Illness, Orphan Works, & Some Flowers

Where does the time go? I just noticed that my last post was in early April - and now it's July! Where did I disappear to for so long? Well, I fell quite ill in the end of April and did little more than stay home, sleep, and watch tv for several weeks. I've never been so sick in all my life and hope that I'm never so sick again!

So, since then I've spent massive amounts of time researching and implementing a new crazy-strict diet that I'm trying out in the hopes that it will help to keep me healthy. Unfortunately (or fortunately), carrying out the diet requires a good deal of home-cooking, label-reading, and searching for obscure ingredients. This is not so bad to me since I like cooking, but my goodness, it has been a time-sink recently.

Anyway, I do have a new piece of art to post, but I'm holding it for a future post. I'd meant to post months ago about the Orphan Works Act that's currently in Congress, but sleeping on the couch seemed much more important (and unavoidable) at the time. So I know I'm really late on the subject, but in the off-chance that there's anybody left out there who still doesn't know about this - There are currently two bills making their way through government - the Senate version, S. 2913: Shawn Bentley Orphan Works Act of 2008 and the House version, H.R. 5889: Orphan Works Act of 2008. The bills set out to free up "orphaned works" (those which are no longer covered by copyright or whose copyright owners cannot be found) for use by cultural institutions, museums, libraries, etc. Sounds nice in principle, but the bills have been drafted in such a broad, sweeping manner that living copyright owners' work may be considered "orphaned" simply because an infringer/user could not locate the owner.

Most artists are upset about this legislation for many reasons -
- If someone else is using our work, without our permission/knowledge, than the exclusivity of our right to exploit the work (as set out in current copyright law) is null and void. We would lose a degree of decision making power regarding our own work. For those that don't know - it's very important to maintain exclusivity of the rights to one's works especially when licensing work to companies, as many arrangements are for specific exclusive rights, i.e. exclusive greeting card rights, etc.
- the possibility of needing to register our work with multiple (currently non-existent) databases to avoid unwanted use at unknown expense to the artist and potentially large amounts of time uploading art that would be better spent on making new art.
- the limitation on damages for unauthorized use
- violation of international copyright law
And so on.... Brad Holland of the Illustrators Partnership explains it in this audio interview. He's speaking in 2008, but referring to the 2006 versions of the bills since the 2008 versions were not available at the time. All the same, it is still relevant to the current proposals:

http://www.sellyourtvconceptnow.com/orphan.html

The Illustrators Partnership has tons of articles on the subject. The most current ones are at the bottom of the page. This one is set up as a Q & A.

For an opinion not directly from an artist, here's a letter to the House of Representatives from a lawyer who works with creative industries.

So, what to do - if you want to oppose these amendments, there are several pre-written, editable e-mail letters here. All you have to do is choose a letter, fill in your name and address and you're done.

For people outside the U.S. wishing to oppose the amendments, there's a letter here. Scroll to the bottom to find addresses where to send them. International voices are very important in opposing these bills as they will affect artists and creators globally.

And lastly, there's a petition, albeit not the most well-written one, here.

The broad manner in which these bills were written seem, to me at least, to be the product of a society and/or people that regard art & its inherent bundle of exclusive rights as something other than personal private property (which is exactly what it is - the "P" in "IP") and what artists do as something less than work. I'm all for cultural institutions getting access to truly orphaned works - just not at the expense of the living artists who create the content that will fill their halls in the future.

So, that's the last of my activism for today. Now, to happy-it-up around here with some pictures of wildflowers taken back in April pre-illness. These pictures were taken off the side of the highway on my husband's drive to work:

Road Trip!

Wildflower season isn't over yet, so I thought I'd try once more to find the sweeping fields of flowers that I'm so longing to see. I'd read that Marble Falls is a wildflower-heavy location, so we took the hour-long drive northeast out of Austin to see what we could find.

I can honestly say we did not find a shocking amount of wildflowers on the drive over, nor did I notice any wildflowers to speak of in Marble Falls - most likely because I don't really know where to look. It seemed that the best patches of flowers were along the highways right in and around Austin. But all was not lost - I planned ahead such that in the event we did not discover the desired wildflower treasure at the end of the journey, we would still have something else to explore. We drove just a little beyond Marble Falls and visited Longhorn Caverns. The picture is the entrance to the cave - all the pictures shot inside the cave were too dark to bother posting. It was a pleasant 70 degrees inside the cave - very nice respite from the warmer weather we've been having. Pretty neat place - during the prohibition years, the cave had served as a speakeasy complete with a dance-floor in a sizeable 'ballroom.'

After touring the cave, we took a hike along a short nature trail at the end of which were some old buildings. They were very sturdy buildings and looked surprisingly new for the age. One had a spiral staircase which you could climb to the top of a tower and lookout over the land.

Though I was a bit disappointed not to have found my long sought-after fields of wildflowers, I was glad we'd been able to explore yet another interesting part of Texas. But we weren't finished quite yet - just as we entered Austin, Chris noticed a side-road just off the highway that was lined with dense patches of bluebonnets. We quickly turned around and went back so I could take some pictures. It was just what I'd been looking for - lovely patches of blue dotted with the red of Indian paintbrush. A perfect end to a pleasant road trip.

Wildflower Season

Here's a couple pictures we took at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center:












I was hoping for sweeping fields of bluebonnets and Indian paintbrush - I didn't quiet get that since this year's only an 'average' wildflower years as opposed to a 'spectacular' year, but even so, it was a nice place to visit. It's quite an attractive facility and even features a rain collection system that stores something like 10,000 gallons - very eco-friendly. So, I am still on the hunt for sweeping fields of bluebonnets. I hear the best spots are often to be found alongside highways.

