small cats

These are going to the small stuff show at bear and bird gallery in Florida. They're small! Only 5"x5" each.

I'm trying to get bolder with my colors, and a little looser with my paintings. I tend to paint really, really, really anal-retentively, leaning over the painting and holding my breath and stuff. I think things come out a little stiff sometimes because of that though! These were small and simple enough that I could just kinda do them without over thinking.

The first one is based on my cat Milo. He was orange and crazy! Now he is a ghost cat.



The siamese is based on nothing, because I never had a siamese myself. Or maybe its based on my awesome vintage TV lamp that Sean got for me... (that is not a photo of MY lamp, but mine is seriously identical)



They're off to Florida! By by kitties!

griffin

Thanks everyone who came to the opening last Saturday! Here's a griffin:



Life is pretty busy in my little corner of the world right now. Lots of wedding planning stuff is happening. There's less than a month left til the big day! Plus APE is coming up, so I've got more than enough to keep me occupied.

I'm a busy little bee!

heartbeat underwater

I have been wanting to do these pieces for sooooooooooo long! Like, years.


I love mermaids. My inner 7 year old is singing right now.

gorgon lady

A gorgon is like, the generic term for a Medusa type lady. They are fierce and scary creatures, with snake hair! Except for when they are wearing fancy flowery robes and sitting on urns.

Something about this bugs me but I haven't figured out what it is yet. I'll come back to it later.

mr. minotaur

He likes apples, but don't get too close or he'll bop you one with his club.

screwing around with a brush pen

I just got a brush pen! I've never really messed around with one before, and I don't really understand how to use it. I understand that it makes whatever you draw look about 300x cooler instantly, but they are very sensitive instruments and I'm used to hammering away on paper with an unsharpened Ebony pencil, so it will take some getting used to. These are just some experiments from last week...



I saw this girl at Trader Joe's last week, when it was all weird/rainy/cold outside. It literally looked like she had just wrapped a tea towel around her shoulders and pulled on the most ridiculous, bright leg warmers she could find. I thought to myself, "Really?? Are pants really that hard to come by these days??" And flip flops, in the rain? What?



But that is why I love Trader Joe's in Silverlake. So much style, so many varieties of tortilla chips!

les demoiselles de rochefort

Obscure films, how I love you so.



I really failed to capture how beautiful these two ladies are, and how dreamy and vibrant the film looks...but I think it turned out kinda cool anyway.

lillian gish as the L.A. river

I know that when you hear "L.A. river" a bunch of clever, mostly negative quips come to mind, like "what river?" and "why isn't there any water it it?" and "oh that big cement thing?" and "that's not a river it's a jumbo sized storm drain!" etc. etc. and on into infinity. But I've actually hung around the LA river before, and yeah there's water in it, fish even, lots of birds, lots of bugs, some garbage, trees, reeds, and sometimes a rogue shopping cart. It doesn't smell very good and I wouldn't swim in it, EVER, but it's there and it's actually a pretty nice place to hang out in certain spots. Like all things in Los Angeles you have to seek it out and know exactly where to go and when. To me it's just another one of those magical secrets hidden away in the city...




AND, this is the last time I'm going to shamelessly advertise my show this weekend (Sunday) at Pehrspace. I'm going to be there all evening, from 6-11pm, eating Newman-O's and generally schmoozing, so if you're in LA you should stop by. There will be lots of paintings for sale, including this one! Next post will probably be photos of the show, so if you are inhabiting remote lands, don't fret! You'll still get a peak.

Kudos to all the folks whose films I saw at the CalArts Producer's Show last night, by the way! Good show, everybody.

building fun!

I'm gonna remind you right now: I have a show at Pehrspace next month! The opening is the evening of May 10, which is a Sunday, and there will be musics and alcohol stuff and also CUPCAKES! Cupcakes with stupid plastic googly finger puppet monsters on top! You can't miss out on that!

And if you've got crazy money burning in your pockets, you can even buy one of these...



...or you can just run up and touch one while I'm not looking, stuff your face with cupcake, dance around and leave.



Either way I'd like you to go if you can!

Color, color, who's got the color?

I'm gonna paint these guys. I pulled these awesome color schemes from some cool vintage fabrics I found. If you're gonna bite, bite from something totally awesome, right?

I am leaning towards pink (#4), but because I am interested in your opinion, and also because I've got nobody around to bounce it off of, I'm having one of my ol' fashioned votes.

#1: Turquoise and yellow...pretty but kinda plain. My first impulse. This is the color scheme I first imagined it in.


#2: Green and orange-red together, like something you'd find in a thrift store.


#3: More muted pink and blue and warm grey...gives it a whole different feeling, doesn't it?


#4: Think pink! My favorite so far...but I like the others too...maybe it's too pink? A little too saccharine?


I'm painting it tomorrow, so don't think about it too long!

background sniplets

Yes I'm back from the dead! I can't show you anything that I've been working on for the past month, but I'll be sure to keep you updated when it's time for the book to come out, sometime in August. Now I can finally get back to normal (whatever that is) and start working my pieces for my show at Pehrspace next month. I've got lots of ideas piled up in my brain and I'll be busily planning and keeping the old blog updated from here on out. Yes, that means twice weekly updates again! Yay!

In the meantime, here are some snippets from the project I spent most of last summer and fall working on. I know they're not super exciting and dynamic on their own, but I swear they look really, really cool with the characters walking around in them. The project was supposed to be viewable online, but I sure as heck haven't seen it anywhere and I've been googling it like crazy. If it turns up I'll let you know.






Later this week: painting sketches. Yay!

those foxes!

It looks like I'll be under the avalanche of my illustration project for a while, but here's those other two fox paintings!





This little trio of foxes is going to be up for sale in my shop next week, along with some other original paintings that have been hanging out for a while...call it spring cleaning, if you will. More details on that later, so stay tuned!

yuki colors

I'm trying to decide what colors to go with for that Yuki poster. It's hard, cause I like colors so very much, and the feeling changes lots depending on what you pick.

I like these blues. Blue roses could be really cool.



I think I'm most attached to this one.



This one is really nice too, but it has a much girly-er feel to it.



Something appealing in this too though...



I give up. What do you think?



What's your vote? I like #2. But maybe #3... See? I need a second opinion.



Now I'm gonna go work the kinks out of the drawing. I'm enjoying the chilly, perfect-for-drinking-tea weather in LA today.

ALSO: I saw Coraline again on Monday night, and I have to say, I liked it even better the second time around. It's one of the best films I've seen in a long time. All you guys who worked on it should buy yourselves ice cream sandwiches to celebrate.

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.

The Glamorous Librarian

Here is an image that seems so obvious for me to have conjured up that I'm surprised I haven't before. There is only one problem: I can't settle on what colors I'm going to paint her up in. I was really smitten with the blue-grey and pink scheme, because a librarian with pink hair was just so charming and cool, but Sean said he liked the green and red better because it just works better for the subject matter, and I think he may be right.

So folks, it comes down to a VOTE!


Make it blue n pink...


Or!


Make it green n red...



Well??