mind harvest - march 2010

8/9/2019 Mind Harvest - March 2010

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March 2010

Five

GG rr ee ee nn Plants

for Black Thumbs

Ten W ay s

to Becom e b buurrnntt oouutt

the quickest way to kill a muse



utterfly Garden 2By DrakoKatze

3 The Issue That Almost Wasn't

By Vampire Wombat

Five Green Plantsfor Black Thumbs

by Jiralmage by Vampire

Wombat)

6 Musings by Sundri

10 Ten Ways toecome Burnt Out

By Vampire

Wombat

12 Water TowerTulips 7

By DrakoKatze



Computer problems, Spring Break which barely could be called that,snow on the first day of Spring, etc. All that is what this month has

brought. And then there's the factthat everyone has been too busy. Sonaturally I was contemplating justcancelling the issue this month. ButI asked if I should do that or do ashort issue instead and people saidI should do the latter. Well, luckily thanks to my lack of thinking of anything to do and putting thingsoff, I've received some submissionsfor this issue.

I know this issue isn't as well puttogether as the last and is muchlater in the month too, but at leastit did come. Next month's will bedifferent, though. It has an actualtheme and will hopefully be the best so far. What is the theme youmay ask? Steampunk. Yeah... It wasn't exactly my choice for themonth. I was actually planning todo it at a later point, but people voted that it be in April instead.I have a few things planned for italready. I'm going to make a few faux ads, design some scaled downclothing, and hopefully write ashort story. I'm going to beresearching magazines, books, and

newspapers from 1870-1900 tomake it more immersive andauthentic feeling. The color will bereflective of this too.

If you or someone you know isinterested in participating in theissue, the tentative release for theissue is between April 19th and23rd. Any submissions can be emailed tome at [email protected] with any combination of the wordsmagazine, steampunk, MindHarvest, or submission. Please keepany submissions at a "pg-13" level.

Sculpture, clothing, photographs, wood cuttings, drawings, shortstories, articles, etc. will beaccepted.

The Issue That Alm ost

Wasn'tBy Vampire Wombat



It's March. The birds are back,

the snow is (mostly) melted, thetrees are starting to bud, and theSpring Fever bug has bitten. So yougo out, buy a bunch of 'easy to grow'

flowers, and watch as they slowly dieunder your devoted care.

For many of us, this is anannual event. No matter what type of flower it is, it just seems as though

your very presence in the roomcauses the leaves to curl and the

buds to fall off. And no amount of sunshine, water, or fertilizer can fixit. Being one of those cursed with a

'black thumb' myself (my track record includes killing a miniaturerose in less than a week, and roastinga cactus to a literal brown crisp in a

window) I have come to find thatthere ARE plants out there that are

just more set on living than others.

Top Five Hard-to-Kill House Plants:

5. Scilla

Scilla can be found at most storesthat sell plant bulbs, and comes in a

variety of colors. Because it is a bulb,

it is just a bit easier to keep alive,and will keep coming up year after year. The plant usually grows to bearound 12 inches tall, and likesmedium sunlight and moist (but notsoggy!) soil.

4. Dahlia

Another bulb plant that comes in an

ever increasing variety of colors andis easily found wherever bulbs aresold. I personally have managed to'kill' mine twice and still had it come

back again in the spring. This plantneeds a large pot, since it grows to bearound three feet tall, and may notflower the first year that you have it.

3. Cactus

Despite my earlier comment onfrying one, the cactus plant is really fairly easy to keep alive. If you don'tlike the prickles of them, there are

varieties that are less dangerous thanothers (though be careful of the fuzzy looking ones. They may look soft,and you might be able to gently touch them and they'll feel soft, butthose little fuzzies are very difficult

to get out of your finger if you brushit wrong). A cactus likes a lot of sunlight, but needs very little waterto survive. Small ones can easily survive on two tablespoons of wateronce a week.

FiveGG rr ee ee nn

Plantsfor Black Thumbs

by Jiral



2. Ivy

While an ivy plant may try to takeover your whole room (or apartment,or house), it is a fairly tenaciousplant that likes to live. As long as ithas a little sunshine and moist dirt, it

will grow and grow all year long. If itstarts invading the rest of the house, just use your scissors to cut it back.