After I caught up listening to the entire archive of "This American Life" over the last year or so, I started listening to the archives of "Speaking of Faith" which I'd occasionally hear on public radio in LA. They don't seem to play it here in Austin... But I just listened to this one a couple days ago and it is just so good I thought I'd share. If you're looking for something moving, here ya go:

http://speakingoffaith.publicradio.org/programs/wisdomoftenderness/index.shtml

The Harpist

Seems I'm not yet finished with my long hair kick or maybe, rather, it isn't finished with me. This sketch is somewhat vaguely inspired by some Japanese fairy-tales I was reading not long ago:I think this is going to be an experiment in style and technique. I'm thinking I'd like to ink the line work, paint it in watered-down acrylic for more of a watercolor look and then slap in some brighter, more opaque color in the sky and flowers. Might be tricky... It's hovering between two styles in my mind's eye and I'm not entirely sure how to approach it yet. We shall see how it turns out...









We intended to hike a 2.5 mile trail last weekend, but it somehow, magically turned into nine miles! We started out at Barton Creek - South Gus Fruh Park and ended up somewhere far, far away. The trails followed along both sides of a broad, dry creek-bed (looked wide enough to be a river to me!) We were pretty tired when we hit the half-way point and completely worn out by the end of the hike.

Wildflower season is nearly upon us and I am so looking forward to it! I hear the bluebonnets are quite a sight to behold. Now I just have to find all the bluebonnet fields!

The Crane's Captive Revisited

My, oh my - seems I've been a bit neglectful updating here. Has it been a month already? Well, I haven't loads of news or anything, just the usual weekend hiking and, oh yes, a finished painting. It's been more or less finished for some time, but I've been picking at the details on and off for a while and therefore stalled in posting it online:The major problem I see with this one is in the closeness of value between the girl's face and the background. They just kind of blend together when the image is small, but it's actually looking a bit better since I added a touch for color to her pale face. This was a nice, relatively quick piece for me since I managed to leave the backgrounds very washy and really only build up the paint on the characters. The scan here is looking a bit warmer than the original for some reason. The original's just a bit cooler in the grays.

I am still debating whether this piece can be a print or not since it's a rather unusual size. Maybe a magnet or sticker... Well, either way, that will have to wait until our new computer is 100% up and running! Yes, we have a new computer! We decided it was time to replace our ancient seven-year old machine after many blue-screens-of-death, full scratch disks, and myriad other bizarre behavior. "Hobbes," the computer, still clunking along even today, was a loyal machine for a long time and will enjoy a quiet retirement in our closet.

Chris has been itching for a trail with ruins and 'urban decay' these days, so last weekend we trekked over t0 Balcones Park which is a green space that runs behind and between apartment and office buildings. Hopefully his urban decay cravings were satiated with the several bridges, tunnels, and battered concrete paths we came across in the park:










There was a nicely designed path starting at one of the office buildings and trailing off into the forest to join up with the rougher paths. Seems like it'd be such a lovely way to go to work - trekking through the forest!

Well, I think I'd best be off. The plants need watering, the laundry needs put away, and my husband will soon need picked up from work!

The Crane's Captive

I have a new sketch that I'm about to start painting:

I had a dream wherein I saw dozens of pink flowers drifting lazily along a stream and then an overhead view of a boat. So, that's where the idea for this started. For a while I had only the girl in the boat, but it seemed like something was missing. I thought about adding a raven to the prow of the boat, but that still didn't seem quite right. I've been reading a book of Japanese fairy tales and one of them made mention of a crane and I thought, that's it! A crane is exactly what this picture needs! I did consider other tall water birds like herons and storks also and for a while it was kind of a toss-up between a crane and a heron, but the crane won out in the end since they are a bit more delicate and seemed more fitting for the illustration. Looking at all those pictures of herons makes me want to paint one though. They look a bit mean and rather unkempt - definitely a bird not to be messed with...



The weather's been so nice lately, so of course, we took advantage of it this past weekend and got in our weekly-when-possible hike over at St. Edwards Hill. This was one of those parks where there are dozens of little trails not shown on the map and therefore very easy to get lost. We managed not to get lost, but sometimes it felt like we weren't so sure where we were going. The most interesting feature of the park was a low dam where the water cascades over in a couple spots. It's such an odd sensation to stand on top of the dam and look out over the creek - almost like walking on water!

Amongst the Mangroves

At long last I have a new finished piece of art to post:

I suppose I'm reasonably satisfied with this piece. It seemed like it went a little smoother than usual and I managed to keep the paint fairly thin on the background which helps to cut down on time spent on the piece. What bothers me a bit is this isolated pool of red-orange that is the squirrel/boat. The warm yellow of the dragonflies was intended to balance out the orange of the squirrel, but I think they are too small to be as effective as I'd like. I did push some orange-ish color around in the background, but maybe not enough... All the same I think it came out okay.
Prints are in my Shop.

Not only have I finally gotten back to painting, but we've also gotten back to our frequent weekend hiking. We had a good long walk at nearby Bull Creek this past weekend. This trail was about three miles one way meandering back and forth across the wide creek. Where in LA we could clearly see the extremely parched condition of the land in the form of dry creek-beds and trickling waterfalls, here we could see the opposite - an abundance of water. We've heard the reason for this is that the soil's quite thin and underneath lies a layer of rock, so the water can't really soak into the ground and therefore channels into the many waterways that wind around the hills here. You can see how rocky the land is around the water in these pictures:

The trail came to an end in a small dog park. I have never seen so many happy dogs together in one place at the same time. It was fun to watch them splashing around in the water so exuberantly. I think they had the right idea too - it was surprisingly warm that day and the water looked so inviting!