Spring in My Step © Jane Davenport - to purchase, click on image
How I wish this were the case. It feels as if spring had arrived! So i can make myself feel warm by looking at sunny summer memories….the ladybirds will be here soon….
I can’t work out how to add the facebook badge in wordpress…something to do with Java…and the only think I know about that is how to drink it.
this is the link to my Facebook profile!
sorry – such a rookie! if you can help me – please do!
Blue Suede Mantis © Jane Davenport
I was wandering aimlessly through my photo library as I searched for images, ideas and inspiration, and meandered into my praying mantis file. I have quite a collection! Looking at the images, I had the stories and location associated with each one jump into my mind.
This may be because they are so tricky to find with their perfect camouflage. Also, as the top invertebrate predator in the garden, they are relatively scarce in number and probably quite territorial. But I think the majority of the truth lies in the fact that I just like them. I admire them. I can relate to a mantid (yes, you heard it here first). I would be hard pressed to bring back such clear recall for every bee I have seen for example, even though I am very fond of them also!
The most recent mantis I worked with was the Jade eyed gargantuan a few months ago (here). The first mantids I worked with are featured in the featured image . In between are dozens of other individuals. I just really love photographing them and I think it shows! I have been asked to put a proposal together for an exhibition, and well, the answer has just presented itself – well, to me anyway!
I would love to see these charasmatic creatures staring from gallery walls en masse. I have had mantids feature in a few of my exhibitions…but I think they deserve more than that! I did have one of my mantis images towering over the entrance to “What’s the Buzz?” exhibition at the Perth Zoo. The magnificent 2m mantis was a favourite with boys!
Anyway, I will send of my proposal and let you know what happens…
Jane
I feel very close to all my artwork. They have become my friends! And I will always care for them.
Kamikaze Bee (c) Jane Davenport - click to purchase
” Kamikaze Bee” holds such a cherished place in my heart and I need to self-celebrate a little today! This image represents the starting point of a monumental journey for me. I created this image way back in my early bug days, on my first Christmas with my then boyfriend (now husband!). It was during this trip that my fairly new interest in photographing bugs turned to a serious obsession. By a quirk of destiny I took it not far from where I live now. But there was a lot of moving around and adventure before arriving back where I started!
This image won a big award in Los Angeles called a ‘Guru’ and was key in securing a scholarship to the Sante Fe Workshops in New Mexico where I had the joy of studying with John Paul Caponigro. It was on the plane coming home from that AMAZING experience and blazing with the passion and confidence to stop dreaming about becoming an artist ‘one day’ and setting about to make my own wishes come true. That I really could do it and that I would follow my bliss.
The little creature is an Australian blue-banded digger bee. It is swift, solitary and an incredibly hard worker. Head down and bum up she collects treasure from flowers…I feel a kindred spirit there! Thanks little bee.
Choose Happiness,
x Jane
Who are you now? Art Journal pages
This is coming up for me so much lately. As my focus is so much on drawing and painting, I struggle with how to mesh my other art forms into my photographic art reputation. I worry that my existing collectors will get confused!
It’s not that I am moving away from photography it’s just that it’s winter, and the days are shorter, the light is different and well, it’s just not as pleasant out in the cold! Yes, I have a studio, but I actually start most photo sessions in the ‘wild’ outside, and fall back to the studio if the wind picks up, or if I have a finicky notion or idea to flesh out that needs a controlled environment…my cameras are in winter hibernation!
Usually I go travelling in winter, but I just love my home so much, there is no destination grabbing my attention hard enough to pull me towards it. And in this settled-in-one-place state, I am being so paint productive!
But it leaves me wondering! Am I painting Jane? Drawing Jane? Illustrating Jane? Photographic arts Jane? Making videos Jane (one imovie and I think I’m a director – hah!)? Fashion design Jane? Blogging Jane? Author Jane? Blah blah blah Jane?!
Of course I know the answer to this – I am all these things! It’s just all part of the whole. My angst sets in when I read any type of ‘art business’ blog or book. Consistency is key. People like to know what to expect. And so far I have been just so reliable. I have a consistent style with my photographic art, its just the way I see the world/want to see the world. It’s the reason I can’t be a commercial photographer – I am beyond bending my focus to outside direction! I make my work for myself and luckily lots of other people find their own stories and meanings in my images. And I have a consistent style for each medium I use…but that’s a bunch of different consistencies!
