Originals added to shop

I just added a lot of my original artworks to my shop.   Many of them have not been available for sale prior to today. 

TIFF vs PSD for archiving and parting with old artworks...

These past few days I've been doing some spring cleaning.  Particularly on my old artworks that I do not wish to sell because I don't think they are up to par to my current skill levels but couldn't seem to part with them even though I (semi) jokingly posted a few months back that I was going to burn them.

I don't know if I will burn them, but I do think some will be shredded or painted over with white acrylic or gesso for a new life. 

I did some researching on what people did with their old art they no longer wanted around and found an enlightening thread on how cathartic it seemed for many to finally be rid of these older works they had done.  Not all were in this camp, some believed that you should keep them all to see how far you've come or that you would regret it later on to lose them.   I'm sorta in both camps and so more research found an article on clutter and how to part with sentimental items with no real value to anyone but yourself.  And one of the suggestions was the cry test. If you would cry if it burned in a house fire, perhaps you still needed to hold on to it for a while longer.

Another suggestion was to take good photos of it and archive these photos and then part with the physical item.   And this is what I've decided to do with the majority of my old art.  There are a few pieces still I'm not ready to part with, and one or two that I want to crop out a particularly good part of the artwork and keep that and discard the rest.

So, how does this relate to the PSD vs TIFF title I used?

It has to do with me sorting through my old original files to burn them to CD (alas, I do not own a DVD burner.  One day...) and then realizing that most of them were in PSD format.  Considering I'm doing this for archiving them so I can remember them 50 years down the road, I then wondered if PSD might not be the best format.  I know that many other technologies have gone by the wayside (betamax, cassette tapes and so on), and PSD is a proprietary file type, so I want to have something that I can actually open in 50 years from now.  And so I did some research and it turns out that TIFF is probably the very best format to save original digital files like this for numerous reasons.   I found this quote from a forum thread really helpful and it convinced me to re-save all my originals digital art files as TIFF instead of PSD as I had been.

"TIFF is publicly documented, PSD is not. That makes TIFF a preferred file format for the long term conservation of digital files.

TIFF uses ZIP compression for max compression, PSD uses RLE which if you save without the Max compatibility will be a bit smaller, but at the risk of not being able to be used by apps, like Lightroom.

TIFF can save EVERYTHING a PSD can save including layers, paths, channels, transparency, annotations and can go up to 4 GIGS in file size. TIFF can save all the color spaces PSD can. The ONLY thing I can think of that PSD can save that currently TIFF can't save is if you Save out of Camera Raw a cropped PSD, you can uncrop the PSD in Photoshop CS, CS2 or 3. That's one tiny obscure thing that PSD can do that TIFF currently doesn't. How many people even knew that let alone use it?"

And more from the same post:

"Getting back to the fist point, Adobe can do anything including stopping support for PSD because it's a proprietary file format. TIFF is public, even if it's owned by Adobe (by virtue of the Aldus purchase). Even if Adobe went belly up tomorrow, TIFF would continue.

And, let me be blunt, anybody who thinks PSD is "better" than TIFF is ignorant of the facts. If Adobe would let them, the Photoshop engineers would tell you to quit using PSD. Lightroom for the first beta did NOT support PSD and Hamburg fought tooth and nail to prevent having to accept PSD. He blinked, but you still can't import a PSD without Max compat enabled-which basically makes it a TIFF with a PSD extension."

Thanks to the poster Schewe for the helpful information, and the link to the thread is above in case you would like to read it all.  :)  

That's not to say that PSD files aren't useful.  I think they are great for saving iterations, or layers or transparencies.   But for archiving the original artwork as a digital file I think TIFF is best.

Oh, and to add, yes, I worry about the CDs not being viewable in the future due to them being possibly phased out for better technology, but I will keep updating my archived media by moving them off CD to the hard drive and on to whatever the new technology is at the time and so on as the years go on and technology changes.

Off to work on my archives....

New layout!

