If you are not familiar with the Mexican tradition of Catrinas (Sometimes spelled Katrinas), you might be interested in reading this great article about José Guadalupe Posada, a 19th c. Mexican graphic artist. La Catrina is one of the most recognizable of his work, seen everywhere during the Day of The Dead Festival.

Posada’s La Catrina:

I am looking for a haughtier Catrina since she is the soloist of my Mariachi Di Funto. (Keep in mind this is only the underpainting…)

The truth is I don’t read it, but I visit occasionally to see what the UK’s finest emerging and established graphic artists are up to.

Luckily, I visited this week to find that their online shop was open for a very short time – from 21st June til 18th July.

I have picked out three. Even with shipping and the sh1tt3 conversion rate offered by paypal, I could have  three 11.7″  x 16.5″ digital prints of some extraordinary graphics delivered to my home ready for framing for under $100.

My choices:

Hannah Waldron 
“Should men and women pay the same insurance premiums?”

http://spotthetiger.bigcartel.com/product/hannah-waldron

Nazario Graziano 
“Should we abolish nuclear weapons?”

http://spotthetiger.bigcartel.com/product/nazario-graziano

Scotty Reifsnyder 
“Should off-licences be nationalised?”

http://spotthetiger.bigcartel.com/product/scotty-reifsnyder

(As much as I want  that new $1000 printer I am saving up for, I want beautiful things that make me happy to be alive so that $100 doesn’t seem like a bad investment)

Ear Nose & Throat (had each image printed on 16×16″ canvas – for a Ear Nose & Throat Doctor)

Baby Rauschenberg Combine

If you are interested in something like this, convo me through Etsy or fill out the contact form below:

Today, I happen to end up reading This Prisoner’s Dilemma. Isn’t this the classic feline look of curiosity mixed with disdain?

SO I grabbed his picture and went to work immortalizing this little hostage’s portrait.

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Despite the small size of the original image I managed to get a decent printable result- 10×8″ 150 dpi.

The winner: ecochick
EcoChick | Seacoast, New Hampshire

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Follow freekibble on twitter and win a free 11×17 Custom Pet Portrait

@Freekibble aims to feed homeless animals in shelters around the country by partnering with various Pet Food Companies.

Halo Pets will donate 1 meal for each  @freekibble Twitter follower .

To further encourage to support of this 1meal/1follower, I am going to giveaway a free custom pet portrait to one lucky follower.

Just Follow these instructions:

1. Follow  @shindigdada on twitter.
2. Sign up to follow @freekibble
3. Simply tweet, ” Feed Homeless Pets- Win a Custom Pet Portrait – Follow @shindigdada and @freekibble then RT to enter – http://is.gd/c7NsK ”

The winner will receive either one (11×17 in) or three (8.5 x 11 in) prints of the 3 x Lichtenstein Pet Portrait printed on Velvet Fine Art paper ready for printing. I will even pay for shippping. (Prints will be shipped in a priority mail flat envelope or in a tube depending on size)

The contest starts today May 13th, 2010 and will ends on Monday, May 17, 2010 at midnight! Winner will be announced Saturday, May 22, 2010.

Some more examples:

About Freekibble:

Freekibble.com and  Freekibblekat.com are a wonderful websites,  pets projects (grin) of a wily 12 yr old named Mimi Ausland. Play the daily online trivia game on either site and Castor & Pollux will donate kibble every time you visit. Follow on Twitter and Halo Pets donates a meal.

The problem with over-compressing images is the loss of data. That doesn’t sound like it applies to images but if we look at the closeups of this image, you can see the damaged areas in the top corners. Those damaged pixels are called compression artefact and are the result of  ”aggressive data compression“.

Technically the pixel isn’t really damaged. It’s lost and replaced by the nearest pixel or, in extreme cases, left white.

For the sake of comparison, click on the images below to get  a close look at the pixellation enlarged 125%.

Did you notice the box effect on the photo of the little girl? That’s the data compression doing its pixel doubling magic, making the file size small enough to email by repeating nearby pixels and destroying the integrity of the image in the process.

To me, it is fascinating how much the human brain is willing to fill in. I am sure its a similar mechanism necessary to enjoy Seurat.

Now that little girl is a full grown woman, a mother  in her own right, and the daughter of my friend Lesli. She sent me this image after a visit with her grand-daughter, accompanied by the whiff of nostalgia…

As there are no other copies of this smushed digital image, I decide to attempt to save and print the image. The problem was its relatively small size and lost pixels.

The NSA and MIT could probably pass this image through some highfaluting algorithm but I just have my trusty Photoshop CS3 to work with.

I tried to suss out as much information as I could, using the Filter > Find Edges and Filter > Glowing Edges, then fix some of the glaring box effect with Filter > Surface Blur.

I am afraid it wasn’t enough. To print an 11×17 at 300dpi, I would have to somehow increase the image 350%.

After much deliberation and testing, I was finally satisfied with the result: the picture now has a dreamy yet vibrant watercolor feel.

Printed on 13×19 Velvet Fine art, paper, the final image looks great, id I do say so myself. (Will add pictures later today)

‘hope Lesli likes it.

Do you have an image that needs this kind of Emergency Help?

Custom Artwork- everyone wants it, right?

I see the delight when my clients see their own faces or their children’s in a print I created for them. I cannot seem to translate the same experience from the real world to my measly online attempts.The problem for me is trying to create an environment online where people can feel as though they are collaborating with design process.

FineArtPets.com.

I created an online website called Fineartpets.com in 2007. I wanted to provide a way for pet lovers to immortalize their favorite photograph into a large, one-of-a-kind, custom portrait. It wasn’t very successful. I got one order in 2 years, which I refunded because the customer couldn’t provide a picture big enough to do anything with.

Did I offer too many choices? (Stretched Canvas, 11×17, 13×19, Glossy Poster Stock) Was I too cheap/expensive/unknown? Wrong keywords? I dunno.

As is always the case, life got in the way. I got busy making a living, then we were hit with Hurricane Ike, the elections, the economic downturn which blossomed into a recession. ( Truth is that I should be used to living in an “economic downturn”. While talking to my vet, I realized that I have lived through 3 recessions since I got out of university: the dot com crash, the 2001 Al-Qaeda f#@kheads recession, and now the Wall Street sh%#heads recession. For me, the downturn is the norm.)

It’s back.

The idea held on, the technology and materials and printers have gotten better and cheaper. I have resurrected FineArtPets.com. and incorporate it with Shindigdada.com. All the sales will be handled through Etsy and I have created listings on Etsy and contact forms on each style to facilitate a conversation with visitors.

Let’s see how this goes. If you have a suggestion on how to make this work, please feel free to leave a comment. I could use some advice.

Want a print? Order from Etsy or request a special listing.
Want more information? Visit Shindigdada.com/press

Follow the Pet Portrait Project here.

Sorry, login failed. Error message from Twitter: This method requires authentication

I followed all the instructions on Ian Devlin’s website but it didn’t help. Granted, his suggestions were for an older version of wordpress but I hate when sh1t stops working and was ready to try anything.

I also tried the WP to Twitter plugin.. The message alluded to some server shortcoming

So now I am trying TwitCategory.

We’ll see what happens…

Didn’t work.
hmmm….

Oh, Wait. It’s a Mercury Retrograde!

UPDATE: SIgned up for Twitterfeed