original drawings on small jigsaw puzzles

Mermaids and Fishes II

© 2011

Mermaids and Fishes I

© 2011

Stars and Doves I

© 2011

Leddy, the Exotic Bird

© 2011

Note: I was planning on this blog post being about the Etsy privacy disaster (as promised from the previous post), but I am putting it off until the next time I blog. It's more pleasant to share new work:

The puzzles (above) are pieces I made yesterday and today. They are original drawings using india ink and professional artist's markers on small blank jigsaw puzzles. Very liberating! I usually plan most of my artworks with preliminary drawings. This is the first time in years when I just took my pen and drew. In other words, I winged it!

I am putting them up for sale in my artist's co-operative gallery, Valley Artisans Market.

Valley Artisans Market celebrated their 30th anniversary this last Sunday with a potluck for members (past and present) and their families.

I usually don't post work that I take to galleries and shops, but perhaps I will start.

Valley Artisans Market is a combination gallery/artisan's market/gift shop. Everything in the shop is locally made. My own handmade items in this shop include framed giclee prints, small wheel thrown vessels and sculptures, greeting cards, gift tags, jig saw puzzles, painted and printed teeshirts and painted and printed tote bags. They also allow me to have my CDs for sale in the shop.

The shop is located in a town very close to where Grandma Moses lived and painted and is often filled with summer and autumn tourists who want a taste of an older America. The area hasn't changed too much since she lived there. The houses still look like the houses she painted. There are no big box stores except a small Cumberland Farms and an Agway. There are no condos, parking lots or apartment buildings. It is like stepping back in time.

The gallery is what you'd expect in an area where Grandma Moses lived: fairly conservative with lots of paintings of the rural landscape and farm animals. Perhaps my work is less conservative than most of the work in the gallery.

links:

MY WEBSITE

VALLEY ARTISAN MARKET

Simon Lovey, Exotic Bird

© 2011

part of the Exotic Bird Series I have been working on

7th in the series

This is listed as a giclee print through this link in my Artfire shop.

I tend to do work on my exotic bird series when I am stressed out or the weather is too hot to think straight. I can just make up what I want as I go along; I don't have to worry about being true to persective or color. I look at these pieces as simply joy.

Joy is a good juxtaposition to being stressed out (sounds so obvious, doesn't it?).

I don't mind telling my readers that my state of stress concerns Etsy's latest privacy breaches. I will go into a lot more detail about the matter in my next blog post, but to briefly keep you abreast, Etsy changed its privacy policies recently and disclosed all buyers' real names to the general public (buyers could opt out of having their real names disclosed-- but many buyers were not aware of any of Etsy's change of privacy policies because they never received Etsy's e-mails). To make a log story short, what people bought on the Etsy site was searchable through google. The story broke on all of the major media (MSNBC, Washington Post, Huffington Post, etc). This effected sellers too, as buyers were blaming sellers for recommending and advertising the site, a site they (the buyers) thought was secure.

At this point, I cannot in good conscience recommend Etsy until this has been worked out to my satisfaction, thus the warning after my Etsy link below:

MY WEBSITE

MY ART IN ON-LINE STORES:

Artfire

(You do not need to be a member of this site to buy—secure site... and largest selection)

Etsy

(You need to be a member of Etsy to buy--secure site... seasonal selection)

MY MUSIC LINKS (hear clips):

Music MYSPACE

My band, Saratoga Faire’s MYSPACE

My Renaissance band MYSPACE: The Spirites Consort

MY MUSIC IN ON-LINE STORES:

CD Baby

Amazon

InandOutRecords (Europe)

My band, Saratoga Faire, on CD Baby

Fuchsia Egg with Bunny

© 2011

This is probably the last Easter design of the year and is available through my Artfire on-line shop in packages of 3 cards each (it can be ordered in different quantities; just read the directions on the listing description).

The original design is 10.5" x 15" and I have saved it in this size just in case someone wants a full print of it. 

I have a lot of easter designs in stock where rabbits have full features, so I decided that this one could be featureless, like a flash of lightening leaping across the suspended egg.

MY WEBSITE

MY ART IN ON-LINE STORES:

Artfire

Etsy

MY MUSIC LINKS (hear clips):

Music MYSPACE

My band, Saratoga Faire’s MYSPACE

My Renaissance band MYSPACE: The Spirites Consort

MY MUSIC IN ON-LINE STORES:

CD Baby

Amazon

InandOutRecords (Europe)

My band, Saratoga Faire, on CD Baby

Is that my face in that balloon?

Jim Manngard: digital artwork
from a photo of me by Jim Lestrange

I thought this was pretty darned cool when Jim Manngard sent this to me, so I'm posting it here. Jim does a lot of fun digital work for his friends including photos with art (and special meanings) around the frames as well as funny self portraits (including himself as Matryoshka dolls!). Not too much of it out there on the web to see, which is too bad, but it is why I'm posting this one here.

He started his balloon series with the Blackmores Night Band. It is a balloon with a picture of the band with the caption "Blackmore's Night Minstrel Band flying high and reaching for the stars". Days later he made Ritchie and Candice (the married leaders of that band) balloons shaped like hearts flying over a lake. I had told him that I liked these pieces, so he sent me this version. Jim works for Blackmores Night as part of the sound team and takes a lot of tour pictures, some of which he converts to digital art when he is home.

You can see a few of Jim's photos on the Blackmores Night website and the Candice Night website.

My own website