These have both been added to the gallery. Keep your eyes peeled for another art update Monday if all goes well. Incidentally, the gallery has also been updated with a downloadable portfolio, T&C, and CV for client use. I’ve also added a Freelance page to distinguish between business projects and private commissions.

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I’ve just signed up as an Artist/Illustrator with the D20 Girls Project. I hope to work on an exciting project with them in the summer, and in the meantime they’ve been very generous in offering me plenty of great opportunities to display and sell my art at conventions I wouldn’t normally be able to attend, as well letting me set up an online store. I was pretty impressed.

If you’re curious about the company, I was originally interested enough to approach them because of their business premise. The site states that the business is “specifically geared towards promoting a female spirit in the gaming industry.” In a nutshell, this means that they offer anime/gaming convention services with the unique angle of employing actual female gamers and fans as opposed to “booth babes” who know nothing or care nothing about the actual series and games they are promoting. The D20 Girls, by contrast, are sincere enthusiasts and since they come in all sizes and backgrounds, they represent actual women far more accurately. According to their site, they are in essence the anti-booth babe: “The D20 Girls Project aims to break down modeling stereotypes; we are not Barbie™ dolls.”

I felt like I would enjoy doing work for the company for these reasons, so don’t be surprised if you see assignments for them popping up in my art updates now and then. Here’s my profile on the site: http://ww4.d20girls.com/profile/sandpaperdaisy

I’ve also updated the Links page with a link to the D20 Girls main page.

Two new pieces finished today and added to the gallery, Digital Art category.

Several works have also been added to the Business category. Since I have been invited to display a large amount of work at the Arts Council building in March, I will be having a lot more art to put in the Traditional Category soon. I also plan to pare down the gallery somewhat to give it more of a portfolio focus.

It was only up as the interim background image for one day, but I will always remember the psychotic smudgy blimp with kindness.

Now however, if you visit this site you will see this image of…well, sandpaper daisies. Blood and all. At least, I imagine your fingers would bleed if you played “she loves me, she loves me not” with sandpaper daisies. There are also teeth in the big daisy for added subliminal threat. Text is random text from passages of Down Your Street.

Mobilization has been completed and the Updates/News page has been moved over so that About is now the site frontpage. As usual, this all took a lot longer than I expected it to take (2 hours longer to be specific) but ultimately I’m glad I got it done. The background site image will be improved upon presently to something a little less busy, but for now, please enjoy this messy psychotic blimp.

Right now during this health-induced lapse in productivity, the news posts have been a series of entirely textual articles focused on site issues. This isn’t consistent with most other artist sites I follow and I think I may be better served by making the frontpage a static page featuring much more in the way of artistic elements. We’ll see how that goes, right now I have to get to bed.

It appears now that Paypal policies do allow small sites and blogs to use their “Donation” button for site maintenance. A site automatically comes under review when $150,000 have been made in donations, then a subjective decision is made by a representative as to whether the button was used appropriately.

Therefore, since this site has a policy of donating a percentage of commission revenue to charities and since I do not anticipate receiving significantly large donations in the near future, for the time being this site will go back to offering the much more flexible Donation option so interested people can enter their own amount. This is naturally subject to change as Paypal’s policies are subject to change. After the business grows a bit, I plan to offer more sophisticated payment methods for purchases and donations. Of course, if any net-savvy readers have any suggestions as to good Paypal alternatives, I’ll always be glad to hear them.

Sandpaperdaisy.com’s “Donate” Paypal screen has now been switched to a “Buy Now” screen. The new “Buy Now” button contains options for a $1, $5, $10, or $20 donation. Otherwise, donations for any amount $0.01 and up can still be specified, but now donors will have to go to Paypal and send their donation to this email rather than having the ease of simply clicking a link or a button. I apologize for the inconvenience, this change is due to a Paypal policy.

I have added Abbey Road Coffee to my Links page, and for very good reason. They have been incredibly helpful to me as a place to meet clients and sell art. In fact, it is no exaggeration to say that this little coffee shop has sold more pieces for me in a few months than any upscale gallery I have ever worked with over a period of years. This is surely due to a lot of factors, of course…I make it a point to display several of my more inexpensive items there, to give a much larger clientele the opportunity to own some of my art. That and they offer really good coffee and scones, which nice galleries typically do not do. But whatever the reasons, Abbey Road Coffee is a fantastic resource for artists. It certainly has been for me. (And I’m addicted to their white chocolate.)

I’m so glad I was able to make it to the opening of digitized tonight, they had a truly wonderful surprise for me. DRIFT took home a First in digital illustration.

Another unexpected treat was seeing a former art professor of mine, Carolyn Roth. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that she does some digital photography too, she has a lovely photo of some elephants in the show that she took while on safari. Her and her husband seem to really be enjoying retirement, I wish them the best!

All in all, a lovely evening. For those of you interested in catching the show during its run (there are many fantastic pieces there!) the show should continue until January 3rd or 4rth and it is at the Bower-Suhrheinrich Foundation Gallery, 318 Main Street, Evansville.