I am not going to be able to answer my own questions right here, right now of course, just letting you into my brain space. I’d love to know your thoughts on this!
Choose happiness
x Jane
I Give You Butterflies ©Jane Davenport. Love it? It's available in my store!
- Sophisticated Ladies © JAne Davenport
It’s been a full-on week! I have had some BIG creative projects to kick of, which always take herculean strength to get rolling. Of course once the ball is on the go, it’s easy to pick up the pace, slow down a little, alter course or change direction! But I feel as if I have been trying to shape all my creative energy into the actual ball itself. Scattered energy, Aaaaaargh!
So at the end of my mental gymnastics week, I got ‘told off’ by an associate. I could hear in the person’s voice and the chaotic background that they were under pressure, and our conversation just kept on esculating until the person became aggressive. When I say ‘our’ conversation I am being generous, as I didn’t get to chime in…yes, we had a problem to sort out, but I was addressed as if I was a naughty child. It’s been a looong time since I have been spoken to in that tone. I was too shocked/tired/scared(!) to stand up for myself, explain or state my version of events, so I took on all the venting and finger wagging and slung away with my tail between my legs. I wonder how long I will be mentally hiding under the bed from this person!
I was worried that the situation would totally derail me from my other projects, because I felt really bad about the way I had been spoken to, and why I would not ‘fight back’. I am just not good at confrontation and I will go a long way to avoid it. It freaks me out. I need time to think about things. I like to ponder all the angles. I take everything personally. Blech!
Anyway! pretty pink saved me from fingernail biting. I didn’t have time to worry about it all day yesterday, as I was in my Byron Bay gallery. It doesn’t happen often, but I enjoy it when I am working there! Seeing my work on the gallery walls, chatting to people, seeing what they like, what images people linger in front of, answering curious questions about my artwork. Helping people make selections is fun!
And maybe because I was still feeling a bit shakey in the back of my brain, I was really attracted to the soft pinks and greys of, the above images “I Give You Butterflies’ and ‘Sophisticated Ladies’ hanging in the gallery. They comforted me. I am feeling a whole new level of love for these images – some of my most popular. They reminded me how lucky I am to do what I love and how hard I have worked to achieve a level of technical proficiency that allows me to get to an image I see in my head! I feel the need to create some friends for these two. Yes its winter, so finding bugjects will be a challenge, but where there is a will there is a way, right?! So after my lovely Gallery day and this chat on my blog, I am feeling all better now! Yay!
I hope you are having a lovely weekend (and nobody gives you a ticking off!)
Choose Happiness,
x Jane
You can tell when I have a commission / exhibition/ project that I am really excited about because my studio gets super-clean and totally reorganized. Instead of getting down to work and actually being productive, I start on all the little ‘chores’ that have been lurking around at the periphery. Things that are ‘sort-of’ important … really tidying my studios, labeling/categorising images from the past months, scanning/ photographing artwork and journal pages, priming canvases, reshuffling inspiration boards, watching podcasts and queued YouTube videos…blah, blah,blah.
All this cleaning and shuffling is an important part of my creative process.
In the distant past, I used to get tempted during this phase to watch TV series and -gasp- play video games…now that really is a waste of time!….lots of fun, but a waste of my life! So I curbed that wicked addiction through massive willpower and now I practice what I call Active Procrastination. While I am gathering and sculpting my thoughts under the surface, I do all the ‘sort-of’ important things. They need to get done eventually as they are beneficial, but they are not ‘red-hot’ important.
So although I am not actively doing my most important work, I am doing good stuff! To the onlooker, I still look productive. But inside I feel like I am dawdling and pottering around. I am organising, tidying, preparing, cleaning up. I am not wasting my time. I relax into this process now because I know I will have my internal processes in order, my thoughts sculpted and eventually get down to the real work – usually right before the deadline - and pour forth in a great creative deluge. Aaaah the relief!
I know that this is about to happen in the next few hours. I was invited to present a proposal for the most EXCITING commission two weeks ago. And I have since moved my whole studio around, finished a sketchbook (really!), filled my entire art journal with backgrounds and learned how to use three software programs. In the past I may have paniced a bit and beat myself up worrying about why I can’t get started on my ‘proper’ work. ! But now I understand my creative process and I have been whistling away as I Actively Procrastinate.