1. Aloe

The Aloe plant (specifically Aloe Vera in this case) is one of the mosthardy plants possible for someone togrow. A desert dweller by nature,this plant can go weeks without

being watered and not die. The Aloe Vera plant also has shallow roots which helps to prevent over- watering. It is happiest with fullsunlight, but moderate to littlesunlight will also keep it alive. Anadded bonus to the Aloe Vera plant,is that it can also cure burns betterthan anything out there on themarket. Just cut off part of a 'leaf',slice it open, and rub on the goo!Good for cooking burns, sunburns,and radiation burns (though you'vegot bigger problems than dyingplants if you have those).

Survival Tips:

Never keep a plant in a window thatdoes not have UV protection over it.UV rays are, as I discovered,

increased when going through a window, and have the ability to roasteven a cactus to a literal crisp. Even a

window screen or slanted blinds willhelp prevent this.

Make sure you have a hole in the bottom of your pot to drain out excess water, and don't leave the pot sitting in water (as this defeats the purpose of having a drain to begin with). If yourplant has too much water, the roots willrot and kill the plant.

Bulb plants need to have a couplemonths of dormancy each year torecharge their bulb batteries to grow again in the spring. This is most easily accomplished by just sticking themoutside when it starts getting cold, stop

watering it, and let it naturally diedown. Then stick the pot into a dry corner for a couple months. I've donethis three winters in a row now with my

Dahlia, and it still comes back every spring.



Musings: Pricing your commissionart or evaluate your skills.

(or, the quickest way to kill a muse.) by Sundri

“Evaluation”: to determine thesignificance, worth, or condition of;usually by careful appraisal andstudy.

“Art Evaluation”: one of the many banes of an artist’s career, involvingntrospection, honest criticism, and

subjecting oneself to the brutality of public opinion.

I really hate having to evaluate thevalue of my own skills. It is probably one of the hardest parts about beinga commission artist. I look around atall the other amazing artists outhere who's work I practically

worship and never feel up-to-snuff with my own. I'm ever in theearning-and-improving phase and

never quite good enough to feel thatI'm actually 'good enough.'

But to be a commission artist meanshat I have to set a value on my skills

and abilities. I have to decide what isacceptable to charge for my work and what people are willing to pay,and find a way to make enough fromselling those skills that I cancontinue to afford to perform them.

But to be a commission artist meansthat I have to set a value on my skillsand abilities. I have to decide what is

acceptable to charge for my work and what people are willing to pay,and find a way to make enough fromselling those skills that I cancontinue to afford to perform them.

In evaluating the worth of your work you always have to consider how much it really 'costs' you to producethe art. This includes the cost of any supplies you use and the 'cost' of your time and creativity. But what you value your time and creativepower at is not always what otherpeople may value it at. So how do you decide what to charge for your work? Starting off you’ll have tounderstand that you will NOT beable to evaluate your fees in thetypical ‘by the hour’ standard. Youhave to go out and do your research

to find out what other artists 'of yourcaliber' are charging in comparisonto help you balance out the figures.This helps you to blend in with thecommission market and get a steady stream of work.

But who are the other artists 'of yourcaliber'? How do you define that when evaluating yourself if younever feel quite up to par? Sure, you

can usually identify less experiencedartists with ease but the lines really start to blur from there on up. Thoseother artists whose work you admire will 'always' be 'better than you' because you admire them so much...and making a comparison to their work with your own generally runs



Gauging your value by yourcommissioners is a delicate art initself however. Some of the biggestdetriment to an artist’s ability to self-evaluate easily comes from the non-artists who commission them, because yes, MANY of the people

who commission you WILL be non-artists. That's why they are buyingart; because they lack the time orskill to do it themselves. Whichmeans that one of the biggestsources of our ability to evaluate our work comes from people who haveno or very little artistic skill. How that works out amazes me every time, since many people don't everseem to register the fact that art is in

fact a rare gift.

There are generally three types of buyers of art that I have run intomost often and each of them has a very distinctive impact on how artists evaluate their skills andprices. If you are really lucky you will be commissioned by many nice andunderstanding people with enough

of an eye to know what they want,enough understanding of artists togive you freedom to be creative, andenough of an artistic sense to be ableto evaluate your skill's worth to themfairly. They will be the people whopolitely ask for changes when they feel something is off, express theirlike or dislike of poses, styles, andcolors in a positive manner, andsometimes will even have pages of

art they have commissioned thatmay help you to compare yourself toother artists that they feel are worthordering from. These kinds of commissioners can be a true blessingto any commission artist as they not

aground of the issue that as artists, we tend to be our own worstcritics. We spot the fatal flaws inour own work because we are soclose to it.

