Who talks in riddles, who talks in reasons?

I should know better than to open up this can of worms again on LJ, but there are two really worthwhile discussions going on which you should read:

On rape and men by cereta, challenging the non-sexist or non-sexist-identified men who always protest that "not all men are like that" to stop telling women they're wrong about their own experiences, and start actually challenging sexism where they encounter it.

You're the guy who would never rape a girl passed out on your bed (who, for that matter, knows that such an act would be rape), or the woman in the village your battalion/troop/whatever is overrunning. You're the guy who wouldn't do such a thing even when his buddies were heckling him, telling him he's a fag and a pussy if he doesn't. Even more, you're the guy who would stop his frat brother from raping that girl, and get her home. You're the guy who would stop his comrades, or at least report them.

Now, here's my question: where the fuck are you?

It's a challenging post, and the thread is full of heart-warming stories of men who didn't rape someone, which didn't particularly surprise me. I know an awful lot of men who are prepared to be decent when in a situation with a drunk or vulnerable woman; who will not only fail to rape her, but will look after her and make sure she gets home okay. That's not really the issue, for me. The issue is that I also know an awful lot of men who aren't prepared to be decent in those situations, and most of my friends have been raped or sexually assaulted once or multiple times, because no-one is prepared to challenge the sexist fuckwits. To tell them to shut up when they make rape jokes. To get them to chill out when they're drunk and yelling at strange women. To tell them to their face that they were out of order when they groped a woman in a club, or pestered someone for sex after they'd already said no, or carried on messing around with her after she passed out.

Before you join in the next conversation about rape protesting that "not all men are like that", think about how much you've done lately to challenge the idea that men are entitled to look at/comment on/touch/fuck women's bodies and if the woman objects or resists she's a stuck-up bitch; as cereta put it, "the idea that if a woman is not actively preventing a man from sticking his penis into her (and even then, if she's an enemy), he is doing nothing wrong, and hey, who can blame him?"

The second post I want to point you at is Perusing Penises in the Park (no, seriously) and some street harassment stories, khalinche's response to cereta. This is not so much about sexual violence or living in fear of rape, but the ubiquity of sexual harassment, especially if you live in the city:

I suppose the point of this long, long post is to do what I always try to do - tell a story. Today it's the story of what it's like to live with the constant possibility of having your appearance or person commented on, loudly, by strangers, and of being on your guard many times a day. It is not about my fear of being raped, because that doesn't figure in my life as much as in those of some of the commentators at the linked post. It is about men feeling that they have a right to talk and shout to me about what they want to do and what they think of my body. It is about trying to get through to the men who don't do this quite how common it is and how it affects the lives of most women.

I had limited success expressing this a year ago; and the number of men who told me then that I was wrong, that this was nothing to do with gender, that if I'd only been more sensible I could have avoided it, only proves how necessary this conversation continues to be. khalinche's post is excellent, and deserves a wide audience.

Edit: Talking about this in IRC, I ended uo looking up this post by Kate Harding, which has a lot of practical suggestions on how men who aren't like that can act to confront harassment and sexism where they encounter it, and why it's important that they do.

This entry was originally posted at http://helenic.dreamwidth.org/325100.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

Does anyone have a Victorian/Edwardian outfit I could borrow for Thursday or Friday next week (21/22 May)? We're doing a two-day shoot in Greenwich and I've got custom-made costumes sorted for most of the scenes, but it would be really good to have a different one for me to wear at the beginning of the film when my character arrives at the house. It's about 1900, my character is a governessy type of young aristocrat, a bit like Jane Eyre but obviously later. Costume doesn't have to be perfect for the period, it wouldn't be out of character for her to be wearing something old-fashioned. Unfortunately our budget doesn't stretch to hiring something just for one 2 minute scene, and I should have sorted this out months ago but I've just had too many other things to think about.

Most of my Victoriana is either lower-class (maidservant etc) or a bit goth; plus I wore my black silk taffeta in the previous film and it would be nice if it wasn't totally obvious how limited our wardrobe is ;)

I don't need a whole costume necessarily - bare minimum would be a hat, and a coat or travelling cloak which I could wear over one of my long skirts. But if anyone has a suitable dress or skirt suit in a size 8-12 that would be amazing. I can travel within London to collect on Mon-Wed next week, or cover postage costs. If you can help, I'll happily buy you something off Amazon or Play.com to say thankyou. :)

This entry was originally posted at http://helenic.dreamwidth.org/323721.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

I have two more DW invite codes - leave a comment if you're interested.

