Tag Archives: Art

No Country for Old Women

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I have always been, and seems I will always be the odd woman out. The extremely square peg. The redheaded stepchild. Finally, I can at least say I’m starting to get used to it.

I have always wanted to find the place where I could be my complete and whole self in public.

There’s no such place. Utopia, right? Some of us get that joke. Utopia is a word that originally meant “nowhere,” because it doesn’t exist, and never will.

I can be me here. I can’t call it a community, but I can absolutely say this is me. Complete and whole. Don’t like it? That’s fine. I don’t like everyone on earth either. Just don’t expect me to care, okay? Move along. It’s what I do, what polite adults do. It’s all I ask.

It took a long time, but I found the absolutely perfect Etsy coach for me, who came with a beautiful community of incredibly creative people from Etsy. Not a group of let’s make another “Mama Shirt” creators. She understood paganism, at least to an extent, and I felt appreciated and that I could fit in there but…

I use Generative AI. They hate Generative AI. So much for that community. Odd woman out. Again.

Obviously, I’m the problem. I’m the reason the evil data centers are needed and being thrust upon the public where they’re not wanted or needed. Also, I’m STEALING FROM ARTISTS. Right.

Fine. Let’s just go there.

First, I’m not the ONE creating a need for data centers. You could take ALL the generative art designers in the US, and together we wouldn’t be the cause. Generative AI has been used in art for at least 4 years now, and LLMs for longer. We were fine with the data storage we had. That’s not the problem.

You’re looking for someone human who you can attack and will react to you for you to vent on. A convenient scapegoat. The truth is a lot more complicated but, hey, maybe those FLOCK CAMERAS might have to do with it? Maybe all the data that the Federal Government is HOARDING about every American Citizen would have something to do with it? And come to it, I’m sure that all those Fortune 500 companies tracking our every move online (Meta, anyone?) have something to do with it?

But sure, blame me.

For this first count, let me now tell you what I’m incredibly proud of. I now have Local AI. LOCAL. As in, it’s completely housed on my own computer. NO DATA CENTER USE AT ALL. So, to be as mature and adult as I can be about this, shut up. That complaint is completely invalid.

Now, as far as stealing from artists, I’m about to offend every artist on the internet. I know I am. But this is the absolute truth. There is not a single artist who has had their art stolen who has any art I would ever use in my products. There’s a world of reasons for that. Some of it is just rank amateur in my eyes. Some of it is a style choice, I don’t want to work with anything “cutesy,” or “Chibi,” or “Manga” or “Comic Book” looking. Not one spirit has expressed any interest in being depicted in those ways. Sorry, not sorry. They are, quite literally, my bosses.

Even in a situation where I might truly appreciate an artist’s style, what are the odds I will see the Spirit the same way? How many artists do you know who like to be instructed in every facet of a piece of art? Hair color, ethnicity, pose, facial expression, clothing choice, background…I am, again because of my bosses, VERY particular. Finding a piece of art online that I can just use as is? It’s really, really fucking hard. I’ve tried.

Here’s Anput. She was generated off of Anubis believe it or not. On the back of the journal, you can see the other items I generated. Even her buddy there on the cover was generated by me. All individually, then pieced together as a collage.

I’ve found a few, and I’ve used them. But when I started to stretch into the lesser-known entities, like Qebhet, for example, it wasn’t even a question of finding something I agreed with. I couldn’t find anything. Hell, I couldn’t even find a complete set of Canopic Jars and I felt those were EXTREMELY important for Anput’s images. It had to be right. That took me quite literally about 18 iterations to get that piece of art which is just one component in the overall piece.

Three different pieces made up this card back. One of them I bought, 2 I generated.

ALSO, if you were an artist, and you could put your art on a t-shirt yourself, why would you sell your art cheaper to someone else for them to do it? Its far more supportive of human artists to want them to make everything they can off of their art. I would gladly help anyone who wanted to go POD with their art, honestly. I want them to get out there and make a living off of it, and I find too many artists don’t have the business sense to do it.

I’m going long again, but just figure that I don’t write often, I write long 🤣

Here’s what my moral law is as far as art goes. I stick to the dead. I do not work with any art style that is recent. I personally like the 75 year standard used for copyrights and so on. The average age. Older types of art as well as art styles that were used for marketing or in such large quantities by so many people giving lots and lots of possible combinations, but most of the art I work with is, well Ancient Egyptian. Ancient Greek. Merovingian. Medieval Christian. Renaissance. The newest I think i have ever touched would be the Art Deco/Art Nouveau/Art Informel, etc., the heyday of which is about 100 years. I also NEVER USE AN ARTIST’S NAME. Never. I stick with styles, schools, movements, ages. That’s it.

Let’s face it, for the Entities I’m working with, the ancient forms of art work better anyway. Anubis looked better in Egypt, although I have to say I ran some patterns with Hekate in Egypt, and they were fire. We’ll see…Merovingian has given me some interesting results as well.

There’s a lot of fun to be had by combining styles and adding in different art terms. Throwing the term “dark” onto anything, or “gothic,” can change an entire look. Gives me that creativity that everyone assumes is missing from AI. Come on, Goth Nouveau? SO BANGING! Esoteric and Occult change the entire vibe of a piece. Goth Esoteric Les Fauves Art…would make a human artist’s head spin, but the AI keeps up with me and my vision.

I don’t just generate a piece and throw it on a product, either. When I started this adventure, I was using the Etsy guidelines; if it wasn’t your own art, it had to have at least two to three other pieces in it to make it your own. I started collaging. And I still do. That canopic jar? That was only one piece of about five I created or found for that Anput image. With the patterns I generate, I can put them on all sorts of different products and reuse the heck outta them so that the generation is anything but wasted. Not just that, either. I pull those apart and use as clip art in other pieces.

