artalicious

IT'S ALIVE!!!!!1!!11!!

2009-08-28T15:36:00.005-04:00

I'm not dead…just haven't been able to muster up a blog post.

I decided today that needs to end, and so I'm bringing you the only artistic thing I've done in the past several months.

Behold.

On the 4th of July weekend, Robert met up with some friends at a local coffee shop, Mighty Joe Espresso (in case you couldn't figure that out!). The owner decided she wanted to do something a little different for some of her seating, so she was inviting customers to decorate some of her tables. I joined up with them a bit later and the above is our finished project!

Robert did the swirls and fishes (based on a design he did when he made tableware designs for a living) and I did the text. I'm happy with it. It's cute and funky and it was a fun, impromptu project.

I also think Robert needs to take up painting! I love those little fish!

So hopefully, you'll start seeing a bit more of me around here. I'm going to try and plan out some future posts, so there's no 2 month gap again!

For today's GPP, I thought I'd feature our newest (and LAST) dog, Saul! aka: Saulie Sue, Mr. Sue, "HEY! What are you eating?! Drop it. Drop it! I said DROP IT!"

For reference, He's the small, cute, black and white puppy with spots in the header. Now he's lots bigger (35 lbs!) and lots more clumsy. We don't have very many super good photos of him yet, but here's two of him riding in the car. He's very laid back. He also thinks he's a lap dog.

~JML

Art-B-Que!

2009-06-10T12:26:00.007-04:00

This weekend is the 2nd Annual Art-B-Que, in Avondale. It's a big party with artists, music, food, beer…what more could you ask for? It's all day Saturday, with vendors opening up around 10-11 am and with musicians closing up the night around 11 pm.

We'll be there, but I have to say, we're not totally sure what we'll be doing yet. This event has caught us by surprise! (And sadly, we've known about it for quite some time…sigh.)

I've got a few ideas brewing, but we'll see if any of them pan out.

Also appearing at the Art-B-Que are The Barrel House Mamas. They are a talented pair of women who write and perform "sweet and sultry mountain music." Robert has done a lot of photography for them and we're excited to see them perform again this weekend!

If you're not busy, we'd love to see any friends that can make it!

Today's GPP is an old friend of mine, Buster (aka: Shnoogie-Woogums). He was a cat we adopted when I was…in high school? Jr. high? I can't remember, but I was much younger! He still lives with my parents and in the photo below, he's up on their roof, surveying the yard work they're having done. I'm not sure if he aproves.

~JML

Seeing good friends again.

2009-05-26T12:14:00.006-04:00

This weekend I got to see my good friend Amanda and FINALLY meet her husband, Henri! It was wonderful visiting with them and it's so obvious how much they love each other (awwww…). In the photo above, it's me (with blonde hair!), Twan, Rhiannon, Amanda and Henri (Robert is taking the picture).

We also got to take some photos of the two of them (ok, ROBERT go to take some photos) and they came out so well. Henri will be sending some of them back to his family in Cameroon (that's right, at some point they'll be going back to live there and we might be able to go visit!).

Of course, it started to POUR right as we left to go OUTSIDE to take photos, so we took a small detour to the studio and shot some like this:

How cute are they? The rain let up and we went to Agnes Scott (where Amanda and I went to school) and took some more like this:

I hope they like them! Also, p.s. to Katie, Robert also got a nice shot of Rhi, remind me to email it to you!

Today's GPP is of Boomer. Because she needs a home! Here she is, looking majestic in Katie and Rhiannon's backyard. Her usual look is actually much more goofy.

~JML

New Banner!

2009-05-22T10:38:00.006-04:00

So, I'm messing around with the blog layout and thought I'd put up a new banner. I'm going to blame those two cuties as the reason for why I haven't blogged in FOREVAH. Let me tell you, the next time you start thinking "Hey, 5 dogs sounds like a good idea!" trust me, it's not.

We are down to just 4 dogs now and hopefully we'll soon be down to 3. The pups in the banner were strays that were born in our neighborhood. They were just too cute to let them get run over by cars (which is what killed the rest of their litter) or to let the local drunk keep carting around (which is what was happening to them!). The other dog we had was my in-laws dog that we (successfully!) re-homed for them. I think that Robert and I must be insane. Or big suckers. Probably both.

So, since it's practically June (eek!) I'm going to roll the April and May stock updates into one. We have put the puppies to work and shot some stock images of them.

