Just the Write Note

So what is that carousel of flashing images up above the post?

I've started a new business. After taking art classes for a year, I decided to use some of my favorite drawings and turn them into note cards. I've opened a store on Zazzle called Just the Write Note. By clicking on the banner above, you can go there and order either greeting cards or note cards with my original art on the front page. One nice thing about Zazzle is that you can buy a single card or buy them in bulk.

I hope some of you will pop over and look around. And if you like what you see, let others know about this new venture of mine.

Thanks!

Back on the Roller Coaster

After we were turned down by the last actor, the actor's agent told our casting agent that she really loved the script. This woman is a top agent in Hollywood, so we decided to take advantage of her enthusiasm. She and her partner specialize in representing hot, rising young stars. So our casting agent asked them unofficially about two of their other clients.

Well, we finally heard back from them, and they have ok'd our making an offer to another young actor. Michael doesn't want me to mention his name, but he's someone we thought was completely out of our reach and whom we never would have approached without the agents' enthusiasm. The offer will go out today and then we start the waiting game all over again.

Picture Ruth and Michael at the peak of a roller coaster, taking a big plunge and screaming our heads off.

Prayers and positive thoughts would be appreciated.

Living the Dream?

A few week's ago, I heard a repeat of a story on NPR's "The Story" that spoke to me. It was about a group of three men who had a band in college called the Kansas City Jammers. After graduation, they cut a record but it didn't make a big splash and they went on to other careers. But here they are, almost 30 years later, still playing together.

What spoke to me was that one of the men said something along the lines of, "The is the dream, to still be pursuing our creative goal. If we had become a big success, we wouldn't have had nearly as much fun as we're having now. The pursuit is the dream." That, of course, is an extremely rough paraphrase based on what I remember.

The reason this spoke to me is that I feel like we're in the same place. For the last two days, we've been waiting to hear from an actor to whom we'd offered the lead in Michael's movie. He considered it seriously . . . very seriously . . . but ultimately he decided that even though he really liked the script, the part was not quite the right fit for him at the moment.

We're disappointed this morning, but we feel somewhat encouraged too. We've made offers to six potential lead actors so far. The script has passed the agent's evaluation every time, and two of the actors gave the project very serious consideration. I think that's remarkable considering that Michael will be a first-time director and he has no name in Hollywood.

At this point, we've invested years and years in Michael's pursuit of his film career and more money than most people would ever consider gambling on a dream like this. To be fair, we've invested time and money in my creative pursuits too, but they aren't quite as expensive as pursuing movies. Sometimes I get a little crazed when I think about what else we could do with the amount we've invested. But in the end, it's only money and it feels like a worthwhile risk. We're living in hope, pushing our creativity to the edge, and hoping to find, not fame and riches, but an audience. It's what we both feel called to do.

So it's on to the next offer. And if necessary, the next one after that . . . until we can't afford to hire the casting agent any longer. I just pray that we get our breakthrough before that happens.

Summer Art Experiment #4 (and the story behind it)

A little over a month ago, Michael and I went to an outdoor concert that featured Spanish guitarists and a flamenco dancer. During the concert, a little girl (about three, I think) was mesmerized by the dancer and kept creeping close to her and imitating her movements.

I was very taken by the scenario, so much so that I wrote a poem about it and published it here on the blog.

Still, I couldn't get it out of my mind. I kept seeing an image of how I might paint the scene. I don't have the skill yet to do it justice (it deserves to be an oil painting, and I haven't even started oils). But I didn't want to lose the idea, so I decided to make a sketch.

Of course, I don't have models, so I had to work from photos: a stage from one, a pair of dancer's legs from another, a skirt from a third, a little girl sucking her thumb from a fourth, with an upraised arm from an entirely different photo. You get the idea.

Here is the resulting sketch. It's just a working study, and it's not quite right because of the way I had to do it. Ideally, I want the girl turned a bit more to her left and her eyes upraised to the dancer. But this is good enough to capture my idea until I'm able to paint it. If I ever do paint it, I'll have to use models to get all the angles and proportions right. But this will do for now.