And today I am feeling ‘angsty’. I am getting annoyed at everything and everybody because it feels as if they are blocking me from focusing on my Proposal. My poor husband just came up to my desk, and his footsteps drove me crazy! I was SCOWLING WILDLY by the time he got to my desk – my look said “WHAT DO YOU WANT! LEAVE ME ALONE! AAARGH!!!”. And now I feel so mean, because he was very kindly bringing me a delicious coffee…! Luckily he has been on this creative path with me from the beginning, so he understands the process!.
Once I finish this post, I will have to go completely radio silent as I begin to poke, squeeze and meld my ideas/thoughts/ideas into something I can comprehend. I am often frustrated and a bit manic during this phase – the whole world stops and condenses to just me and my work. And then Once I have bought my ideas into a coalesced form, I will shape them into the Proposal. And once I have finished printed, PDF’ed and posted the proposal, the dancing around will commence! YAY!
What is your creative process? Have you noticed your creative patterns? I would love to hear them!
Wish me luck in creating an amazing proposal for my next large-scale outdoors art installation – it’s soo exciting…must get to it!
Choose Happiness,
x Jane
"Everyone always referred to her as a bright girl." © Jane Davenport
I am feeling very BRIGHT today…I woke up this morning with the rising sun, leaped out the front door for a 5km run, (is this rhyming? ), then I swam for an hour…KIDDING! It is so cold today (granted it’s only Byron Bay cold – not snowing in the mountains cold) and its reminding me that the ladybirds and most of my insect friends are in hibernation or hiding…so there are few of my Bugjects to photograph. And I miss my little insect buddies!
Having a small pine-full moment…so I had a peep through my huge library of ..sigh… ladybird images ( it’s gargantuan actually , but don’t tell anybody) , and this one caught my eye. I created it in the middle of summer at the Chicago Botanic Gardens. There were flowers everywhere, it was hot and the air was buzzing with little creatures. Nice ones, not the bitey variety. Spring through summer and into the turn of autumn you will find me outside, in the gardens, poking my nose into flowers and looking at the little life. But not in winter.
HOWEVER! that means there is more time to draw and paint, and there has been a lot of that going on…. AND lots of technological advances. The Institute of Cute has a Facebook page and went from 4 friends to 160 (and counting !) in a few days with a bit of effort. AND there was the videos of course, on the IOC’s own YouTube channel (!). And today I start building my Etsy store. The excitement is palpable here in ladybird land…
Of course, there has been a little assistance. I have a magical fairy called Erin helping me. She comes in to the studio 1 day a week and it amazes me the difference in energy it makes. Angus an I both get prepared for ‘Erin Day’ in advance, and we are making videos and thinking about ‘the business end’ of the art studio which adds to the momentum. Even just the tidying up for our guest worker is of huge benefit! And on the day she is here, I think we work harder, just to ‘set a good example’.
…so I am feeling like a Bright Girl too.
Choose Happiness,
x Jane
Nesting-Instinct © Jane Davenport
Here is a little preview of the story I am creating with my photography at the moment….
( A cosy little nest must feel like a boat on a wild ocean when its windy.)
Choose Happiness
x Jane
art journal page by Jane Davenport - "Why Bugs?"
I really enjoyed posting some of my journal pages a few days ago! I carry mine with me everywhere I go. I catch ideas and pin them down before they flit away again….sort of like a flower pressing book. Anyway, I liberated some insect pages from an old World Book Encyclopedia (remember those?!!) and made a collage a while back. Played with some bright colour and shapes (messy and scrumptious). And that was it for the time being.
Someone asked me “Why bugs” the other day…and when I was manically flipping through my journal in the attempt to distract myself on the ROUGH flight home last night from Sydney (we didn’t hit any stray tornadoes though! Wild and weird weather…hope the Lennox Head tornado was a one off – NOT a sign of things to come!), the answers to why I just love wrangling insects for my art practice flowed on to the uncannily prepared surface.
i love these moment when ‘things’ just flow…
Choose happiness,
x Jane
It feels like the year has only just started (yes, I know we are nearly halfway through! Time flies when you are having FUN!) and here I am showing you 2011 calendars…but I was so excited when they arrived from the USA today! I work with Leap Year Publishing, and have 4 titles with them for 2011..
In the Magic Garden
Love & DevOcean
The Sea Party
LadybirDelicious!