The look of the blog will probably also keep changing. It's not quite how I want it, but sadly I know just enough html to be dangerous, but not enough to keep me from tearing my hair out as I try to change things!

And now for the GPP (like those three up top aren't enough!). This is my friend Crystal's newest addition, Molly. She was a stray that someone dumped.

And these are Crystal's dogs meeting Molly and thinking "ZOMG. WE CAN HAZ KITTEH?!"

It turns out that they did get to keep her after all! (Crystal may also be a sucker :) )

~JML

March Stock Photography Recap

2009-04-02T12:10:00.004-04:00

Man, I've been slacking on the blogging. I blame it on the bad weather.

March has been ok. Actually it's been pretty good considering the lack of uploading and photographizing.

Shutterstock

We had 16 photos accepted and 9 photos rejected. So we're up to a gallery of 246. Downloads were pretty consistent, though we had more zero download days compared to February. We totaled $20.59 in sales and earned another payout! I wasn't sure if we would hit the $20 mark this month. I know I'll need to step up the submissions for April for sure. We're also less than $30 away from increasing our payout from .25 per subscription download to .30! It doesn't seem like a huge raise, but those extra nickels can add up fast!

Here's a favorite from March's uploads.

That's Ali, a model we've worked with a few times. She's sweet, easy to work with and very good at expressing subtle emotions.

Big Stock Photo

I didn't submit anything to BSP. But we still had three downloads for a total of $2.

Dreamstime

No submissions to this site either. We had 4 downloads for a total earning of $4.13

Vector Stock

This is a new site for us. I saw them mentioned online and went to check them out. They accept and offer only vector files and signing up was easy. Uploading is a little slow, so I don't have many files online yet and no downloads. So we'll see how they work out.

Goals for April

Almost identical to March! Upload more! I'd also like to get accepted to iStock, at least in the vector department. Some kind members there have looked at my work and I think I need just one more illustration to complete my application.

I stole today's GPP from Katie. It was too cute to pass up!

Granted, you do have to search a little to find the pet. That's O'Malley, doing his best impression of an Ottoman Gremlin. Or else he's playing hide and seek, it's a little hard to tell.

~JML

Cat Furniture!

2009-03-20T12:29:00.006-04:00

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

February Stock Photography Recap

2009-03-02T14:50:00.005-05:00

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

Overheard at Citi Kroger

2009-02-25T11:35:00.004-05:00

"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

Illustration Friday - Instinct. Plus some other stuff.

2009-02-20T12:35:00.007-05:00

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

All Small Redux - Recap

2009-02-15T14:53:00.011-05:00

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

For Rachel

2009-02-13T18:03:00.004-05:00

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

RAD Recap

2009-02-09T21:48:00.013-05:00

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

Rail Arts District Studio Cruise

2009-02-06T09:57:00.006-05:00

This is coming a bit late (like everything I do), but for those in the Atlanta area, I'd like to invite you to the RAD Studio Cruise, this Saturday, February 7th, from 5-10 pm. Here's a bit about the event:

RAD Studio Cruise 2009 is our second annual event, building on the amazing turnout and enthusiasm we gratefully experienced in year one. All of the founding group will be back including Alcove Gallery (sculpture & painting), AMALGAM Arts (jewelry), Bart Webb Studios (metal sculpture), DuckBill Studio (blown glass) and MudFire Clayworks (pottery & sculpture).

This year's Cruise will include great new additions including the debut of Academy Theater, the just-opened artist colony at Little Tree Studios, the artists of Studio 2850, and individual artist studios at the participating facilities.

Click here, to learn more.

Robert and I will be at our studio, taking Valentine's Day portraits for those who are brave enough to step in front of the camera!

And now for the gratuitous pet photo of the day! Today's GPP comes by way of my good friend Katie at Redykle, who sent me a link to a book review of Pet Projects: The Animal Knits Bible. The review contained an excellent description of this photo:

"A borrowed hamster was Ms. Muir’s model for the hamster house, above. 'He did exactly as I expected,' she said. 'He lived in it for a day, then he ate it. Then he bit me.'"

Truer words have never been spoken.

~JML

January Stock Photography Recap

2009-02-03T10:50:00.002-05:00

I'd like to start posting a recap of how many uploads, acceptances and sales we've had at the end of each month.

