FINALLY

Ok, now that I was finally able to reset my password and gain access to my blog once again, I can start...well...blogging of course!  I am hoping to use this as a place to express some thoughts and feelings as well as promote my work and my shop.  In the past several months I've been working at growing my Etsy page.  I recently discovered that a year ago, my work was featured in a blog (however I was completely unaware of this little tidbit until I Googled myself the other day).  Hmm...that sounds dirty.  Anyway, my ultrasound paintings were featured on Craftastrophe and Strollerderby because apparently they are "horrific" and "creepy."  Well, DUH!  LOL  Have any of you ever had a 3D or 4D ultrasound?  Or have any of you ever seen pictures from one?  Those images don't exactly give most people (other than maybe the expectant parents) the warm fuzzies.  Particularly before the third trimester.  They tend to look more like creepy little aliens by that point.  I work in an OB office, so I should know.  ;)  So, I will be the first to admit that my ultrasound paintings which are done in the likeness of the photos I am given, tend to be a little creepy.  I can't lie, they are most definitely weird.  However, aren't we as artists supposed to think outside the box and come up with creative and different ideas?  I typically don't do still lifes and daisies because they tend to be a bit boring and overdone.  So, like many artists I would rather blaze my own trail.  Some stuff is a hit, and some stuff is a miss.  That's just how it goes.

I'm sure some are wondering why on earth I would even do a portrait of an unborn baby from a photo where it looks like a creepy little alien anyway.  What part of that could possibly inspire an artist?  Well, like I said, artists tend to think outside the box which is usually outside of society's norm.  Working in an OB office, I am surrounded by expectant mothers and ultrasound images all day long.  However, my inspiration came years earlier when a close friend of mine e-mailed me some photos from her son's 3D ultrasound.  For some reason, I was inspired to paint one of them.  I was going to just use the colors from the photo, but while I was playing with my photo editing software, I messed around with the colors a bit and discovered that it looked very interesting in monochromatic shades of purple.  That was definitely something I had never done before.  So I e-mailed the examples to my friend and asked which she would prefer, the normal colors, or the purple.  She chose the purple and a few days later, I had finished her son's ultrasound portrait in monochromatic purples with some warm tints of pink mixed in.  I showed the painting to a couple other friends who were a little creeped out at first, but a few months later when they showed me 3D ultrasound pictures of their own bundle of joy, they wanted me to do one for them as well.  I was surprised when this baby's father called me up a few days later and asked if I would do their child's painting in green to match their furniture.  What?  Match their beautiful daughter's painting to their ugly green couch?  Of course I did it and I found a lovely metallic gold paint to add to it which also happened by accident.  I was looking for earthy colors and thought it was really a toned down earthy yellow.  Instead it was metallic and sparkly.  It worked well, but of course the end result was a green baby that due to the fact she was green and metallic, had an alien-like appearance.  As far as I know (and to my relief) the parents loved it.  As a matter of fact, years later when they were expecting their son, they asked me to do another.  That one took the longest, because it was just of his feet and I wanted to make sure I got the details right.  That one was done in a Rembrandt Palate to match the Detroit Tigers theme in his nursery.  So, although those paintings may be creepy, ultrasound images are a bit creepy to begin with and I most definitely know that those paintings are NOT for everyone.  Not everyone is going to love something like that.  Hence the term "custom."  If you don't want one, don't order it.  If you DO want one, you get to choose your color scheme and it is a picture of YOUR baby and not some random green baby you did not conceive.   The ones I did were custom requests by friends, so each of those paintings has a home and someone loves them.  My ultrasound paintings can no longer be found on Etsy due to the fact that I allowed the listings to expire.  I realized there wasn't a huge market for something so unusual and figured it was best to just allow my circle of friends to request them from me if they want them.

Now, I have to say although those blogs didn't say such great things about my paintings, I was excited to see someone was actually blogging about MY work!  They also included links to my shop which was quite helpful.  Sure my paintings were being made fun of, but it generated traffic to my site.  When you type WyldAngelz into the Yahoo search engine, MY shop is the first thing that pops up and that blog is the 4th link down!  The way I see it, that blog helped put me on the map and get me established!  I look at it in kind of the same way when people get made fun of on Saturday Night Live.  If you are important enough to get made fun of on Saturday Night Live, you've been noticed.  You've made it.  If people are making fun of my artwork in these large online blogs at a time when my shop has been up and running for less than a year, then I've done SOMETHING worth noticing and worth talking about and that excites me.  I even showed these blogs to my co-workers and we cracked up while reading the comments.  As an artist, I've learned several years ago, that you can't please everyone.  It is impossible, therefore I don't try.  I just do what I do.  Some people love it and some people hate it, but either way they talk about it.  Those who love it become fans of my work.  Those who hate it get to talk about it and spark interest in others who may potentially love it or hate it.  Either way, after hearing about such a "monstrosity," they will want to see it for themselves.  lol  So, I would like to thank Craftastrophe and Strollerderby for featuring my ultrasound paintings in their blogs last year.  I realize you hated them and they probably gave you nightmares (which I won't apologize for, because I don't care), but you helped put me on the map, so thank you for that!  I just wish I would have known about it sooner.  ;)

Well, aside from that exciting little bit of info, I'd like to give a shout-out to the teams I recently joined on Etsy.  These people are awesome and they all have very beautiful shops!  Thanks for the invite and I love being a member of these teams!

EtsyLush:
http://www.etsy.com/teams/8706/etsylush?ref=pr_teams

and the E J Art Treasury Promotion Team
http://www.etsy.com/teams/9761/e-j-art-treasury-promotion-team?ref=pr_teams

Also, if any of you would like to see images of my "creepy" and "horrific" ultrasound paintings, you can view them here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/wyldangelz/

Oh, before I forget, here's a link to my shop:
http://www.etsy.com/shop/WyldAngelz?ref=si_shop

As well as a link to my Twitter and Facebook:
http://twitter.com/#!/WyldAngelz
http://www.facebook.com/wyldangelzdesigns

Well, I guess that's all for now.  I'll include some photos of my latest non-creepy artwork.  Until next time...