New Trio

Three little stamps I carved up today to decorate the envelopes I use for the shop.

Gwen Frostic

Have you ever heard of Gwen Frostic? I fell in love with her work after reading a feature article in the March 2005 Martha Stewart Living magazine.

The last time we were in the US I was really excited to find a lovely bird-themed
block print Note Card set at Anthropologie. Aren't they enchanting?
I feel inspired to make a four color block print of my own...

Use jquery to style your external links with image

You must have noticed in Wikipedia that all external links is followed by an image basically this tells user that the link will open in a new tab.
Lets see an example -
Blogger -An external Link
Fun with blogger -Internal link

You have noticed that the hyperlink blogger has an arrow image on right of it! This tells the user that the link will open up in a new tab when being clicked!One way of doing this is manually putting the class name to each anchor tag entry having external target! or just use jquery function and let Jquery do it for you.

# Understanding External Links strategy.What are external links?
External links are those links which points away from  your site.For this  we use a special attribute target="_blank" which tells the browser to open external link in new tab or window.
External link Looks like this
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/" target="_blank">Blogger </a>
# Purpose/Use  of JQuery.We will use jQuery to find out all a tags with target="_blank" attribute and will append a class name "external" to them by easily defining css for class external.
# Add Class name "external" To your blogger.Just Edit your Template:
Blogger Dashboard >
Layout > Edit HTML

a.external {
padding-right: 13px;
background: transparent url("https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEja2_eiY3Lzo0VpSKWoPJ_eNV7VTDDQ66SIJKUU2oisjwnwoOXmdHusTL0rWh97x9LuM47BbCJzVQ7IrQm5rsfBc5grgrXW3mn82_EGI3ZxyASlQBfHqv00fUUOJXwRYp0O_PrIG6CHgIWk/s320/external.png") no-repeat scroll right center;
}

Now paste the above CSS code before ]]></b:skin>

#Append JQuery to your blogger.Copy below code and paste it Before the </head> in your template.

 <script type="text/javascript" src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.4.2/jquery.min.js"> </script><script type="text/javascript">$(document).ready(function() {    $('a[target="_blank"]').addClass("external");});</script>

This javascript code consist of two parts:
Jquery library-
 <script type="text/javascript" src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.4.2/jquery.min.js"></script>
And a function which search  target="_blank" attribute and will append a class name "external" to it.

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That was all regarding Using jquery to make your external links looks cool and different.Stay in touch with me bu subscribing to my posts with RSS And MAIL
Please  give your feedback and do share this article with your friends.

Mockingbird Stamp

Commissioned hand carved stamp for my friend Martha
based on one of her beautiful photographs.

Wild Things

Took them on my recent visit to our building site.

For you

I made a line drawing of the birdie I used for the Linen Tea Towel as a little gift for you.
Click here to see it BIGGER, download it, print it and enjoy!
I'd love to see it when you're done, so don't forget to take a picture of it.
I added a flower just because :)

TIME AND CHANCE HAPPENETH TO THEM ALL (part three)

The brilliant young Mathematician Evariste Galois was killed in a duel when he was only 20. His biographer, E.T. Bell, described the last night of Galois' life this way:

All night long he had spent the fleeting hours feverishly dashing off his scientific last will and testament, writing against time to glean a few of the great things in his teeming mind before the death he saw could overtake him. Time after time he broke off to scribble in the margin "I have not time; I have not time," and passed on to the next frantically scrawled outline. What he wrote in those last desperate hours before the dawn will keep generations of mathematicians busy for hundreds of years.

Later biographers believe Bell's account to be a little overheated; for example, Galois did not invent his famous theorem that very night, he had been working on it for some time. Still, it is clear that when faced with almost certain death the next morning, Galois' defense was to keep doing what he did best, and to do as much of it as possible before his time ran out. His parting words were:

There are a few things left to be completed in this proof. I have not the time....I hope some men will find it profitable to sort out this mess. I embrace you with effusion.

Which brings us to Virginia Frances Sterrett (1900-1931). As a child growing up in Missouri, all Sterrett wanted to do was draw. There weren't many opportunities for artists in Missouri back then, but as a young teenager Sterrett audaciously entered the Kansas State Fair art competition and won three first prizes. Encouraged, Sterrett went to Chicago at age 15 to attend high school and study art. The Art Institute was so impressed with her that it gave her a full scholarship.

When Sterrett reached 19, two things happened: first, she received a commission to illustrate her very first book (Old French Fairy Tales by Comtesse de Segur). Second, she came down with tuberculosis which soon began to sap her strength. The race was on.



For the rest of her short life, Sterrett worked as hard as her failing strength would allow, illustrating Tanglewood Tales, the Arabian Nights and Myths and Legends.