Not first come first served this time, I'm afraid. I'd rather give them to people who actually intend to use the service to blog, not people who just want to squat the username. I reserve the right to give preference to people whose blogs I am particularly interested in reading.

Edit: All taken now - to the writers of two of my favourite LJs, hoorah.

This entry was originally posted at http://helenic.dreamwidth.org/322857.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

Stephen Fry's letter to himself: Dearest absurd child
"Yes, you will grow to be a very, very, very, very lucky man who is able to express his nature out loud without fear of hatred or reprisal from any except the most deluded, demented and sad. But that is a small battle won. A whole theatre of war remains. This theatre of war is bigger than the simple issue of being gay, just as the question of love swamps the question of mere sexuality. For alongside sexual politics the entire achievement of the enlightenment (which led inter alia to gay liberation) is under threat like never before. The cruel, hypocritical and loveless hand of religion and absolutism has fallen on the world once more."

Filament Magazine
"A new magazine for women. I felt the world was in desperate need of one with:

• Intelligent, inspiring articles, and no fashion, celebrity gossip or diets


• Erotic photography of men based on research about what women think is sexy.

It's hard copy, quarterly and the first issue will be posted out on 1 June.

(Reviewed by Erotica Cover Watch and featuring photography by the talented Ara Maye McBay)

This entry was originally posted at http://helenic.dreamwidth.org/322363.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

I have four shiny Dreamwidth invite codes. Any takers?

Edit: All gone :)

This entry was originally posted at http://helenic.dreamwidth.org/322149.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

I've written a couple of articles this week for Police State UK:

Connecting the Dots

While some writers have linked the policing of the G20 to the history of policing and political dissent, even the independent media have mostly failed to situate this connection in a wider context.

How about this for context: The last couple of years has seen a stream of increasingly repressive legislation, denying the conscience of the individual moral agency and responsibility, and curtailing the rights of the many to protect the few. (So the excuse goes; but do we, the public, really need legal protection from people who look at kinky porn or photograph policemen?) Scare-mongering propaganda urging people to report suspicious behaviour among their neighbours. Ubiquitous surveillance enhanced by new technology; endless strategies designed to make it easier to keep tabs on people, such as centralised databases; internet surveillance; making Oyster cards the cheapest way of using the Tube. Exaggerating the threat of an illusory enemy as an excuse to treat the general public as guilty until proven innocent. Terrorism is less dangerous than bird flu or sunbathing; and yet Section 44 uses it as the excuse to grant the Met stop and search powers which intimidate and inconvenience countless members of the general public.

Call me paranoid, but there's a pattern here. And it's getting worse.

MPA defend peaceful protest

Tim Godwin and Chris Allison accepted responsibility in vague terms for events, while denying any specific culpability, and persistently washed their hands of the actions of "individuals". They couldn't give detailed answers on the subjects of any pending investigations. But they were also reasonably conciliatory, and accepted the need for a review of police strategy, to "learn lessons for the future".

However, I'm cautiously optimistic that if the Members of the MPA have anything to do with it, the investigation will be sympathetic and conscientious.

This entry was originally posted at http://helenic.dreamwidth.org/321578.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

Police State UK.

This is what Denny and I have been working on for the last couple of weeks. It's still a bit buggy, and we haven't fixed the theme in IE 6 or for the subpages yet, but it's functional. Readers, commenters, and contributors are very much welcomed. Please, if you care about civil liberties and human rights in the UK, have a look and pass on the link.

There's an RSS Feed here; feel free to syndicate it. DW feed is police_state_uk_feed.

Thanks.

This entry was originally posted at http://helenic.dreamwidth.org/321377.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

I'm excited about Dreamwidth, for all the reasons listed here and more. Denny has been involved with the beta phase of the site, and has been trying to get me to submit some site designs or journal themes. I'm well up for this in principle, but time is sadly the limiting factor. I'm still hoping to send something to them, but I haven't had the chance yet.

Either way, Denny has very generously let me have his first invite code. I need to use it soonish, as he can't get any more til I've signed up. I don't think I want to disembark to Dreamwidth entirely. I've got a permanent LJ account and an awful lot of history on this site. My first LJ account was created in 2001, and I've been writing in libellum for over six years. When I post publicly, my readership is quite impressive, particularly once people start linking my posts. It's a very useful forum if I want to say anything important.

