artalicious

Ok, this isn't exactly art, but I think it's pretty creative.

We own a house built in 1960. It has it's original hardwood floors (which are beautiful). BUT those hardwoods have shrunk a bit in their 50 years and now have some decent gaps between them (which are also beautiful). What is less beautiful is when our cats track litter all over and it gets stuck in those gaps. And then when those same cats mess with their water and we end up with litter cement in the cracks. That's actually kind of gross. And impossible to clean.

So Robert came up with a design for a "cat bench/litter home". The basic idea being that it's a bench with a hole in the top that holds our litter boxes. The kittehs jump in and out from the top, which ends up keeping most of the litter either inside the bench or on top. It's awesome.

I shelf papered the inside to make clean up easier (our big man cat can have, uh, difficulties with aiming). We also put it on casters so it's easier to move and it needed to be raised as it sits right over the AC vent for that room. We've made it very open so that the bench won't hold on to cat poop smells and discourage any of them from going in.

So far, it's been a hit! The litter is staying inside, everyone has been ok with using it. In fact they love to sit on the top (which has been enhanced with a thrift store bath mat) and watch the birds.

The other great bonus is that none of the dogs can sneak in there and eat "kitty treats!" Before we would have to shut the door to the cat room and make sure that the kitties got potty breaks, but not anymore!

Here's some other views. Fatty Duncan admiring the birds outside. They have their bath mat on one side and food and water dish on the other (the dogs also can't get those now either!).


The view during the feeding frenzy, uh I mean dinner time. Mr. Tub sez "Back off from my food bitches!" You can see one box peeking through the hole in the bench lid.


Robert is demonstrating poopy scooping time! We keep that long piece of scrap wood in there and use it to prop up the lid. You can also see the shelf paper. I didn't do the whole inside because I'm lazy and it's hard. I'd also like to paint the whole bench and seal the inside with a high gloss paint.


And on the "front" of the bench, we wound some sisal rope to make an extra scratcher for the cats to use.


So that's it! It was a fun project and it's really made a difference in keeping the kitty room clean.

For our GPP, I've been saving this fantastic photo of Boo, our girl cat.

This is our kitty:


This is our kitty on drugs!


~JML

Posted in: Animals, pet furniture, Random Things, Robert Hill on March 20, 2009 at at 12:29 PM 3 comments    

Well, it's been another month!

Robert and I did hardly any shooting this past month, and I really slacked on the photo editing. Despite all of that, we still had ok sales.

Shutterstock

We had 34 photos accepted and 9 photos rejected. Our gallery now has 230 images! Overall, we had a total of $23.51 in sales. We also had at least one sale for every day except the 28th! That's great as generally sales drop off to zero on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays.

Here's a favorite from February's uploads.

It's actually an illustration I did a long time ago for a logo. It didn't end up being used and I randomly found it on a hard drive a couple weeks ago and thought I might as well upload it! So far it's earned me a dollar.

Big Stock Photo

I had one image accepted (the above) and none rejected. We also had zero sales. Nothing too exciting there, but not unexpected since I don't do much with BSP right now.

Dreamstime

I had one image accepted and none rejected. We had 4 downloads which equaled $5 in sales! A bit better than last month, especially considering that I'm not very active with this site.

Goals for March

Upload more! We still have 85 bazillion images, some of them need to end up online! I've also been working on my stock inspiration binder and we're just about ready to try some still life shots and see how those turn out. I'll post those images once we finish with them.

And now for the GPP! For those not in the Southeast, it snowed buckets yesterday. Which meant it was time for Snow Dogs! Here's a brief glimpse of what our day looked like.

nom nom nom. snowball. nom nom nom.


back the f@$% off, small dog. my snowball.


did someone say something?


what's that food lady? did you say…


SNOWBALLZ? sproing.


SUPER SPROING.


snowball crisis has been handled. i will now pose majestically in the snow.


The entire snow set can be found here.

~JML

Posted in: Big Stock Photo, Dreamstime, Shutterstock, Stock Images, Stock Recap on March 2, 2009 at at 2:50 PM 1 comments    

"There are other ways to get home! You shouldn't have gotten in that car, now you might be considered a suspect!"

