Something for US

So I rarely sit down and say "Ya know, I am going to paint myself something today." Scott and I recently moved into what is now officially "our place" we chose paint colors and the whole nine yards. We are one closet away from being completely settled, we hung art, it has been quite fun.

Except the living room. We chose a yellow and we do not have enough small stuff or the right large piece to really work with the space above the couch. So to me it feels odd that here we are two artists and when you walk into the first room of the house you are assaulted by bare walls.




Since I had materials and a little bit of time I finally did think "Ya know, I am going to paint myself something today." So I set out to make a simple muerto of Scott, Myself, and a really large one of our dog since neither Scott or I are that vain but our dog loves the attention. 
I started out with these three panels 

I took one day of prep and it should only take me a day each to finish out the other pieces now that I have the background yellow mapped out and I am just down to filling in. 

I will add more pictures later after I am finished with the set, just wanted to let you see what I have been doing lately. No your eyes are not screwy, our dog is missing a leg. The outline should only have three legs.

It's hot everywhere!

Here's a shot of cooling, kinda.


http://pnr.ma/ahqPPq

a few new tanks.

Since we ran out of big metal boxes for the moment and do not have time to build any more yet, back to Tank-O-Lanterns. There will be more coming and I still need to take pictures of them glowing with the lights installed but the sun has yet to set. Playing a bit more with shadow play on a few of them to see what kind of shadows they will cast on the wall if placed in a corner.

Wenchkin's Mail Art 366 - Halfway Done!

I can hardly believe I hit the halfway point for my 366 daily project. I thought for fun I would grab a cross section of the cards and make a little slideshow of just a few of the things I have created in the last 6 months. If you would like to see the whole project in it's entirety you can find it on my art page on G+.

Skull table #3 finished

For this last one we opted to not cut out real table legs as it were and just go for making a rubix style design all the way around it. We are quite happy with it so far and unsure if we are going to even attempt to try to light this or just leave it as it. Remains to be seen when the lights go down.

If you have missed the series so far this is a collaboration between Scott and I. He built the boxes, I created and drew the designs on then he cut them out using a plasma cutter. The other two we have made can be seen here - Skull table #1 and Skull table #2

Updated - hung a light from the middle inside and shot pictures of it on our porch. 

Skull Table #3 - still in progress.

Scott and I talked about this piece before choosing to cut out the table legs that I had originally planned seen in my last post here. Instead of giving this one legs we decided I should change the pattern that I had going on the top up a bit and also put it on the sides giving it more of a full pseduo rubix effect.
This took me so long to do the four sides today that Scott most likely will not get to cutting it out until at least tomorrow but we are very excited to see how this one comes out.

Skull Table #3 In Progress

These things are so dang hard to shoot being shiny metal and all.
So pseduo rubix top

Now when Scott gets time this weekend he will cut this sucker out
If you missed the other two we have done you can see the finished products
http://yuccaflatsnm.blogspot.com/2012/06/skull-table-2-finished.html
and
http://yuccaflatsnm.blogspot.com/2012/06/cube-finished.html

My new found love for the Sunflower

My first sunflower of the year barely began to yesterday. This is exciting for me as these were a surprise flower. In spring when I began watering the honeysuckle out back a bunch of baby plants popped up. I myself did not plant them and was curious as to what they were since they were not weeds so I transplanted them to a different planter to let them grow to see what they were. This was what I got.
suprise sunflowers





















Then something else happened. As they started to grow I noticed one in particular was growing additional blooms as the base of every leaf. I dug back into the internet to try to find out why. It turns out there are thousands of varieties and I did not establish which one mine was. However I did find out that this one single plant with multiple blooms is most likely the effect of cross pollination. Awesome. So the bees, wasps, ladybugs and other garden visitors probably stopped down the street at my neighbor's multi bloom variety before stopping by my pad.


I have enjoyed just watching them grow. You can also click on any of the pictures to see them full size as I have them saved much lager than the size shown 




And my last little bit that tickles my dork side I am stealing from wiki-
The flower petals within the sunflower's cluster are usually in a a spiral pattern. Generally, each floret is oriented toward the next by approximately the golden angle, 137.5°, producing a pattern of interconnecting spirals, where the number of left spirals and the number of right spirals are successive Fibonacci numbers. Typically, there are 34 spirals in one direction and 55 in the other; on a very large sunflower there could be 89 in one direction and 144 in the other.^[1][2][3] This pattern produces the most efficient packing of seeds within the flower head.^[4][5][6]

math, I hate having to do it but it's results in nature are just awesome.
The head of mine has just started to grown but it should give you a good idea of the spirals they speak of and of course you can click on it to make it larger.