On the other hand, I haven't used it for personal journalling for over six months now. That wasn't a deliberate decision. It was a combination of two things: lack of time, particularly once I started the Job of Doom, and then entered the current crazy career phase I'm now in, juggling five or six simultaneous work tracks per week. The other factor was the extent to which I used libellum as a professional blog when I was still trying to live off my art. After using it as a marketing tool, it was harder to go back to using it the way I used to.

So I'm not abandoning LJ. But I do want to support the Dreamwidth project. At the moment, it looks like it would make most sense to continue to use libellum as a public blog, for political debate and advertising my art and design work, and use a new Dreamwidth account for private journalling.

What I'm stuck on is username. Libellum has never been a 'nick' - it's the name of this journal, exactly as if I'd named a paper journal. Calling a new journal the same thing would be pointless. I don't really have a constant nick for use online, but the closest thing to it is helenic, which was my original idea for the Dreamwidth account. (Pun on "Hellenic" and "Helen nick", geddit?)

However, I've just discovered that helen is still available on Dreamwidth. Which would be really cool, in an early adopter sort of way. I doubt I'm going to get the chance to be Helen on many sites, so I should probably grab the opportunity. But bizarrely, helenic feels more "me". I've never been "Helen" online, mostly because it's never available but partly because I know a few Helens and I'm rarely the default one; if friends refer to me it's usually as "Helen L" or "Helen (libellum)". I don't identify with the name particularly, and I don't feel I have more right to it than any other Helens who might want Dreamwidth accounts.

This is coming out sounding far more foolish a question than it did in my head. Ah well. I put it to you, o wise flist:

Poll #1384066 Dreamwidth username
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

Which suits me better?

FOR THE ATTENTION OF
David Lammy MP
Labour MP for Tottenham

Dear Mr Lammy,

I am sure by now that you are aware of the allegations of police brutality against demonstrators during the G20 last week. This week, enough evidence has come to light surrounding the death of Ian Tomlinson that an independent inquiry has been launched, a fact for which I am very thankful.

I remain concerned, however, that the case of Ian Tomlinson's death may drown out the other incidents which took place on April 1 and 2 2009. This case has already demonstrated the willingness of the Metropolitan Police and the IPCC to cover up the truth. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/apr/09/g20-police-assault-ian-tomlinson-g20 provides a good summary of the many attempts by the police to close down the investigation, prevent crucial evidence from being published, and deflect blame away from themselves.

Since the protests last week, eye-witness accounts have flooded online media with convincing and consistent reports of police brutality. The tactic of kettling protesters has already, quite rightly, been publicly questioned. Batons and shields were used aggressively against peaceful protesters inside the Bishopsgate kettle on April 1. Even police medics joined in the fray, enthusiastically hitting demonstrators with full-arm swings from a position of safety behind police lines.

Around midnight on April 1, teams of baton-wielding riot police with dogs were sent to clear hundreds of peaceful protesters from the climate camp in Bishopsgate while the national media was absent. Not only were demonstrators injured and intimidated, but the police wilfully destroyed their personal property - a particularly hypocritical act given that the police used the vandalism of RBS by protesters to excuse police actions earlier that day.

All these eye-witness reports have, over the last week, been substantiated by an ever-increasing number of independent sources, including photographs and video footage. (http://london.indymedia.org.uk/articles/1068 provides some useful links.)

Contrary to the narrative presented by most national media, most protesters were peaceful, and the police response was violently disproportionate. I have been appalled by the biased reporting of this case in the BBC and other national media, which I assume can only be the result of police pressure. I am concerned that this suppression will allow the bigger picture of police conduct and strategy to go unchecked.

I hope that justice is met regarding Ian Tomlinson's death, and that not only the individual officers, but also their superiors, will be brought to account. I also hope that the countless incidents of unprovoked police brutality against hundreds of peaceful demonstrators will be publicly accounted for. Ian Tomlinson was not the only innocent person to be assaulted by police, and the survivors of aggressive policing deserve justice as much as the victims.

I urge you to raise this matter in the House of Commons, and put pressure on the police for an independent inquiry into the wider issue of police conduct and strategy during law-abiding demonstrations. Police should enable peaceful protest, not impede it. The strategy of kettling is more likely to cause violence than contain it, and the use of riot shields and batons against peaceful protesters is unacceptable.

