Blue Knot Studios

At the office, every day is Halloween So Many Zombies...

Mon, 31 Oct 2011 20:10:14 -0400

At the office, every day is Halloween

Circus vs. Cirque

Sat, 03 Sep 2011 00:45:00 -0400

Just got back from Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey’s “Barnum 200” circus. Spectacle overload. Enter-chaos. A glorious mound of amazing.

We saw the show last year and this one tops it by a mile. The theme is celebrating the 200th (actually 201st by now) birthday of P. T. Barnum, and to that end the show is built around re-imagining classic circus elements, classic acts — including the sideshow and the carnival geeks.

Acrobats and contortionists… amazing, yes; but maybe too slow to keep the kiddies’ attention. So throw four different sets of performers onto the floor at once and suddenly your eyes can’t keep up.

Seen a horse run around a ring before? Ho-hum. So add Shetland ponies to the mix. And a horse-riding dog. Maybe a couple goats and donkeys. And a llama. (a llama?!) Hey, this is Ringling Bros.; throw in an elephant. Oh, and how about a longhorn steer for good measure.

The keyword here is “more”. Four motorcycles in s steel globe? Easy. Why not five? Sure! Can we top that? Six? No. Seven.

Now… having also seen Cirque du Soleil within six months (specifically, “La Nouba” in Orlando) and that also being an awesome show, it’s interesting to compare the two.

They are both spectacular, but very, very different. Tonight I sat with a huge smile on my face (matching my son’s!) and the usual reaction was a genuine, enthusiastic “Wow! … WOW!!”.

At Cirque du Soleil I mainly sat with eyes and mouth open, staring in awe. The reactions bounced between an awestruck “whoa.” and a startled “WHOA!”.

Cirque pushes the “circus” envelope. It redefines it and polishes it and reinvents it. Becomes the essence of Circus in its pure form but unlike anything you’ve seen before. Ringling specializes in stuffing the envelope as full as possible. Then, once you see how full it is, they show you that it was folded over the whole time… and look what else we can put in it!

Cirque is a dance. It’s acrobatics raised to performance art. It’s elegant and surreal and enthralling and stunning. It’s also funny and charming.

Ringling is, well… a circus. Actually it’s more like three circuses all happening at the same time. It’s flashy and bright and surprising and just plain fun. And then it has moments that completely surprise you just when you thought you knew what you were watching.

Ok. So you might be reading this, wondering when I’m going to get to the point. “Which one is better?” The big question. Having seen both, I should at least be able to offer an opinion, right?

Not going to try. No need. It’s a little like asking “Which is better: chocolate, or rock & roll?” Not only can’t you rank them, there’s no reason you should.

Just enjoy the show.

theyetee: The Happiest Place in Middle Earth by...

Wed, 31 Aug 2011 10:32:16 -0400

theyetee:

The Happiest Place in Middle Earth by famousafterdeath

One does not simply walk into this magical kingdom where magic rings are forged and an all seeing eye watches your every movement. Pick up “The Happiest Place in Middle Earth” for $11 until Aug 31st! But wait! There’s more! You can win this tee for free! Simply reblog this photo or pop over to our Facebook Page and for another way to win a free shirt! Seriously! That’s all it takes to win this awesome tee for free!

But hey. You should probably just buy one to be safe: LINK

Winners will be announced on our Facebook Page on Aug 31st at 2PM CST

Stay away from the “fire mountain” ride though…

“Step Lightly!” (Lightly step, skip, play)…...

Tue, 30 Aug 2011 22:31:05 -0400

“Step Lightly!”

(Lightly step, skip, play)
… No thorns have scratched me yet!
(Step lightly, day by day)
… I don’t even see a threat!

Original created in November 2007 and submitted to only one certain site. It was a too-subtle commentary on that site’s oblivious nature to things that would get them in trouble. Today, they blithely skip along just the same… sometimes they notice when they get bitten, but they never seem to understand how it happened.

Revisited, tweaked and rendered at larger version August 2011 for printy goodness!

Zazzle • Fine Art America • deviantArt

New after nine years!

Mon, 29 Aug 2011 22:06:00 -0400

I’m finally linking my deviantArt account as one of my main galleries, despite having had the account open for over nine years.

Why? Well, even though I created the account in June 2002, up to now I used it to comment on some friends’ work and hadn’t uploaded much more than an avatar.