Those who are familiar with the Citi Kroger will not be surprised by that statement. Robert and I kind of gave each other this *look* when we heard it.

So, that wasn't art related at all, but it was too funny/weird to pass up.

There's a new face for today's GPP! Meet Rascal! He belongs to Rachel and her wife Terri. He looks to be a very spoiled and lucky dog. I wonder if his fur is as soft as it looks? I love this photo of him, partly because he's got a backpack! Keira has one as well and she loves it. I tried to find the Taters one, but they don't seem to come that small.



Also, Mum and Mike, you must email me GPPs as well. I need to see how big Ilsa is now!

~JML

Posted in: Random Things on February 25, 2009 at at 11:35 AM 4 comments    

So I'm trying to get back into the swing of Illustration Fridays. This weeks concept is Instinct. I'm also just trying to blog more and maybe go back through some older pieces, so I thought I'd use 4 pictures from my "Dick and Jane" series.

To sum up the project briefly, I think it's crap that depictions of men doing "traditional women's work" (cleaning, cooking, child-raising) is often emasculating. That the men are somehow, less manly for doing such things. I think it devalues the work that many women do and it lets men (in general) off the hook for learning how to do these tasks that are essential to maintaining a home and family.

Since the biggest way to effect change (in my opinion) is to start young, I took some of the old "Dick and Jane" stories and re-illustrated them, turning all the female characters to male ones. So Mom becomes Dad, Jane becomes Johny, etc.

How these relate to IF? I hope these illustrate (haha?) that divisions in labor that run along gender lines, are NOT instinctual.




And now for everyone's favorite part: the gratuitous pet photo! (I'd also like to say, that I still can't spell gratuitous correctly after all these GPPs. Thank god for spell check). Today's GPP comes courtesy of Katie and Rhiannon. I thought this one was super funny. Rhiannon is being a beast! (grrrr…) and doing pushups, while Oliver attempts to…help her? thwart her? make her laugh so she falls and crushes him? It is a mystery. But it's also super cute!


This reminds me, so that the GPPs aren't all of Aggie (I think she's cute, but I understand not everyone holds the same opinon), if you have your own GPP and would like me to use them, please send them to me! You can email them to: julia at julialutgendorf dot com.

~JML

Posted in: Digital, Feminism, Illustration, Illustration Friday, Rhiannon on February 20, 2009 at at 12:35 PM 5 comments    

Say that title 5 times fast.

I should have recapped this on Friday, the day after it happened, because then I would have REMEMBERED more of what I wanted to write about.

So, in brief, it was lots of fun! Saw many friends and met lots of people (well Robert did, he's the one with art in the show and he's more outgoing than I am). Heard lots of great comments about his work, and lots of people told him he needs to keep making more! So exciting!

So let's progress to the photos, 'cause that's the fun part. I have to apologize for the image quality. We were running late and forgot to bring Robert's camera with us, so these were all taken with his iPhone and are thus noisy and not properly exposed. Alas.

Let's start with a portrait of the artist. Doesn't he look happy that I made him pose for this photo?



Here's the two of us together with his art.


And here's a shot of the art "in situ."


Here's our friend Jennifer Young, posing with her artwork.


And here's my favorite piece of hers.


I love that little bunny! So sweet and innocent in that flower. Jennifer does a lot of illustration work that I love. She's also a very talented (and helpful!) tattoo artist.

Here's one of Nell's pieces from inside the gallery:


And from outside:


Yes, that's me. I love Nell's work, how she uses line and planes to create these fantastic new ways of looking at spaces. The photos of these don't do them justice at all. I'd love to buy one of these, but we're poor and I'm pretty sure the kittehs would do their best to knock them off our windows and eat them.

Here's some pieces by other artists. I'll have to see if I can find out who they were made by since I can't remember. First these neat glasses that had images transfered onto their lenses.


I wanted to put them on to see the pictures, like those antique 3-d glasses, but of course, then the image would be too close for my eyes to even focus on it!

Here's me using a magnifying glass to look at some TINY print. That's Katie behind me.