I can hardly wait to take more macro shots as it grows and much later harvest seeds.
What a fun surprise this has been.

Skull Table #2 finished

No light up pics yet as I have yet to install a light and the sun has not quite set yet anyway. But we are super excited and wanted to share pictures of it now anyway.

These are the before it was cut out shots 

This is where we are now.

These have been a great joy to create and collaborate on.

Skull Table 2 in progress

Just finished sketching out the idea for this one. So far I have kept the edges of the box intact. That may change after Scott cuts it out. We need to look at it before we decide to keep it that way or just give it full legs like the last one. 

If you missed the first box finished pictures of it are here 

so you can get an idea of where this one is going. 

Look, it's a skull table!

I think we need some rust and a glass top.  Excited to get the next two tables cutout this week!  The shadows are a super cool effect.

Updated - added light in leg 

Taking back facebook - my 2 cents

If you use facebook you have to be aware that is has been slowly changing. If you have a page with more than 400 fans I am sure you noticed the new promoted posts section. I myself thought my fan interaction dropped off a bit ago and I could not figure out why. Other people I know stated the same thing. Some people told us we were crazy. Now that I have had time to read up on *active fans* it is apparent that your page is not being viewed by all the people that like your page anymore, only your active fans. According to them your page's active fans are probably only about 10% of the people that actually liked your page.

Now outside of all this I have had my own issues with the site and have been deleted multiple times along with at least 30 other people I know.  What I learned from all of this was that those people really did want my content and went straight back to my page and liked it again with their new account turning them for the time being into active fans. My stats currently show I reach 25% of my fans instead of the usual 10%.

I think there are two factors involved here.
1. New fans are instantly deemed active until the time allowed that slips them into inactive and I have no idea how long that takes.
2. When I started noticing drop off I started talking to other page owners and we made a pact to try to at least like or comment on something once a week so we are able to continue to see each others feeds.

I for the most part do not think you as a page owner can do anything about the percentage of fan base you reach other than reaching out to your fans and letting them know if they want to keep seeing you show up in their feed it is on them to remain active.

This is where you need to enable yourself and your friends to go back in and take back your pages as an individual. I opened up the section of all the pages I have liked, established if I really do like them and want their content, unliked them if I did not and unliked pages I actually do like to like it again to hopefully kick me back into being active and for good measure I left a few likes and a comment while I was there.

The only way you are really going to get your numbers up is to educate people on what it is to be an active fan, and you yourself strive to be a more active fan to the pages you like. Do not allow apathy to allow you to slip into becoming inactive. If you like content in your steam from pages it is on you as the user to keep it there.

I myself as a page owner will not pay to promote posts as most of what I put out are free coloring pages, tutorials and just pictures of my art to share. I do not want to pay to spam people about it. If you want my stuff, you will come for it and that makes me happy. But I can not afford 5 bucks a post for three days so all my fans will see my free coloring page. Sorry folks. 

However if you have a page you want me to pay attention to and give a like, by all means let me know since I am still rebuilding facebook to be what I want. 

The Cube Finished!

 We started in wanting to have it finished for Skull Appreciation Day but life got us too busy to finish at that time. Scott just now finished cutting it out and we wanted to share some pictures with you. We will have to wait till tonight to light it up and take pictures of it glowing as that was part of the point of having a lit up outside table for when we bbq and party outside.

you can click on the pictures to enlarge them if you so desire.
it is a 24" cube

I have two more to design but unsure what I will be doing with those two yet.
We also can be conned into selling them I just worry a bit about what shipping would run on something this large and metal.

and since people kept asking about it we did cave and list it for sale http://www.artfire.com/ext/shop/product_view/scottkrichau/4782877/Metal_Skull_Table_with_Flower_Center/Furniture/Tables/Patio

Dinner is Served!

Kabobs with rice was awesome tonight.

Backyardigands

Skull Appreciation Day Winner

If you missed all the fun yesterday it was Skull Appreciation Day so I put up a special coloring page and did a little giveaway, you can view that post here http://yuccaflatsnm.blogspot.com/2012/06/skull-appreciation-day-giveaway.html

anyhow. I woke up this morning to 12 comments, one a duplicate removed by author so I deleted it and ran the numbers 1-11 into random.org. I screen capped the winner pick from that site and random picked comment number 3

Comment number 3 was this one

edizziJune 4, 2012 7:53 AM

oooo...so very AWESOME!!! I found you via G+ and love your daily creations! :-D My email is 01edizzi25@gmail.com

I will be writing you shortly to get some shipping info. 

Thanks to everyone that dropped by, looked around, left comments and played.

Now back to more art