How a comic is made. Here is website by artist Kazu Kibuishi, the artist of a graphic novel called Copper....see how he prepares a comic art page step by step. Very cool info...I found this on Boing Boing.

Click here to see the comic tutorial

I was excited to see we use the same art paper (okay so I get excited over small stuff!)

http://www.boingboing.net/2006/01/30/how_a_comic_is_made.html

Boy: (noun) - A noise with dirt on it.

[here is a new photo of my 2-1/2 year old little boy]

Toddler Miracle Diet!
(found on Internet, author unknown)

 Americans are always on the lookout for a new diet. The trouble with
     most diets is that you don't get enough to eat (the starvation diet),
     or you don't get enough variation (the liquid diet), or you go broke
     (the all-meat diet).

     Consequently, people tend to cheat on their diets, or quit after 3
     days, or go right back to stuffing their faces after it is all over.
     Is there nothing you can do but give up and tell your friends you have
     a gland problem? Or is there a slim (groan) hope?

     Well, now there's the new Toddler Miracle Diet!

     Over the years you may have noticed, as I have, that most
     two-year-olds are trim. It came to me one day over a cup of black
     coffee and a carrot that perhaps their diet is the reason. After
     consultation with pediatricians, X-ray technicians, and distraught
     moms, I was able to formulate this new diet. It is inexpensive,
     offering great variety and sufficient quantity.  Before embarking on
     this diet, however, be sure to check with your doctor... otherwise you
     might have to see him afterward. Good luck!

      DAY ONE
     -------
     Breakfast
          One scrambled egg, one piece of toast with grape jelly.
          Eat 2 bites of egg, using your fingers; dump the rest on the
                floor.
          Take 1 bite of toast, then smear the jelly over your face and
                clothes.

     Lunch
          Four crayons (any color), a handful of potato chips, and a
          glass of milk (3 sips only, then spill the rest).

     Dinner
          A dry stick, two pennies and a nickel.

     Bedtime Snack
          Toast piece of bread and toss it on the kitchen floor.

     DAY TWO
     -------
     Breakfast
           Pick up stale toast from kitchen floor and eat it. Drink half
           bottle of vanilla extract or one vial of vegetable dye.

     Lunch
           Half a tube of "Pulsating Pink" lipstick and a handful of
           Purina Dog Chow (any flavor). One ice cube, if desired.

     Afternoon Snack
           Lick an all-day sucker until sticky, take outside, drop in
           dirt.  Retrieve and continue slurping until it is clean again.
           Then bring inside and drop on the rug.

     Dinner
           A rock or an uncooked bean, which should be thrust up your left
           nostril. Pour iced tea over mashed potatoes; eat with a spoon.

     DAY THREE
     ---------
     Breakfast
           Two pancakes with plenty of syrup, eat with fingers, rub in
           hair. Glass of milk: drink half, stuff pancakes in glass.
           After breakfast, pick up yesterday's sucker from rug, lick off
           fuzz, and put it on the cushion of your best chair.

     Lunch
           Three matches, peanut-butter and jelly sandwich. Spit several
           bites onto the floor. Pour glass of milk on table and slurp up.

     Dinner
           Dish of ice cream, handful of potato chips.


     FINAL DAY
     ---------
     Breakfast
           A quarter-tube of toothpaste (any flavor), bit of soap, an
           olive. Pour a glass of milk over bowl of cornflakes, add a
           half-cup of sugar. Once cereal is soggy, drink milk and feed
           cereal to dog.

     Lunch
           Eat crumbs off kitchen floor and dining room carpet. Find that
           sucker and finish eating it.

     Dinner
           A glass of spaghetti and chocolate milk. Leave meatball on
           plate. Stick of mascara for dessert.

It is not a slight thing when they, who are so fresh from God, love us ~ Charles Dickens

More e-mail from budding artists:

Dear Darla,

"....I would like to get started drawing portraits for others. I am wondering what you do about copyrighting and how you do taxes. As I understand it, it costs 30 dollars to copyright material and since this is rather expensive I was wondering if there is another way than copyrighting each individual drawing. Also, how do you do payments? I see that you accept paypal and am wondering how to get started with them. Also, I was wondering if your website is a business site or a personal site. As far as taxes go, I am just wondering about income tax etc. Okay! I think that is everything. I will look forward to hearing from you if you feel comfortable sharing this information!"