January was pretty good! I've stayed motivated and have been uploading images pretty often. Not as often as I like, I still have tons to go through, but we're doing at least 10-20 every weeks.

Shutterstock

We had 68 photos accepted and 21 photos rejected. Some of those rejected images were resubmitted and then accepted (I did some bad isolations and uploaded an incomplete model release). So our gallery grew from 128 to 196 during January.

We had a total of 73 downloads during January which earned us: $23.19. Not our best month ever, but pretty close! My goal is to end up with 73 downloads per day, rather than per month.

Here's one of my favorites for January.

Big Stock Photo

We didn't upload here at all. Mainly because I hadn't yet found a generic model release. We've been using Shutterstock's MR, and obviously BSP won't accept that. I also didn't feel like harassing our models to make them sign 3 different releases.

So, no growth in our portfolio, but we made $5 dollars in sales! It's $5 we didn't have before.

Dreamstime

There were also no uploads here, for the same reason.

No portfolio growth, sales earned us $1. (I gotta say, it's a lot harder to get excited about that $1.)

Goals for February

We now have a more "universal" model release, that, supposedly, all the agencies accept. Which means we can start to upload more model photos to all the other agencies, not just SS.

I'd also like to start doing more planned shoots. Right now we're just finding models, having them do their own hair/make-up/outfits and shooting them. That's ok, but those photos don't sell crazy well because the models aren't clearly doing or selling anything.

And now, to end with a gratuitous pet photo! Today's GPP is of O'Malley, he's Keira's boyfriend and is owned by our good friends Katie and Rhiannon.

He's a cutie!

~JML

Art Show! All Small Redux

2009-01-29T10:36:00.005-05:00

This is a bit of a brag post, because Robert has 5 pieces in an upcoming art show! As you can see from the postcard at right, it's called All Small Redux, and is in Agnes Scott's Dalton Gallery (my alma matter).

Here's a brief synopsis from their website:

"All Small Redux returns to the premise of the acclaimed 2002 exhibition, all small@eyedrum—that the exquisite and completely petite nature of small works can be overwhelmingly mighty.

In this time of downsizing, low returns, minimal output and small budgets, it is refreshing to celebrate the fabulous preciousness of the tiny.

All Small Redux adds into the fold the world of micro fiction.

Works at or under six inches, sixty seconds or one-hundred and eight words will be reviewed for possible inclusion in the exhibit."

I think that a total of around 50 artists are in the show, including our friends Nell Ruby and Jennifer Young. The opening is February 12, from 5-8. If you look on the postcard, on the last row, three over from the left, that's one of Robert's pieces! Let me see if I can find some larger photos of pieces. Here are my two favorites. They're lighter than in the photos, as the concrete was still damp when he took these pictures.

His concept is creating a modern fossil, basically taking bits of technology (wires, cables, cds, cell phones, computer mice, etc). Then embedding them in concrete and cutting them up into slices. They're lovely to look at and really interesting as many of them are almost unrecognizable from their original forms. This is a perfect project for him as he loves both fossils and technology. I'll probably need to have him write up a bit about this as he can explain it better than I can.

~JML

Finding inspiration for stock photography

2009-01-28T10:49:00.004-05:00

I just started a stock inspiration binder. I'm going through our stack of magazines and pulling out images that are fantastic.

So far, I've come up with the following categories:

1) Models - this is actually going to be a reference for the models we work with. These are photos that have interesting poses and perhaps most importantly, interesting emotions. A lot of inexperienced models want to start out with that sort of blank "model face" that see a lot of in high fashion images. While that look has its place, in stock, it's much more preferred for the model to be expressing some emotion, even if done subtly. Though I just realized that in the example below, one model is giving the model face. But the pose is nice.

2) Ideas for People - these are images that contain interesting concepts, angles or crops of shots with people in them. I hope these will serve as a reminder to us to try some different kind of shots.

3) Ideas for Still Life - these are images of food or settings without people in them. I'd like to eventually do at least one stock shoot a week, and these can fill in the times when we can't schedule a model. Both of these come from Fine Cooking magazine, which is FILLED with beautiful photography (thanks for the subscription Mum!).

4) Animals - we have lots of them! Might as well put them to work!

5) Vectors - Here are images that inspire me to try some different illustration techniques/styles and subject matter. Good vectors are some of our best sellers and are an area that we've been lacking in lately. I hope that as this section grows, I'll set aside the time to work on more of these. I like this as it's a style I haven't tried out before.