The WONDERFUL and EXCITING thing about having my work in calendars each year is that the images are reproduced in full blazing colour in a lovely large and juicy format. Delicious!
When my Australian calendars with OzCorp Publishing are ready to show off, I will let you know!
The drive home from Sydney to Byron Bay can be a real drag…time is measured out in coffee stops and toilet breaks. So any excitement along the way is always welcome, especially if it is of a close encounter with a giant bug!
As we passed a new sushi roadside diner at Coffs Harbour, my eyes clamped on a HUGE insect sitting on the lime green wall. Can you imagine how BIG it was to see it from the road? So I commando rolled out of the moving vehicle to dash over and have a close-up look…I split with excitement when I saw her huge pregnant belly, flourescent green eyes, and splashes of emerald down her wings. A magnificent site. And my mind started racing over the photo opps as I darted back to the now safely stationary car to grab my camera. And then I remembered…my camera was in Canon hospital getting repaired (the lens had locked with the camera body!). OK, not to worry, I will take her home. A quick google check (love my iphone!) revealed she was a species that lives in my area as well, so I could relocate her without guilt.
Now what to put her in? Well it just so happens that I never travel without a bug house in the car. Oh, right, it’s full of baby stick insects ( a gift from one of my art collectors in Sydney – really!) and the mantis will definitely polish them off. So into a rinsed-out drink container she goes. I could hear her scrachety-scratching for the rest of the journey.
The next day, safe and sound in her own bug house, the mantis layed her eggs (told you she was preggers) and looked at me hungrily. I have been hunting grasshoppers for her ever since. And managed to find a rocket frog, damselflies and a plethora of other little critters for lots of photographic fun over the long weekend!
Tenodera australasiae – aka: The Australian Mantid or Purple Winged mantid
As you can imagine, I have been very careful with my large guest and I prepared the studio carefully for her photo-session. I planned the images I wanted before picking up the camera (which arrived back safely – thanks Canon!).
I am at the Sydney Royal Easter Flower and Garden Show trying not to eat fairy floss ( how can something that looks so fluffy, pink and innocent be so bad for you?!).
the Institute of Cute continued its journey from Melbourne to Sydney and landed in the lovliest spot at the Royal Show – right in the Horticultural Pavilion! My artwork is displayed on giant 3m x 3m murals hanging from the walls and that is the biggest I will have seen my work. Seeing them for the first time, caused a real rush of excitement.
The exhibition continues at both major entrances. Yes, I am trying to take over ‘The Show’ bit by bit…!
I held a competition for my ‘Ladybird Letter’ subscribers for double pass to the show, and received so many entries for my question: “If you were a bug, what bug would you be?”! Last week the Melbourne Flower Show competition caused great excitement and the entries were WONDERFUL!
I have been watching the hordes of people at the Sydney Royal Easter Flower and Garden Show taking photos of the competition flowers on display.
99% of people must have their point-and-shoot camera set on full auto and just poke it at the Grand Champion rose, BANG! flash goes off, on to the next flower. I really do pity whoever would be shown all the bleached out, non-composed snap shots…Boring!
What would make those shots so much better straight away would be for people to line up a non- distracting background. If you are going to the trouble of snapping something, why not make it fairly clear what you where trying to take a picture of!
2nd, make sure you select the ‘Macro’ mode ( usually represented by a tulip logo).
3rd – check your flash mode. Judging by all the flashes going off around me all day ( I am getting to know how Britney feels!), most of those little cameras are in. ‘forced flash’ mode- that means the flash will fire- no matter what! “Experiment with your other flash modes people!” is what I feel like calling out…a little fill flash, 2nd curtain sync, or no flash at all may give better or more interesting results.
Here is the continuation of my essential kit:
5. little flash – Canon Speedlite 270EX
This small and light flash is a cracker! If I need to pop just a little bit more light into some shadowy recess of the universe, I can. It has a diffuser and I can angle the head to bounce the light from another surface and on to my subject. I wish my fancy macro flashes were more portable, like this one. I usually only take them with me if I have a string of sherpas to help hump them up the mountain…! I am hoping that this is the next area to get some technological advance. Smaller, lighter flash technology is needed for naughty, hand-held photogs like me!
6. Cleaning cloths:
i have a nifty souvenir microfibre glass cleaning cloth with a map of New York on it for the back of the camera and a little pack of lens cleaning tissues.
