oh here she is!

She's all done! Yay! Now there are four circus folk paintings. I think I may want there to be six, but I'm not sure which freaks I should go for next...suggestions? Maybe I should just watch Freaks?

Now I'm going to go get myself a soy latte from my favorite coffee spot, and paint some Shangri-la's.

acrobats painting + pink or blue?? + teddy newton drawing

So here are those acrobats all colored up and ready to go...



They'll probably get a few tweaks and such before they go into the shop to join their fellow circus folk.
Speaking of which, I'm having a color conundrum with my darling bearded lady: pink makes her look a wee bit more girly than I was going to go for, but it kind of works since, you know, she has a BEARD and the pink + beard is kinda funny. BUT I think she looks so pretty in blue, and there's something nice about the caramel colored BG against a nice cool periwinkle blue.

So, I'm leaving it up to you.

Make it PINK!



Make it bloooo!



Whatta ya think?



Also, while I was attempting to become organized this past week (as I often find myself doing), I decided it was high time I sifted through the giant stack of papers that was taking up waaaaay too much space under my table. It had a little bit of everything in it, and as I got toward the bottom of the stack I hit Pixar drawings (mostly mine but a good portion are other people's caricatures of me), and mixed in there was this little guy:



It's a little rat drawing by Teddy Newton! SO appealing! Even his signature is all elegantly executed. It lives on my cork board now so I can ogle it all the time and show it off to people who come into my workspace.

OH yeah, and I went to the Felt Club this past weekend! It was really, really overwhelmed by all the cool stuff, and tragically I didn't have much cash on my person. But I found a few cool shops to share anyway: Ach Ach Leibling had really excellent delicate jewelry, Mahar Drygoods had some of the cutest toys and stuff that made me wish I had babies just so that I could have an excuse to buy them, and Ryn Rini had the most wonderful little felt hats that I pined away for for the rest of the afternoon.

acrobats + bearded lady + some circus pictures

I finally got a chance to sit down and figure these guys out...

Acrobatics and contortions by the spectacular twins and their feline accompaniment!



It took me a long time to figure out a pose for these two that was both spectacular and not too complex to understand at a glance. I think the cat really brought it all together.

The bearded lady! Make no mistake, she is truly a lady in every sense of the word.



I can just picture the contents of her dressing room table: mascara, rouge, perfume, mustache wax...

Also, while I was looking around for cool circus images for reference I ran across some real gems on Corbis. Check 'em out!

This girl is playing the piano!!



These gals make me happy. It's a combination of their gleeful expressions and their cute thick thighs.



When did this happen??



Once upon a time, all it took to lure people to the circus was the promise of floppy, floating women.



Check back soon, cause I'm going to color those girls and make them real pretty. Have a lovely weekend!

Miss Lib + it's almost Halloween!

Here is Miss Librarian. I think I've still got some finishing touches to do, but you get the idear.



ALSO, please watch this cartoon. It's almost Halloween, and nothing gets me in the spirit more than watching a nice seasonal cartoon. I particularly like the part when Donald's feet get hexed and go crazy. Oh YouTube, how you enrich our lives...




Last year I didn't get a chance to dress up on Halloween. BOO to that! This year I think I'll just play it safe with a nice low-key kinda costume, like a bearded lady. That way I can wear a preposterous false beard but also have an excuse to get extra prettied up. This was always the conundrum of Halloween costumes for a little girl: be something pretty, which is fun but not very effective, or be something gross/shocking/gooey, which is VERY effective but not at all pretty. I think my all time favorite costume is still the big yellow bird I made a couple years ago. It was fun to be something so friendly looking and pointless.

Plus I got a few compliments on my legs. I also thought about being a librarian, but that seems a little obvious, doesn't it?