Once upon a time, I kept an idea book. You know, just another journal, laying around the house, filled with potential art projects. It had a pretty good beginning, too... But then it got depressing to page through.

Depressing because I had all these great ideas for projects, but I never worked on any of them. I remember my excitement as I was writing my idea, pages of writing in some cases. Little pictures drawn, tangents here and there.

But it seems that as soon as my idea gets down on paper, my enthusiasm wanes. Nietzsche said something along those lines: One no longer loves one's knowledge sufficiently after one has communicated it.

And I have recognized this tendency in myself. Unfortunately, my solution is rather disfunctional: I keep my ideas locked up in my brain. Since I am not writing them down, I have to remember them, and in doing so, the idea has to stay in the foreground. And if it's in the foreground long enough, the project might be worked on, just so I don't have to think about it anymore.

That's how the logic goes. Sometimes it does work, especially for writing projects. But for the most part, ideas get lost, and they get stale, and my brain (filled with old stuff) is not welcoming new stuff.

My friend Harmonia asked yesterday if anyone used Paint Shop Pro, and of course, I had to say something. I love PSP, I use it pretty extensively, I read the user guides and have bought guide books.

The first version of PSP I bought was 4, and before that, I had hacked versions. I have bought most versions since, and I'm now working on version 9.0... v9 was the last one made by Jasc, v10 has been out for a while, but it was put out by Corel, and I didn't really see any brilliant upgrades that I had to have. eh.

Anyway. I must have been high when I left the note at Harmonia's blog, because I told her if she showed her art, I would show one of my digital paintings. And, right away, she put up her art work, very cool blend-collage type pieces. So, now it's my turn...

The frog is from my Art Wall. I painted him a year ago, and used a stock photo as reference. I like him, and like the scribbly, almost impressionistic thing. Impressionism is my favorite style of painting, tho I'm not very good at it myself.

I have gotten away from showing my art online. For starters, I am shy about it (and truthfully, I don't have that much art to show). But mostly, it's because I am tired of being burned... If you put something online, it's going to get stolen, just a matter of time, really. And I hate it when my art gets stolen. In fact, if there were a stronger word than "hate", I would use it! Art thieves make me angry.

Let's see: I no longer allow hotlinking from my site, but yesterday I had to block 8 of my images from being displayed elsewhere. Two of the images were photographs, the rest were my art.

That's 8 people who found my art, they say to themself "Oh, that's nice" and then hotlinked the image at their own web space. Who cares, right, after all, that's what the Internet is all about, random links.

They did not ask for my permission to put my art work on their web site. And they did not give me credit for the work I did. In some cases, they are even taking the credit for themselves.

So, that's what the "Static8.com" not-so-subtle watermark is all about on my froggy painting. Hotlinkers do occasionally get through my block, this way at least viewers know where that image is coming from. And anyone who does 'real' thieving, by right clicking and saving, (with the intention of displaying the art publicly somewhere) will have to do work to remove that watermark. And maybe in doing that work, they will realize that they are a low life bloody *#%^# criminal.

*smiles sweetly*

I'm going to do that to all my art work, from here on out. Of course, that implies that there is more art to come? Well, if I paint anything else, maybe I'll let you know! :)

Static8 > Journal > Archive > 27 Apr 2006 Entry