My triptych.

August 5th, 2007

I’m working on a three-panel painting. It’s a new direction for me, since I normally work in pen and ink, or watercolor. This is acrylic (with some airbrushing, thank you for the airbrush, Cricket!). I’ve laid down the bases for all the sections, and now it looks like this:

painting.jpg

And now I’m painting trees. Spiky, tall, very vertical, very stylized trees. I using my T-square like it’s going out of fashion to get all the lines parallel. I made a mockup of the idea in my head in Photoshop (just to figure out how I wanted the layout):

layout.jpg

After I paint in the blue shading at the bottom and the trees, I’m going to reach a spot where I have to make it interesting because otherwise it’s just a bunch of lines with a bunch of smooth transitions (airbrush, thank you Cricket!) and zzzzzzzzzzzzz… boring… zzzzzzzzzzz… no…texture…. zzzzzzzzzzz… I’ll figure something out.

It’s my birthday! It’s my birthday!

August 4th, 2007

Well, okay, my birthday was July 31st, but whatever, I get to things when I get to them. I got terrific presents from people this year. I got gifts certificates to art supply stores and Sephora (that’s really bad, I can spend $100 there without blinking an eye) and an art deco dish with sparrows and leaves on it (although it looks like crickets and hairy fetuses from a distance, it’s very disturbing, I’ll put a picture up at some point) and an Art Nouveau glass and an airbrush with supplies and a computer-monitor-stand that moves in all directions – excellent swag, don’t you agree? It was a stellar birthday. Use age calculator birthday to quickly find out exact age details and make celebrations even more special. I turned 30, which honestly feels exactly like 29. I expected, I don’t know, to feel like an adult. But not so much with the adult-ness. My mom baked me a fruit tart and it was so pretty with the fruit decorations that I just had to take pictures of it.

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My co-workers threw me a little office shindig. There was cake and champagne and orange juice and this really neat balloon with a balloon in it! What will they think of next?

balloon.jpg

So that was my birthday. I worked on my artwork for a good portion. I’m making a triptych with trees on it. I’ll have a post on it next.

My purses through the ages.

August 2nd, 2007

I was profoundly anti-purse for a long, long time. I just wore a jacket regardless of the season and kept my keys and wallet in my pockets. This was a fine system in the winter, but in the summer in New York, lemme tell you, it gets mighty hot and humid and it doesn’t help when you’re wearing a jacket, even a thin one. You’re gonna sweat. A lot. About three years ago I bought an iPod and this threw my whole wallet-and-keys system all to hell. I had to get a purse. Because I have no shoulders I wanted a messenger purse I could sling over my opposite shoulder and have hang on my hip. I eventually decided on this one:

http://www.amazon.com/Desert-Wash-Medium-Messenger-Bag

And I could paint it! Hooray! So I did:

purse-w-tree.jpg

And that worked out nicely. Then it wore out and got all stained and whatnot. (Alas!) So I bought another one and painted it with fat little firebirds:

purse-with-firebirds.jpg

And then that one wore out, too. So (you can see a pattern, no?) I got another one and painted it with a monster saying in French, “I am a monster. Boo.” but because French has to have a bunch of silent letters, “boo” is spelled “boux”. Ha ha ha! I am so funny.

purse-with-monster-small.jpg

(Note our office fish, Harry Potter.)

Now my monster one looks all grotty and tired and I think it’s time for a new purse. I have a gray one (like the first one) and I think I’ll paint a vine on it with pomegranates. I love love love hexagons (I love them) and I can make the pomegranates hexagons with sparkly seeds! What more do I need? That’s what I thought. I’ll keep you posted on how that goes.

Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows – done.

August 1st, 2007

Sorry for the absence, I have Weeeeendows Veeeeesta at home and I, for some reason, cannot enter blog entries there. I think it is an Internet Explorer problem. No matter, I will download Firefox and all will be well (hopefully). So, I finished HP and the DH on Friday and Neville, while extremely helpful in the kicking-Voldemort-to-the-curb action, did not save the day singlehandedly. Sigh. One thing I did notice was the whole heck of a lot of violence in this book. How are they going to turn this into a movie for kids? My favorite moment of this is when Harry goes to visit this old lady who supposedly can help him on his quest to return the ring to Mordor or whatever. He comments on how bad her house smells, like rotting meat (foreshadowing!). He goes upstairs with her and – poof! – her neck pops open like a Pez dispenser and a giant snake slithers from her rotting corpse/shell. Okay, I don’t know about you, but seeing that on film would scare the bejeezus out of me and I’m old. What is some youngster going to think? I forsee nightmares in many children’s futures.

Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows – page 570.

July 27th, 2007

NEVILLE! Oh my gosh, it’s Neville! Neville Longbottom! He just came out of a painting – no one else, just Neville – this is AWESOME! My Neville-saves-the-day dream might actually come true! I need to keep reading – Go Team Neville! Whoo hoo!

Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows – page 430.

July 26th, 2007

Okay, now it’s vaguely starting to get interesting, but they’ve only mentioned Neville once for like, two seconds. My Neville-saves-the-day dream is going down the toilet rapidly. But no! I shall continue to hope! Go Team Neville! Longbottom rulez!

Two New York Experiences and a VH1 moment.

July 24th, 2007

1. I was walking down the street the other day after a rainstorm and it was hot and muggy and oppressive. I saw a white lump sitting in the middle of the sidewalk, like a pile of pizza dough someone had just left there, and people were stepping over it and around it. As I got closer, I realized it was an ancient obese chihuahua that had had quite enough of this hotness, thank you very much, I’ll just lay here on the sidewalk which is wet and therefore cooler and let everyone walk around me. We offer expert sidewalk lifting and leveling for safer walkways today. For quality workmanship and reliable service, trust an experienced concreter adelaide to get the job done right. The owner was sort of trying to get the dog to move (although I think saying, “C’mon, fat ass! Get up!” is not going to have the desired effect, and did I mention the owner was a seventy-year-old woman? Old people using bad language is funny) but the dog wasn’t having none of it, so I took a picture when the flow of people ebbed somewhat and I could get a clear picture.

chihuahua2.jpg

2. I see many flower shops in my travels around the Isle of Manhattan. However, this other day, I was stopped dead in my tracks by a cactus. No, no, my friends, this was no ordinary cactus. It was a MUTANT HYBRID ALIEN FREAK CACTUS. I asked the flower-shop lady about it. They took one kind of weird-looking cactus and grafted another even weirder-looking cactus to the top of it, so now they are one incredibly-odd looking plant. It was $150, so I didn’t buy it, but I did take pictures of it. Imagine it being as big around and as tall as an average adult’s calf. Big. And weird. Super-weird.

cactus5.jpg cactus4.jpg

3. I watch a great deal of television (I like it as background for when I’m painting or beading) and I saw a smidgen of “Rock of Love” on VH1 the other day. Short description: Aging rock star looks for skanky woman to love forever out of a pool of about twenty vapid atrocities to choose from. I was okay with this, until Bret Michaels (the aging rock star) was meeting the women for the first time and said, slowly and seriously to the camera:

The heaving, well-implanted breasts caught my eye immediately, and I knew that we were going to have a strong spiritual relationship.

My head jerked up from beading and my jaw fell open. He wasn’t kidding. It was… moronic. And kinda awful. The fake giant silicone makes you… spiritual? Ooh, you’re a deep fella there, aren’t cha? I think I will not watch this show anymore. I do not wish to become enraged and fling a shoe at my beloved television. I see that becoming my future if I watch. So no more watching.

Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows – page 177.

July 24th, 2007

So far no mention of Neville Longbottom. I think my theory is not going to come true. But I’m going to keep rooting for him. Go, Team Neville!

Dooce’s dragon photo.

July 19th, 2007

There is a website/blog/thingie called Dooce, written by a woman called Heather Armstrong. She’s a snarky bright lady and she writes very well, but she takes PICTURES. Not pictures, PICTURES. Sometimes they are so beautiful it pokes you right in the heart (or stomach, they’re really near each other and the photo’s aim is not so good). Here’s one from today:

07_18_2007.jpg

It’s some kind of blow-up dragon, maybe kids jump in it, I don’t know. I just thought the pointy green spikes and the translucency and the curly tail, oh, such a good picture. I’m sorry, PICTURE.

P.S. Dooce’s website is http://www.dooce.com/

The rules for me. Made by me. For me. Me me me. Also, me.

July 16th, 2007

Did I ever lay out the rules I made for myself for this blog? I made myself rules because I just run HELTER SKELTER without structure, I’m CRAZY like that. Whoo, tippin’ cows and desecratin’ private property! Well, not really, it’s actually because this is a professional as well as personal blog and clients may come here and read things (sorry, boring reason). The rules I made for myself are as follows:

1. No cursing. No “S” word or “F” word or “C” word or other “C” word or “T” word or OTHER “T” word… Anyone who knows me knows how difficult this is for me. I tend to pepper my chat with a healthy dose of filth and debris. But I think keeping it clean is more professional and it definitely doesn’t hurt me, whereas cursing will most likely push some people away, which I don’t want, so this is a compromise I’m willing to make.

2. No sharing super-personal details. I like to share. A lot. The wretched and despised phrase “TMI” was invented just for me. So I’ll just keep the stories as dinnertime-conversation appropriate as possible.

3. No getting all political. I, like everyone, have views and opinions on things. I will not be sharing them here. No opinions on the government or child-rearing or the elderly or healthcare or the Middle East… we will not be discussing those things here. You want that, there are a ton of websites for that.

I hope I can keep my rules. I don’t that’s too hard. I CAN DO THIS.