My current favorite Dionysus image, pilfered from my own pattern.

I am very frugal in all ways! 😊

The truth is, I’m a writer not a physical artist. Words are what I’m stronger with, and this is a format that is made for me. The better you can describe, the better the art. I can actually bring what I see to life and share it with you. I’m sorry, but to me that is art, although there are far too many people out there who have way too much hate for me for it. That’s my life.

I do not use the “art” word in public much. Too many people are biased against me to begin with. I will say designer, the ultimate compromise, much like I would say I was a “crafter” in my jewelry-making days. People hated me for that, too. I didn’t do anything but string beads, I wasn’t an artist…yeah, I’ve heard all this bullshit before.

If I wasn’t slowly losing my hands, I’d probably still be doing the jewelry. I had plans…I was going to do a LOT of crafting for my shop. If I can get a dx and the proper treatment, maybe I can still get some of it done. Currently, I have a melted knuckle, and other digits that feel like they’re going in the same direction. Its either RA or Sjogren’s, and I have way more markers for Sjogren’s, so that’s a little scary. It takes on average about 6 years for an actual diagnosis with that one; I don’t have that kind of time. I don’t mind the osteoarthritis, in my family that’s predictable. I’ve known I had the swan’s neck deformation when I was in my thirties.

This is different.

But I can still create and whether you like it or not, that’s what I’m doing.

At the end, I realize that I will lose potential business because of my decisions. I am alright with that. My Gods and Spirits are happy with me, and I know I will be cared for by them. At the end of the day, it’s Their approval that matters. Yours would be a bonus.

It’s Just Business?

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Can I tell you how much I detest that phrase? I’ve never had any use for it, and some of the worst people in my life have used that as an excuse for all sorts of horrid actions. It’s never been just business to me.

But then, I think I’ve vented about that before. I am me. I’ve worked very hard, and I’m still working very hard, to be me. I will not divide myself into bite-sized chunks for easy digestion. It just doesn’t work that way. My religion, witchcraft, crafts, arts, politics, humor, disabilities, and neuro-spiciness can’t be parsed out.

When I was searching my brain for a business name, for a brand, as they call it, I wanted something all-encompassing. Like this blog, it was going to be my home, so I needed to be comfortable in it, and feel it expressed all those facets of me-ness. I’ve had a few bad business names in my life, and I’ve seethed with jealousy at friends who just had the best, most creative, most interesting business names. No one seemed to be able to help me with that, though. I don’t know why but all those friends with brilliant business names weren’t able to help me come up with one for mine.

I was on my own.

The breakthrough came when I managed to get an email address with no numbers or extra letters for the name of one of my all-time favorite movies; “High Spirits.”

It’s an older movie, so I expect almost no one has seen it, and of the few who have, I suspect you might not remember it. Without exaggeration, this is one of the most accurate movies about Spirits I have ever seen.

Yes, it is a comedy. I mean, with Peter O’Toole and Steve Guttenberg I doubt there was any doubt in your minds about that. And still, a very realistic portrayal of Spirits. They are, for me at least, very much as they were in life. I don’t see them, so I don’t see the disintegration of the body so much as depicted in this movie, although I’ve hears some psychics who claim to see them this way. I have the feeling for the movie, it was more of a costume decision than an attempt at realism, though.

Obviously, that’s about all my business has in common with this movie. But it was definitely the inspiration. I could see that some would assume it was “high” as in certain recreational and medicinal substances “high,” but that wasn’t part of my inspiration for the business at the time. It is one of my me-ness facets, though, as I do use that substance medicinally as I have peripheral neuropathy. It’s one of the few substances I have found that actually works for nerve pain and is an excellent substitute for the prescription medicine that would otherwise be my only other choice.

Not that kind of “high spirits”!

There is a play on words here, though. Because in Spiritism I learned that praying for the Spirits enlightens them. A word play that absolutely works better in English. As a polytheistic Spiritist, as opposed to the normal Catholic flavor, I don’t necessarily see prayer as the connection here, but I do believe that communicating, working with them, and caring for them does “raise” them in a way. It’s not as much a matter of getting into heaven as it is improving the life of their incarnation present with me in this time frame but also gives them something of an edge on the other side. The details are still a bit unclear, but it’s what I’ve been hearing lately.

Naturally, the exact name of “High Spirits” was not available on Etsy. Which is fine. I don’t think I’d want it to be exact as then there could be potential conflict with the movie. As much as it is an inspiration for my business name, I did like the idea of setting myself apart. The obvious choice for me was to add “Divine.” More word play for the win!

Divine because for most of us, at least, the Spirits I am creating for are considered “Gods.” Whatever that is. 😉Gods are, no matter their characteristics, the definition of “Divine.” A word play needs two different meanings at least, so let’s throw on there that I also use divination to determine what to do for whom. Well, often I do at least. Sometimes it’s more of a known factor, and sometimes I have to whip out my pendulum and ask. I’m slowly becoming less dependent on the pendulum which is a big “YAY”. For a third part to this fun little word play, divine with a lower-case d, as in my designs are “divine.” Beautiful, or at least I like to think so.

There’s part of the Origin Story for High Spirits Divine Jewelry & Sundries 🙂. There’s more, of course, and I’ll get to it one of these days. In the meantime, I have some Dionysus products that I need to get out and some edits on Brigid I’m working on!

Honestly, these two are having a great time being difficult!

Do yourself a favor. If you haven’t watched High Spirits, give it a whirl. It’s on YouTube for free.