8. Water in spray bottle:
i can drink the water, spray it on my face if it’s hot and spray it on a surface/ flower to deepen its colour if I want. Sometimes spraying a beetle will also prevent it from flying off as they like their wings to be dry before heading off into the wild blue yonder!
7. Headache pills:
Looking through a little viewfinder with one eye open and the other scrunched up for hours on end and not drinking any water is a sure-fire recipe for massive headache. I often don’t even realise how much pain I am actually in, until I resurface into the real world from hours spent gazing at my magnified view of ladybirds and flowers. Nurofen has saved me many times!
9. Spare film:
Sandisk Xtreme series IV 16GB card in the camera and 2 x 8GB cards in the bag – just in case…
10. iphone:
I can play music, set a timer ( I lose all sense of time when I have found an engaging bugject), and call in an emergency.
There! my top 10 essentials! Actually there is one last – A good camera bag, but this deserves its own post!
Finally, the equipment list requested a thousand times!
These are the pieces of kit that I pack most often when I am going on a scouting expedition, to just have some fun and see what I see. So, I am able to roll with the punches and capture whatever magic comes my way, this is what I take:
1. The Camera
I use the Canon EOS system. I have a 5D Mark II digital SLR. What an amazing piece of technology it is. The quality of capture is breathtaking. I can use it in very low-light and deep shadow, tripodless, crank up the ISO and get the shots I am after. What a wonderful art tool. I love it. I adore it. I worship it. I will drop it like a hot potato when Canon bring out their next marvel of course. I am what the industry refers to as “an early adapter” 
Why the 5D ‘Prosumer’ (don’t you HATE that word, I don’t know why marketing people thing we would identify with it…but here I am using it…sigh) model? It has more points of measurement than the cheaper models (but that 7D looks pretty nice…!), and I have found that this makes a HUGE difference to exposure and the low-light/low-noise capabilities are a little photographic miracle. Why not the ‘Pro’ 1 series? Simple, too heavy!
Why Canon? My first camera was a hand-me-down Canon, so that is why I started with that brand. As the photography bug bites deep into your soul, you may start a lovely lense collection like I have, and that pretty much locks you in to a brand of camera. I have used Nikons and Sonys in the past, and would recommend them also.
2. lens 1 – My Canon macro 50mm 2.5 lens:
It is beat up and battered from years of use because I use it like a microscope and poke it at things for the closest possible view, and sometimes my aim is off, and I bump in to things… but I have never damaged the glass though! When I am so close, weird and wonderful things start happening to colour – but I will save that discussion for another time!
3. Lens 2 – Canon 100mm 2.8 Macro:
My new baby. I resisted getting this lens for years because it was the most regularly ‘recommended’ macro lens, and I don’t like being regular! However, even though creeping up on butterflies and dragonflies with the 50mm lead me to develop Hiawatha type skills, I did miss a lot of shots. So I gave-in and got this Macro lens, so I could stand further away, and still get an ‘up-close’ view. But what I found is that this lens delivers a totally different perspective. I hold the camera and stand differently when I use this lens. The 50mm and 100 mm Macro are not an either, or situation for me. I wear them out equally!
4. Lens 3 – Canon 50 mm 1.8:
I feel as if I am the last person into photography to get one of these lenses. It is light, cheap and offers a light filled view. When I finish with my macro lenses, I will pop the 50mm 1.8 on and photograph the whole scene to get a wider understanding of the environment I am focusing on.
Stay tuned: i will complete my list!
Paper Kite Butterfly
the beautiful Paper Kite butterfly
Scientific name: Idea leuconoe
This large, striking, black-and-white butterfly flits and floats in the air, like a piece of paper drifting in the wind. Its huge 9 to 10cm wingspan is accentuated by spectacular pattern. It is also known as the Rice Paper butterfly and Large Tree Nymph.
This GORGEOUS tropical butterfly has managed to spread its wings all over the world, simply by being beautiful. You may not have seen it in the wild (I haven’t yet!), but chances are if you have been to a butterfly house, then you have witnessed its loveliness. As you can see, it is attracted to red flowers, so wear a red top or hat if you want one to land on you!