Many people in this country are unhappy with recent decisions made by this government, and have legitimate fears for the future. Personally, I am concerned by a pattern of increasingly repressive legislation curtailing our civil liberties and personal agency. In a party system our power to effect change is limited, and public demonstration remains one of our best options for making our voices heard. If exercising our democratic right to protest results in us being intimidated, unlawfully detained, and physically assaulted, then this country is more police state than democracy.

Yours sincerely,
Helen Lambert

Sent via Write to them. Given David Lammy MP's track record, I'm not particularly confident that he'll speak out on this, so I've also sent letters to Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer and Lord West of Spithead, who debated the use of force against protesters before the G20 last week.

I've also signed this petition against the use of kettling at peaceful demonstrations. And I'll be at the Memorial Protest tomorrow.

I've been continuing to add links and quotes to my previous post, trying to keep everything in one place. I do want to call attention to a couple of things though.

You probably all know by now that yesterday evening, additional footage was released of Ian Tomlinson's assault, clearly showing the full-arm swing with a baton which was directed at him from behind. The officer in question has now handed himself in.

This is positive. It means that people are beginning to accept the undeniable reality of disproportionate and unprovoked police violence on that day. It means that the individual accepts culpability, perhaps even feels remorse - although that seems unlikely given the late hour of his confession. And it means that justice, of a sort, will hopefully be served.

But it's also worrying, because if all the blame falls on a single officer or officers, it may deflect attention from everything else that happened. Ian Tomlinson wasn't the only person to be assaulted and injured by police. The peaceful protesters who were assaulted were no less innocent. Hell, even the protesters who started shouting and shoving might have had a point, after being threatened and unlawfully detained for hours with no food, water or medication.

Ian Tomlinson's death, while tragic, is not the whole story. I am glad that this case is being given the attention it deserves. But it's not the only case. The problem here is systemic.

Every time photos or video is released which corroborates the eye witness accounts, which have been many and consistent since April 1, it makes the rest of those accounts seem more plausible.

Eye-witnesses claimed that Ian Tomlinson was shoved and batoned by police.

Eye-witnesses claimed that police made free with their batons, attacking unarmed people who were protesting peacefully.

Eye-witnesses claimed that in the Bishopsgate kettle on the afternoon of April 1st, police medics were among the most violent with their batons, reaching over the front line to attack protesters.
"We turned to see the police hitting people. A whole line of them lashing out indiscriminately again and again. Two officers close to me who had “Police Medic” written on their back were walking up and down behind the line of their colleagues, protected from direct assault, reaching over and thrashing with the most gusto of all."
(from Indymedia, Saturday 04 April 2009)

Police medics doing exactly this can be seen in this video, 2:07-2:09. (Look out for the green patches they're wearing.)

Also in this video can be seen police baton-charging seated, unarmed protesters - at the Bishopsgate demonstration on April 1st (05:30-05:44). Climate Camp had not been charged yet; this was in broad daylight, in the middle of the kettle outside the Bank of England. This was people responding to the police assault passively and peacefully by choosing to sit down, have a smoke and look them in the eyes. They were attacked with batons and shields.

So, while I haven't yet seen any video evidence confirming the stories from Climate Camp on the evening of the 1st (beyond the footage of the initial swoop), an increasing number of independent sources are telling the same story about Climate Camp. And thus far, the eye-witnesses have been proved more right than wrong. Their accounts need to be taken seriously by the press, and by an independent investigation on the G20 policing.

I'll be at the G-20 Meltdown memorial and protest this Saturday, marching for our democratic right to protest without fear of police brutality. It'd be good to see you there.

Everyone in London has been following the saga of the G20 protests and the police response to it. But I keep finding things other people haven't seen, and other people keep finding things I haven't seen, and when I told my mum and dad about this at the weekend they hadn't heard about any of it, so I'm not sure how far this has spread in the national press yet.

And even if you're in London, if your sources are the BBC, the free papers or the Evening Standard, you've probably got a distorted version of events.

