dresses which are not dresses + website

I forgot to mention this before, but I finally have a place you can find me in the internets with a name which is very easy to remember!  

It's brigetteb.com!

That's where my tumblr-based portfolio lives.  If you have a tumblr you can follow me and tumbl away! It feels very official and neat.  The only bummer is that you still have to remember to spell my name right (no D, two E's, two T's, yes I know it's a funny spelling, but I didn't choose it).

And here are some discarded ideas from a thing I'm working on, er, trying to be working on.  

I'm not going to explain too much because there isn't much to say.

Here's a birdcage dress lady!  Her hat is also a birdcage.  

I imagine that the weather girl is prone to mood swings.  

Pomegranates.

Yes I know they're very silly.  

buttons! buttons!

It's that time of the year again: I'm getting all my goodies together for the Alternative Press Expo next month. That means I've got to order some new buttons, among other things, but the other things are boring. Paper and ink and plastic sleeves are not half as good as shiny new pin back buttons!




I want your opinion on these buttons, k? In the past I've just kinda picked at random whichever images I think would look good on a button, but then I end up with none of one kind of a whole bunch of another kind left over. My preference would be to have no buttons left, because they are happily living on your jacket or book bag or wherever! SO, vote for your favorites (as many as you want!), and I'll make buttons of the most popular picks. This is especially easy cause you don't even have to leave an actual comment, you can just click on this little poll-thinger!

Click click click!

Quizzes by Quibblo.com

Or, you know, if there's something you think would be cool as a button that ya don't see here, I'm open to suggestions.

squirrels + magpies + owls

I did these drawings last winter when I was in a certain European country for a couple weeks. They didn't actually use any of what I worked on while I was there, but they seemed pretty happy with it at the time. I did these with marker on this totally bizarre round paper that they had. I could've used photoshop, but they only had old crusty PC's (which I hate) and the keyboards are different in Europe (like the z and c keys are switched I think?? or something?) and all the keyboard short cuts were different too, and photoshop is just no good without shortcuts. So I went for markers and paper. Also, I don't really know how to use markers! Obviously!





Sometimes you do a drawing and look back on it later and think "oh yuck", and I don't quite feel "oh yuck" about these...they're slightly above yuck. I may decide that they are yuck later but I'm strapped for blog content right now. I fear that I will soon be posting pictures of my feet or something.




Anyway, they were fun to do. It was really liberating to just hang out and drink free cappuccinos from the fancy espresso machine in the office (Alpenmilch! Yum!) and mess around with markers, and then go eat a pizza and watch Pippi Longstocking on TV.





I promise not to lame out with only one post like I did last week. I had been doing so good posting twice weekly!

And last post was my 100th! I forgot to mention it at the time, but it kind of fills you with a feeling of accomplishment...even if it took over two years to make it to 100 and most posts are just a bunch of my gobbledy gook writing anyway.

rainy day

Way back last January (which feels like just about another lifetime compared to the present) I got an idea to do a painting of a girl walking around in the rain with an umbrella. One BAZILLION years later I finally got around to doing it.



It totally changed from the originally intended version. The only similarities are the girl, the umbrella, and the vertically inclined composition. I didn't get started on this image way back when because in part it really bothered me that I couldn't figure out what was going on with the girl. I didn't know what she was all about, or what the image was supposed to be about for that matter. I had to change it around this much to make it feel right. It's kind of an intangible thing and it looks pretty hokey in writing, but oh well. Sometimes making art is a hokey business.

In other news, Unique LA is this coming weekend and I have sooooo much stuff to do still to get ready for it! So I'm gonna go do that stuff!

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?

It's business time.

Since I am supposed to be a professional artist, or something, it seemed like it was about time that I made myself a pro-feshunal type business card!

This is the front, with all my contact info on it! I omitted my last name because it is: impossible to pronounce (butchered daily, always and forever, with an inexplicable 'n' thrown in where there is none), not at all memorable, and also unspellable. Even if you can say it and remember it right, you won't be able to spell it. Doubt it? Go ahead!! Give yourself the Barrager quiz! It ends in disaster every time.




This is the back. I took a workshop through CalArts Alumni Services from a very wise and witty and with-it lady who proposed this astonishing idea: if you are an artist, and you are in the business of making images, and you are handing out a double-sided piece of paper with all your information on it, should you not make it look awesome so that people not only hang onto it but they know EXACTLY what you do just by looking at it?




By the way, if anything on these cards is unclear, or kinda hard to read, or smeary or something, NOW would be the appropriate time to tell me. Critiques are appreciated! Now! Because after I get these printed (I'm going to use Vista Print I think) it will be too late to give constructive criticism.


Another reason for getting my business card ready to go is that I'm going to be exhibiting at the Alternative Press Expo in November. This is a momentous, fun, and incredibly stressful situation for me. Before Halloween, I've got to make it look like I've got my act together, do a bunch of cool new artwork, and still manage to somehow do my "day job" (aka the job I actually got paid money to do although I mostly do it night). I'm going to need a lot of luck and very, very little sleep to accomplish these things.

In other small news, although I haven't sold a lot of stuff on my etsy store,
a couple of my items have been featured on the front page, which is kind of a big deal! It means that hundreds of people saw my stuff and clicked on it, too! It was a nice little ego-booster for me, personally.