*herrenmedia

Hope everyone had a great first half of the year and is feeling independent and patriotic these days (betters day are ahead, they just have to be right?), and I figured it was time for another semi-monthly update. To get good use of my sub powers whilst I have them, here are a few cool pics from some folks I admire and enjoy here on DeviantART:





























They are all awesome. Check them out!

Here we go.....

Tagged by Jay

The rules:

1- Post these rules.
2- Each tagged person must post 8 things about their self on their journal.
3- At the end, you have to choose and tag 8 people and post their icons on the same journal.
4- Go to their pages and send a message saying you tagged them.
5- No tag-backs.

The Facts:

1. I love cheesecake. It's the best thing ever. I have long held the belief that there are two kinds of people in the world: those who know and respect the awesomeness of cheesecake, and those who are living a lie and have yet to realize this.

2. Conversely, I despise potato salad with every fiber of my being. It is the devil's work here on Earth. My dislike for potato salad is so strong that I have, as weird as this may sound, actually passed up sex because of it.

3. I have ophidiophobia. Or rather, a fear of snakes. I come by this as a learned behavior from my Mom who has herpetophobia, or an intense fear of reptiles. She couldn't even look at them on television or in pictures. I have worked hard to overcome my fear and can be near snakes and even appreciate how cool they actually are, but... I will never touch one.

4. I have a slight obsession with Julie Newmar. Not in a drag queen way, but rather in a 'watched the 60s Batman show religiously as a child' way. For some people it's Bettie Page. For me it's Julie. If you could look through my brain like a dictionary, the category for "sexy" would simply be a picture of Julie Newmar dressed as Catwoman.

5. I was born on Valentine's Day. While not a matchmaking "cupid" or a ladie's man Casanova, I do like women quite a bit. I'm just more comfortable with female friends than men. I realize this means I probably have issues.

6. I have had an unexplainable supernatural experience. I know that sounds kooky, but take it for what it's worth.

7. I have never been outside the United States. Heck, I haven't even been any further west than Texas. I hope to change this one day and travel around to at least a few different countries (high on the list are Germany, Japan, and Great Britain).

8. The day I become a paid professional artist, I will make an appointment for my first tattoo. It's a promise I made myself a long time ago and hopefully will be happening this year. As yet not a paid pro, I have accomplished a few things such as having designed the 'Welcome To...' sign still being used in my hometown, designed a neon sign for a restaurant here in town, been published on the cover of a local magazine, painted mascots on a few school walls, and a number of other similarly quasi-impressive jobs. Just this week I've been approached about a tattoo design and a mural for a local business, and I'm on the verge of self-publishing a comic. So I hope to be able to make the claim of a being a "pro" very soon and getting my first ink.

I tag:

















If you haven't done this yet of course.

Holy smokes!

'No messages' is on my tool bar for the first time in a long while. Most of the time I have several favorites waiting to be responded to, comments to be followed up on, journal entries I'm holding until I have a chance to read, and anywhere between a half dozen to a hundred deviations to look at and/or comment on (depending on how busy you've all been). It's weird how it comes in waves sometimes and everyone seems to post all at once. I'll have a small number of devs to look at one day and then it seems to double and triple every time I check in. It's always better to have some to look at rather than none, but man can they stack up fast at times.

That said I've also been having the unusual situation of getting more favorites than comments lately. There are some of you that have been very kind and given me a lot of favorites on my newer works, and I really do appreciate each and every one of those, but I've found myself thanking people for faves more than actually responding to comments. I guess that's a lot better than having nothing to respond to at all so I'm not going to complain too much. I do seem to be picking up some speed on the page views and that is due partly to the generous feature by on his front page, but also in part I think to my diversifying of subjects. I have a lot of fandoms but so far have only really represented the few I'm most active in. For example, just by posting the two new steampunk pics in my gallery, I've already seen a new small flow of traffic from that particuler fandom. So it stands to reason if I post pics for 10 new fandoms I'd see 10 times the new traffic streams right?

Here are the places you can find me on the interwebs these days...

MySpace: [link]
Comicspace: [link]
Psychotronik Comics: [link] (mostly the forums)
DC2: [link] (where I sometimes make teh fan fics and fan arts)

I have a Blogger and Livejournal too but one isn't really mine anymore and the other is painfully neglected. My Photobuckets are private. Amazingly I don't have either a Flickr or a Facebook, but I obviously crave social attention so just give me time.

Speaking of which, a new phenomenon I've been noticing the longer I'm here at DeviantART and that is that I've been running into the same people on various Deviant pages I've been visiting. I'll see a cool piece of art and follow it only to see that someone I watch has been there already. Or I'll get a fave and see thanks from other people in my watch in that person's comments. And that's before going to a mutual friend's page and seeing several of these names all in the comments. It's nice way as it reinforces a real sense of community. Like I'm either in a loose group or at least observing one closely. Ha. I'd make a list but that would be weird.

And lastly, what is the true advantage to having a subscription? I've never had one so I'm not really sure whether it would be worth it or not. Thanks for any comments on that.

There was a big stink over an article by Mark Simon about the Orphaned Works legislation supposedly making its way through Congress that would make creators pay for their works on a individual basis to secure their rights. In case you haven't already heard it turns out that this might not really be the case. Here's an excerpt from Radio Free Meredith's livejournal on the subject...

"His article, which I linked above, is miserably poorly researched, jumps to completely illogical conclusions, and, most retardedly of all, implores artists to letterbomb Congress in protest of proposed legislation which does not actually exist. Someone please tell me where this guy is getting the crack he’s smoking, because I want to avoid that streetcorner and everything in a six-block radius, kthx."

Check out the rest of the article here which is essential reading on the subject. Big thanks to The Beat from whence I swiped the links. Also included at Heidi's blog is a case of real art theft that reminds us that maybe the current copyright protection system may need some type of revision because art theft is still a very real problem.

So I got a new book in the mail the other day titled Pop Surrealism: The Rise of Underground Art. Awesome, awesome book full of amazing works of such fine socially demented folk such as Robert Williams, Mark Ryden, Todd Schorr, Niagara, Shag, Tim Biskup, and so on. I couldn’t be happier having this little package of insanity sitting on my bookshelf but something has been bothering me about it and I just figured it out after reading the introduction... I hate the term Pop Surrealism.

This is Lowbrow! Why not just call it was it is? Apparently the term "lowbrow" has been a sticking point in the movement for some time as it is perceived as underselling and degrading the work, and the new term "pop surrealism" is a move toward legitimacy. I have to ask, why? Hasn’t the point been to rebuke the fine art world and wallow in trashy pop culture all along? Do what you want and the acceptance will take care of itself. EC Comics (one of the earliest influences on this movement) was demonized and run out of business - their books being burned in the streets in some cases - yet they lived on and their effect on our culture is indisputable. R. Crumb never shied away from any subject or taboo but now he is revered and displayed in contemporary galleries. God knows Ed Roth never catered to the finer sensibilities and again, he is now immortal.

It’s just a little depressing because all my art rebel heroes seem to be losing their edge. Look at comics these days. Since they’ve gotten a little taste of mainstream success with all the superhero movies all of a sudden desperately want to be taken seriously. Comics aren’t the popular kid, they are the shifty cool kid in the back of the class! The same with the Lowbrow artists. I know everyone wants to cash in before they die these days, but come on! Also consider that anything that once would have been underground is now on the internet for everyone to see and instantly turned into the next hip thing (if at all socially acceptable), so it should be even more important to hang onto our established institutions of subversiveness. Where will we go when even our cheap thrills and exploitation lose their appeal?