It is a popular butterfly to have in captivity at Butterfly houses because of its size and slower flying pattern. I have photographed them in butterfly houses in Germany, all across the USA, in Australia, Thailand and South Africa. I created these images at ‘That Butterfly Place’ in Branson, Missouri.
In the wild it is found from India through Malaysia and SE Asia. It is bred commercially in the Phillipines and Malaysia and each chrysalis carefully packed and sent to new butterfly houses around the world.
The chrysalis and newly emerged Paper kite butterflies
The chrysalis is just as beautiful as the butterfly in my opinion. They are yellow with metallic gold and black markings as in the above images. You can see the empty chrysalis with the emerged adult butterflies stretching their newly freed wings.
As caterpillars they eat plants with bitter-tasting alkaloids, which in turn give them a bitter taste and protect them from predation even as butterflies. I look forward to photographing the caterpillars one day…
The Reference shot : remembering scale
Not every shot I take is aimed at being an aesthetic wonder! Reference shots, which are seldom attractive, are hugely important for many reasons, and one is scale.
It is actually very hard to remember the correct size of something after the event. In my mind’s eye at least, my subjects bugjects grow in stature! And I am often surprised when I find a beetle or bug that I have previously photographed, at just how small it actually is! My recollections are tampered with because I am looking at my images at many times magnification.
So I find it really helpful to take a reference shot just to indicate the size of my bugject. A ruler is most accurate, but my phone, hand, sunglasses and toes all make appearances. If my bugject’s patience allows, I try and get them in the reference shot, but sometimes that is impossible, so in amongst my lovely close-up shots of a butterfly, you will find a random, uncomposed shot of the whole plant it was sitting on. With bigger subjects such as birds, I always try and get a shot of the whole tree, preferably with a person under it, so the scale is recorded.
Reference shots to show the 'scale' of your smaller subjects are important and helpful!
I learned this trick from studying my grandfather’s slides. He was a ‘Gentleman Collector’ and fortunate to be able to indulge in a pastime passed down the ancestral line. As ‘landed gentry’ it was respectable to devote time in naturalist pursuits such as fossil, butterfly and orchid cataloguing, observing and collecting.
Thankfully, rather than killing hordes of animals to display, he used the camera to collect and record the nature around him. Amongst his thousands of his slides and films, there are many of family, but the overwhelming majority of photos portray a passion for wildflowers from the south-west of Western Australia. The slides themselves are not aesthetic wonders, but a determined and loving effort to capture the amazing breadth of variety and detail in his lens’s gaze. What I find most fascinating is that each one has an everyday object, such as a coin, matchbox or match ruler, placed alongside the subject so that the scale can be seen. Without this attention to detail, there really is no way of telling just how tiny these flowers are, unless you look up the size in a reference book!
I blogged earlier in the week about a Giant water bug that I found, and included one of my reference images, which is a more rarely seen beast than the secretive, mud-dwelling creature! But to show how big the subject bugject was, it needed a reference point, so I used a pen. I certainly won’t be using the image for an Art print, but a wonderful reference accessory.
I had to share this with you, my first Guest Book!
I work with Ozcorp Card and Stationery Co in Australia for my stationery range. I have cards, journals, writing pads, diaries, address books, calendars and even sticky notes featuring my artwork with them! You can see some of the range on my shop website : here and here. I love it when I am at a meeting or new friend’s house, and I see one of my creations in use. I get very excited when I walk into a nice store or papershop and see a display of my stationery, where I am known to do a little girl jig, and then rearrange and tidy everything!
The image on the guestbook is called Tropic Love. I created it in a Plumeria grove in Hawaii. When I look at it I can still feel the bliss of that day…the thrill of discovering such a beautiful place…warm tropical sunshine on my back… the heady, delicious fragrance from thousands of flowers…and plenty of time to relax into making photos…what a dreamy day it was…
i am just feeling a bit nudie with my painting exposed in the last Post… so I need to run under the skirts of the familiar for a moment! I created some still-life vignettes (love that word)…for my DevOcean series. It was the first major shoot working with my new Studio Block (see post below – i don’t know how to link to my own posts – cripes!)…and with the AM.AaaaY. ZING weather in Byron Bay the last few whiles…well, being inspired in a beachified manner came as no surprise…
I was tinkering and shooting for hours and hours and hours a day. I will use the images for signed prints, and I shot them off to some of my art licensing partners and they fainted all over the place and demanded hi-res versions..so excitingness on many levels!
