Note-able News

I just got over a cold that seems to be quite, uh, "popular" these days -- seems like EVERYone's got it!

But before I contracted the pestilence, I did manage to produce and deliver a set of 5" x 3" / 12.5cm x 7.5cm note cards to the Joshua Tree National Park Association that are now being offered in at least one of the Park's visitor centers. The cards feature an image of one of my paintings, Sentinels, include an envelope and are currently selling for $3.95 each. One of the park rangers informed me the cards are selling well!

The image features a painting I made in the early 1990s. This is a typical iconic view of what the Mojave desert portion of the Park looks like...I figured this might go over well with visitors to the park.

This is the display rack that holds my note cards in the Visitor Center in Twentynine Palms. For now, it's nestled among jars of scented candles!

















I think -- but I'm not sure -- that all of the visitors centers will have the note cards available. That would be nice -- Park visitation has been increasing over the years, and the peak have just arrived with the profusion of desert wildflowers thanks to the generous rainfall we've received over the last few months!

GREAT news!!

Mark Junge
 
www.SouthwestSpaces.com
www.MarkJunge.com

Drawing (but NOT Quartering) Body Parts!

As you may or may not know, I offer a number of prints on Fine Art America. A few of them are of paintings I've done, but most are some of my many MANY photographs that I've played with a bit to make them look more like paintings.

And I'll have to admit -- I'm underwhelmed by the sales so far.

So...what to do, what to do?

Well, I'd like to be able to offer more prints of paintings, but frankly, I can't afford to pay for high-resolution digital images to be made of my artwork. And I don't have a large-format flatbed scanner.

My latest brainchild is to make some drawings of people, or at least parts of people, that I can scan on the equipment I do have. The drawings could be either in black-and-white, colored pencil, or -- more likely if I want color -- scanned as line drawings and then add color on the computer, so they'd be hybrid drawings + digital art.

These two drawings are details showing the joined hands of two young woman dancing. It's a subject that's near and dear to my heart since I've had a fetish for clasped hands and interlocked fingers (especially girls'/women's hands) for as far back as I can remember -- there's something terribly intimate and sexy about it. (I always loved the fact that in the many dance classes I've taken, many female students seemed to like holding MY hand(s) that way!)

I don't know if there's a market for this sort of thing or not. I've seen many art pieces in which the torso, heads and faces were executed in an artistic way. I'm thinking of other body parts besides hands, and...I dunno...maybe!

In addition, I understand there's a way to make the Fine Art America prints appear on my website. I'd like to figure out how to do that. It's hard to say if it would help, but I doubt it would hurt!

Once again -- stay tuned. Oh, and by the way -- my website URLs are SouthwestSpaces.com and MarkJunge.com.