It’s about time to use it like it was meant to be used: as a showcase for my work. The grand intention is that it will eventually contain all my print work as well as WIPs and incomplete work that either has never been published or was published in locations that no longer exist in the ‘net.

Are you a deviant? See you around there!

http://blueknot.deviantart.com/

“Swing” An acrobatic danse macabre suspended from a...

Mon, 29 Aug 2011 21:15:00 -0400

“Swing”

An acrobatic danse macabre suspended from a wooden gallows, gently swinging.

A full nude is somewhat unusual for me; but in this case I didn’t want the clothes to be a distraction, to assign a ‘role’ to the woman. She is not ‘an acrobat’ or ‘a dancer’ or any definition that is merely occupation. She is life and death, human and inhuman, beautiful and grotesque.

(This image disturbs a lot of people, and the post-its above will disturb the rest. Sorry about that. You can click-through to see the full, un-stickied image at Fine Art America, deviant Art, or Renderosity)

Please enjoy this image; and if you have nightmares… well, they were probably there already, I just nudged them on the backswing.

Kim who?

Thu, 25 Aug 2011 18:23:15 -0400

Kim who?

Knot Asleep

Sun, 17 Jul 2011 13:20:00 -0400

Wow, after I closed the rb site I seemed to have dropped off the face of the ‘net, right?

Not entirely true, but it’s an easy mistake to make. I haven’t put up any new art and only a trickle of older work has been making it into new venues. There are things that are in the works, and a few exciting things I haven’t had opportunity to post about, but pretty much nil on this blog.

Fact is, the site closing came at a bad time. I didn’t pick that time because it was strategically the right time; I closed the site because I personally had reached a limit with the politics there. Strategically, it was all wrong, but it was still right as far as I was concerned.

During this time I’ve had a load of offline things I’ve been working on and organizing; but there is a fork at the end of the tunnel and more art is on the way. The Grand Reawakening event is just around the corner…

The Bubble is Popped

Tue, 21 Jun 2011 17:58:00 -0400

As of today I’m one storefront, one art account smaller than I used to be. My choice—disagreement on how problems were handled by that site.

I hoped to have a few replacements lined up, but here at least is one other:

http://fineartamerica.com/profiles/dan-redding.html

More prints are coming there, and more links in the near future. Also, when FAA is up-to-speed with prints it’ll be added to the main site.

RedBubble site shuttered

Sat, 11 Jun 2011 17:25:16 -0400

For the next couple weeks you can still see the page there, but I’ve removed the links from the blueknot.com site and you cannot buy anything there. zazzle is still up and running and I am working on expanding the gallery there are two other sites. Stay tuned here for more announcements.

Ahead of Schedule...

Sat, 28 May 2011 13:45:00 -0400

Rather than the end of June; it looks like I’ll be able to close down my redbubble store within 1-2 weeks. At that point, I still won’t have everything that was available there up at zazzle, but I’ll have a good chunk up (especially the most recent and popular prints & tees) AND I will soon be announcing galleries at two, maybe three additional sites! Stay tuned to this station for breaking details…

In the meantime, I have removed the ‘for sale’ option on all prints at redbubble, and am removing tees that are already at zazzle as I go.

If you’re curious WHY this is happening, well, there are three reasons. This one is neither the least nor most offensive:

http://firmspy.com/law-disorder/5613/exclusive-oh-heil-arnold-bloch-leibler-represents-company-spruiking-neo-nazi-propaganda

A Bubble About to Burst

Tue, 24 May 2011 20:24:00 -0400

I’ve come close a number of times; now the proverbial straw has been loaded onto my own hunched back.

I’ve been uncomfortable with redbubble’s site management and the growing proliferation of copyright-infringing material. They also have an unusually high tolerance of hate-based work. A few years ago I tried to get them to remove what I considered to be a fiercely racist Christmas card, only to be told “they didn’t think it was that bad” despite many, many complaints.

At that time, I did leave redbubble for a while; maybe a year. When I decided to try and take my art more seriously, I returned. I don’t know if the card is still there or not, sadly I had given up on trying to get rid of it and I didn’t want to give it any more publicity, good or bad. Now a new bit of hate has reared up, and once again they are hiding behind ‘artist responsibility’.

