Yeah!!! Did that sound too happy? I think summer would be more valuable if we stretched out the school year and have two to three week breaks at a time. Then, older kids would miss out the opportunity of having summer jobs or doing special programs. Eh, it’ll never change.

• If Only I Had Some Advice for Writers: I get questions like Rachelle does. Sometimes writing related and sometimes something else. When it’s writing, I point to this blog entry and this one prompted by a similar question. If you’re bold, send them to LMGTFY.
• Marketing Advice for Writers with Molly O’Neill: Mine — always make marketing part of your job no matter where you are in your project or career [Link: Greg Pincus].
• 5 Questions for Those Who Don’t Have Time to Market/Promote: See previous. No excuses for not marketing!
• The Press Releases of the Damned: Love this. I rarely predict things — but I called it on Palm’s Foleo. I had a better article on the Foleo ready for print publication, but Palm killed the product before the article was to print.
• How to Drive Traffic with Repeat Tweets: I repeat-tweet on occasion and it’s not a problem. Few people keep track of all your tweets and won’t notice unless you repeat yourself too often.

And for fun because we’re allowed…

• Broadway’s Next to Normal Goes Viral, the Twitterized version of the musical. Follow ‘em @n2nbroadway.
• 12 Funniest Wedding Cake Toppers
• Firekites’ Autumn Story Chalk Animation Video: I like the song and the animation fit well with the mood.
• Cardboard Sculptures: (Picture me: Jaw dropped, whites of my eyes peering)
• Grammar geeks unite! [Link: @kylejameson @lydiabreakfast]

• Five Words You Can Cut: Blogged about this in the past… cut modifiers such as “really, very, much” is a good start. I use “just,” but more to add “conversation” to writing. If it’s an article or something formal, I omit it. [Link: John]
• 35 Essential Elements for a Newsworthy Release: 35 is a bit much. Useful info.
• Landing Page Tutorials and Case Studies. One resource should do the trick for your landing pages wanna knows.
• Polish Your Writing to Professionalism: Three tips to self-editing. My number one tip is to use an editor… but that’s not always possible, so these three will do.
• 5 Business Decisions You Will Be Proud Of: “Does doing all of these things guarantee anything? The answer: YES.”

And the fun stuff because you’re allowed.

• ABC book in 3D. For a moment, I wished I had this book when my kids were younger. But then I realized… they’d tear it up. This one looks too fabulous to ruin.
• Jewish Bread Toilet Seat Cover: In honor of Passover, which starts this weekend.
• 10 annoyingly brilliant office interiors: No depressing gray found here.
• The 10 Most Underrated Consoles

Happy 12th birthday to my oldest!

* Sand Fantasy has amazing videos of an artist who uses nothing but hands and sandy to create changing pictures.

* Techdirt posts funny blurbs related to tech and has current news, rumors, book reviews, and white papers.

* Web Gallery of Art isn’t a fancy site and uses frames (ick), but it has over 10,000 pictures of artwork along with commentary. An art-lovers dream.

* Lemmings was one of the few games I played when I began life after college and it was hard to stop. They’re back! You can play them online, on PSP (thank goodness I don’t have one), and create an interactive wallpaper. [ Thanks to Adverblog for addicting me again ]

* Considering U.S. President’s Day is coming up on February 20, it seemed appropriate to point to the Presidential Pet Museum.

From the sponsor: Since the Academy Awards are coming soon, you can bet many entertainers are having Los Angeles cosmetic surgery. Here’s a Facial Plastic Surgery blog and its February 3 entry happens to mention the Oscars.

Painting the Digital River takes a view of art by comparing digital art and classic art. Author James Faure Walker makes many points as he gives value to both art forms, discarding neither as less legitimate than the other. Himself an artist, Walker knows that many artists are confused as to what it means to be an artist and expert at what they do. He says that artists must know about painting, its past and its present, and possess some knowledge of the digital form.