This binder isn't meant to be a book of images that we go through and try to replicate (well, maybe the general model poses will be copied from), but rather almost as a text book, to help us learn what creates better, more salable images.

And, for the heck of it since I'm adding images, a gratuitous glamor shot of Aggie. She's so majestic.

~JML

Our latest stock photos

2009-01-14T10:12:00.008-05:00

I think I've mentioned on here that Robert and I submit photos and illustrations to various micro stock sites.

*Warning, the following may be very boring if you have no interest in stock photography.*

For those whose eyes just glazed over, a micro stock site, is a place like Shutterstock, where people (mostly graphic designers) buy royalty free images for between $1-$50. They are different from the macro stock sites (Getty Images being probably the largest and most well known) where images are sold as either royalty free or rights managed and typically prices start around $100 and go WAY up from there.

The other difference is that most macro stock sites (like Getty) hire professional photographers, models, make-up artists, stylists, etc. While the mirco stock sites (like Shutterstock) have photographers and illustrators go through an application process, and then accept the images that they feel are up to their standards. Which means if you're not very good, they're not going to take very many of your photos. It also means that if you're an amateur, this is a good way to make a little money while improving your skills.

Both micro and macro stock agencies pay their photographers some set amount per image sale. This fee ranges for anywhere from .25 to several hundred dollars. The most we've ever earned on one photo for one sale was $28. And that only happened once!

Now that's an incredibly simple description of how stock sites work. I could go on and on, but 1) that would be boring and 2) I'm also no where near an expert in this area.

Ok, so boring explanation over, here's some of what Robert and I have been doing in the studio lately. Mainly we've been working with different models and perfecting taking portraits over a white background. These are useful to designers, as the white background ads a lot of versatility to the image. When we first started out taking photos of models, we didn't have the set up we have now, so we had to hunt around for backgrounds. This meant we have a lot of photos like this:

And it means that these don't sell very well. She's a pretty girl, but her outfit and her setting aren't clearly selling or stating anything. Compare it to this image, which can sell just about anything, by photographer Yuri Arcurs (who, by the way, is probably the top selling micro stock photographer out there):

See the difference? Now that's not to say that images without a white background will sell like crap. They don't, but the background needs to support the overall look and message of the image. Something that our random bricks weren't doing.

So now that we have a "for real" set up, I'm hoping that images like this one:

Will earn more sales. The model above, by the way, is one of our favorites to work with. She's got a great personality and is so comfortable in front of the camera. Two great qualities when you're spending 3 hours locked in an 11x19 foot studio with someone!

The other kind of image that sell really well (and that I need to make more of) are vector illustrations. They're great because designers can pull them apart, edit them, scale them to any size, etc. Our top selling vector illustration is this one:

It's not sexy, but it's handy and it's earned over $100 since it's been accepted at various stock sites.

So our goals for this year are to shoot, shoot, shoot, edit, edit, edit and illustrate whenever we can. I've currently got a backlog of at least 500 images to go through (of which probably only 70-100 will be stock-worthy, and of those, probably only 50-60 will be accepted by the sites we submit to).

The sites that we currently work with are: Shutterstock, Big Stock Photo, and Dreamstime. I'm in the process of getting us accepted and set up with a host of other sites. I really need to get us going with iStock.

Ok, I'm stocked out for now. I need to get back to practicing some fine art. I'll be thinking more about that in the coming days.

~JML

The Studio - Holiday Recap

2009-01-12T13:15:00.006-05:00

I thought I would put up some images that we've been taking in the studio (and by "we" I mean "mostly Robert").

First, we had an open house of sorts with all of the other studios and the gallery. We took holiday portraits for anyone who was brave enough to step in front of the camera, and there were some fantastic results!

Here's a great one of our friends' kid hamming it up. When I asked her if he practiced this a lot at home, she looked at me and said she's never seen him dance like this before!

Then we got this cute image (which I took, not too bad I think!):

We also took a holiday portrait for our friends, Katie and Rhiannon with their dogs, O'Malley and Oliver. There was much waving of toys and shaking of treats and wearing of antlers (on the dogs). They went with this one for their holiday card.

We then thought it would be a great idea to traumatize our own dogs, so we brought them over to the studio and made them do embarrassing things with holiday decorations. No animals were harmed during this photo shoot, but I can't say the same for the decorations.