I wasn't at the protests; I was at work, and the evening was romauld's birthday, so I was spending time with him instead. I'd been invited to the Climate Camp by various hippie friends, and considered going to it, but I had mixed feelings about using the G20 as a vehicle for general protest. The G20 was convened as a financial summit to sort out global recession and world trade. I'd read up on it a bit and had a sketchy understanding of quite how complex the whole messy business was, and I felt that the world leaders would have their work cut out to curtail protectionism, and keep trade links from breaking which might take years to rebuild. Never mind world peace at the same time. President Obama has been criticised for trying to fulfil his progressive campaign promises at the same time as sort the economy out, and not really achieving either; critics argue he should fix the economy first and then deal with the rest of it. And while the Copenhagan summit is arguably too late to deal with climate change, it's only in six months' time, so I was sort of disinclined to tell the G20 they should be sorting out Jobs, Justice and Climate Change at the same time as all the complex financial stuff.

Since then I've rethought that. Not only because we should be thinking about environmental and financial crises holistically if we want to solve them, rather than compartmentalising - I don't think that's realistic with our present governmental system, but I still think it's true - but because the police response to the protests was shocking, and I wish I'd been there with a camera, been there non-violently, so I could have added my voice to the eye-witness accounts flooding the internet over the next few days and insisting that the media representation of what happened was wrong.

Okay, there's a lot to get through here, so I'm going to attempt it in roughly chronological order.
( The G20 protests: attempting to see through the smoke )

I am currently in the process of paying off all my debts. This feels utterly lovely. My bank balance is, for the first time in years, substantially in the black, and will remain in the black even after I've paid off my credit cards and outstanding utility bill, which I should be able to clear with my next pay cheque.

I do need a credit card, because my debit card isn't Visa, and I buy things online a lot. The credit is also occasionally useful for resolving cash-flow issues, although I've demonstrated I can't be trusted with it, so if I keep it open I'll either cut up one of the cards or give them to someone else for safekeeping.

The thing is, I'm not particularly happy with either of my existing cards: Barclaycard which I got as a fresher, ignored throughout university, and started using again when I was a starving artist; Post Office which I transferred my Barclaycard balance onto last year to take advantage of their 0% on balance transfers, but since I then filled up the Barclaycard again this was a bit pointless, and the Post Office are now charging me interest anyway. I've been thinking of getting an Egg Smile card for a while because I generally think the Co-op are less evil than alternatives, internet banking is shiny, and I've paid more in late payment fees for my Post Office card (because they make it so difficult to set up a direct debit I've never actually got round to it) than I have in interest.

The question is, if I'm about to apply for an Egg Smile card, is my credit rating going to be higher before I pay off the other two cards, or after?

And should I be trying to get the maximum possible credit from Egg Smile, so I've got it as a backup in case of emergencies, and then give the card to someone else? (In which case it's not much use to pay for stuff online.) Or should I be applying for a minimal credit allowance, so I can use it online but there's a limit to how much debt I can get back into? Earning lots for the first time in my life is delicious, and giving almost all of it away as soon as it arrives in my bank account is bitter. I don't want to get into this situation again; ideally I would like to start saving. My budgeting is better than it used to be, but I'm not entirely sure, yet, how much I can trust myself with credit. What would you do?

--

edit: Ah, I meant Smile, not Egg. Cheers dennyd.

Also, have realised that now I've paid my overdraft off I can FINALLY move my main bank account away from RBS with their unethical bank charges and plummeting reputation. Is Smile the best option for a current account as well?

In lieu of actual content, here's some of the interesting stuff I've been looking at lately:

• Breastfeeding: radical, feminist and good for you by Kate Joester at the F Word (via ailbhe)


• "On a more sobering note, President Obama has killed his first civilians (that we know of) since taking office" by smhwpf.


• Is the Policing and Crime Bill 2008 a productive and reasonable compromise when it comes to legislating prostitution? - Penny Red argues that she thinks it might be, for all its flaws.


• Obama's LGBT agenda looks promising, although the I think the inclusion of HIV/AIDs policies in this list is problematic.


• The view across the bar - a new political leftie blog which I'm enjoying immensely.


• Calls to action regarding the BBC refusing to air an appeal for aid to Gaza - from smhwpf here and khalinche here


• An open letter to male humans on the subject of unwanted sexual attention. I don't fear rape as much as this essay suggests, but my awareness of the possibility of it makes me uncomfortable, angry, defensive and certainly colours my interactions with male strangers and acquaintances. The rest of what emmelinemay says is spot on.


• Minor Delays - a short story for every station on the London Underground.


• A Wordle illustration of Obama's inaugural address


• Call for submissions: Spilling Over: A Fat, Queer Anthology - might interest a few of you? The deadline is this Sunday.