Walker discusses the classical way of learning to draw and paint, and then looks at the tools available for artists today. Just as canvas, brush and pigment all come in many qualities; the digital world offers a variety of hardware and software to enhance the finished product of the artist’s vision.

[ Read more ... ]

From the sponsor:
Neil Young’s Heart of Gold movie is coming to theaters on February 10.

Painting the Digital River takes a view of art by comparing digital art and classic art. Author James Faure Walker makes many points as he gives value to both art forms, discarding neither as less legitimate than the other. Himself an artist, Walker knows that many artists are confused as to what it means to be an artist and expert at what they do. He says that artists must know about painting, its past and its present, and possess some knowledge of the digital form.

Walker discusses the classical way of learning to draw and paint, and then looks at the tools available for artists today. Just as canvas, brush and pigment all come in many qualities; the digital world offers a variety of hardware and software to enhance the finished product of the artist’s vision.

He describes a variety of activities illustrating different forms of digital art and tries to answer many of the questions faced by artists of today, lovers of art, and the museums and galleries that display the new art forms. The author covers some of the work — both classical and modern that he has viewed — finding some of it a waste of time and others breathtaking.

Where the author finally reconciles the different forms of art is in the mind of the painter, the inspiration, the idea from which his work flows. Whether with brush on canvas or printmaking using computer graphics, the painter’s talent most affects the quality of the art. Still, he adds, “that for all its faults, digital art has a life of its own.”

This book starts and ends with the metaphor of the river (Walker works overlooking the Thames); the river changes, it flows this way and that. Painting, like the river, follows a winding course and has quirky ways.

This book is timely as many people are confused by all of the digital art and are trying to put it in perspective — is it art? Is it the only art (from now on)? The author tries to sort out and help understand what painting is and that there is good and bad art in the new digital world just as there always has been with ink and paint. He does a good job reviewing art history and providing technical insight. Painters, art historians, those who appreciate what they see, as well as those interested in the technology that produces digital paintings should find the book worth exploring.

Title: Painting the Digital River
Author: James Faure Walker
Publisher: Prentice Hall PTR
ISBN: 0131739026
Date: January 2006
Format: Hardcover
Pages: 352
Cover Price: USD: $24.99 Amazon: $16.49

Art books are reaching new heights and Pictoplasma is one of the first I’ve seen. The others are Designer Shock’s DSOS1 : The User’s Manual and Anime. All three books are published by German publisher, Die Gestalten Verlag, and they’re onto something here.

The book is a showcase of contemporary art created by international graphic designers, animators, artists, and production companies. Thaler states in the book’s foreword, “Character design is the most universal of graphic languages. Characters work independent of cultural context and narrative structure. They are entirely self-referential, defined by clearly distinctive characteristics and have a life of their own.”

Thaler is absolutely correct when saying the characters have taken on a life of their own. Furthermore, the art attempts to convey the artist’s message emotionally while reaching out to its viewer in the hopes of bonding.

The entire book is pure eye candy in every free hand drawing, pixel, vector graphic, 3-D objects, and an encyclopedia of resurfacing motifs. Even non-Internet surfers will recognize many of the colorful and creative designs because they are found other media including television, books, and video games.

The index lists all the titles of the art, contributors’ names along with their email and Web addresses. As a confessed non-artist, I’m in awe as I flip through pages of expressive and colorfully rendered art. The book can be much more than just another art book, it can be an inspiration for those in the process of creating. This is the coffee table book for geeks and Web designers and it’ll go just fine with the books containing the Monets, Picassos, and Renoirs.

The book has a companion Web site and you can view pages at the publisher’s Web site.

VITAL STATISTICS:
TITLE: Pictoplasma
AUTHORS: Peter Thaler (Editor), Michael Mischler (Editor), Hendrik Hellige (Editor)
PUBLISHER: Die Gestalten Verlag
PUBLICATION DATE: November 2001
ISBN: 3931126587
FORMAT: Hardcover
PAGES: 224
PRICE: US$50