Here's Keira, plotting our demise as soon as this is over.

Aggie gets pissed off. Keira hits the floor.

All is soon forgiven. Much kissy face is seen.

They make up over a meal of holiday garland. Lovely. I launch myself at them to make sure they don't swallow any. Damn dogs.

The rest of the images can be found by clicking here. We ended up picking 4 different photos and printed them out with funny captions and put those in our holiday cards.

Next up will be some of our model photos we've taken for stock.

~JML

Happy New Year!

2009-01-09T11:35:00.005-05:00

Well, one thing I would like to do more is post more about art that I made this year. To start that off, here's an illustration of sorts that I've been working on.

I'd like to modify it enough to try and screen print it in one and two colors with my (new since Nov.) screen printing kit.

Right now it's got too many colors and screens to do that, but I think I can work with it. I'm also going to keep working on the letters and such a bit more. It's not quite done.

In other news, Robert and I did get the studio space. We've had it since late October and we really like it. It's allowed us to move a lot of the "art stuff" out of the house, plus it's let Robert set up a seamless white background for stock photography purposes.

We're now using SmugMug to host galleries of client photos and I'm really happy with it. Now I need to make sure we start to make money off of it to justify the yearly fee!

~JML

New Banner!

2008-09-05T11:23:00.004-04:00

I'm trying to figure out how to customize this blog. Seems like I should know how since I am a graphic designer.

So far, we have made a banner! woot. I think I'll need to get Robert to help me do the rest. To be fair, I'm not really much of a web designer/coder.

The current illustration in the banner is from a line drawing I did for a book called Jhane's Affliction. (yes, you may groan at the bad pun.) The other women are her glamorous super-model sisters. They don't have names. That's a slightly hacked up and rearanged version of the first page of the book (yay photoshop!).

Jhane is the short one up there. She's my alter ego of sorts. Short and with dark hair. I would say she *seems* like she has more issues than me, but that might just be an exaggeration.

~JML

Potential Studio Space?

2008-08-27T13:42:00.003-04:00

Robert and I are scoping out studio space. There's a warehouse being divided up and rented out near our work and our house.

It would give us a place to move all of our art stuffs (which are currently packed up and jammed in odd spaces in the tiny house) plus give Robert a "home base" for a lot of his photography work. At least the stuff that needs to be studio based anyway (head shots, portraits, products, stock, etc.).

And it will (hopefully) get us back into a community of artists, something I'm missing.

We're trying to look at money and figure out how we can afford this and how it can help us bring in more income.

I'm hoping this will work out!

~JML

Tattoo!

2008-07-08T17:38:00.006-04:00

Well Mike got his tattoo! He promises that he made it through with minimal flinching. The outline was done in one setting and he's going to get it colored (though I'll have to ask him about that as I didn't remember him wanting color, just shading). It's on his rib cage on the side. I think on left side of his body? I'll have to double check that.

So here's the new tattoo!

I think it looks great. I love what the artist did with the scales and the water. Now the waves don't look like mountains, but actually like waves.

And while he is pretty pale, he's not quite that ghostly shade of white. I lightened the photo a bit.

I'll have to find out where he got the tattoo done and who did it. You hear that Mike? Let me know!

This has been a good learning experience. I'm still looking for a sketch group so that I can work on my skills. And I think I've learned a bit about tattoos as well.

~Julia

Practice makes Perfect!

2008-06-25T12:36:00.011-04:00

Which means in my case, that I'm not doing so well!

My brother asked me to illustrate a tattoo for him. Awesome! I was really touched that he would ask me to do that. So I start working on it. And working. And working. And…I think you get the idea.

I realized that I haven't done any "real" drawing in probably 3-4 YEARS. I've done some small sketches for work as different logo projects came up and done some for stock work. But most of that ends up refined in Illustrator. And as long as I can get a decent sketch scanned into Illustrator, I can usually refine it from there.

But not this tattoo. It's just looking too "clip arty". I don't have the skills to add all the wonderful detail and shading and personality that a good tattoo artist can.

Fortunately, I remembered that my friend Jennifer "Jenny Bunns" Young is a tattoo artist! (check out her website: www.theapprenticediaries.com and her blog: theapprenticediaries.blogspot.com) She told me to stop tearing my hair out and that since the tattoo artist is going to have to redraw everything anyway, what I've got is good enough to take to them. So I think that's what's happening next. I think Mike is happy with the general details and he's scouting out a good artist.