• Obama reverses 'global gag rule' on family planning organisations


• From the No2ID Project: Privacy Invasion by the Back Door - via ms_katonic


• Obama issues executive orders to close Guantanamo, ban torture, and ensure transparent and open government.


• The Bush Years: All Circus, No Bread by pfarley - via ms_katonic


• "This is not culture, this is not custom, this is criminal" - Hillary Clinton on women's rights in the Middle East


• Racism! QED - an incisive social analysis by vito_excalibur

My lovely dennyd is looking for a flatmate from February onwards, after mr_magicfingers moves out:

'The flat is a two-bedroom on the ground floor of a vaguely nice six-storey block, very close to Old Street tube. The second bedroom is about 12' by 10', currently painted a relatively inoffensive orange but you're welcome to repaint it if you want. I own the flat, so there's no problem getting hold of the landlord if you want to shout at him for some reason :-) The rent is £500 including council tax.'

If you know anyone who might be interested in a centrally located, poly/kink/alternative-friendly room, please feel free to point them at Denny's entry. Ta :)

Excerpt from last night's pillow talk:

me: Hell is a small, isolated, fluorescent-lit room where you're desperately trying to use the internet to send an urgent message but your connection speed is so weak it takes about 45 minutes to download a text-only email.

Chris: Oh god. I think I've been there.

me: And there are millions of tiny windowless identical rooms, all unaware of each other, and the air con vents over your keyboard so your hands are freezing and you're using a virus-riddled Windows machine -

Chris: One of the ones you get in public computer rooms running Windows 3.1.

me: Whereas in heaven, everything runs on Linux.

Chris: Apple Macs. Has to be Macintosh for heaven, nothing else has the graphics support.

me: With high-speed broadband and unlimited bandwidth. And Internet Explorer doesn't exist. Nor does MySpace. And you can have any domain name you want.

Chris: Yeah. Domain squatting is definitely illegal in heaven.

So I have a new Earth·Sky·Art blog (an Earth·Sky·Blog?), which is currently standing empty. What I am inclined to do is start posting all my art posts over to that, and stop posting them here (or only post friends-only versions with Sekrit Information, and stop posting public art posts here). In the run up to starting to use that blog, I have been posting more and more public art posts on this journal, so the percentage of content I'm talking about moving is currently fairly high.

The thing is that I want to stop using libellum for marketing/promotion. It is my personal blog and I use it socially. I by no means expect any of my friendslist to buy any of my products, and I have no intention of asking them to (although I'm happy to respond to interest, of course.) This is not a selling journal and it's not an art journal, although art is one of the things I post to it.

The thing is that I usually get several comments on art posts, and I don't want to lose that readership because feedback/flattery is one of the things that motivates me. Yes, I am vain and shallow, but I'm disappointed when I post art and no-one says anything. So stopping posting art here, where I have several hundred readers, and starting posting it on a new blog that has no readers, doesn't really make much sense.

Should I duplicate all posts, so they're here as well as on E·S·A? This doesn't really make much sense either - I'd be better off having the "Blog" link on my website come to my LJ, and then only post art-related entries publically. But sometimes I want to make other public posts, and as I said before, I don't want this to be a commercial blog, and I do want a commercial art blog somewhere.

What I'm inclined to do is syndicate the E·S·A blog and encourage anyone interested in following my art to friend the RSS feed. Does that sound like something you'd be willing to do?

I would create a poll, but I have stuff to get on with, so your responses can be FREEFORM.

- Mermaid is finished and on my website. That was fun. I particularly enjoyed the TINY TINY LINES in the hair. OMG DETAIL. *happy place* Chinese calligraphy brushes are awesome.

- I am doing the Art Market again for two days on the weekend after next (27th/28th). From the sound of it they have MANY VOLUNTEER SPACES every weekend, probably because no-one is willing to give them any money when no-one ever sells anything. Clearly I am a glutton for rejection, but I figure it's worth one more try before I give up. This time I will have greetings cards, more art, prints, and you never know, I might even do some promotional work beforehand.

- My DaWanda shop is online. I have re-written all the blurb for all the artworks as the text on Etsy was very po-faced, and chatty seems to be the way forward on a home-made craft site. Now I need to go back and edit all the Etsy listings, but I might wait until I've added a portfolio to one of the poncy fine art portfolio sites, where po-faced might be more appropriate, so I can copy it across before I replace it.