I've designed and uploaded a new layout to my website.

http://www.aprilvansickle.com/

I think it accomplishes the desired goal to make a template that will incorporate a variety (sweet to conceptual/high fantasy) of art and not just be designed to showcase well only one style.  Plus I've incorporated a new gallery to display art that I hope provides a better experience than my last gallery did. 

I have a few minor visual things to fix (better looking cart buttons etc) but functionally it should be working perfectly.  I've tested and tested it to make sure.   However, if you happen to find any errors, please do let me know.  I would really appreciate it!

PS>  Forgot to add, that this new layout is based on one of my favorite paint colors:  payne's grey!  :)

Merry Christmas!!

Merry Christmas!   :)

Christmas Kiss

It's dry!  And scanned!   :)

I absolutely adore this little guy kissing his little friend in the ornament.  :)

I'll be uploading it to my Zazzle shop tonight.

Farewell twitter....

I decided that twitter was just not for me. It's sort of an interesting concept but it just doesn't fit my personality. But I am glad that I gave it a go and experimented with it and had that life experience.

On a more artsy note, I've been working on something. :) I'm hoping to show it to you all soon, but its not ready yet.

Triumphant!

This has nothing really to do with my art. But, since this problem has been plaguing me for about a month now, I wanted to share the answer.

Ever since I joined twitter, I have been having a problem with actually reaching the site. Why, I really still don't understand, but today after trying all day long to reach twitter and receiving an error that looks like this (the numbers keep changing, but the error was still the same)

Invalid URL

The requested URL "/", is invalid.

Reference #9.d5ea8acf.1251828932.0

I decided to try to figure this out once and for all. No one else seems to realize twitter was down, so I figured it had to be my system. 3 different browsers gave me the same error. Clearing the cache did not fix it. So I turned to google for help. After browsing through many pages, I finally found one that resolved the problem for me. Apparently the problem is that Windows makes a DNS cache on your system to make things faster. So in order to fix this, you need to do a DNS cache flush. I found this article on how to do it (and explaining it) and I did it and like magic, twitter was working again! :)

http://www.updatexp.com/dns-windows-xp.html

Hope this is helpful to someone. I'm posting it here again so I know where to find the link so I can fix it again in the future. :)

Art... going, going...gone?

I am considering clearing out my entire gallery of my artwork and starting fresh. Very seriously. So if you are interested in owning a print of any of the current available artworks, then now would be the time to consider purchasing it. Once they're retired, I won't be offering them for sale again.

I'm feeling drawn to a different style of fantasy art. My current plan is to doodle and paint over the next few months and then when I have a handful of new pieces to retire every single piece I've painted up to this month and solely promote the new artworks. Originals from the older artworks may or may not be for sale. Some have already sold or been given away and some I'm thinking of burning. heh. ;)

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Next topic: twitter! and other social networking places

I have been thinking about how I want to use twitter. I don't want to obligate people to have to follow twitter for fear of missing an important or interesting post. What I've tentatively decided to do is to use twitter as a mini-journal (for when something is just so insignificant and short that a full journal isn't really needed) and also for links to major announcements. Major announcements will also be added to this blog. i.e. new art or something along those lines.

We'll see how that goes. I am not very much into social networking in a huge way, so I doubt I'll get into it so much as to have entire conversations there. But since so many use and love twitter I'm going to give it a go. :)

I also tried facebook recently BUT I do not like it and so will not be posting there. I have asked for my account there to be deleted. Same goes for MySpace. I tried it (more than once!) and just could not get into it so I ruthlessly killed it too. ;)

As for livejournal: I've had an account there for many years. I don't use it much anymore for my own posts as I post all my journals here. However, I do still check it frequently to keep up with some of the friends I've made there.

Following:   Please feel free to follow me if you like.   I don't care for the following feature here at blogger though as I prefer to use Google reader instead to follow blogs.   I find it is easier to read.  :)

That about sums things up for that topic. :) If you are curious about any other site I may belong to, then check out my links page on my website. I try to keep that list current with all the places you can find me on the net.

Twittering

I'm now on twitter!

http://twitter.com/aprilvansickle

Sea Princess

"Sea Princess"

Acrylics