Sincerely,
M.Z.

Dear M.Z,

It is a job I love that I can do from home. It helps pay for some groceries... :)
But it's not a big wealth builder - the artwork gives me something to do besides change diapers and do laundry/dishes. :) I don't want to discourage you, there are ways to make money in art, but pencil portraits aren't it, probably. (The better money is in art licensing or oil portraits).

I just don't want someone to quit a good paying day job to do this...if they like the day job, that is. I disliked my day job and I wanted to stay home with my kids (I now have 4 kids).

My site is $12 a month on Tripod. It's pretty easy to use. I then got my domain name from http://namesecure.com/ and then forward it to my Tripod website address, or URL.

Each artwork is copyrighted, by the disclaimer on every page, but I have heard that there is a way to make images unsave-able by other parties by turning them into javascript using image protection software.

See this page for info on copyright.... http://www.whatiscopyright.org/
No, I wouldn't pay to copyright. I have had someone steal my text off my site before, so that's why I use http://copyscape.com/ to check, but I don't pay for that service either.

For taxes, I just use TurboTax Premier software (formerly Turbotax Home and Office)
Pretty simple, because I don't carry an inventory.

Paypal is wonderful ! It will take you 5 minutes to get going with your account. They will need your bank account information. PayPal just gets a percentage every time you have a transaction incoming. (basically the seller is paying the fees). You can invoice the customer, then when you get notice that they've paid, you transfer the money to your bank account. I print out the statements as I go along, so I'll have the fee that PayPal took out for my records, and I put them on my taxes as bank fees, because that's basically what they are. I don't advise leaving any funds sitting at PayPal though, because PayPal isn't FDIC insured like an actual bank. By clicking on Merchant Tools, PayPal provides you with the codes you need to set up Buy It Now buttons and a Shopping Cart (if desired).

I hope this helps!
Darla

When our cat of many years died a year and a half ago, I looked all over for a gravestone or marker for pets.

I ended up getting a resin statue of a fairy to put in the garden just to remember her by. Fairies have nothing to do with cats, but I couldn't find anything else!

Well wouldn't you know it, I found some by accident today:

Remember Me Pet Memorial Stone
I like this one, because you can use it for any pet.

Here is a grave marker specifically for cats:
Rest In Peace Pet Memorial Marker - CAT

They also have the traditional gravestone you can have personalized for your dog (or any pet, I suppose)

Rest In Peace Granite Pet Memorial - GRAY GRANITE

I can also do memorial pencil portraits of pets.
See pencil portrait art examples:

DOG PENCIL PORTRAITS

CAT PENCIL PORTRAITS

I always find it interesting to see where people visiting my website come from. I use Sitemeter.com for this info. It gives me a general idea of where people are, or at least, where their Internet Service Providers are!

In the past 24 hours, my site, http://www.darladixon.com has had visitors from Cottesloe, West Australia; Blackburn-Darwin, UK; Makati, Rizal, Philippines; Galston, New South Wales, Australia; Thailand; Scoresby, Victoria, Australia; Alberta Canada; Belfast, UK; Buenos Aires, Argentina; Newfoundland; and Slough, UK.

I also get some fun statistics (statistics...fun?!?)

79% of my website visitors are from North America
7% are from Europe
7% are from Asia (especially Thailand)
4% are from Australia (good on ya, mate!)
2% are from South America
1% from Unknown (how's the weather there in Unknown?) I've always wanted to visit.

Where are you from? Post a message here or sign my map at http://frappr.com/darladixon/

A good deal for the girls

Imagine cosmetics, most for only $1 each! E.l.f. (Eyes, Lips, Face). What a wonderful find! I guess you can tell where some of my money is going this week!

Drawing Tips for Beginning Artists

Art questions from site visitors -

These are from Richie in California:

"Where do you get your supplys whats the name of the store for instance, maybe one will be out here. secondly could u email me a list of the stuff you use for the drawings, like what type of pencils i should get for the best results in my pictures and finally id like to thank you again i am so glad i found your site i cant wait to start drawing some stuff."