By the time she turned 22, she had to enter a sanatorium where she could only work for short periods of time before resting. Yet, Sterrett's exhaustion doesn't show up in her pictures. You don't see her taking shortcuts or compromising the quality of her work. She seemed intent on making her pictures as perfect as she could, to isolate them from the limitations and frustrations of her life.

She knew the game was fixed against her; she wouldn't have a lifetime to improve her skills or compile a major body of work, the way other artists did. Working under those restrictions it might have made more sense to give up or resort to drink, but still she persisted. Such time as she had, that time was going to be devoted to making pictures. She was almost done illustrating Myths and Legends when she died.







The local newspaper, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch ran an obituary that remarked upon the disparity between her life and the exotic world she drew:

Her life spent in prosaic places of the West and Middle West, she made pictures of haunting loveliness, suggesting Oriental lands she never saw and magical realms no one ever knew except in the dreams of childhood....Perhaps it was the hardships of her own life that gave the young girl's work its fanciful quality. In the imaginative scenes she set down on paper she must have escaped from the harsh actualities of existence.

I view each of Sterrett's pictures, like I view Galois' journal, as a little pearl of resistance against the fact that life is unfair and death comes too soon. Not much of a consolation, you say? It seems to be all we've got, which is why it might make sense to pay attention to her achievement.

Embroidered Tea Towel

It was fun to use needle and thread again, I hadn't done it in a while.
I used chain stitch. It's my favorite stitch to "draw" on fabric.
I got the pretty linen tea towel at Manos.

Parts

I'm having these made as postcards and will be at the shop soon :)
Maybe some t-shirts? What do you think?

On my desk tonight

Enjoying some quiet time & playing with my watercolors.

Spring is here!

Precious vermilion flycatcher I spotted today in our neighborhood.
I am SO looking forward to all the flowers...

Tender Loving Care

Tending to my plants this morning under the "supervision" of my furry sidekick.

Not Yet

Work related...will tell you more about it soon ;)
Watercolor, acrylic ink & collage.

Desert Bird

Micron pen & collage on recycled paper.
9 x 12 inches

JOHN CUNEO: AIMING FOR AN INVISIBLE TARGET

Compare Saul Steinberg's observation on the obstacles to creation...



...with John Cuneo's treatment of the same theme:



Cuneo's hapless artist suffers from very different constraints. You'll rarely find a theme-- or a line-- in Cuneo's offbeat world as straight as Steinberg's leash.

Cuneo's artist is bedeviled by his diminutive artistic size, by the huge, languid planet of muliebrity between him and his art, by that rump distracting him from his artistic mission, by that wobbly little easel perched on top of his subject... here is a valiant artist clearly outmatched by his subject matter, whose vast limbs drape beyond his field of vision. Like much of Cuneo's work, this picture is laced with subtle visual touches; without the impassive face on the woman, this picture wouldn't be nearly as smart. The woman is utterly indifferent to the artist's presence, both artistically and amatorily.

I find Cuneo to be one of the most psychologically insightful illustrators working today, and his observations about the artistic process and about life in general make me laugh out loud. Check out Cuneo's drawing for the Society of Illustrators:



I've never seen a more hilarious or pointed rendition of what artists secretly hope to achieve by their work, contrasted with the actual response of their audience.

Ever since the days of Robert Blechman, it is not uncommon for illustrators to draw with stray, wispy lines, blobby colors and lopsided, distorted figures. On this blog, I have criticized artists who try to mimic children's drawings in superficial ways, or who are willfully sloppy but fail to achieve the raw, disturbing potential of that kind of art. I find that sometimes artists who adopt a childlike approach are merely milking the contradiction between a naive drawing style and a mature subject matter.

But Cuneo's pictures use this approach to achieve piercing, authentic results. For me, they are achingly genuine and psychologically astute, not to mention rich and funny and weird. But that leaves the question, if Cuneo is able to hit the target better than most of his peers, exactly what target is he hitting? This week I would like to explore what makes such drawing successful (or not).

Picasso put it arrogantly (of course), but accurately:

In the old days, pictures went forward toward completion by stages.... A picture used to be the sum of additions. In my case, a picture is the sum of destructions.

When art was subject to the formal rules of a powerful Academy, artists used agreed-upon techniques to progress toward agreed-upon goals. Viewers were able to ask, "Is that hand drawn correctly? Is that flower accurate? Does the artist know how to mix color? Does that pose seem stiff and awkward?" Later, when Picasso and his successors obliterated such standards, abstraction and conceptual art operated under their own criteria for success.

Today the criteria for a successful picture seem pretty clear at either extreme on the spectrum, but artists working in Cuneo's genre seem to occupy a kind of purgatory in between. Their work is representational, but deliberately "off" or "wrong." If an artist aspires to ungainly and awkward pictures, how do you distinguish between "good" awkward and "bad" awkward? What makes this type of distortion effective in some cases and ineffective in others? In other words, what the hell is the target?