Part of appropriately evaluating

your own work is going to involvehonesty with yourself, both about your art’s flaws and good points.This takes time, and a great deal of study of other artists work to get afeel for what your style is and how it fits in the general field.

One of the biggest tools that acommission artist has inevaluating their work however,

comes from those who purchasetheir art. And this is where youmay have to turn in order tounderstand where to price yourself in the market. If you overvalue your skills you can usually tell because either no one buys your work or people are constantly complaining about your prices being too high to purchase. Pricingtoo high may also end up gaining you critics who can damage yourself-esteem with their slams about your art 'not being worth the price.'

The opposite can be just asdamaging however, as if youundervalue your skills you end upso swamped with orders that you burn out quickly, or loose self-esteem because you feel your art is

only 'worth' buying at the lowerprices and that makes you rank lower in the ranks of your fellow artists. Either side of the coin isnot a positive one in any way andreflects a lack of balance in yourestimate.



but like to think that they do and itcan cause great stress to the artiststhey commission. They may buy yourart but will strip you of yourconfidence in exchange. They give nopositive critique, and in many cases will not even comment about the art

but instead just purchase it like they would a cup of coffee or a candy barfrom the corner store. This type of treatment devalues your skills andcan punch holes in your anti-art- block armor rather quickly.

The worst cases of people in thisthird category are the art thieves - which are most artist's worstnightmare, stealing both the credit

for your work and defacing,devaluing, and degrading your skills,image, and heart. They come in theform of both people whopurposefully do not pay you forcommissions as well as people whosteal your finished works and claimthem as their own, alter them, sellpoor quality prints of them, andmisuse and abuse them until they

are nothing but internet sludge.There are many ways to protect yourart from art thieves, but none of them are truly infallible if you wishto present and share your work withother people and eventually every artist of decent caliber will have their works stolen at some point. If thishappens to you it can be devastatingand has driven many good artistscompletely out of the market or off

the internet, but you can also take a bit of heart if it does occur as it tells you that your skills have at leastreached a level that these people seeas worth claiming. It is by far notenough to soothe the pain of thetheft, but there it is.

only help you to learn andimprove your skills with practiceand comparison but they also helpto give your moral a boost. They like your work and are willing topay you what you ask for it whichreally raises your self-esteem and

that, in the long run, can make youa better artist! Commissioners likethis are a treasure to have.

The second type of commissioneris the cheery art-lovingcommission hoarders. I love thesepeople to death because they loveeverything you give them andusually give you complete creativefreedom, but at the same time they

are on a whole neither extremely helpful nor detrimental to yourskills and self-evaluation. They can help you feel good about yourself and your skills but only to a small degree as they are happy with just about everything they getfrom anyone and don't complainor offer critique. Most often youget the bulk of these peoplecommissioning art when you areundercharging for your skill level.Not always is that the case though,and they do turn up often in bothoverpriced and underpricedmarkets as well. I'm not going togripe however; if you are one of these people don't change, because you make being an artist fun!

If you are really unlucky you get

the people who undervalue yourskills, have no artistic eye, areconstant art critics, and may know what they want but will demand itin such detail that it leaves noroom for creative expression.Often people of this nature haveno real artistic ability themselves,



Everyone who seeks to be acommission artist or seeks tocommission an artist should alwayskeep in mind a few fundamentalthings. Artists are artists, not artmachines. What makes an artist anartist is their ability to be a gateway

for creative force and put into visualform their own and often theircommissioner’s thoughts anddreams. Creating art is not likeputting together something from a blueprint or tracing lines fromanother person's vision. True art isnot in the finished product but in theact of creation itself. That is amagical gift not just a skill that can be learned and applied. To truly do it

well you have to have a love for what you do, yourself, and your abilities. When you create you put a piece of yourself into your work, a little bit of your ever-healing soul which canflourish if loved. If you take away that love, the art suffers, the artistdoes not improve, and eventually their ability to be creative suffocatesand dies out.

In order to be a successfulcommission artist you will have to beable to recognize the things that canpotentially suffocate your abilitiesand learn how to avoid them in orderto keep going without burning yourself out. It often helps to ‘re-evaluate’ yourself from time to time,as your abilities grow with practiceand comparing your improvement

can be a confidence booster. Being acommission artist can be achallenging field to work in but onethat can go a long way towardshelping you to learn and improve your skills as an artist.

By learning to be honest with yourself about your skills, payingattention to the types of people who are commissioning you for work, and having a willingness toallow your prices to fluctuate it ispossible to find a good balance

between the cost yourcommissioners want and theactual cost of your work. Don’t beafraid to set your prices high tostart off with, and always makesure that you reserve the right torefuse commissions! This can help you to avoid people who makethemselves fit rather obviously into the third type of commissioner.

