Fame!
Posted on Friday 01/21/2022 04:23:56
Back in July, Christine Harrelson (TuesdayPillow for those of you who remember her from Journalspace) posted the following challenge on Facebook:
If this sounds like a fun project, let me know. It needs to be done within a month.
I accepted her challenge, and she sent me some photos of herself for me to work with. She gave me a free hand regarding the painting, so I chose Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer 1, by Gustav Klimt.
It took me a couple of weeks, a few false starts, a lot of tests with different coloured marker pens (I had no intention of trying a proper painting; I know my limitations), but I got there in the end.
As I noted in my diary when I embarked on the job:
…which pretty well sums it up! I sent a high-definition scan to Christine, and she said she’d put it into the hands of her lawyers. I heard nothing for a while, then, when it was published on Amazon on 2 October, she said that she’d send copies of the CD to anyone who downloaded the album, Dark Matter. More to the point, that she’d send a copy of the CD for those poor souls who lived in England, as she’d be visiting there in early October. So I begged her to send me one, and she promised she would.
For the last week she has been feasting on such English gourmet delights as fish and chips, black pudding, fried eggs, fried bacon, fried… well, let me just put it this way: her arteries will be a good deal harder by the time she gets back to the US. And I have been waiting. But today it arrived. Proof that my artistic efforts had been recognised:
If you want to see it at a higher resolution, it can be found in my DeviantArt gallery, or if you’re too lazy to click on the link, here it is at medium size:
As a footnote, I would like to thank Nightbreed for the excellent term ‘Montgomery C Burns hands’, which sums up Klimt’s inimitable work so well.
kittenheel Says:
I DIDN'T KNOW YOU HAD A DEVIANT ART GALLERY!!! I think you did a superb job, and the Klimt idea was definitely inspired.
Simon Says:
Thank you! Christine was delighted by my choice too; apparently she’s a fan of Klimt, though I had no idea at the time.
And I’m afraid laziness means there is little to see in my gallery, though I hope to add a piece every year or two. :)
kittenheel Says:
I used to have one, but I have no idea what my username or password would be. I don't think there was much in there.
lunamor Says:
That is really, really well done. There is no way I wouldn't recognize her in it, and the artistry is amazing. Beautiful work!
idoru Says:
Oh, well ... if you're doing free cd cover artwork for people from Journalspace ... ;)
Simon Says:
Just let me know!
H3OsMama Says:
Very nice! I had no idea you have artistic talents!
intense Says:
Bravo!
lermontov Says:
That's superb Simon
Simon Says:
Thanks, everyone. Your words are appreciated!
snow Says:
Very nice!!! I had no idea you were so artfully talented!
Nightbreed Says:
You're welcome, Simon. ;) Congratulations! Now massage my brain!
Simon Says:
Had to Google that one!
Nightbreed Says:
Thanks! I needed that! :D
H3OsMama Says:
Hi, Nighty! Long time no see!
Simon Says:
Alas! All those remote-hosted images. Gone forever!
lunamor Says:
My Photobucket ones seem to be still there, but they have the PB watermark. I refused to pay them their extortion-level pro membership fee.
Simon Says:
This didn’t work when I tried making it as a post, so I’m trying it as a comment.
Does anyone else see all non-ASCII characters such as single opening and closing quotation marks, ellipses, etc, being shown weirdly (’ in the case of the apostrophe)? Or is it just me? Looking at the page source and the original blog posts the change seems to have been made to the saved posts and comments rather than it being a display problem.
To see if the problem applies to new posts, let me try this:
Opening and closing quote marks: ‘Test’.
Ellipsis: Test…
Simon Says:
All right. So it’s now okay. Evidently all the original posts have had any non-ASCII characters replaced by odd character combinations, but it’s not a continuing problem.
Simon Says:
However, while I’m able to leave comments, a post I attempted to publish didn’t appear. I should like to make a complaint to the manager.
Simon Says:
For the curious, the reason why my last post has popped up at the top of the list is because I was testing to see if a post could be edited (having found that I was unable to make a new post). It can, clearly. I also took the opportunity to purge those odd characters I have been whining about.
Off to bed now! Behave yourselves while I’m gone, please. Think of the children.
Simon Says:
Oops! No, it appears the edit wasn’t applied. Or at least if it was, the strange character problem is still there. NOW I shall go to bed.
Fritz The Bootlegger Says:
Was this one of those cases where someone got someone else to do some free consulting “for exposure”?
Simon Says:
What a cynic you are, Steve.
Simon Says:
Testing to see if Google Drive will allow hot-linking of images hosted there:
/homepage
kittenheel Says:
Test comment
lunamor Says:
Damn, you guys really have gone 3rd world. Hope your hatred of the French was worth it! :P
Simon Says:
The unquestioning, slave-like love of Boris Johnson is being put to the test!
Fritz The Bootlegger Says:
When he lost Piers Morgan, Boris Johnson truly lost Britain.
Simon Says:
Ah, Piers! Truly a manifestation of a deity. I hope you knelt and made the appropriate oblations when you typed His name.
Fritz The Bootlegger Says:
It’s funny how in most cases Piers Morgan is further to the right of Donald Trump, but if you bring up the British NHS, he and Gary Lineker (English football hero to those not aware) get all affectionate on Twitter.
Simon Says:
That’s what being indoctrinated into perverted socialism practices in childhood does to a person.
Simon Says:
Right! I have finally managed to make an edit hold! God knows why it took about fifty tries, but I got there in the end. This, for what it’s worth, was to see if I could make a post using images hosted on my Google Drive account. Thank you for your patience, everyone, but unfortunately every time a post is edited it appears at the top of the list on the home page, even if nothing has been changed in it.
Simon Says:
By the way, should you be interested, Matt, the problem was caused by a standard typewriter apostrophe (Unicode 0027, as opposed to the typesetter apostrophe Unicode 2019). Each time I tried resubmitting the edited post when it contained this apostrophe (which I only included because it was in the quoted text made by Christine) it failed to update. Only when I replaced it with the HTML character entity did it finally work. I have no idea why this is, and I’m not going to tempt providence by trying it in a new post.
H3OsMama Says:
Hola! Is everything up and running again?
Simon Says:
Yes, thanks to the Viagra. Oh! You mean— yes, of course you do. Sorry about that.
H3OsMama Says:
Ha!