Have I Been Cheating Myself?

I recently just completed my first painting using artist or professional quality oils. Up till now I'd never used anything but Winton, Windsor and Newton's student grade oils, but my local art supply store had Gamblin professional oils on sale, so I thought I'd finally give artist grade paints a try and see if they're worth the hype. I'd always heard how much more vibrant the colors are with artist grade oils and how you use less paint because of the higher pigment load and that the colors can last for a hundred years or more without fading or yellowing. Well, I do want vibrant color in my paintings and it is nice to use less paint, especially when that paint costs as much as $40 a tube, although I never really cared so much about the colors being true for a hundred years. Won't the earth be just a mass of toxic boiling seawater full of dirty jet ski-riding outlaws and pirates by then anyway?.

Anyway, when I first started my latest painting with my new Gamblin artist paints, I was pissed! The colors were a lot less workable, probably because of the higher pigment to oil ratio they had compared to the student grade crap I was used to. I like to paint right of the tube and don't usually thin with a medium, so getting the blank canvas covered with paint was rougher going than I was used to. Later once I had the underpainting finished things got easier, and I started to like my new paints. Then when I was nearly finished, I took an older painting done in student grade paint out of storage and compared it to my new painting done in artist grade. I was amazed at the difference! The colors in the older one looked so drab and dull next to my new work on the easel. So until this week I was prepared to write a new post extolling the virtues of artist grade paints and bemoaning how much time I'd wasted painting with cheap crap. But now that the painting is finally fininshed I don't know...

I mean I did use less paint, and the colors were much more opaque and covered better than the student grade I had been using. The artist grade also dried more evenly without the weird shiny spots I'd gotten used to, but after comparing the new painting to several more older paintings I've done, I'd say in most paintings the difference is not so great. Certain colors like reds and dark blues are noticeably better, but overall I've haven't cheated myself that much. Not with paint anyhow. And I've still got the same cottony unrealistic cloud formations, which if I can figure how to do properly on a test canvas I may even repaint. They're definitely the weak link here.

"With Teeth", 2009

24" x 28", oil on wood

Another name taken from a song off an album in my collection. Good track, but crappy video.

I've seen the painting used on the album cover at several garage sales and flea markets over the years. I didn't know until recently that the image was so famous. It's based on a sculpture called "Appeal to the Great Spirit". Thanks Wikipedia!

Sorry About All Those Viruses

My humble little website was hacked a couple months ago. A string of malicious Javascript was added to the index page. This script redirected visitors from my site to another site hosting a nasty virus. The virus exploits a vulnerability in Adobe Reader (supposedly upgrading to 9.1v fixes this hole, but I haven’t been brave enough to try it) to automatically download a malicious pdf to the visitor's computer, which installs a bogus Anti-Virus program. This “Anti-Virus” program then installs a Trojan on the user’s computer.

I figured out all the above information within a week of hearing my site was infected. I had to hear about it, because I use Firefox and not Internet Explorer, which is still what most people use for web browsing, so I didn’t notice anything wrong. The malicious script only worked in IE, because it exploited IE’s Active X controls (the IE 8 upgrade stopped the script from running, but still showed just a blank page). But what stumped me for the last couple months was how the script kept getting into my web pages. I would upload a clean copy of my index file and within 12 hours it was infected again. If it wasn’t an infected server, which my hosting company swore it wasn’t, then what was it? All I could read about were Javascript and SQL injection attacks, which I didn’t really understand and hoped weren’t relevant to my little Web 1.0 site.

Finally, after being infected with a new script, which looked like Google analytics code, I visited a Google analytics help page where others had a similar problem. After days of following postings there, I got my answer. Who needs fancy Javascript and SQL injection attacks when you can steal a person’s FTP account information right off his own computer?! That’s right, malware hidden on my computer was stealing all the info and passwords I used to upload web pages to my hosting server. What’s even more devious is the malware was gotten from another “legitimate” but compromised site. My site became yet another in the chain downloading Trojans to unsuspecting visitors (I doubt they were netting that many with mine) to steal more FTP account info stored on their computers and infect any sites they manage with the same FTP password stealing virus. What do they, whoever they are, ultimately get from all this? Anyway I think I finally removed the Trojan from my computer. I changed all my passwords and my site has been clean for a week now. I fixed it… I think.

Here are some links to articles with more info on this kind of hack:

http://www.martinsecurity.net/2009/05/20/inside-the-massive-gumblar-attacka-dentro-del-enorme-ataque-gumblar/

http://blog.trendmicro.com/stolen-ftp-credentials-key-to-gumblar-attack/

http://www.securecomputing.net.au/News/146604,beladen-website-compromises-cropping-up.aspx

"Trojan Horse", 2006

26" x 24", oil on wood



Hopefully this is the only trojan horse visitors to my site will find.

Gator Head and Shell

"Gator Head and Shell", 2009

11" x 14", oil on canvas board

A painting I was doing as a study for a new painting. I decided to finish it. I don't usually do studies. I think it looks like the alligator is laughing. Doesn't it look like the alligator is laughing? Ha, ha! I won't even say what it looks like the conch shell is doing.

"Left Side" Reception

A few photos from last night's reception at Howl Gallery in Fort Myers. The show runs through May 13th.

Howl in Fort Myers

There's a very cool new gallery in downtown Ft. Myers. The Howl Gallery is an art gallery/tattoo studio that specializes in the kind of pop-surrealist art you commonly see in Juxtapoz magazine. It just had it's grand opening last month, and this month the current show is called "Left Hand Side". It's a show of left coast artists. Left coast meaning artists from the "left coast" of Florida. I'm proud to have four pieces in this show. Opening reception is tomorrow night from 7 to 10pm. Be there!