What does your profile picture say about you?

Your profile picture says a lot about who you are and what's important to you. If you have a photo of yourself in a business suit, looking very professional, then you probably use your social networking profiles seriously. You use them as another weapon in your arsenal of  marketing yourself to potential clients. If you have a photo of your children, then you are probably more interested in family and the true 'social' aspects of social media. If you have a picture of your pet, your pet takes priority in anything you do! If you have a photo of yourself doing the "Duck Face", then it's pretty safe to say, you are a teenage girl.

I switch mine occasionally. I guess it depends on what mood I am in. My LinkedIn profile currently has this:

Since I want a sample of my art on my profile, I chose this small section of a larger piece I had done for Analog Magazine.

One day, I randomly asked for a suggestion on my Facebook Page for a project. Some one suggested I paint their profile picture. Hmmm. Interesting. I thought about it for a minute and decided it would not only be fun, but it could be good practice on how to get a painting done quickly. Well, I did it and it did turned out pretty good.

It's 600pxi X 600pxi and I did it in ArtRage Studio Pro in about 3 hours. I actually didn't want to spend that much time on it, but I was having so much fun experimenting and messing around with it, I went a little overboard.

SOOOOO, someone else has asked me to do there's and since I'm such a sucker, I said I would. For nothing. I think I'm going to do this one in black and white though. The photo ref is a little iffy, but I think I can work with it.

If you'd like your profile pic done, drop me a line on my Facebook Page and I'll see what I can do. I'd like to charge $50 USD for each, but I may do it for nothing. Depends on what mood I'm in.

Have you tried ArtRage?

I love ArtRage! It is a great little graphics program that is super easy to learn! On the surface, it doesn't look like much. It has a very clean interface and isn't cluttered up with a bunch of ugly boxes and tabs all up and down the sides. The nodes are all soft and organic, with rounded edges and you can even change the colors to something that appeals more to you. ArtRage is amazingly easy to load up and start painting right away.
I would highly, highly recommend this if you have a youngster. I think ArtRage is perfect for children. Lot's to play with!

                                   Jon Hodgson is also an ArtRage lover and he's put together a few neat vids. This one on how to make and use stencils, happens to be my favorite. Don't forget your weak lemon drink!

Also, pick up Jon's excellent book on Amazon. You can use all you learn from his book and practice it in ArtRage!

Check out ArtRage. Oh, yeah it's only eighty bucks.

Till next time, keep it real!

Where am I going and what am I doing?

It's been a while since I've posted up anything on the old weblog. I was sitting around, staring into space, after the morning routine of hitting the job boards, looking for work.

This past year has certainly been a roller coaster of emotions for my family and me. Losing a job we had held for ten years for standing up for what was right, then moving to Ohio for another position similar to the one we held in Georgia. In retrospect, I was looking to replace the good life God had given me, which I had learned to take for granted and then I personally destroyed it all.

Now, I'm trying to pick up the pieces, hold everything together and rebuild. Uncertainty abounds. I want to do art but I'm finding the market very stingy and crowded with talent.

I'm a Work In Progress. Aren't we all?

Do you really think you have any privacy?

Once again, Facebook is under the gun for privacy issues with their new "Facebook Places" application. Similar to Foursquare (which no one seems to have a problem with privacy wise) people can check in from anywhere using their smart phone and all your friends will know where you are, where you've been and what you're doing as long as they are using the app as well. If you want to disable Facebook Places you can do so from this link on Switched.com.  Me, I don't own a smart phone. I can't afford the ridiculous amount of money providers charge each month to spend ungodly amounts of time updating where I am at any given point in time and space. Who the heck cares where I am anyway? I certainly do not care where Jo Schmo is enjoying his morning cup of coffee and if he is the mayor of the local trendy donut shoppe. Unless Jo Schmo has a job for me, I could care less where he is.

People scream about how their privacy is being invaded and how Google and Facebook are all of a sudden evil hoarders of information and are going to take over the world. Privacy is an illusion, a nifty idea that has long been swept away in the giant wave that is the internet. Facebook is not some benevolent entity, joyfully providing you with a open forum to tell everyone what you crapped in the toilet this morning or that you're now single. It is a business. Facebook, Google and all the other nifty "free" things you sign up for (which btw, erode your illusion of privacy even more) are in it to MAKE MONEY! When will people wake up to the fact there is nothing free! The whole idea behind social marketing is: Become buddies, then hit them with the sales pitch. Facebook knows this, EVERY single operating entity on the internet knows this! It's all about the Benjamins!

My biggest paranoia is Spychips. RFID tags. This is where we should be concerned! Having tracking tags placed in the clothing we buy, and possibly even implanted in our bodies! That is some scary stuff right there.
Katherine Albrecht is a major force against these truly privacy invading monstrosities. Check out her site at http://Spychips.com for some truly eye opening reading.

If you're on the internet, have a social presence ANYWHERE, use a credit or debit card, signed a lease, bought a car or a house, used any sort of customer discount card, bought anything online, filed your taxes, applied for a job or loan, opted in to get emails, joined a forum or group, you've pretty much given all the information you need for anyone to pretty much find anything out about you. You can't hide from it unless you intentionally go 'off the grid' and I really think that's pretty much impossible unless you never had any records about you from birth. I've done reverse phone number look ups, traced IP addresses and googled names. It's too easy.