3.16.2024

SAINT PATRICK'S DAY

 WEARING 'O THE GREEN

So, celebrating Christianity in Ireland became quite a fun holiday, aye? Wearing green hats and clothes, carrying good luck charms and shamrocks, drinking green beer, having parades and just plain celebrating the foremost patron saint, Saint Patrick. This is always on March 17th, the day he died.


 Quoted from NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC:

MYTHS BUSTED

St. Patrick was a real person, but some of the traditions associated with him and the holiday are actually myths. For instance, you’ll often see the four-leaf clover on St. Patrick’s Day. However, according to legend, Patrick used a three-leaf clover, or shamrock, as part of his teachings. Even though it's possible for a shamrock to grow a fourth leaf, a four-leaf clover is just considered a symbol of good luck.

Another legend says that Patrick chased all the snakes out of Ireland. The problem? These creatures never actually lived in the country. In fact many animals found throughout Europe and North America don’t live on the island of Ireland—the ocean keeps the critters away.

So, if you don't wear green you risk the chance of getting pinched! Some really do go all out for this holiday too! Like Chicago, the city that turns the Chicago river green to honor the Irish immigrants who came here and helped to settle this area. 

Green became the color associated with this holiday but St. Patrick actually wore blue. He taught his lessons using the green shamrock so eventually, green became the color associated with him as well. The leprechauns also were originally a different color too, they were known to wear red. Their attire became green too!


Mostly, anything celebrating your Irish heritage is what it's all about! Whether you go all in for the wearing 'o the green, having green foods, drinking green beer, wearing a shamrock for good luck (the four leafed shamrocks) or simply and quietly observing the people who came from the Emerald Isle to America to start a new life, enjoy this Sunday!

Slainte!

2.29.2024

EASTER BONNET

 


MARCH MEANS EASTER SPRING!

Easter is coming up soon! It's such a lovely time in my memories. The beautiful baskets my mom made for us, she really did go all out! With tons of candies and little gifts, the baskets were so wonderful. We made hard boiled eggs and dyed them with food coloring, what a treasure it is to remember! When I was in high school, I put food coloring drops on the eggs and then blew on them real hard so they splattered, I felt like I invented something so fantastic and new! The effect of splattered colors, wow!

The easter egg hunts were so special, so much fun anticipating who will find the most eggs! Mom and dad hid the eggs in good places too, kind of hard to find. Gosh we had so much fun! Once in a while it was warm but then it got cooler and cooler at Easter time. One time we had snow. But it was all good times and as I got older, the three youngest would search for the eggs that my older brother and I would hide.

Easter time makes me feel like dressing as in vintage days, in a time for wearing Easter hats and dresses, with gloves and frilly socks and shiny shoes. Oh, those pretty dresses with ruffles and those adorable hats with flowers that sit so pretty on my curly hair! 

Back when I was a kid, I hated dressing up for Easter. Mom made me wear the most ugly lace hat, a dress and fancy socks with shiny black or white shoes. Oh, and I had a little string bag purse. I felt so silly, I remember hating it. I never did like one piece dresses either. I guess it was because most of the time I was in shorts and top and dirty all the time. I was quite the 'tomboy' and never had reason to dress up. Except on Easter. Mom made sure of it. And we went to church.

Now, I would love to dress up for Easter! I'd love to make a beautiful Easter Bonnet with all the frills upon it so I could be so envied at the Easter parade! (Did you just sing that tune too?) 


I'd love to see children running about and searching for eggs and eating chocolate bunnies. An Easter dinner of ham and scalloped potatoes or augratin, the one with cheese in it! A side of peas and for dessert, a big apple pie and ice cream!

That is the only time we went to church too. We walked to a church that was a bit far away and I loved going to the children's room because we made crafts and colored. I still have the cotton fabric that I colored with crayons and made tulips on it. I had it framed it in glass ... I'll have to go look for it, my first work of art! And to think, it's now an antique!

2.20.2024

FAKE REALITY

OBSESSED WITH FAKES

From money, credit cards, identifications, house plants, wood, fur, house siding and roofs to eyelashes, fingernails, clothing and hair ... why are we so obsessed with fakes?