Here's some iterations. He wanted the tattoo to have 2 elements. A compass and an Ouroboros, or a snake eating it's tail. The compass was representing the Navy (which he's leaving in a couple days) as well as direction or guidance. The Ouroboros (don't ask me how to pronounce it!) represents the idea of your actions coming back to you. Being mindful of your behaviour/actions.

I started with the compass (since it was the easiest!).

We ditched the star and then came to this:

Which turned into this:

I then took a detour over here:

Which I like as it integrates the elements more, but it gets waaay too "dragony" and not enough "snakey", so we nixed this.

I went back to "drawing" and came up with this to help me get the face and some detail.

Brought that BACK into Illustrator and got to here:

You'll notice the compass changed (we could never figure out what to put in the circle after we took the star out) and we added a wave and star design in the center. The water symbolizes change, movement and the stars represent another form of guidance.

The current final version is this:

I've taken out the minor shading I had. We got rid of the clouds; they were too busy. I made the waves less crappy (though now they look like snow covered mountains to me, hopefully the tattoo artist can fix that!) and I've got the compass pointing down into the middle of the waves. I like integrating the elements together like that. The stars suck, again, I'm relying on the tattoo artists to interpret those in a more interesting fashion.

Overall, I'm happy. I'm disappointed with how LONG this has taken me and I really wish I could have done a nice, detailed, illustration. I might still try to do a pencil sketch and see what I can come up with, but I think this is enough for Mike to take and get something nice done.

Now I'm trying to find a sketch group to attend since I've become aware of bad my skills have become!

I'll post a final image whenever Mike gets his tattoo done and I can get a good image of it.

~JML

In which I meet two "real live" artists.

2008-05-23T16:01:00.002-04:00

I was very lucky a few weeks ago and was able to meet two artists. H.A. Sigg, who is from Switzerland and Ron Balser, from Atlanta.

Sigg was showing at Mason Murer for Modern Atlanta weekend. My partner designed his website so we were introduced to Sigg, his wife and his son. He was a charming little old man. I don't remember how it came up, but he said to us at one point "When I'm in my studio, I am a god, a king. But when I leave, I am nobody." (This is all quite paraphrased by the way.) I thought it was a good description of probably how many artists feel. Creating something that seems so important or amazing, but then (for most of us) no one knows (or cares!) what we've made. : ) It reminds me of Nell always telling us to "let go" of our art, to not keep it precious to us.

It was also interesting that I didn't have much to say. I mean, here I was, talking with an internationally know artist and all I could comment on was how brilliant blue some of his paintings were. I'm not great at small talk, but geez, seems like I could have said something more than "I love that blue."

I did love seeing the originals, especially after a year of seeing web printouts of his paintings all over the house!

Ron's work was up at the Fay Gold Gallery. Ron is a client of ours at work. We've done some of the design and the coding for his website. Some of the benches were pretty cool. I loved Dorothy's Tornado. I thought it was a nice variation on "bench."

Didn't have much to say to Ron either, but he's a client and that feels a little presumptuous to take up his time in that way. He was also swamped with guests. But maybe those are all excuses to not have to talk to him! : )

There was also photographer Arno Rafael Minkkinen with work up at Fay Gold. His work was really clever. Landscapes and body shapes that would create these weird spaces and vistas. They try to trick your eye. Very cool.

So, I didn't make any art, but I did get to see some and meet some artists. And now I'm writing about it. Pretty much doing everything I can to avoid making anything!

~JML

Illustration Friday - Heavy

2008-03-21T18:13:00.002-04:00

Here's a quick drawing for IF. Heavy. I'm guessing that mama bird is actually feeling quite a bit lighter at the moment. Though imagine how many worms that baby will need.

~JML

Illustration Friday - Garden

2008-03-12T13:25:00.003-04:00

Here's another flower image I did, based on Hungarian needlework (inspiration provided by my partner, who's half Hungarian!).

It's also available for purchase as a stock image, though I have to be honest, these aren't really selling very well as stock images.

~JML

Testing Images

2008-03-05T13:49:00.009-05:00

Here's an illustration I made for the stock images site: Shutterstock.

It can be found in my gallery, here.

Testing?

2008-03-05T12:25:00.004-05:00

Let's see what happens.

~JML