- PinkDoodle haven't sent me the confirmation email I need to verify my account, even though I've triple-checked the email address and re-requested it twice. I sent them a support email on Monday and they haven't answered that either. So that may be a lost cause.

- RedBubble is AMAZING. You upload unwatermarked, unbordered, high-resolution images, and they run a print shop for your stuff. You can sell fine art prints, canvas prints, posters, greetings cards, t-shirts. They charge a base rate for each item and you add whatever you want to markup on top of that. Or you can order stuff yourself at the base rate and sell it on yourself. This is utterly fantastic, but uploading high res images using my connection is a very slow process. Still, if any of you wanted Little Elephant cards, you can get them here. They aren't square, sadly. I will be uploading other colours and other images soon, but it's a massive job because I can basically upload everything I've ever sold to this (apart from commissions, obviously) and that's a LOT of art. I am optimistic, though.

- Really, I want to be printing my own greetings cards wholesale. I really don't know where to start with this though. Professional printers are very expensive, and I'm not sure I'm at the stage of buying 100 copies of each design even if I could afford it. Even at that quantity it's still about a quid per card. I don't mind folding them myself, though, and I don't mind blank insides, so maybe I should just look at ordering glossy A4 prints on card, with two cards laid out flat on each sheet, and trimming/folding them myself. Unless any of you know someone who runs a printing shop, or who has a professional quality colour photo printer? Would be happy to pay for using the latter, of course.

- This summer I have spent 95% of my time on marketing/online promotion/correspondence/framing and mounting/art fairs and 5% on actual painting. This is the WRONG WAY ROUND. And I know stuff like getting my website online and getting these online shops set up only needs to be done once and then they can tick away in the background while I do new art, but still.

Anyway, at least I'm focussed. And poor. But poor, focussed and happy. I'm doing what I love, I'm more or less keeping on top of things, I think there's a sliver of hope that I might be able to earn some money off this yet. Although it does occur to me that finally getting into the swing of producing/promoting art in a concerted, professional way now is fairly ironic. I mean, it makes perfect sense in terms of my personal and professional development over the last two years, but there's a recession on. Now is perhaps not the time to be setting up a small business selling luxury items.

- So, er, yes. If any of you want any prints or cards, keep an eye on RedBubble. I'll be adding the archives to it over the next few days.

- Three sites down, including the one that I can't seem to sign up to. Seven to go! At this rate, I might be done by Christmas...

Interrupted the tedium of setting up new shops on umpteen different selling sites to do a wee painting last night. Ended up getting lost in unnecessarily indulgent decorations for HOURS. Also started a nude that is reminding me a bit of Modigliani. Will post updates later.

In the meantime, untitled elephant needs a title. Any suggestions? (ETA: have decided, is called Little Elephant).


Little Elephant.
Acrylic on canvas, 12" x 12"

Ahahahaaha I have just rediscovered the Hue tool in Photoshop. Whee!



Okay, I'm going to the bank now.

Right, so, that drunken painting session? We were in the kitchen, I was adding spirals to the mermaid's tail, cyrus_ii was doing something arcane with a coin and an electric file (actaully it might have been a mini angle-grinder, I couldn't quite tell) and romauld was smoking. I stopped working on the mermaid but wanted to keep painting, so romauld asked if he could suggest an image for me to paint. I said sure. He started to describe a scene, but I was slightly too tired and slightly too drunk to follow what he was saying and remember it well enough to reproduce it, so I got him to slow the description down, and I painted what he described at high speed, as he described it. I haven't done ten-minute paintings since the last time I went to a life drawing class. Here's what we came up with between us:



Brief: A rolling landscape in the foreground, green and summery. Midsummer sunrise on the horizon. On the crest of a hill on the right, an oak tree in full leaf. A lowing stag silhouetted against the dawn.
romauld's comment: The tree was meant to be much smaller, and also silhouetted. The stag is good though.
My comment: OH GOD NEVER LET ME DO LETTERING. EVER. Especially when cyrus_ii is around and could have done it instead. ESPECIALLY WHEN I AM DRUNK.

( four more, each one drunker and more inept than the last! )

Called Candid Arts this morning about the October art and design fair (a big event, not the same as the weekly markets) to ask if they had any spaces left for volunteers. They said in general, they weren't offering free stalls to volunteers, but rather a 30% commission on sales instead of an up-front fee. I'd be happy with that, but sadly they don't think they're offering any for the first weekend of the fair, which is the one for painting/fine arts and therefore the one I'd be interested in. The others are all design, textiles, jewellery etc. They said if they did decide to offer any stalls on that basis they'd bear me in mind, but they don't think they will. I suspect they've got enough people willing to pay that they don't need to.