Did you ever wonder how many things in this world are fake? How LONG we've been creating and buying fakes? How much we buy that is fake, how much people spend time on creating 'fake' stuff? There sure is a lot of fake stuff in this world. Do you suppose it comes from greed? The quick buck? Because we cannot afford many of the real things we yearn for, we appease ourselves with fakes.

The reality of fake people, social media has really helped us with that! People pretending to be what they aren't for a number of reasons, from trying to get money from you or attention. Acting like they have perfect lives on the internet, but many, in truth, are not real at all. Just a show. For whatever reasons, just a show.



Yes, it truly is a very fake world today and so much depends on it. People want to make money on art apps that creates fake art. We cannot afford the 'real' deal in many cases, like purchasing or building a home with real logs instead of fake log siding. We wear fake eyelashes, unfortunately the poor minks are tortured for this. I won't go into the animal cruelty problem, my heart cannot handle it.

Klimt Style Painting

I am guilty of this fake reality in the art world as I'm trying to create art that looks like real gold*! Sure, it's called 'realism' and in art, it is something that we've seen for a very long time. Creating art, painting portraits and scenes that look realistic is very beautiful and difficult to do! I think many people can appreciate and like realism in art, like beautiful paintings of still life, flowers in vases and protraits of beautiful people. Some of the famous statues are ultra realistic. 

I've always loved realism and I enjoy painting or drawing subjects that look very realistic. I actually have more trouble creating whimsical or abstract art! I have a tough time letting go and painting 'loosely' or just slapping paint around haphazardly and calling it abstract. 

My thought was to create a prim 'folk art' style landscape but quickly turned into this realistic style painting. I used Rebelle 7 Pro by Escape Motions, digital art application.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

There is now a scary side to this fake world we live in too, using artificial intelligence to create everything from compositions, essays, art, movies and music to people. There are actual restaurants in Japan where the servers are robots, fake people. Even though there are handicapped people in the back room controlling the robots, why is it necessary? It's a thrill of a sort I guess. When we see creatures, like dinosaurs that come to life and look so realistic, and even scare us because of how real it is, it certainly is a thrill of a kind. But I'm just not into it for people to scare other people, but it is scary. The ai fakes are taking over and it is truly scary!

Why can't we fix what is wrong with the world first, before trying to come up with new ways to do things that will evenutally only add to the existing problems that we have?

People get very depressed when they are threatened with the prospect of losing their jobs, their security and way of life, along with all of their hopes and dreams when other people are intent on finding ways of eliminating them! Whether it is their job or their life, when we become so uncaring and let people die because they are just the unfortunate or take away their livelyhood, their passions, we become fake people. People with no real compassion for others, who just live to get more, more, more as quickly as they can don't seem real. But they are!



Artificial Intelligence aka Ai, is taking over so much in this world already, and in my world of art, it has finally ruined my business. It won't matter if I complain about it too. The place where I sell my digital art doesn't care that they've let people sell images that were made with apps that have proven to have stolen copyrighted images and are just not ethical. It won't matter if I beg or plead and try to explain to others that buying into ai is the end of us all in ways we'll never begin to realize the full extent.

My little Etsy shop, Cherie's Arts 'n Crafts, where I sell my graphic designs as clip art and surface patterns primarily, is now dead in the water. I refused to use art apps that create art out of text sentences that you feed it and out pops incredibly intricate art pieces that a person could not paint in a day, let alone create hundreds of them in minutes. 


Many people have hopped onto this bandwagon, creating clip art and patterns with incredible speed and are selling it in massive amounts for pennies, and my art is now no longer wanted. I've spent years on my art, not minutes. My passion, my job is now mostly trying to find another creative outlet that I can still make an income with.

THE UGLIER SIDE OF AI

Those creepy people out there who do nothing but steal from others, whether it's fraud accounts, stealing accounts, hacking, stealing bank accounts and credit card numbers to child pornography, are getting more and more abusive. The numbers are rising! With every new fake art application like FACE APP.

Fortunately there are people who agree with me and are fighting to keep ai under control, but it's almost impossible to do now.

I have done some research by just Googling it, and at YouTube I've found some people who have made an impact on controlling ai. These people realize a lot more than we do, they work within this world of computers, science, technology and our future. One is Conner Leahy, check him out!


 



*Gold metallic paint by Escape Motions app called Rebelle 7 Pro. Brushes provided by Karen Bonaker, president of Digital Art Academy.