Next Large Project

So I was jumping around the internet, wasting my time when I came across this intriguing book-wreath. It was intriguing not because I want to make something just like that, because it's in a frilly wreath shape and thats fine and all, but who wants a wreath when you can make a spiral? Like a really big dragon/baroque inspired spiral?

I was feeling like my studio was empty without that big mural in it anymore, and I needed something else big to fill the space, so I tapped into my inner studio artist and a 30 minute project has turned into a four hour This-Is-Not-A-Craft project. Plus, I wanted it big enough to fill the space above my bed, because I can't hang anything heavy there since I live basically on top of the San Andreas Fault.

In the other tutorial they had a foam mold, and molds don't come in swee spiral shapes, so insead I had to make my own out of wire. I used copper wire because we have a lot of this around (my Father also has his own this-is-not-a-craft, but for engineers, where he tries to place a ham radio inside of every empty container you leave around the house, from altoids, to fishing poles, to the entire computer room. This is why we have lots of copper wire)
this is me using copper wire as really big chopsticks. That should be a new fad: really big chopsticks. Anyways, since I needed two for the size of this piece, I clamped them down in our sautering area (we are nerds we have a sautering area. Usaully for chip-boards, I'm the only one that uses it for art)

and sautered away. Holds up nice.

bent it into shape. covered that shape with a mix of fun-foam and newspaper. I've decided after trying both that newspaper is easier and quicker than fun foam, which was a hassle and I used up almost all of my glue doing it. With newspaper you don't even need to glue, just needs rubber bands and yarn to string it together.

I took my Jane Eyre, my five dollar spend from three years ago that ended up being the worst classic I've ever read. Jane Eyre is like the Twilight of their time. Yes I meant that. Some people really like Jane Eyre and they are allowed to, but I think it is absolutely rediculous.

using flat pages makes a round shape like in the original tutorial. but I didn't want that, I wanted scales/wings.

One and a half hours later:

It's going to take me years but I'm excited about this TINAC.

and the wire holds up super well. Takes up enough space in my studio that my freinds and family think I'm an artist again.

Sidetrack Saturday!

So it's Saturday, and Saturday is the day I save for random useless things that I refuse to call crafts. Things like bookbinding and making random belts out of clothesline. So, since it's Saturday I'll share some of my better This-is-Not-A-Craft's, how about that?

Todays This-Is-Not-A-Craft (better known as "leci n'est pas une Craft")I learned from my roomate a few years back, the Cranky Kleptomaniac. And no that is not her username, she really was a klepto potty mouth and this was about the only usefull thing she offered to my life and well being (other things she offered include how to swear like a banshee over the phone to the landlord, not doing the dishes for three weeks out of spite to the landlord, and crochet)

you start out with these glass baulbes that I know every child within the United States collects, trades, and swallows by accident. They sell them next to the plant section at Micheals, and the bigger you can get them, the better the pic comes out. I avoid the irridescent ones. Only because i think it's kind of tacky.

I don't like things that make me use their images when I can do a better personalized job myself. So I printed out my angry penguin. He's super simple because this thing is 1/2 in . My Cranky Klepto used photographs when she did this and it came out absolutely terrible. It was too much detail in a bauble that distorts the picture anyway.

glue on with thin super glue so's not to leave bubbles.

place, then cut.

voila! Thing is, the paper can easily come off so I put on a backing with some fun-foam that my neice left behind here.

but it's hard to cut exactly, to cover the edge it just needs something like ribbon or something

and that is the finished TINAC Now ready to be either glued onto buttons, books, bags, and sent to all the neices and nephews so that I can be remembered as the 'fun aunt,' which has become increasingly important to me as they have gotten older and more picky.

Off of Hiatus

This project was put on the back burner for a while, but considering how commissions are turning out, it looks like I'll have to start pushing more of my own work out there.

They're such large files, that I got sick after trying to condense two of them down and decided not to condense the rest.

Final one looks like the stacks of paper are floating. Weird. I'll have to fix that.

Art for my neice who likes creepy stories but hates to read

Never done anything at all comic before, and as a lot of you know, I didn't even read comics until about 2007 when I was stuck on a week-long road-trip with 8 illustrators and animators who tutored me all in the basics of comics AKA why the never ending fight between Batman, Superman, Spiderman, and ninjas is basically never ending (and all the details of why Captian America was so boring that he deserved to die). By the time I was done with illustration I feel like I minored in comics, but still never actually attempted one.

But now since its the recession and I've nothing better to do, I've been making little stories for my neices and nephews, and one has a thing for creepy Tim-Burton stuff and she really, really hates to read ( a shame!) . So I'm making her a creepy comic about hairless cats who are taking over the world that live in an alternate Cat-reality and can only be stopped by other, much better looking cats. Type thing. we'll see how this goes.

And then I did the first page and realized I made something that looks like Lady Gaga Fanfiction. These take forever to make! I've done about 10 pages and I've dropped the ink and switched to pencil and it's still...quite the effort! What do you people with more comic experience do to make it go faster? Or is that not the point?

Monterey and the Aquarium

went to the Monterey Aquarium to see it's new Seahorse Exhibit--and it's so cool! I didn't take any pictures of the Seahorses, I just drew them. They have seahorses that look exactly like dragons. Man. And in most of the deep sea exhibit there isn't enough light to draw, so I took pictures. Pictures with no flash that still came out cool

Wow. God can make even glowing snot look really, really cool. Because that's basically all that jellyfish are: Glowing Snot.


there were 5 billion little kids.
And I've never seen them feeding the Jellyfishes before, but this is what it looks like--a puff of misty Jellyfish food. I don't know what's in it. Can you spot why this is a Northern California beach in March? a.) no swimsuits, just jeans and sweatshirts b.) more treacherous giant human sized rocks than humans. This is why we have the best beaches in the world, because you don't ever have to shave and you generally have most of the beach to yourself.

these are awesome because they're constantly pulling food into their mouths with those little feelers. So cool!

