



The trials and tribulations of a recovering spirit.
Man! It has been a rough couple of weeks! After submitting my Saint Hildegard for approval with GCU, I began looking at Halloween categories I might have missed, and decided to make some Halloween party invitations. Then I began researching what kind of Christmas theme I wanted to pursue. I wanted to have a theme so I could make a bunch of cards on one subject, kind of like illustrating a story. I decided that since I neglected the faeries for Halloween, it would be neat to have a faerie theme for Christmas.
I noticed it was taking a while for my Hildegard card to get approved, but I had read on the forum that a lady had over two hundred cards pending approval and I figured that this was the hang up. It didn't occur to why she would have so many pending. Then someone else complained on the forum how long it was taking for their cards to be approved. I should point out at this point that it is rare for someone from GCU proper to respond on the forum unless they are addressed by name; so when someone asks a question, it is usually answered by other artists who have more experience (hopefully) than the questioner. This time the response was that cards were taking a long time for approval because of the holiday season. What?! I thought starting on Christmas cards in August was being ahead of the game! Well, if you consider Halloween, and Thanksgiving part of the holiday season, I guess I am still ahead of the game; however, I realize that the vast majority of total cards sold are Christmas cards so naturally I began to panic. I went from being ahead to being behind without even noticing it! Crap!
Well, what can I do but proceed? I actually already have a few Christmas Cards posted. My great idea was to have faeries lighting a Christmas tree with their little halos. I know, right? Great idea! Well, I am now on my second attempt. My first attempt was too complicated and too small. I tried to draw each faerie and make their glow different colors on 7"x10" watercolor block. I used a device of having a closer faerie heading toward the tree to make it more obvious that the tree was lit by faeries. This way I could detail one faerie, and the tree. It was just too messy.
My second attempt is on a 8.5"x14" (10"x15" cropped). This time the faeries on the tree are shining orbs with a faint faerie silhouette. Also, the glow is uniformly golden. I still have the device of a faerie closer to the viewer to convey that faeries are lighting the tree. Also, in the new version, she looks over her shoulder at the viewer and beckons us in. In each case, I also have faeries topping the tree and they are a little bigger.
I also wanted the trees to be covered with snow. To make the lights seem bright, I had to set the scene at night, right? So, I decided to make the snow a light blue. Trying to make snow look like snow and still have the lights be the lightest part of the painting turned out to be challenging. (when I was a kid, "challenging" meant "motivated one to try harder" now it is applied to every situation that is difficult; some kind of political correctness cross wire.) The trees just looked blue. Luckily, you can add yellow to blue and get green; the color most people expect fir trees to be.
The biggest challenge of the new painting turned out to be the glow of the main faerie. In the first painting, I left the paper white for the faerie glow. This is the recommended way to achieve light in watercolor: use the white of the paper. Using white paint is frowned upon. In the first painting; however, all the halos were too sharp edged, particularly the lead faerie as she appears against the night sky. On the new painting I thought I would try leaving the sky light around the lead faerie but not white. The whole sky came out funky though. Kind of patchy as the paper dried before it could paint the whole sky. On a second pass, I wet the area to be painted first but this created puddly splotches.
When it came time to paint the glow around her; let's call her Noel so I don't have to keep calling her the lead faerie, putting yellow on top of purple didn't work so well. So in with the white paint!
OK, this might be a good point to talk about Christmas music. I thought it might be a good idea to listen to Christmas music while I was working on this project, to help create the proper mood. I listen to Pandora which is usually great. I'm kind of picky about my Christmas music though, and the thing about Pandora if you aren't familiar with it, is: you set parameters, and they pick music according to those parameters. This way, they get to try to sell you some music you weren't expecting. First I picked "Christmas music" rather than a genre like "blues Christmas", "Jazz Christmas," etc... I wanted some Jewel, some Anonymous4, some Mormon Tabernacle choir, and I put this into the parameters, but Christmas is a stronger parameter, and I got Bing Crosby, Dean Martin... like that. That's fine, but it is August remember? I used to work at a craft store and the manager would put Christmas music on in September (to go through January) and it drove me crazy. Well I switched my station to "Classical Christmas" and put in my parameters. after three straight days of listening like 8 hours a day they have yet to play one specific artist or song I put in, and I doubt they are going to. I like the classical Christmas, but I have a resentment now that they are not playing what I asked them too. They can't get Sufi music down either, but that's another story (they keep playing dance music: whirling dervish? I don't know. there. that's the story)
Any reader of this blog will quickly come to the conclusion that I have a lot of ideas that I voice and then seem to abandon. Sometimes, it gets put on hold for pursuit of a new idea, and I return to it later. Sometimes I do abandon it because while it might have sounded good in my head, it doesn't work out in reality. We'll see what happens to the "Faerie Christmas." Even if I start doing line drawings of Santa Clause and Nativity scenes (both of which are in the works) I still want to do more faerie Christmas.
