We are moving!

For all the subsequent adventures of Studio ArtOcrat please visit our brand new blog - http://artocrat.blogspot.com/

:)

See you there!

ArtOcrat's "Flights of Fancy" series of bird prints

For the past few months I have been working on my "Flights of Fancy" series of bird prints . This series is going to have 20 really colorful and vibrant bird prints. Below you can see the 6 I have completed already.

More prints will follow soon!!

2 Flamingos

Blue Bird


Bird On a Branch

Summers Bird

Early Bird

Monday Morning Blues

A recently completed commissioned portrait project

The client wanted a surprise birthday present for his lovely wife. He proposed that I make a really colorful portrait of her!! (I know, how very sweet!! ). I was working on a tight deadline of just 4 days. And instead of taking a print and sending it by mail, I was going to e mail him a soft copy.

This made the project quiet unique. Sending out a soft copy has serious disadvantages. Selling of multiple prints without my knowledge was the biggest one. But, it had the advantage of being totally eco friendly or green. No gas burnt for shipping! Yay!!

I'm going to explore this business model further, in the later posts.

So here is my process, with lots of pictures.

This is the lovely wife and my subject.

I chose shades of brown and green with a dash of blue and red for the portrait.
I just love a riot of colors!

After the hair I drew out the eyes.
I use Wacom's pen tablet to sketch directly on my mac. And I love it to death!

Then I filled out the rest of her face and the other side of hair.

And then the neck and shoulders.
By this time the blue and green had started bothering me a little bit.
So I experimented with a new mostly red color palette.

It didn't pop out as much as I would have liked it to.
So off to the drawing board again.

I went back to the original face. Changed the eyes to a less scary brown, and turned the hair red.
Now it had the pop I was looking for.

The client like the last version too and printed out a large 60cm X 60cm poster!


And here is the very happy wife with her very own custom portrait.
A very satisfying project indeed. :)

More about no shipping business model in the next post.

Achieving Sustainability The Etsy Way

Earrings and Cuff links upcyled from bottle caps from COOB Originals
Note - Gift boxes are hand crafted using upcycled cardboard too!

Glasses and coasters made from recycled glass bottles from YAVA Glass


Soap dishes and Business card holder made from recycled records albums by Retired Records


Really cute Robots and Sculpture made from recycled materials by Reclaim 2 fame


Purse and Accessories made from recycled juice pouch by I Luv MoJo


Dolls made from recycled and cast-off materials by Hasenpfeffer

Sculptures created by material from landfills by Pacific Artworks

Get Inspired!
Buy Sustainably!!

Another cool find - EcoUsable's Stainless Filtered Water Bottle

I'm always on the look out for great products that help me reduce my ever increasing recycling and trash pile. And if I find something that is also good for the environment, made locally and mange to save me some money in the long term its jackpot!!

'Ech2o' - EcoUsable's new stainless water bottle with a built- in filter is one such really cool product. It is such a wonderful step toward eliminating single use plastic water bottles.

The bottle is made of food grade stainless steel, is non-leaching, BPA-free, reusable, lightweight, and taste-neutral. All parts are made of FDA approved materials and are environmentally safe.

The Ionic-Adsorption Micro-Filtration System is an entire water filtration plant within a portable bottle. The patented Ionic-Absorption Micro-Filtration reduces up to 99.99% of contamination.

For all the people out there who want to do their part to stop the plastic water bottle epidemic this bottle is a pretty attractive solution.

Another cool product - Conserve Cleaning Tablets

Baumgarten's Conserve has launched a new line of household cleaners sold in tablet form. It requires 75 percent less packaging and reduces the impact of shipping because the products have 85 percent less “water weight.”
Consumers purchase one bottle and a four-pack of tablets, and the tablets dissolve in water when ready to use. The available products include a glass cleaner, multi-surface, bathroom and odor eliminator.


By shipping cleaners without water, Conserve is able to save 7.5 pounds per bottle. By only including one bottle in a package that provides four uses, Conserve can also ship more cleaners in a single load.

The cleaners themselves only use ingredients approved by the EPA’s “Designed for the Environment” program.

Conserve claims that its products also save money, costing 40 percent less than the national brands of cleaners.

“We are able to achieve these cost-savings for consumers because our products have eliminated the heaviest ingredient in household cleaners: water,” says David Baumgarten, vice president of Baumgartens. “Conventional cleaner equivalents would require eight trucks versus just one for ours, not to mention all the equipment, time and energy needed to load and unload those trucks.”

Good 50×70 announces its 210 shortlisted posters for 2009

There’s no one better at telling people a message and getting them to act on it than the communications industry. There’s nothing more instant form of communicating a message than a poster.

Good 50×70, an independent, non-profit initiative was created with the following aims:

- to promote the value of social communication in the creative community,
- to provide charities with a (free) database of communication tools,
- to inspire the public via graphic design.

Their focus is an annual contest to design posters confronting seven of the critical issues affecting today’s world. They chose posters as the media for the contest as they’re the most direct way to convey a message and can be easily translated to other media.

Here are some of my favorite shortlisted posters under all the 7 categories.Women Right Violation

'THEY ARE ALL READY CARRYING TOO MUCH'

Camila Jaimes

Bolivia

Women Right Violation
'Right to health'

Eva Chudomelova

Czech Republic

War on Terror

'Hope!'

