Dear Diary,

The only thing worse than not selling any art is not being able to give it away for free. So far I have exactly zero entries in my facebook “Like” competition since my mom got me a bunch more likes (you’re awesome, mom!) but bowed out of the contest. The rest of you have a little less than two weeks to get into the game. The original contest information is here: http://www.facebook.com/notes/spirals-in-love/do-my-bidding-get-free-art/172078159508439, but basically you have until 4/10/11 to refer people to “Like” the Spirals In Love facebook page and the person with the most referrals wins a piece of original art.

On a marginally related note, I wish I had someone to tear my art apart. Granted, I’m pretty much a hermit, but one of my hopes in putting my art up on the Internet is that I could get genuine criticism. The only thing I’ve ever gotten out of praise is embarrassment – critique is key to artistic growth. So I am officially giving any of my readers license to say mean things.

“That yellow doesn’t look any better just because you put sparkles in it.”

“Change the direction of your lighting once in a while.”

“Why does that creature’s body eclipse both its legs if I’m looking at it from the side?”

You don’t have to be able to draw or paint to criticize me (I’ve always hated the “don’t say anything if you couldn’t do it better yourself” argument) and I will appreciate anything you have to say as a chance to understand what other people see when they look at my art.

Anyway…I’ve been reading and sleeping a lot and that 12-painting auction project took a lot of time so I haven’t made a much progress on my own work the last few days. I have big painting plans for this afternoon and evening though. In the meantime, I’d like to share some graffiti I saw on Seattle’s public graffiti wall (http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/georgetown-graffiti-wall/Location?oid=447646). The face on the wall was very reminiscent of a series of “Catrina” paintings and drawings by Rebekah Joy Plett. I don’t know if the graffiti artist was familiar with Rebekah’s work or if it was a coincidental transfer of ideas across some artistic hive mind. I’d like to think it was the latter. One of the original drawings is below – you can see more in the archives of Rebekah’s blog at http://rebekahjoyplett.blogspot.com/.