Getting an audience is hard. Sustaining an audience is hard. It demands a consistency of thought, of purpose, and of action over a long period of time.
Bruce Springsteen 
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/consistency.html#GaqhobBvoblMfghM.99 

Using consistency in a business Model.

http://www.youtube.com/user/marieforleo

Now I am working very hard at consistency. Or rather I am working at certain things that I have not been consistent about. The link is to Marie TV aka Marie Forleo. I believe she is going to be a superstar. She gets so many things, but one thing she gets and can communicate is the power of online business. Within that context, and within the context of business she talks at great length, and discusses the importance of consistency, She is the reason I took a look at what was not working and realized I need to be regular, and yes more consistent with my posts. Bruce Springsteen is just another voice.

So following that though I said I would fix the 'Cat in the Door' piece and repost it. I liked the darkness of the first one because I think it communicated mystery, and that sense of night I wanted. I am working on this between other projects.  It is still a work in progress. 

Cats

"The thing is, we have to let go of all blame, all attacking, all judging, to free our inner selves to attract what we say we want. Until we do, we are hamsters in a cage chasing our own tails and wondering why we aren't getting the results we seek."

— Dr. Joe Vitale: Motivational author and speaker

Fun with Photoshop. Needs some clean up, but it is still pretty funny. 

I am taking two very important classes this term, one is InDesign, which is part of Adobe Creative Suite 5. InDesign is a page layout program: Newsletters, magazines etc.  The other class is Photoshop. The trick with Photoshop is not to make it look like it was manipulated in Photoshop. That is the part that takes time and patience. The programs are described as robust. That is an understatement. You can do so much with either one that the possibilities are endless. 

I am becoming much more efficient due to the lack of time I have. Sometimes, however, I find myself wishing for a cats life. Meow. 

Change of focus

"The mind, once expanded to the dimensions of larger ideas, never returns to its original size."

— Oliver Wendell Holmes: was an Associate Justice of
the Supreme Court of the United States

An old friend wrote to me and suggested I stop worrying about the daily post, and do what I can when I can. That was a bit of a relief to hear. Those of us who have been going to school, with deadlines, etc know how stressful it can be to hit those, while you are involved in the learning curve of learning something new. That deadline is a useful tool because it forces you to take what you have learned and use it, quickly, and usually that means you will hang on to the information. It is a kind of expansion such as the good Justice spoke of in the quote. 

This is actually a class assignment from this past year in the spring, Design Fundamentals. I went into this class thinking OMG I am going to be so bored. But the review of principles, the reminder of color theory, all of those little things you need to know to make a good composition turned out to be a good boot in the butt. And the instructor and I went to the Academy of Art in San Francisco, me for my BFA, he for his MFA. So he raised the bar a bit for me. 

This piece was a collage timeline. It begins in the left corner with a sun drawing from high school, and moves through postmarks, sketches and drawings to the Postmark that represents the start of school. I collect postmarks, and the square barcodes because they are interesting visually. I also collect stamps, and someday when I have some free time for fine art I am going to do some mixed media and collage pieces incorporating them. I did not draw the Sumo Wrestler or the Cat. The Sumo Wrestler alludes to a slide that we were shown in class that made us all laugh, which is why it is at the end of the sequence. And new to my posts, this one is for web only and will not expand to view detail. Sorry, I have become concerned about copyright infringement. ;-(

So until the next post.