Some of my favorites from a post at Tor.com today entitled “Picturing Dragons”
Afternoon Dragons with Tea
Tag: painting
Maitz on Art Pact: “On Fantasy Publishing, and Negotiating Contracts”
Don Maitz, a renowned (and one of my favorite) fantasy and maritime artist, wrote an excellent article over at Art Pact. This paragraph especially caught my eye:
So that being said, most producers of a product want to see a fair profit for everyone involved in their production line. Things get dicey when the financial bottom line takes precedent over content and when a legal department does it’s job too well. In Ian Ballantine’s day, as many artists such as I remember, the company, be it a publishing house or gaming company, was answerable to the president who made ultimate decisions on the products they chose and how they were to be conceived and marketed. These self owned enterprises were able to go out on a limb to try something on their own. Today, such companies are owned by corporations that also own many other companies in the Entertainment industry and the person that makes the bulk of the important decisions is now the accountant, as the quarterly bottom line that is fed to the corporate board and stockholders sets the guidelines. Profit over content is something that publishers are struggling with and I believe is the core issue of why this website was established.
— Don Maitz, “On Fantasy Publishing, and Negotiating Contracts“, Art Pact (May 2014)
The Gray and the White
We protected the purple walls with blue tape, brown paper and clear plastic drop clothes last weekend. We wrapped up the room by Sunday evening, ready for Terry to paint the ceiling during the night, when that front southeast corner room would remain cool. He did get the edging done before we took time out for dinner and an episode of Falling Skies.
I woke up Monday to the same dingy gray ceiling, but I wasn’t complaining. Terry could take as much time as he needed. I headed off to work. Terry painted as much as he could Monday afternoon, but ran out of paint at about the halfway point on the ceiling. I saw a trip to Home Depot in our future for more bright white ceiling paint. Terry thought about buying a five gallon bucket of ceiling paint, because we also have to paint the vaulted ceiling in our bedroom before we proceed with flooring in that room. The $103 price was a bit of a shock, but we compromised and bought a two gallon variety instead for a bit over $40. We reviewed the hard wood flooring options available, still not happy about having to order what we wanted and have it ‘quick shipped’ to us a week to ten days later. Nothing ‘quick’ about that, if you ask me.
The ceiling remained half-gray, half-white for a couple more days. I came home Wednesday evening to a bright white ceiling and the smell of drying paint. We turned on the ceiling fan and retired downstairs for dinner and an episode of Chopped. A thunderstorm rolled through Lansing while we ate, dumping some much needed rain on us and gracing us with a beautiful double rainbow.
The rain demonstrated yet another home maintenance issue to resolve before the drought ends in earnest.
Terry finished painting the ceiling Wednesday, applying two coats of the bright white ceiling paint.
With the ceiling dry, we could unwrap the room, leaving a huge pile in the middle of the floor to confuse the dogs.
This concludes the renovation of the top of the purple room. Next, we’ll tackle the floor, once we decide on whether we’re just doing this one bedroom, or all the bedrooms on the top floor.
Purple Haze Phase
I can thank my daughter for the choice of wall colors in my library and the other spare bedroom on the top floor of our home. As you can see above, my daughter transformed an otherwise boring eggshell colored wall to eye-popping purple. Her other spare bedroom, which I took over as my library, she foreshadowed in green, perhaps predicting her eventual defection to the University of North Texas? (Go Mean Green!).
I received news last week that my son and his wife will be visiting us the second weekend of August. This finally spurred me out of my summertime torpidity and got me to cleaning out the aforementioned purple bedroom. I asked Terry if we could get the hardwood floors installed before Derek and Royna arrive. He countered with “I need to paint the ceiling before I put the new floor in.” Why, you might ask? Well, because my daughter, with the impetuousness (and impatience) of youth, did not protect the white ceiling from her purple paintbrush.
I spent a couple of evenings last week sorting through empty boxes; old wrapping paper; even older clothes (a leftover tuxedo my son wore in high school ten years ago for a choir uniform); baseball and football trading cars; parts of a RC car; a skateboard; some stuffed animals; a laundry basket full of books; etc., etc. Some of it even made it all the way down three sets of stairs to the basement storage room. A few items just made it across the hallway into the master bedroom or the library.
I found the floor by late afternoon on Saturday, enough to sweep. Terry brought up the five-in-one ladder so he could start taping off the walls from the ceiling. This morning, I picked up where he left off and began putting rolled brown paper over the top of the first layer of painters tape to which we will eventually tape some plastic drop clothes. Terry should have the ceiling painted today.
Then it’s down to the floors.