Selcuk Ozis

United Kingdom

War on Terror
'Close Guantanamo Bay'

Anita Wasik

Poland

Nuclear Emergency
'THE SCREAM'

Malgorzata Bedowska

Poland

Nuclear Emergency
'Nuclear Evolution'

Handoko Tjung

Indonesia

HIV/AIDS
'Fight aids not people with aids'

Sara Gama

Portugal

HIV/AIDS
'Together'

Rémi Fouquet

France

Healthcare Deprivation
'you can't boil water and call it soup'

Daniele Politini

Italy

Healthcare Deprivation
'WE CAN HEAL US'

Khodabandeh Bizhan

United States

Climate Change
'Extinction'

Marco Valentini

Italy

Climate Change
'Global warming makes them disappear'

Ju-hwan Lee
Seung-hoon Nam

Korea (South)

Child Labor
'One in Six'

Ana Cristina Abreu Jesus

Portugal

Child Labor
'Labor Mobile'

Jude Landry

United States

Some really cool Recycling Stations

We all have recycling stations in our homes. Some homes have dedicated bins or shelves for it. But if your home is anything like mine then you have a area (mostly a corner of your patio) piled up with recycling stuff and a too small bin underneath the pile.

So, are some cool products (via apartmenttherapy) to turn your unruly pile into a organized recycling corner.

Via - livingetc

Via williams sonoma

Via marthastewart

Via popularmechanics

Via downeastkitchens

Couple Generates Only 1 Bag of Trash in 2008!

The couple Matthew and Waveney, live with their dog and two chickens in Christchurch, New Zealand and they challenged themselves to limit their yearly trash quota to one bag. And they did it!! To cap off their successful adventure, they hosted a party of 100 people and generated only 1 piece of plastic wrap from that huge celebration!

Check out what they have to say here.

CFL's poison workers - Hundreds of factory staff are being made ill by mercury used in bulbs.

This disturbing article "Green' light bulbs poison workers" points out about a very disturbing aspect of our green movement and could be a big blow to our ongoing struggle towards sustainability.

We all know that one CLF bulb is as good as 9 regular bulbs and, some of us also know that each CFL Bulb contains up to 5 milligrams of mercury(Hg).


In China, a heavy environmental price is being paid for the production of CFL lightbulbs in cost-cutting factories.

Large numbers of Chinese workers have been poisoned by mercury, which forms part of the compact fluorescent lightbulbs. A surge in foreign demand, set off by a European Union directive making these bulbs compulsory within three years, has also led to the reopening of mercury mines that have ruined the environment.

This is a scary situation to be in. We will have to wait and see how China and Europe decide to deal with this. What measures will be taken to protect the factory and mine workers from the harmful effects of mercury and what happens to the prices of CFL bulbs once these measures are enforced.

And what we as consumers decide when the price rises.

‘Fan Cans’ Promote Recycling at Sports Stadiums

The Fan Can is a new line of recycling receptacles aims to capitalize on sports fans’ enthusiasm for their teams.

It was first installed at the Washington Nationals sports complex, with 100 such cans being sponsored by Coca-Cola.

The Fan Can is designed to integrate corporate marketing messages, including recycling and sustainability, into the sporting scene.

Permutations of the Fan Can come with lids lids shaped like helmets used by baseball batters, football players and motor sports drivers. The cans are made of up to 50 percent post-consumer and industrial plastic, are highly-durable for expanded service life, and are 100 percent recyclable at the end of their life cycle, according to a press release.

"Fan Cans make it easy for sponsors to link their brand with the green movement, while also connecting with sports teams and their fans," explains Stephen Wolford, president of Fan Cans, LLC.

Zero Waste Station on Earth Day

On Sunday, April 19, San Diego celebrated Earth day at Balboa Park. It was the largest fee annual environmental fair in the world and had around 70,000 visitors.

With 400 volunteers, The Earth Fair featured more than 400 exhibitors, special theme areas, a Food Pavilion, a special Kids’ Activity Area, three entertainment venues, the Children's Earth Parade, the eARTh Gallery art show, and the Cleaner Car Concourse.

The most interesting thing about San Diego Earth Fair was that it was working toward becoming a Zero Waste Event.

Earth Works in collaboration with EDCO and Urban Corp of San Diego, was behind this effort.

Recycling bins had been available since the beginning of Earth Day and this time bins to collect organic materials for composting were been added. The organics bins(green) along with recycle(blue) and trash (Black)bins comprised the "Zero waste station".

We(Tarun my hubby & me) along with hundreds of others volunteered at the zero waste station to make sure that the attendees use the appropriate bin.

We were there to guide, and used this opportunity to teach attendees how zero waste can eliminate the need for landfills and concepts such as “waste”.

We also educated attendees about the need for manufacturer redesign and responsibility, greenhouse gas emission reductions by recycling, and monetary value of resource management versus landfill reliance.

It was a extremely fulfilling and educating task. It was an extremely hot day but we had the time of our life!

And our efforts paid off.

About 2.33 tons of waste was sent for recycling, 1.28 tons for composting and .9 tons to the landfill. We achieved a total of 80% diversion rate!!

And this was in spite of some crazy lemonade people selling their stuff in Styrofoam containers.

This is how our trash(black) bin looked like. Mostly filled with Styrofoam. :( It was an exceptionally hot day and people drank lots of Lemonade.
Imagine celebrating earth day with Styrofoam! Some businesses just don't have any sense of right or wrong.