Posted on June 16, 2002

• Happy Father’s Day to you dads out there! Jessie and I just got back from spending the weekend at a “Catholic Engaged Encounter”. It’s a three day closed seminar designed to teach us all about how to have a successful marriage. It is also a prerequisite to having a wedding in a Catholic church (which is the only option for Jessie). I’m not Catholic but I found it to be an eye-opening and generally helpful experience. Now that it is over, I’m glad we went. I’m going to decompress tonight and then get busy working on my new render tomorrow.

  This latest one is taking longer than usual for a number of different reasons. The most important being that it is a request from a scientist to depict an actual phenomenon. I want to it look as realistic as possible. Trust me. If I can put what’s in my head onto the screen, you will like it.

  This brings me to another point. Every time more than seven days pass between new renders I get a bunch of nasty emails from members complaining that they are not getting their money’s worth. Looks like I need to clarify things.

  This is not a “Wallpaper of the Week” club. The subscription works like this: your initial membership payment covers access to everything in my gallery for the amount of time you purchased (1 year, 90 days, or Lifetime). All of these images are available for preview on the free site so you cannot say you didn’t know what you were getting. From time to time (at whatever interval is comfortable for me) I will post new images. I do this because I enjoy creating art, I want new people to sign up and I want you all to keep renewing your memberships (or else I don’t eat). These new images, though, are available for free to existing members. I do not charge you extra for them.

  If, when your expiration date rolls around, you decide that the new images I posted (and the frequency with which I posted them) were valuable to you then I ask that you renew your membership. This way you always know what you are paying for, and I am comfortable knowing that no one feels cheated. Capiche?

Posted on June 14, 2002

• I’d been working at having a new render ready to post by this morning but, as I am looking at it, it is just not ready yet. I’ll keep working at it today but due to another obligation I won’t be able to work on it over the weekend. If I don’t get it posted by this afternoon then I hope to have it up early next week.

Posted on June 7, 2002

• I get between 50-100 submissions per week for the User Gallery. Of those, I usually post less than 10. Of those that I reject, it is a good bet that up to half of them are cheesy looking “Photoshop Swirls”. It seems to be a genre all its own.

  Anyway, I looked through my gallery to see if I had done any these in my early days. I didn’t find anything (except for maybe this) so I decided to try my hand. I wanted mine to have a more multi-layered, 3D look (and not use any Photoshop filters).

  The result is up now on the new images page. I couldn’t think of a good name for it until Jessie suggested “Not Titled”. From that I settled on “Null”. Hope you like it. Comments welcome.

Posted on June 6, 2002

• Just wanted to chime in and say that my new project should be up before the end of the week.

Posted on June 3, 2002

• I’ve added two alternately colored versions of “Cobalt Daisy” (a “Fire Daisy” and an “Emerald Daisy”) to the Pickle Jar.