Look at Cuneo's choices in the following drawing. You can tell from his treatment of the man's hands or the swivel of his hips that Cuneo knows how to draw in the traditional sense. Yet, look at the weird way he distorts the girl's arms and legs, or how her head is too small for her own body, let alone in comparison to the man's oversized cranium.



When you know how to draw, you have to unlearn what you know to draw this way. You have to conquer muscle memory and uproot hardened patterns of perception. When you start making wrong lines, your muscles rebel. Alarms in the synapses between your hand and eye start to shriek: "Stop! Too far! Out of proportion! Go back!"



The artist has to resist the urge, described by Picasso, to complete the picture by going back and fixing the apparent flaws. The eye and the hand battle with the brain for control, and it is a contest that must be fought inch by inch.

Despite the deliberate crudeness of Cuneo's lines, they come together for some highly sophisticated results. The expressions on the people in many of Cuneo's pictures-- wan, jaded, dissolute, indulgent-- aren't the basic expressions you'd typically learn in art school.


Note the glee of the drunk urinating on a street person.


More subtle touches-- the surgeon who throws his hands in the air like a magician proud of his newest miracle. This hilarious picture, which seems to be drawn so casually, was the product of intense labor.

Here is a detail from Cuneo's treatment of Adam and Eve. I find this picture of Eve quite beautiful and erotic.


If you want to see the full drawing you'll have to hunt it down in Cuneo's book, nEuROTIC. If I posted the full version here, some reader would turn me in to the blogger police.

Cuneo's drawings are tiny-- never more than a few inches tall.


I love the way Cuneo uses just a few gentle skritches around the perimeter of a circle to suggest this face



Once we've jettisoned the relatively objective criteria that accompanied representational art, it's difficult to articulate a coherent standard for when "awkward" and "wrong" will turn out to be "honest" and "beautiful." How much distortion is enough? With each picture Cuneo has to decide where to pitch his tent on the road between all and nothing at all. The quality of his pictures are proof that the target, even if invisible, is not an illusion.

Insert Adsense Block in the Middle of the post-Blogger

 How to place Adsense in the middle of Blogger posts.
The solution to this problem is quite simple: you only need to move the post body around the advertising code, just with a bunch of JavaScript and a couple of DIVs (divisions).
Works For both Old blogger and New Blogger.






1. In your Blogger template:


OLD BLOGGER

Find the tag <$BlogItemBody$> and replace it with following code:

<div id="prv<$BlogItemNumber$>"></div>

<div style="clear:both;margin:10px 0">

<!-- Your AdSense code -->

</div>

<div id="fst<$BlogItemNumber$>">

<$BlogItemBody$>

</div>

<script type="text/javascript">
var obj0=document.getElementById("prv<$BlogItemNumber$>");
var obj1=document.getElementById("fst<$BlogItemNumber$>");
var s=obj1.innerHTML;
var r=s.search(/\x3C!-- adsense --\x3E/igm);
if(r>0) {obj0.innerHTML=s.substr(0,r);obj1.innerHTML=s.substr(r+16);}
</script>

NEW BLOGGER

Find the tag <data:post.body/> (you must check Expand Widget Templates in Blogger console) and replace it with following code:

<div expr:id='"aim1" + data:post.id'></div>

<div style="clear:both; margin:10px 0">

<!-- Your AdSense code here -->

</div>

<div expr:id='"aim2" + data:post.id'>

<data:post.body/>

</div>

<script type="text/javascript">
var obj0=document.getElementById("aim1<data:post.id/>");
var obj1=document.getElementById("aim2<data:post.id/>");
var s=obj1.innerHTML;
var r=s.search(/\x3C!-- adsense --\x3E/igm);
if(r>0) {obj0.innerHTML=s.substr(0,r);obj1.innerHTML=s.substr(r+16);}
</script>

Note that you must replace <!-- Your AdSense code --> with block code provided by Google.


2. In every blog post:

Put a special comment

<!-- adsense -->

in the exact point you want to appear AdSense advertising.
Done!


Questions

1. Does this method violate Google ToS?
   
   No. Answering a direct support request Google stated this method doesn't violate any of their program policies.
2. What if I forget to put in a post the <!-- adsense --> comment?
   
   Nothing. The advertising block will appear in the traditional position you defined in your template before implementing this modification.
3. What happens in Blogger home page and archive pages where there several posts with <!-- adsense --> comment appears together?
   
   Exactly the same thing happening before this modification: Google automatically inject in your posts up to 3 AdSense blocks. So just the first 3 posts (in a top-down order) in your home page or archive pages will have ads.

Labor of Love

Photos of our 'work in progress' home soon :)

Add to blogger :Bullets With Image hover effect

This is a simple tutorial to learn to ADD bullets images to your blogger which change with while you place mouse on it.The image beside shows hovering effect .IF you are looking for free bullets icons or graphics for your blog you can check my article Best places to download free bullets .

