The Richter Scale^®

While on our travels in Fiji recently, a small creative streak overtook us, and we (the Bonaire-based Richters) decided to assemble an image for Christmas time and our annual greeting to friends, family, and associates alike. See below.

The above image is composed using the bark of a coconut tree, flower blossoms (including that of a Plumeria/Frangipani on top), and shells of small cowries found while wandering the beach, as well as a cork we found). The result is our Tropical Christmas Tree.

With that, we’d like to wish you all (early) a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Jake, Linda, Krystyana, and Bas Richter

If you’ve looked at the post below, you might know that I am traveling around the Pacific with my family at present. We spent the week of November 17-24, 2007 at Castaway Island Resort in Fiji, and during that time I got to do a lot of diving - more than I have on Bonaire in some time.

One of the many different (from Bonaire) and new (to me) creatures I found underwater were lionfish. I saw two different species here, one of which was the Fijian Spotfin Lionfish. The colors and textures of the fish were so impressive that I felt inspired to create a new piece of art in honor of that lionfish (see above for what I came up with).

My Fijian Spotfin Lionfish art will be made available later this month as a limited edition print both in our soon-to-be-completed gallery on Bonaire as well as on-line via http://www.RichterArt.com, in a series of only 25 numbered pieces.

Print number one of those 25 was auctioned off at a fundraiser at the Castaway Resort for FJ$425, with all proceeds going to the Mamanuca Environment Society - an environmental non-profit looking to protect Fiji’s reefs and nature. The Jones family of Singapore, bless their generous hearts, got the top bid.

I have just posted a handful of my articles and commentaries from Jon Peddie’s TechWatch, an industry newsletter I write for regularly over on my Richter Scale Articles site.

Those articles/commentaries are as follows:

From the December 11, 2006 issue of TechWatch:

- What Was Significant in 2006
- Forecasts for 2007

From the January 8, 2007 issue of TechWatch:
- Bill Gates’ Digital Lifestyle Vision - Putting the Pieces Together
- LG’s New BH100 Super Multi Blue Player for HD-DVD and Blu-ray
- One size fits all, says Warner Bros. - New THD disc is both HD-DVD and Blu-ray Disc
- To HD, Or Not To HD, That Is The Question

Hope you enjoy them even if they are a little dated (I only repost articles after the issue the articles are in has been superceded by a newer issue).

After having broken her hand in the late spring, and then a summer full of travel, my wife Linda is finally back in full swing painting. She has three active paintings going at any one time (as oils take a while to dry after a coat of paint has been applied), and just finished two new paintings these past two weeks. And one of them is my new favorite.

And that would be the one above, entitled Pelican Vigil. Breathtaking, especially when you see the original.

The other new painting is Trupial Brunch. Trupials are in the Oriole family of birds, and an amazing yellow orange in color across their necks and bellies. They also have this cool blue outline around their eyes. Linda captured them well in the painting (pictured below). She also did an excellent job with the cactus.

She has also converted much of our home into exhibit space for her works, so if you find yourself on Bonaire, call us at 717-4112 for a private showing. The plan is to build an extension onto our home (which on Bonaire is about a 6-9 month project - we’re still waiting to get near-final plans from our architect) which will have a sizable (1000 square feet or so) dedicated exhibit area (and will expand my office with another 150 square feet of space as a result - that’s much needed).

For more information on Linda’s new paintings, take a look at the Linda Richter web site.

We (my wife and I) were recently invited to participate in a juried art exhibition on Bonaire, featuring Bonaire’s artists. The jurying took place a few weeks ago, and the exhibition is slated to happen during the early part of November, with the possibility that Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands will officiate.

I created three very different pieces to enter into the jurying process:

All of these are based on my photographs, and all involve some level of various digital painting or manipulation. Of the three images, two were selected to be exhibited in November - a pleasant surprise. The only image not selected was “Shades of Growth” - not surprising as the judges indicated that they were looking at color as well as content.

More information on all three of these images can be found on the Jake Richter Art Site. All three images are available in a very limited closed edition and are available for purchase at Caribbean Art.

I’ve been busy the last couple of weeks with my latest project - a news blog called Bonaire Insider. The idea for Bonaire Insider came about over a month ago when my business partner in NetTech N.V., Susan Davis, and I decided we wanted to get fresher news on the home page of the Bonaire tourism information web site, InfoBonaire, which we own and operate.

It took some intense programming, as well as a lot of exploratory work with the same blogging software which I use for this blog (Expression Engine from pMachine), but two days ago we launched Bonaire Insider.

Among the cool features are the ability for people to sign up to get automatic copies of new posts to the Bonaire Insider news blog, integration of the RSS news feed from the site on the InfoBonaire home page, and integration with Google for running context sensitive ads (to help at least partially offset the costs of running the new site).

We’re still working on generating our internal style guide for news items, but it seems to be coming along well - we’ve had over 10,000 page views in just the first couple of days. Not a bad start for a small site about a small Caribbean island.

I have just posted three articles I wrote for the May 22, 2006 issue of Jon Peddie’s TechWatch industry newsletter over at http://www.RichterScale.org. All three of these articles cover various aspects of the 2006 E3 show.

More specifically, Alternative Input Devices for gaming, the E3 Keynote by ESA President Doug Lowenstein, and the results of a couple of interviews with Professional Gamers as a I search for a possible future career for my children.

I introduced a new series of artistic photographic images about a week ago. It’s the “Time For...” series, and it’s an open edition (meaning that it’s not a limited or numbered edition).

Take a look at the series and my motivation behind it in the Gallery section of my art web site.

A couple of the images from the new series are presented here - Time For Christmas I and Time for Dawn I, respectively:

I’ve been so busy in the last few months that I’ve barely had time to surface, but things are thankfully slowing down. I have probably missed a few new images, but my extremely talented wife, Linda Richter just finished several new paintings.

A couple weeks ago she finished “Koi in Blue”, and this past week, a triplet of tropical frog images she has entitled “One Frog, Three Frogs. Green, Blue, and Yellow Frogs.” Take a look at them at http://www.LindaRichter.com.

Linda has also been making some very cool ornaments (which in the present season make great Christmas ornaments) featuring miniature prints of her and my work, in a small mat decorated with cinnamon sticks, sea glass, or shells. These can be found only at our Cinnamon Art Gallery on Bonaire at the moment, though.

One of the things we’ve been doing at CaribbeanArt.com is a monthly newsletter which includes specials. If you want to learn more, click here to see the newsletters as well as sign up to receive them yourself.

That newsletter is where you’ll find out about things like Linda’s newest painting - “Fishing Lessons”

I also write a newsletter with happenings at the Cinnamon Art Gallery of Bonaire - click here for information on that newsletter.