Danielle

[Jim Riley]

Geri,

I share the favorable comments and helpful hints given for your pastel portrait of your daughter. It's a good effort and you are doing many things extremely well. Keep it up. I would suggest, however, that you sneak up on your highlights and use them judiciouly. Once you get to white (or near white) there is no place to go. It's something we all have had to learn. That we should resist the temptation to put highlights everwhere. Sometimes more is less. I must confess that I still tend to do it. A highlight on the nose looks so good that I put one on the chin, then the forehead, the eyes, etc. and soon they have they have collectively lost their impact and take on more importance than the beautiful middle and dark tones such as you evidenced in this portrait. Not to dwell on this but the hair on our left is wonderful but not helped by the light highlight line. Make it only as light as you need too. Again, sneak up!

Good Luck

[Geri Comicz]

Jim,

I am so tickled with myself. Viewing the painting on the forum/monitor, the streak in the hair bothered me also. So I got up from my chair and gently subdued the streak on our left side. Then thought, maybe I should not have done that. It does look better, it was really pulling the eye, I thought. Thank you for the confirmation that I proceeded in the right direction.

As for the highlights, you are correct again. I am thinking I will tone those down also. Maybe with just a slight finger pat.

Thanks so much. Geri

[Anne Hall]

Just a few years ago, Bill Gates bought up a vast quantity of digital rights to the world's art treasures. Let us all keep in mind the monopolistic behavior of the first business enterprise he founded, and make sure to challenge any sign that he will use his "rights" to infringe on ours. A "caveat art" to coin a twisted phrase.

[Karin Wells]

Where on earth did you hear that stuff about Bill Gates and the digital images?

[Geri Comicz]

Anne,

Are you saying that everytime we now see a, say Rembrandt, in a book that we cannot use it for practice or copy work because Bill Gates may have a digital copyright on this particular painting.

Or are you saying only on the computer. I don't think I understand what the meaning is. I wonder if you could clarify for me. Thanks Geri

[Lon Haverly]

Yes, where? You really ought to quote your sources. I am really tired of unqualified remarks about Bill Gates. Few have contributed as much to society as he. And I am not so sure that his company was so monopolistic as you perceive it to be. Are you a Mac enthusiast?

[Anne Hall]

I will search out some current sources to back up my statements that Bill Gates purchased DIGITAL rights to the world's art treasures. As I recall from the articles I read going back at least five, maybe seven years, worried observers thought by owning the digital rights that Bill Gates would be able to prevent other interested parties from being able to use DIGITAL images without paying him/his company royalties. Much like Michael Jackson owning rights to the Beatles' Apple music library (please don't jump on me if I don't have the terminology correct, as my background is in print publishing not music.) So no one can play or record a Beatles song without paying Michael Jackson a cut.

And please don't jump on me in any event. I meant to convey that we all might share an interest in making sure that we can continue to have access to things we want to. Seven years ago who would have anticipated that we would rely so heavily on the computer as a visual communication tool? Few did but Bill Gates was among them. It is of course quite possible that Bill Gates did not pursue the business strategy that was feared.

And Bill Gates does inspire fear. He is a formidable competitor and he has the resources of a multibillion-dollar company to back his ideas, however farfetched they may seem on the surface. From my experience as a Microsoft customer for more than 20 years, I truly believe that he is such a driven entrepreneur that if he thought there was a way to make money from the DIGITAL rights he owns, he/his company would not worry much about who was inconvenienced.

The issue is similar in one way to that which Napster raised, that is, people liked being able to download and share whatever songs they wanted, but the music industry didn't want them to do this because they would lose money. And yet it is different than Napster, because we are talking about access to images that have been in the public domain. It would be a change to have to pay for them.

I am not a Mac user. But I am a sadder and wiser Forum user since my comment provoked the responses it did. I just wished to alert an online community of people who care about art to a potential threat to some of the freedom we enjoy in viewing and using images of the world's art treasures.

[Steven Sweeney]

I believe the reference to Bill Gates has to do with his Corbis business enterprise (www.corbis.com) which indeed is a massive library/museum of stock photography and fine art digital images for professional and consumer use (assuming you successfully register at the site). I've never tried to register and I don't know what sort of "fine art" works are included, but my impression is that it's material the copyright for which was purchased by Corbis from the artist or other entity who owned the right. Obviously, millions of digital images are being created or captured every year, and the best of them have commercial value, as Bill Gates has astutely noticed.

The site has, indeed, generated some copyright concerns and litigation, but from what I've seen the problems seem to stem from alleged use by Corbis of copyrighted material without permission or payment to the owner of the copyright. In one case, an architectural photograph contained a shot of a sculpture in front of the building, and the sculptor protested the commercial use of his artwork without permission.

It should be understood that claims to rights to digital images -- and to the legal right to make those digital images -- isn't a threat to anyone who wants to go to the Met and copy a Rembrandt. What Corbis is protecting is the product of its unique digital imaging technology. If anyone were to, say, spend a year creating hundreds of digital clip art images, we would expect that person to have the right (the copyright and other rights) to say who could use the images and how -- whether they were images of poodles or dump trucks, or of the Mona Lisa or the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Doesn't mean that I can't go to those original sources and produce my own copies (as long as the originals aren't protected by copyright).

Just to indicate how weird all this intellectual property stuff can get, I used to work for a company that published legal opinions from courts throughout the country. What could be more "public"? And yet because the company had an oft-denied but de facto monopoly in the business, our books containing those judicial opinions were the preferred citation throughout the legal system. And guess what? The company claimed (successfully) that the peculiar arrangement of the opinions in its books -- generating unique page numbers -- was copyright-protected added value or work, and that if another publisher wanted to cite to our publications, it had to pay us to use "our" page numbers. As Dave Barry says, I am not making this up.

Anyway, I'm not too worried about Corbis (though I'm kind of leery of some other massive online digital art collection sites). As with any other good story, it has generated a lot of "urban myth" type of spin-offs. It's admittedly difficult to sort it all out.

Steven

[Anne Hall]

While Steven was writing his reply, I went on to Google and located Corbis. I was pleased to see there is a library of royalty-free images and wanted to see what it contained. But to register required providing credit card information!

[Steven Sweeney]

Macaholics Anonymous

My name is Steven and I'm a Macaholic. Sometimes I hide this from my friends and family. During the day, I often think about the next opportunity I'll have to sign onto my Mac. I buy Mac products from several different stores, so as not to arouse suspicion. It has changed my sleep habits and my ability to concentrate and my sleep habits and ability to concentrate as well. The anti-Mac tormentors are part of a vast right-wing conspiracy. I am not paranoid, too. I just wish they'd make more software for my Mac. By the way, Beta was superior to VHS, too, but there you go.

Remember, what's said in this room stays in this room.