Adding Bullets to Post Area

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• Login to your blogger
• Click on Layout tab >> Click Edit HTML
• Use your browser search (Cntrl + F) to find .post ul li or some thing like this might be different in different templates.

Copy

background:transparent url(http://i47.tinypic.com/deppy0.jpg) no-repeat scroll 0 4px;

and add in your .post ul li(in between curly brackets { and }) so that your code becomes

.post ul li {
line-height:1.4em;

background:transparent url(http://i47.tinypic.com/deppy0.jpg) no-repeat scroll 0 4px;

margin:0.3em 0;
padding:0 0 0.8em 20px;
}

This is not yet done ,if you save your template you have successfully added image as bullet in your template but it will not change when you take your mouse to your lists.
For that you have to add an another image generally of same style but with different color like i have done first green then blue.For doing that copy below part - and paste it just after .post ul li part

background:transparent url(http://i46.tinypic.com/330u3kp.jpg) no-repeat scroll 0 4px;

.post ul li:hover {

background:transparent url(http://i46.tinypic.com/330u3kp.jpg) no-repeat scroll 0 4px;

}

So now your Final code becomes-

.post ul li {
line-height:1.4em;

background:transparent url(http://i47.tinypic.com/deppy0.jpg) no-repeat scroll 0 4px;

margin:0.3em 0;
padding:0 0 0.8em 20px;
}
.post ul li:hover {

background:transparent url(http://i46.tinypic.com/330u3kp.jpg) no-repeat scroll 0 4px;

}

---

Note : If your theme does not have any thing like .post ul li   or   .post ul li:hover  in that case search for ]]></b:skin> and paste full code above it.

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Adding Bullets to Sidebar

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Adding bullets to sidebar is similar to adding it in posts area just add

background:transparent url(http://i47.tinypic.com/deppy0.jpg) no-repeat scroll 0 4px;

in your sidebar wrapper code if your sidebar already has an image you just need to replace the image with this http://i47.tinypic.com/deppy0.jpg


.sidebar ul li {
float:left;
list-style-type:none;
padding-left:15px;
background:transparent url(http://i47.tinypic.com/deppy0.jpg) no-repeat scroll 0 4px;
margin:0 0 5px;
}
.sidebar ul li:hover {
background:transparent url(http://i46.tinypic.com/330u3kp.jpg) no-repeat scroll 0 4px;
}

---

Note : If your sidebar does not have any thing like .sidebar ul li:hover   you have to add one for your sidebar.
Note :Dont just copy paste blindly it will not work

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Desert Song

Watercolor, acrylic ink & collage on paper.
9 x 12 inches.

2010 - 73rd SANIBEL SHELL SHOW & SALE

The shell tent at The Sanibel Community House was open a few days early, herald the coming of the 73rd Sanibel Shell Show, a 3 day event, beginning on Thursday, March 4, 2010.

Shell tent volunteers were busy selling an amazing array of local Sanibel - Captiva shells, collected through out the year by Community House volunteers.

I love these - a whole box of Lace Murexes!

ABOVE PHOTO: "Lovers Grotto" Shell Frame by L.A. Givens

The 2010 Sanibel Shell Show was wonderful, with a stunning line up of one-of-a-kind shell art to suit every taste. I was fortunate to have met a few of the shows veteran shell artists this year- Sandy Moran, who has had a long association with the Sanibel Shell Show and known for her beautiful and delicate Sailors Valentines, William Jordan, who is known for his intricate shell work with antique pocket watches, authentic period Sailors Valentines and some of the most amazing miniature shell work I've ever seen and Mary Robertson, who has to be one of the most versatile shell artists, with an unbelievable range in shell work and style. I don't have a web site for Ms. Robertson. If you would like to purchase her work, please contact the Sanibel Community House, I am sure they can provide with contact info.

Below are just a few of the beautiful shell art pieces featured at the shell show this year -

ABOVE PHOTO: Sailor's Valentine by Jane Santini

ABOVE PHOTO: Shell Museum By Rusti Stover

ABOVE PHOTO: Shell Lamp by Mary Robertson

ABOVE PHOTO: Sailor's Valentine by Pat Cohen

ABOVE PHOTO: Sponge Basket by Joann Goodwin

ABOVE PHOTO: Sailor's Valentine by William Jordan

ABOVE PHOTO: Shell Necklace by Nancy Goes

ABOVE PHOTO: Shell Mirror by Susan Lloyd (Mirror with the Blue Ribbon)

ABOVE PHOTO: "Poseidon's Kaleidoscope" Shell Box by L.A. Givens

I will be uploading more great photos from the 2010 Sanibel Shell Show to my Flickr account shortly and will list the slide show on this blog for your viewing pleasure - stay tuned!