If you belong to an art community that allows it holding ‘art auctions’can be another good way toevaluate your pricing but beprepared to hold several of them before you judge an appropriateprice. It can take time to buildinterest in your work if you arenew to the community. Make surethat you display good examples of your work and always rememberto watermark your images, which will help to prevent art theft. Evenif an image is horribly marred by the words SAMPLE SAMPLESAMPLE scrawled in brilliantscarlet across its surface peoplecan still see the skill beneath it.Once you have held severalsuccessful art auctions you’ll have

a better idea of what people are willing to pay for your work PLUSthe added bonus of picking up afew people who will most likely commission you later on becausethey liked your work.



Perhaps not everyone gets burnt out on things, but many of usdo. I wish that more people wouldn'tget burnt out and that I was one of them. I also wish I had wisdomenough to sure fire way of not

becoming burnt out. But insteadhere are ways to become burnt out.Maybe you can find them useful toprevent yourself from being burntout.

1. Spread yourself thin. Yeah, thisone definitely will do it. Have toomany projects or other things to doand not enough time to do them. If

you care about the things in any way

and yet are failing to get them done,it will chip away at you.

2. Don't take enough breaks. Yeah,it's very tempting to work yourself too hard when you have too much todo. But this just ends up making youmore tired and frustrated. It also will

most likely cause you not to work as well as you would if you were rested.

Yet it's hard to justify when you haveall that stuff you want or need to getdone. You know the saying, "I'll rest

when I'm dead."

3. Take things too seriously. Yeah,making things seem more seriousthan they are or letting theseriousness of things get to you. Just

because something has to get donedoesn't mean you can't have fun withit, does it?

4. Losing focus. Sometimes we forget why we're even doing something andlet the doing it take over. But what'sthe point of continuing to dosomething when you don't evenremember why you're doing it in thefirst place?

5. Not enough sunlight. Well, if you're working on something inside,it's very easy to get consumed by itand not get any sunlight. We humansmay not be quite like plants, butsunlight does help. If you're feeling

blah, you're probably going to end upfeeling burnt out too.

by Vampire W om bat

Ten W ay s

to Becom e

b buurrnntt oouutt



6. Loss of confidence. If you stopfeeling confident about yourself of

what you're working on, then the work will feel pointless to you. And if it feels pointless, then why evencontinue doing it? Oh right, there'sthat monkey on your back that's

more of a leech. Maybe things are better than you think. Just maybe you've been working so long on itthat you notice flaws which eitheraren't there or that no one else wouldeven see. Unless you never had thetalent to do whatever it is, then

you're probably still doing as well as you were when you started off.

7. Too much junk food. Well, it's easy

to eat more junk food when you're busy. It's convenient after all.Unfortunately it also lacks thenutrition you really need and mostlikely is adding to feeling negative.But it also tastes so good. Maybesome fruit would be a better choicethan some potato chips after all. Andseriously, is fast food really that goodtasting any more? It may seemconvenient at the time, but if you buy stuff when you grocery shop formaking easy meals, it actually ismore convenient than buying fastfood.

8. Sitting too long. The majority of work which will make you burnt outis work which you do sitting down.Sure it may be partially becauseoffice work can be more depressing,

but even more creative work can get you depressed. Get up for a couple of minutes at least once an hour, even if

you don't think you can spare thetime. Yeah, I know it's hard to do

when you get really into something, but you can at least try, right?

9. Doing something you're not good at. Yeah, sometimes you're doingsomething which you're not good at.Sometimes you know you're not good atit and even tell people you're not goodat it, yet they don't believe you. Thiscan be really frustrating. Sometimes

you know your limits better thanothers. Sure, people can do more thanthey may realize at times, but there aresome things which certain people willnever be good at. There are times whenthat just needs to be accepted and forthe person to move on to somethingdifferent.

10. Working with someone you don'tlike. Yeah, sometimes you may end up

working with someone that you can'tstand. It's much easier to work withpeople you get along with. It can bealmost impossible to work withsomeone if you want to stab them inthe temple with a pencil. You have afew options, though. You can ignore thesituation and just keep working, youcan confront the person, you can find a

way out of working with the person,

you can get annoyed with the person,or you can try to find another person to work with you who will act as a sort of "buffer" between you and the person

you can't stand.

mind harvest - march 2010

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