happy holidays

I know it's kinda early...but is it?

This is the holiday card I designed for 826LA, a nonprofit writing and tutoring center in Echo Park, Los Angeles!  They are super great and awesome.  

I never ever ever work for free (if you ask I'll say no) but when they inquired as to whether I'd be willing to donate some time + energy to illustrate a holiday card for them I said yes.   I just really believe that what they do is fantastic.  

If you live in the area, you can visit their Time Travel Mart store front (the front of the space is a little store, and the back of the space is a big giant room where they tutor the kiddies).  The store is very silly, and very very fun.  If you live in San Francisco you might be familiar with the Pirate Store, it's founded by the same folks.  

Read your kid a book!!!  And happy holidays.

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!

Opening! This Saturday! Come out and play, Los Angeles folk!

I'm having a little opening at Occidental College this weekend! Saturday night!




+there will be cupcakes
+there will be drinks
+there will be me
+it is in a LIBRARY


How often to you get to hang out in a library and drink? I'm going to guess not that often. I'll have framed, signed, large versions of all those mythological creatures I've done lately for sale. Plus, the library at Occidental is really pretty! It's worth checking out. Even if you can't come on Saturday, you can go look at the stuff later: the show will be up aaaaaalll semester (until December).

The details:

where: Mary Norton Clapp Library, at Occidental College
when: 7pm - 10pm
why: eat cupcake, hang out in library with mythological creatures


View Larger Map

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.

that book...

Remember that book I illustrated, and how I had to do it really fast and I didn't update my blog for like a month because of it? Well here's proof that it exists!

Right HERE!

I can't tell you how crazy it feels to search my own name on amazon and actually have something come up! By the way, I'm not responsible for the cover...that's just a screen shot from the film (weird). It's not actually available until August, but I was excited about it regardless.

AND my gallery opening was last night and it was great, if I do say so myself. So many people showed up to be supportive and check out the work and that was super awesome, and my friend Jenny + pals played some great music, and my bff Matthias made vegan cupcakes which was so sweet of him. Pictures coming soon! In the meantime, here are some little paintings from the show that were very spontaneous and fun to do...

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!

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??