Thievery and copyrights

Finally home, finally back in the studio- and now I have about  a week before I go back to my regular job.  With so much going on this past month I really haven't gotten the studio time I had hoped for, though I did finish a portrait of my best friend's beautiful daughter.

Elliott Quinn

I had a 16x20 canvas sprayed silver, then sketched the portrait with charcoal before finishing it off with acrylic.

In other good news, I have a new site up!  Dust Jacket Studios is up and running online at an, albeit temporary, spot that at least gets the job done.  There is a gallery, spot to order, links to merchandise, and some good info.       It's not all of DJS, but so far encompasses my own art.  I am still working on a logo.  A problem I have been running into lately is  "rights to celebrity."  What this is doing is pulling any merchandise or prints I post using my paintings because they are recognized as celebrity portraits and companies like CafePress don't want to be held responsible in case someone wants to sue for using their face.  I guess I will just have to make these items personal and just offer them exclusively through my website, which kind of sucks since I won't have all the exposure of CafePress users, but I suppose it's better than nothing.  I did an awesome mug for The Legend of Billie Jean that I wanted for myself anyway. hehe.

Awesome, so, in looking for a link to just use, I came across another LOBJ item using my painting.  This is kind of like the whole rights to celebrity thing, only here is my argument.  If you are a celebrity, you expect your image to be everywhere, you even want it out there for advertisement.  The difference being, artistic interpretation belongs to an artist, and stealing that image is just that- stealing.  It would be different it the image was once again artistically interpreted, then it would no longer be my own interpretation.  The problem I keep running into here is that people just slap the image of my painting on their own products without giving credit to me or asking my permission.   All I did with the original movie poster image was Photoshop it until I got the look I wanted, then I painted that altered image.  I have found my painting on half a dozen unauthorized products the past few years when all these people ever had to do was Photoshop the movie poster the same way I initially did and leave my painting out of it.  Ugh.
omg, so I spent the better part of the past hour searching around and found two culprits- one on fanpop.com and the other on photobucket, where the other supposedly was linked from.  The original Photobucket image was one I had put up at least 6 years ago and forgot all about since I no longer use the site.  I rock. Well, hopefully it will now be taken care of and I will no longer see such thievery of my images.  Phew!

A step in the right direction

My desk arrived the other day!  yay!  Even though it is a piece of crap, it still gets the job done.  My studio is all set up.

As you can see, I have been drawing away.  Actually, in the middle of this drawing, I got the idea to do a video of my drawing process. About 40 minutes into it I finished the outline.  That's when I noticed it was so bright that you couldn't even see anything on the paper.  Live and learn- I will fix it for next time.  So now I am half way through two new drawings.  Neither of which is today's Sketch of the Day.  Here is further proof that I love Johnny Depp.

Johnny

On a completely different note, I came across another person trying to sell t-shirts using the image of my Legend of Billie Jean painting.  wtf?!  This is the 4th or 5th time this has happened.  Before it was on Ebay, but his time I cam across it while looking for an avatar for my new Billie Jean Fans page on DeviantArt.  I really don't understand why people photoshop my copyrighted image when they can photoshop someone else's for those t-shirts that nobody buys anyway.  People suck.

Now for todays Recipe of the Day!  This one is simple.  I am currently reading Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett, so, in honor of Prior Philip and the monks of Kingsbridge, here is the recipe for Horsebread.

HORSE BREAD

"Take two bushels of good clean beans and one bushel of wheat, and grind them together. Then, through a fine [sieve], bolt out the quantity of two pecks of pure meal, and bake it in two or three loaves by itself. The rest sift through a meal sieve and knead it with water and good store of barme [yeast]. And so, bake it in bread loaves and with the coarser bread feed your horse in his rest."
(Gervase Markham Country Contentments, 1615)

Enjoy!