Among the various print services for artists, redbubble is one of the easiest to use. True, this is mainly due to a glaring lack of options; but sometimes a quick upload late at night made up for that. For this reason, redbubble is the only site I currently have most of my work visible on. And for that reason, I cannot immediately delete my gallery until I have a significant amount of work uploaded elsewhere.

While I get Zazzle and a couple other sites (to be announced later!) up to speed I will leave my redbubble gallery up for you to browse. At the end of June 2011 I will be removing all work from my redbubble gallery.

This does not mean I am encouraging you to buy any of my work from redbubble. I do not want to give them any more business. But, if you see something you like, please drop me a note - either through this blog or on http://www.blueknot.com - and I will move whatever piece you suggest to the top of my upload/publish list. I’ll even put it on sale for the first few days! ;-)

“Dolly Grey” Some pics are experiments… change...

Fri, 18 Mar 2011 23:24:25 -0400

“Dolly Grey”

Some pics are experiments… change of style, new technique, some new variation…. just seeing what happens when you do B instead of A.

And I’ll be honest… most never get finished. Sometimes it turns out B wasn’t the best choice after all.

And sometimes it just clicks. I think Dolly Grey is one of those. Do you agree?

Prints etc. - redbubble … zazzle

“Hypnotism on a Budget” When I had this idea I knew...

Wed, 16 Mar 2011 18:29:37 -0400

“Hypnotism on a Budget”

When I had this idea I knew that my usual 3D style would not work for this one. A simple, cartoony look would be better. So not only was this the first tee I ever designed on redbubble, but it was also the first vector art design I ever published.

It’s also been one of my more popular items, appealing to both adults and children (and parents of children.)

redbubble (all styles and sizes from this link) … zazzle

“Help/Now/Give/Pray” Part of the Zazzle Japanese...

Mon, 14 Mar 2011 21:52:00 -0400

“Help/Now/Give/Pray”

Part of the Zazzle Japanese Relief project. All royalties will be donated to charity by Zazzle. Use your donation to help spread the word.

My Donated Design

“Glass Cage” I was thinking of starting a new series...

Sat, 12 Mar 2011 19:52:02 -0500

“Glass Cage”

I was thinking of starting a new series of Gynoids; but when all was rendered and done no robotic parts were visible! Still, the bits that were visible turned out nice enough to share—Enjoy!

Poser Pro, Photoshop, Apophysis for the fractal, KnotPlot for the tubes.

redbubble link … zazzle coming soon!

The evolution of female stereotypes through the...

Fri, 11 Mar 2011 17:38:28 -0500

The evolution of female stereotypes through the years.

…As demonstrated by Disney.

“The Devil’s Own Private Heck” What gives old...

Fri, 11 Mar 2011 10:31:44 -0500

“The Devil’s Own Private Heck”

What gives old nick nightmares? What torments his sleep when he binges on leftover cold pizza and chili before bedtime?

Something like this; I think. ;-)

Made in Poser with a recolored satyr model and every bit of cuteness I had available. Blue sky & rainbow courtesy of PhotoShop.

redbubble … zazzle

“Point of Impact” (Flashback Friday) Sometimes I...

Fri, 04 Mar 2011 16:09:00 -0500

“Point of Impact”

(Flashback Friday) Sometimes I just try and tell a story with a single still image. Sometimes it’s funny, sometimes not. This is one of the latter. No, you’re not meant to understand everything, but hopefully you can identify something in it nonetheless.

prints at redbubble

(at the moment, this work is not available at zazzle, not sure what sort of card it would go on and it doesn’t seem to be t-shirt material. Though of course you can contact me if you’d like to see it there on something.)

“Terra Radiant” Today’s “Tee for...

Tue, 01 Mar 2011 04:45:07 -0500

“Terra Radiant”

Today’s “Tee for Tuesday” is more of a “Tie for Tuesday” (and iPhone/iPad cases, just for fun!)

This was an experiment in digital manipulation. This started out as a simple family photo… and got so far afield I no longer recognize which one! But I liked the result as an abstract I thought it stood as a design on it’s own.

Both ties are based from the same large image, just different sections. And since you can customize everything in my zazzle store, you can pick a different part of that image to make a tie 100% unique for you!

Terra Radiant is part of the “Wild Styles” section of my zazzle store