mozilla Firefox 0.9, could you take a look and make sure the layout isn’t totally whacked out? Thanks! There are new photos on there too, of seahorses!

https://www.wertle.com/personal

Also, I need all you people who are good with PHP! My next assignment I’ve given myself on my art archive is to do two doable but probably very tedious things.

One is, to have my search results display on multiple pages, so 10 results would display on one page and so on.

The other is, when you click on an image and go to the display page, to have Back and Forward buttons that will go through the images in the search results.

Both of these seem like they need to involve some magical global list to store search results in (it would actually only need to store 1 attribute of the results, because I can get all the info I need from the id number), but I do not know enough PHP to figure out a good way to do this.

Any advice?

Personal Blog

Comicathon

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In July, Brendan and Maria are going to Comic-con, and Brendan thought it would be a good fun idea to make a comic compilation with me, Will and Stephen. (phew! lotta links)

Anyway, upon realizing that we are all terrible procrastinators, we realized the only way this could possibly get done was to have an all-day comic-drawing-athon. It was really fun, and productive (in spite of occasional video game and food breaks), as I went in with only one idea–that I wanted to use my old character, Samurai Virus–and came out with new characters, a story idea, and good 5 pages of rough sketchiness. Of course I’ll upload it when it has been completed, but I’m warning you right now, A PUPPY DIES ON THE FIRST PAGE.

*ahem* Yes, so, good productive drawing fun. Goals for next week include: cleaning this mess I’ve made from puppet building, finishing my Fish painting, starting a new small painting of a dragon, and of course working more on this comic.

Personal Blog

Buildin a puppet for fun

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I have now constructed a dragon puppet head that opens its mouth and blinks. I am in the process of building flapping wings for its body. I would take pictures, but it looks like a mutilated cyborg right now, due to being mostly upholstery foam, wood, fishing wire, coathangers, and electrical tape (don’t worry, I’ll take a photo once I get his head all prettied up).

It’s ended up being a lot bigger than I was planning on, but that’s okay. Hopefully I’ll have it finished by Conglomeration, so I can carry it about and have it steal baby carrots from the Con Suite. Woo!

In other news, the squirrels have realized that my cats can’t get them through the window, so they have taken to running right up to the window sill and teasing my cats on the other side, saying things like “Oh oh, lookit me! You could totally swipe me if that glass weren’t there, but it IS, and you CAN’T. HAHAHAHAHAHHA!” Silly squirrels.

Personal Blog

yesterday i scrounged trash bins until i found an old plug, which i used to make an adaptor for charging my ipod and camera battery

Nate () is my hero.

Personal Blog

General Update

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The summer has been going exquisitely, in spite of some sleeping problems I had after Carleton left on his trip, but I think I’ve gotten a handle on that now.

It is wonderful, I have so much inspiration to do art! I’m working steadily on that painting of Fish, as well as a commission I am doing for Scott. I also finished up some gift art that I started for Flamestryke two years ago, but stopped when we lost communication. I decided to start over and finish it up, after I regained contact with him this spring. It was another vector-coloring experiment, to counter balance the oil painting and watercolor/colored pencil pieces I’m working on.

I also have an inkling to try batiking (or to make a batik…is it a noun or a verb?) I tried it once in high school with so-so results, but I had an idea of a door hanging that I would love to make, I just need to go buy supplies for it.

Last night I went to a tapas bar in town with Jaime, Becca, and Laura, and it was reeeeeeeeeally yummy! I had always wanted to try a Spanish tortilla, I’m glad I got a chance. Tapas are tasty!

I keep having dreams about the Science Center, which I am taking as a sign that I need to go there. I need to visit it at least once before I leave Kentucky for the year.

Other tidbits: I’ve picked Kempo back up full swing (it’s great to see everybody again), I’ve been making regular trips to the library, I am secretly writing a story…in secret, Dave () still owes me pie.

Personal Blog

Crazy LJness

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Hey guys, I’ve seen some of you on my friends list post the Russian Meme, and I thought I’d give you the heads up. It’s a potential security problem. More info here:

http://www.livejournal.com/users/gregoire77/120830.html

and

http://www.livejournal.com/users/rosenho/274752.html

Personal Blog

Crafty Ideas

So today, I was preparing a list of things I plan to sell at Conglomeration this summer, thinking about my boyfriend as he flies to Russia, and noticing my small collection of matryoshka, you know, those Russian nested wooden dolls?. I suddenly thought, “How awesome would it be to make a set of those!” and visualized a dragon-themed set.

Unfortunately, I am far from a master woodworker, or even an amateur woodworker, or even a woodworker at all, so fashioning my own set of dolls is out of the question. Making dolls out of some other material wouldn’t feel right.

I’m still feeling awfully inspired, though, and perhaps I’d be able to hunt down a set of “blank” dolls to paint, if only to have a set just for myself.

Personal Blog

Website update

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Sorry for the two brief updates in one day, but if anyone has been to my website recently, they will notice some renovations have occurred.

The biggest of which is that I got my spring databases course final project, my online portfolio and image archive, up and semi-running:

https://www.wertle.com/portfolio

This is especially for all you guys who have asked me “Hey, do you still have that picture of that thing you drew two years ago?” and those of you who have prodded to see all those Life Anthropomorphized comics again.

There are still some large images that escaped my uploads, and not all my old images have been uploaded yet, so there’s a large gap between like 2002 and now, and the Search features in the archive will probably get expanded in the future, but for now, I hope you enjoy it!