Greetings, weary traveler! Welcome to another edition of the exciting new blog everyone's talking about! Oh wait. No, welcome to Azule Blue Dragon instead. Well, I have been hard at work, making cards, friends on facebook, and trouble in general. My facebook fanpage; known as bluedragon connections, if you aren't near a link, has 85 fans so far, but I went from getting a four star rating to zero to one. People click "like" and then don't interact anymore than that. That doesn't bother me, but I still have made only two sales on cards and I have to figure out a way to market my cards to people who are looking for them.
Well, I just keep moving forward; or as fish savant Dory would say, "just keep swimming." I post at least once a day on all three facebook walls, make new cards, examine what I think makes other people's cards good or interesting, and researching new subjects and marketing strategies.
I'm exploring the various theories on "search engine optimization", which is why I've done all the things I've done so far, but clearly more needs to be done.
More interesting to me is the new cards I've made. A few utilize a new painting I created combining my favorite deep space object: the cone nebula, with pictures I found of witches celebrating Halloween, which they call "Samhain" pronounced "Sowen". When I was younger, I became interested in this phenomena and did some research. I had a real "through the looking glass moment" when I realized that real witches don't worship the devil. The religion, now known as "Wicca", predates Christianity. When Constantine; a Roman Emperor, converted to Christianity, Christianity took on many aspects of Roman Culture; centralized authority, and conquering the world. To this end, whenever opposition was found that couldn't be overcome with a sword, God was used as a weapon. In this way non Christians were made to convert to Christianity or be killed, usually after torture. To justify this, the deities of other religions were made to be the devil, and the followers of these other religions were said to be devil worshipers. That would be like making a Hindu or Buddhist out to be devil worshippers today (which some people do) The funny thing is witches don't even worship a male god; they worship a Mother Goddess. Her consort is the "Horned God", and the patriarchal early Christians mistook him as the main Deity of the wiccans. They said he was the devil. This is one of the primary sources for the modern view of the appearance of the devil.
Anyway, I try to have respect for all religions (including Christianity) but I feel the need to explain my affinity for the Wiccans.
In fact, I have also made cards utilizing prayers from the Catholic Rite of Mass. Specifically "Gloria" & "Sanctus".
Finally, I have crafted an ink and brush rendering in Sanskrit of the word "yoga". The word means "Union with God" and, being indo-european etymologically speaking shares the same root as the word "yoke" in English. I hope to create many more cards using Sanskrit calligraphy.
OK! It's been a while and in some ways a lot has happened! I finally got some of my recovery cards approved and more are on the way! Check out my store here. As you may know this is the place to see what I'm working on before it appears in the store. Just to catch you up to speed; I had trouble getting my first batch of recovery cards approved because I wasn't clear in my inner text message. I also was unclear what was expected of me. I finally figured out that the category is simply "12 step programs" so that could include people recovering from drug addiction, overeating, sex addiction, gambling, and a whole host of things other than alcoholism, which is the focus of my
cards.
The procedure is that they send me an email saying "see notes for resubmission" and on the site where I manage my store are notes saying, "Please be more specific with 12 step language in your message." I wasn't sure what they meant, so I turned to the forum that's available to artists with "storefronts" at gcu. They pointed out to me that I could reply to the email gcu had sent me. This didn't occur to me because the notes were in a separate place and also I am a dufus.
I wrote a note explaining that I was being as specific as I could (I had added sobriety specific language to my greetings) and wasn't sure what else they wanted. Well, they approved my cards without further comment.
I suppose that was too much info, but it was the focus of my being for about a week.
Now I have taken to submitting photographs. Some of them were taken at Sea World of the polar bears, and some were taken at local parks and nature trails. I have noticed the the people at gcu who are successful and respected have hundreds of cards in their stores, so I am going to create as many as I can. My new images are of animals and flowers. Usually I create the image first and then try to figure out what category card I can fit it into. Of course this is backwards, but until I get the hang of this, I am going to try everything I can to build a store that has a wide selection of products that will attract a wide variety of people.
As I have stated previously, I am focusing mainly on recovery cards, and that continues to be the case, but that will not stop me from creating cards that fit into a variety of subjects.
I also submitted a painting of the blue dragon that this site and my store are named after. This is significant because of the text within the card:
I am the Blue Dragon. I serve the Blue Light; whose physical manifestation is the Universe: the One Voice, the Eternal Word, the Infinite Sound. All things are revealed by the Light. All shadows are created by the Light. Love is the Way of the Light. Either one serves Love or one opposes Love. One cannot claim to serve Love through hate. Anger and fear are the absence of Love. Love is omnipresent. There is nowhere it is not. It does not shirk; it does not hide. To be unable to feel its presence is delusion. It is we who turn away from the Light. It is constant and never abandons us. It is The Energy; The Force; The Power. The Source of all. Love is indiscriminate. Love is not concerned with what name it is called, or what rituals it is worshiped by. Love does not favor one over another. Love does not punish. Love wants you to be happy and healthy. For this to happen you must conform to Love. Love cannot be ruled by you. You are a manifestation of Love. There is no intermediary.