Finished up the redo of the illustration above. Brightened the colors (slightly), redrew the entire thing (by half) and merged and added via photoshop (the floral border of the tree was absurd and needed to redraw along with skinnying down the trunk of the tree...and then fused with the new half/flop). I am pleased with where this has gone.I may try stripping in some light texture or putting on an antique paper to see if this might give it a bit more UMPH. Who knows.
Bought new spikes, compression shorts and tee shirt for the Cross Country guy. It was a great day filled with subway tile(five boxes...and lots of hassling the Lowes guys to do their jobs...), eating burritos, and laughing a lot with teenagers yesterday. Today evolved into more laughter, pancakes (with peaches bought from Rick at the top of the hill along with tomatoes, red peppers (I've roasted), zucchini and a melon), homework (me and the littles....I got some pagination work done on my book for HAS--promising).Lots of mist and rain, particularly to Kitty's delight. A. ran with a friend. R. drew moulding profiles and K and I delivered my buffalo to the State of the Art Gallery for the Art Trail show and finished the afternoon off at the Museum of Food, Wegmans. We had a wonderful time from admiring the russian tea cakes, taking pictures of the octopus, buying pesto and tzaziki, greek yogurt (a new favorite) and salmon...and touring the organic products exclaiming over what was there and the packaging pros and cons. We went wild in the indian food department (as usual) and got very into the interesting smells and the prepackaged naan offered.
Poor Shady Grove was a bit under the weather yesterday. As R and I admired the brilliantly streaked sky over the lake, suspended over beautifully clear water and still winds, Shady looked to find refuge under our legs to the produce the goods. After R didn't even miss a beat, the dock was clear of poor Miss Grove's woopsie--and we went about checking her out. She had a dry nose and a bit of heat. After giving her a bit of couscous and treating her gently, she was back in the game today-- chasing balls, and finding the worst place to be and spreading out in it. Thank goodness...she had us going. Evidence was that she inhaled the salmon skin this evening and was looking for more. Upset stomach be damned!
Now for the political moment:
The Orphan Works Bill is something we need to rally around. Everyone!
Let your voice be heard...it is immanent...and will affect your work, your world and your legacy you leave your children or inheritors. Brad Holland in a succinct article says:
Proposed US Legislation Could Orphan Copyrights
by Brad Holland and Cynthia Turner
From Illustrators’ Partnership
Proposed US Legislation Could Orphan Copyrights
February 20, 2006
The US Orphan Works Report: On January 23 the U.S. Copyright Office issued their Orphan Works Report, outlining a proposed amendment to the 1976 Copyright Act. It defines an “orphan work” as any work where the author is unidentifiable or unlocatable, and applies to both published and unpublished works, US and foreign, regardless of age. The legislation would be retroactive. http://www.copyright.gov/orphan/orphan-report-full.pdf
The proposal would not re-impose formalities, but would penalize artists who didn’t re-impose formalities on themselves. The strategy is to “limit remedies” for infringement in any case where an illustration or photograph was published without “relevant information” on the picture itself - or where relevant information has been removed:
“For authors and copyright owners, marking copies of their works with identifying information is likely the most significant step they can take to avoid the work falling into the orphan works category. This is particularly true for works of visual art, like photographs and illustrations, that otherwise do not contain text or other information that a user can rely on to help determine the identity of the copyright owner. Nothing in the Office’s recommendation would make such markings mandatory...Nevertheless, the presence and quality of the information on particular copies will be a highly relevant fact as to whether a reasonable search will find the copyright owner.” (p. 9, emphasis added)
continued>>
Check out this mental paper from the Register of Copyrights, Mary Beth Peters>>
this we lift from Flickr>> Who, I think synthesizes it beautifully>>
no news doesn't mean good news. pay attention:
orphanworks.blogspot.com/
www.nikondigital.org/dps/dps-v-4-08.htm
www.tomrichmond.com/blog/?tag=orphan-works-act
www.sellyourtvconceptnow.com/orphan.html
"Photos on the internet could be orphaned. With tens of millions of photos shared online with services like Flickr, Shutterfly and Snapfish, there is a huge opportunity for unauthorized use of your photos... legally.
You could see photos you take of your family and kids, or of a family vacation, used in a magazine or newspaper without your permission or payment to you. You would have to pay to register your photos, all of them, in every new registry in order to protect them. Say the average person takes 300 photos per year (I take a lot more than that). If a registry only charges $5 per image, that is a whopping $1,500 to protect your photos that are protected automatically under the current laws. If there are three registries, protecting your images could cost an amazing $4,500. Not to mention the time it would take to register every photo you take. Plus, you will also have to place your copyright sign on every photo.
That's not including all your art, sketches, paintings, 3D models, animations, etc. Do you really have all that extra time and money? Plus, even if you do register, the people stealing your work can still claim it was orphaned and, unless you fight them, they win. Even if you win, you may not make back your legal fees.
It gets even better. Anyone can submit images, including your images. They would then be excused from any liability for infringement (also known as THEFT) unless the legitimate rights owner (you) responds within a certain period of time to grant or deny permission to use your work.
That means you will also have to look through every image in every registry all the time to make sure someone is not stealing and registering your art. You could actually end up illegally using your own artwork if someone else registers it. DOES ANYONE SEE A PROBLEM WITH THIS?"
With the god damned melee happening in Washington, this baby has been slipped in and approved by the Senate. It is not about retouching pictures of grandpa. Its about our work, our sketches, our intellectual property and art as illustrators. Please, let your voice be heard. It is critical. Please engage wheither you are an illustrator, artist, or someone interested in the arts. It is the rug being pulled out from under us in a world filled with people who believe every image on google images are royalty free from family photographs, to corporate images, to illustrations the neighbor next door put on Deviant Art to share with their friends. The time is now to Act. Please consider this.