Richie, this page should help -
http://www.pencil-portrait-drawing-artist.com/supplies.html
I have linked a lot of the items to MisterArt.com so you can see exactly what everything looks like...but you can buy a lot of the items anywhere. I really prefer Dick Blick for online - there aren't any TRUE art stores close to where I live. Dick Blick has a reasonable shipping fee.


"How do you practice your drawing because i have been copying portraits for quit a while and have gotten pretty good but no where near your level if you could give me a few pointers that would be great if not i understand compleatly."

The best advice I can give you is to just keep working at it. I used Lee Hammond's book, How to Draw Lifelike Portraits from Photographs, and it was really helpful. If you use that book and follow the directions step by step, you will be amazed at the progress you will make.
This page of my site has some personal drawing tips from me:
http://pencil-artist.tripod.com/tutorial.html

Here is the oldest known pencil...it's from the 1600's
http://www.pencilpages.com/gallery/oldest.htm

Here is the new tax form. I don't know who made this, but it's pretty good. It would simplify things a lot, wouldn't it? Gotta admit there is a slight downside to this deal though!

I guess I am a total nerd

Last night the family was flipping through TV channels. I saw that billiards was on ESPN. How often do you get to watch people play pool on TV? I said, "Hey, that's billiards! I'd like to watch that!" and of course, I didn't have the remote control in my hand, the man always holds the remote, right?!? :) and DD2 says, "Mom, you like to watch people play pool - on TV?!? That's SO pathetic, Mom!" to which I replied, "Yeah, I like billiards and bowling...so sue me!"

When I was younger, I played a lot more physical games. I played Volleyball and Basketball (was on teams) and I learned to do a killer power-serve overhand in Volleyball. We won a lot of our games just because of the psychological terror that serve brought on to the girls in the other teams. I thought that was hilarious, because the ball doesn't fly over the net any faster or harder, it just looked intimidating.

Although as I've gotten older, I do less physical sports stuff - I like ping pong, darts, and the aforementioned billiards and bowling. When I get a chance again, I want to do some archery.

For board type games, I recently learned how to play Bunco. Bunco requires absolutely no skill, it's just lucky rolls of the dice. But it is fun. I also like Scrabble, but I'm not phenomenal in that by any means. Another favorite game that's hard to get anyone to play with me, is Trivial Pursuit.

I've known people who don't like to play games. I think that some folks are afraid they will look stupid and will be embarrassed for not knowing something - I think it's not the game itself that they dislike, but the emotions that can be brought up when they play make them so uncomfortable, they can't enjoy it.

If and when you play, whatever you play - play to win.
Have you ever played a game with someone who is too nice? Even if you end up winning the game, technically it doesn't feel like a win, because they gave you lots of 'gimmees'.... or, they expect you to be nicey-nice and let them win...it takes all the fun and the point out of the game.
I guess for me, the competition is a major part of the fun. I compete, but I don't take it all too seriously.

It's Martin Luther King Jr. Day. If you and your family have some time off work, why not spend some of it playing games? It will bring you closer together.

I have been going through a little bit of a writer's slump in my blog lately. I don't know if you've noticed. Amazingly, I've been blogging for over TWO YEARS now!* Can you believe it?!? I know I can't - I thought I wouldn't have anything to write about.

In the last two years, we've added 2 kids and a dog to our household.
That makes it a total of 4 kids now. That gives me a lot of writing material.


I worked on McK's portrait last night - I got the pencil shading part of it done before the baby started wailing again. I hate being interrupted when I'm "in the zone." Tonight I hope I can pick right up with it again, or perhaps this afternoon while my two little ones nap...if I can get their naps to cooincide [and the planets to line up].

Definitely have decided to sign up for the fitness/weight training place. It's convenient, I can fit it into my schedule because they have 30 minute workouts, and the price is right. I'll let you know how it goes!

If you were hoping for an interesting blog post, this isn't it.

I thought I would have fun, interesting things to say, but somehow all thought has
gone out the window while I listen to the baby cry (teething....I have done all I can do for the moment to help him!)

Oh! He's stopped crying now and has fallen alseep (relieved sigh!)
Let's see if I can think of something to blog now...

um...

nope...

I got nuthin'

~Monetize your website or blog~