I am hungover today. Last week, when I realised that I hadn't had a day properly off since Glade - I've had days not working, but they've all been spent moving house and going to weddings - I promised myself I'd take two days off after the art fair to watch films and sleep and recover. This morning, I realised that I just can't afford to. Once I've got some paid work lined up, or I've sold a painting, then I will stop. Until then, I can look after myself, but I can't take two days completely off. So I am not in bed, I am pottering and drinking tea and planning, answering my modelling emails in the hopes of booking a shoot or two, and scanning in new artwork.

I went round to Straylight last night to see people, because I wanted chats and company and wine. The Snug is a fantastic work space, productive and private, but not terribly good for socialising or relaxing, yet. It was lovely to see people - the usual suspects, plus a cute pagan historian from Yorkshire called Lizzie, whom I may have rambled at drunkenly, and also sashagoblin, which was a lovely surprise. I got there late and she left before she turned into a pumpkin, so we didn't get as long as I'd have liked, but I am looking forward to seeing her again at Planet Angel next weekend. Which I am facepainting at, again - hoorah! :)

I really, really needed a drink, so Chris very kindly bought me a bottle of white wine since I couldn't afford to buy anything myself. Which I then proceeded to drink all of. I ranted about the art fair, and then started talking enthusiastically about my pagan card/calendar ideas. Somewhere along the line, asking Chris if, in theory, he could help me with the symbolism for some of the festivals I'm less knowledgeable about turned into me spreading out the whole of my DruidCraft tarot deck in order on the bed in three concentric circles.



Inner circle - Major arcana. The journey of the soul through initiation and rebirth. Spirituality, abstract concepts. The inner universe. Faery, the non-physical realm, the innermost (and outermost) ring of druidic cosmology, outside time.

Middle circle - Court cards. The self, facets of identity. People, personalities. The human realm. Relationships, interaction.

Outer circle - Minor arcana. The physical realm - real life, the mundane and day to day things. The external world, the measurable universe as it exists in time.

What you can do is spread them out in a wheel so that the Ace of Pentacles is the Winter Solstice, the Ace of Swords is the Spring Equinox, the Ace of Wands is the Summer Solstice, and the Ace of Cups is the Autumn Equinox. The minor arcana then create the wheel of the year, with the four major pagan festivals falling on the Sixes. The court cards for each suit are spread out evenly around the four quadrants/seasons, with the Princesses aligned with the Aces. Then the Trumps are spread out with The World/The Fool aligned with the Winter Solstice, and The Wheel/Justice aligned with the Summer Solstice. You can then read symbolic correspondences between all the cards in terms of where they fall in the pattern. It was AWESOME. Things fit in really cool ways.

It's not completely perfect, but that has only inspired me to make it all fit even better when I design my own tarot deck. I was hoping that the seasons would be immediately visually obvious from the colouring on the cards, and they aren't, although the trees on all the cards are mostly at the right time of year for the seasons they fall in. I want to design a deck which is coded chromatically into this pattern, and I'd want to add an extra ring, for the four-part goddess/lunar cycle and how that fits in with the wheel of the year, with full moon falling on Beltane and new moon falling on Samhain, and I'd want any moons appearing on the cards to be in the right phase for where that card is in the wheel.

Oh, it was awesome though. We got very excited, and I made LOTS of notes and now have at least eight designs in mind for each of the festivals, and several for some of them. I am going to aim to produce a set of Yule cards in the next couple of months, and then work on the rest over the next year. So this is going to be a general eclectic Wiccan/druidic print set, but I have so many ideas of other themes I can do. Like a Heathen set, and a fairy set, and a goddess/lunar set ... I am very excited :)

Anyway, by the time we'd finished with that I was drunk and giddy, and proceeded to get drunker and giddier. At some point in this process art happened. This resulted in OMG SPONTANEOUS SPEED PAINTING with Chris dictating images and me getting what he was describing down on paper as fast as I could. I had to get cyrus_ii to help with the people because I am rubbish at figures from imagination. And of course the drunker and tireder we got the worse the paintings got. But! So cool! I want to do more painting like that.