There was also a really nice series of woodcuts. I wanted to get this one for Mike:


But I'm poor, so he'll just have to make due with this grainy photo. (He's got a Belgian Malnois puppy.)

Overall, it was a great show. There was a huge variety of works and just about everything was beautiful and well crafted. So many of the pieces were impressive in regards to how well people could work on such a small scale, and the amount of information or emotion that could fit into such tiny spaces.

Now, for the Gratuitous Pet Photo! Which today is actually a series of photos illustrating what happens when Keira gets to play with her boyfriend, O'Malley.

We start out with this:


A body SLAM! I love how O'Malley's tail looks in this picture. Actually I love his whole body shape. I think it conveys exactly what it would feel like to have Keira body check you. Which is mostly, "holy crap!"

O'Malley retaliates with an "I'll eat your FACE!"


To which Keira says, "Eat this, biatch!"


They both decide that they should work together to crash into the food lady. (Who is clumsy and slow and couldn't get her ass out of the way in time.)


Oliver thinks the whole thing is quite ridiculous. And that I should be petting him instead of photographing those losers.



~JML

Posted in: art show, Jennifer Young, Nell Ruby, Robert Hill on February 15, 2009 at at 2:53 PM 2 comments    

Here's a Gratuitous GPP (a GGPP?).

This first one is of Keira as a puppy. I think she was about 4-5 months old. Her ears were full grown, but she wasn't!


And here's The Taters (ie, Aggie). She's being majestic in the kudzu. I think she looks like a foo dog.


I hope they make you smile!

~JML

Posted in: Animals on February 13, 2009 at at 6:03 PM 6 comments    

Let's just say the evening started out like this (bonus points if you see what's wrong):



And ended like this:



Ha ha! ok, it didn't really go down EXACTLY like that. The first photo is true. I can't spell and was in a hurry and didn't run spell check. The second photo is a great example of the face I make when I try to drink wine. Needless to say, I don't drink it very often. And now that I know what my face looks like, I may tone it down a bit!

In reality, the night started off really slow. Like, soul-crushingly slow. I didn't realize it until later, but our stretch of building was listed as last on the tour. So there weren't a lot of people coming through, and those that were there, were fancy art connoisseurs. I have nothing against art connoisseurs (I hope they buy my art some day!) but when you ask people like that if they'd like to have their photo taken being "decorated by Valentine's Day accessories," they give you a look that can be loosely translated into "are you high?"

I'll be honest, after the first hour of glares, we were ready to pack it in and visit the other studios. We were sure we'd misjudged the event and the crowd. Fortunately, our friends Luma and Tracy showed up and they were kind and posed for us. At that point, I think people saw them getting their picture taken and the crowd was picking up (and drinking a bit more) and we started having a much easier time of things.

We had some people who felt this way about Valentine's Day:



Though they made up at the end.


Our good friends Leah and Katie showed up and demonstrated the best way to celebrate St. Patrick's Day:



Another nice fellow stopped by and did a wonderful job modeling our "St. Patrick's ears":


Another friend of ours, Nicolette, came with two friends. They were creative!


Then, we helped a family embarrass their teenage daughter.


We ended the evening with these three. Who decided they wanted to find their own props.


All in all, the evening turned out really well. We met lots of new people (and remembered to get email addresses this time) and took a lot of fun portraits. The rest of the pictures can be found here.

I'd like to change a few things about our studio set-up for the next show. We need more art up on the walls for those who don't want a photo taken, but are interested in photography. Hopefully I'll also have some illustrations or paintings done by that time as well. I think we're also going to have to come up with photo ideas that are more creative and perhaps a little less cheesy.

And now, for the gratuitous pet photo! Today's GPP is of little Boo, our female cat. This was her first Christmas with us, when she was still young and innocent and let us stick tiny hats on her head.


This photo was used with several others in our Christmas cards that year. This photo is up in our studio and she got lots of compliments. Though I'm not sure we could convince her to be quite so well behaved anymore.

~JML

Posted in: Holidays, Portraits, RAD, Studio on February 9, 2009 at at 9:48 PM 1 comments