Photo problems

I'm frustrated because I can't get a decent shot of this finished mural. The reason? I just don't have a good enough camera lens and I just don't have 40 feet to back up in, which is why it came out a pixelated mess.



Just know that in real life it was painted with finesse and contrast and without the blurry mcblurry all over the place

again with the size:

It was really tough to give it a cohesive look when it's this big, but I really am happy with how it turned out, although I am not happy with how it's photo-reference shots came out.

'Toga

So I decided that in order to have more "joy in the journey" I should take photo's every day. Cuz, while starting an art career is really hard, truly, it is mostly really boring, very truly boring. It's a lot of waiting. But I don't really believe in waiting for life to start, so, since this is a blend of personal blog and art blog (my porftolio being totally seperate) here's some photos.

(not to mention that art is pretty ugly until its final stages, and I'm tired of posting ugly art for a while. So this is for the meantime.)

I decided to start with my home town, Saratoga. We live in a forest, although surrounded by cities. I think people are surprised to find out that, although I'm from the heart of city-dense Silicon Valley, I'm actually from a city that pretends to be a small town for tourists.

and if you closely you can see vineyards! Still hanging around and I honestly don't know how, but they're pretty.

I started taking pictures and realized cute things about my boring town.

I love this sign because the kid wrote it in not only bad english, but also bad Chinese, and even tried to replicate the logo. I have no idea what '88' stands for. but kids are funny.


this is the bakery where I discovered Jones Soda when I was 11 years old

and it closed down! In fact, all of the businesses in my downtown that were really...rediculous and I never understood why they were in business are closed now, including the grocery that only sold expired food and the really ugly antique plate store.

We discovered our kitty wants to be a vegetarian. But we still love her. We had to build a special cage unit to keep her from eating our seedling tomatoes.

but she devoured my tulips I bought at farmers market.

Colleen atwood: Amazing

So I just saw Alice in Wonderland and thought that it was pretty meh. which is what I knew going into it. However, the costume designs are incredible! (and my favorite dress is probably floating around on the internet somewhere but I have no idea how to find it) So I looked up Colleen Atwood, two time Oscar winner, and realized that she's basically done every other film I've looked at and thought "well...at least the costumes were good." (not that every movie she does costumes for is meh) and I tried to find her illustrations for the outfits, and I was blown away by how they have really...no details and yet she can make an outfit out of them. How do costume designers do that?

Anyway, It had too much CGI. I'm getting sick of this new wave of Super-CGI that's come about since Avatar. It might look almost real, but doesn't convince me that it's not fake, it just makes it...a CGI movie. What so bad about making a set?

And I never want to see this glowing ultramarine blue matched with a warm gray ever again. I am so sick of it! It was all over Avatar, it was all over this movie (on the cat) and it's all over every video game in the past five years. Other colors can, indeed, glow in the dark.

Farmers Market

My town has a Farmers Market just down the street from where I live. I'm bummed that I didn't take a picture of a.) the local singers who are all sorts of fantastic (this week the singer came with a bubble machine and sang folk stuff from the 70's) and b.) the Honey. We have this place that sells all these flavors of honey and its sort of addictive. But don't try ginger honey because it's like slurping a red-hot through your nose. You'll feel it for hours. I know.

I really liked these precariously bunched beets.

Because its the Chinese New Year season, abouts (because it lasts for a while) there's orchids all over the place, stacked so it was like being in a little forest of orchids. My mom insisted that even I could keep one alive. I guess we'll see.


I got this purple kind. I haven't named it yet so it hasn't gotten sick and plopped over from exhaustion like all of my other plants.

Mural is almost finished

I wish I didn't have to use flash to make these come out, but my table is sitting in the place my tripod would be. So o well. When its all done, I'll get a good shot of it to have and hold...I guess. Just know that in the actual mural all the lines are straight (I spent like a whole hour just making them straight)

All that's left is feet and outlines and noodly bits. Like the shadows just need to be wiped with a sponge, really.

mural update

look at this, two updates in a row!

Anyways, went back to attack the dress on the chick on the right. She went sleeveless, not sleeveless, had all sorts of sleeves in many different shades of gray, and now I think I'm going to take her back to sleeveless. I also blocked in some shadows on the floor.

I spent a while on this painting yesterday but it looks like there's not much improvement because of this pearl necklace. Man pearl necklaces take a long time.

food I ate, things I saw

So, since I am an artist and all, I thought maybe I should make my blog more artsy, so first things first, I need to take a meticulously planned out picture of my food. Because thats what artists do. On every blog ever written.





I should have found a weird doily or something--or speckled it with powdered sugar to give it that 'frost' effect...but this will have to do. Microwave lasagna. mmm. on a warped, plastic liner.

As I was making my lasagna I decided to let it sit in the microwave and rest after cooking like it tells you toon the box, which is something I've never actually done before, and in that time I went outside and took some pictures of our garden.

I used to love this tree as a kid because all of those flowers that grow on it have a soft skin like a cat--its really trippy, and I missed these trees when I went to live in the desert.

There's a perfect x on this little log.

when this leaf dies it looks like a cheeta--how does nature do that? I know. its mold.

I love my red cabbages--because they look like alien plants with those black leaves!

Man I love the shape of cabbages.

I fell in love with the colors on this leaf.