flower heads and cake ladies

I did these sketches for what was maybe going to be a stationary set, but it didn't pan out.  What a bummer.  I hate it when that happens.  

The idea was that they would be black line art on white paper, and they would come with a little watercolor set and you could color them yourself.  

As far as the designs go, I was just having fun, really.  They are marker and pencil,sketches and they're not the best drawings, but they give you a pretty good idea.  I probably would have fancied them up with a brush pen if they it had been a go.  Brush pens are fun things. 

Things I like: flowers, fancy ladies, beautiful desserts, and the 18th century fashion.  If you couldn't tell.  

And then there was this weirdo one withe the octopus hair thrown in.  

I like markers a lot, even though my marker technique (if there is such a thing in the case of markers) is pretty 'whatever'.  

Frustrating days lately, you guys.  Really stupidly tough!!  I can't seem to get any projects off the ground, for reasons that are utterly mystifying (to me at least).  I don't wanna bitch out on my blog, because that's sort of yucky, but then again why not?  It's part of the deal when you're an artist that depends on other folks/institutions to put your work out there.  Your s#*% gets rejected sometimes!  

Anyway.  On to the next!

fairies

I am technically a grown up lady but some things I loved when I was just a sprout will just never become passe or uninteresting to me.  Like FAIRIES!

These designs are for a project I can't show you yet.  This is part of the bummer of working all the time: I'm always making stuff, but it's always for somebody else, so I can only show it off when they say it's okay.  Hm hmmn.  The point is, I get to make stuff all the time, and you'll see it eventually!

I could probably just keep drawing these forever.  They are marker on animation paper.  Markers are fun!

Got a lot of stuff coming up around the bend, guys.  BIG stuff.  Book stuff.  Stay tuned.  

doodle explosion

I've been doodling a lot lately.  I'm in this Norman Rockwell tribute show in July, and I'm doing a couple paintings for it.  I'm using one of my favorite (and one of Rockwell's, too) subject matters:  teenagers.  They are pretty wonderful.  This is my very sloppy color sketch for one of said paintings.  

Here are some sketches that I coughed up in preparation for this piece.  I decided not to edit them or make them pretty, so, what you see is how they were drawn on the page. 

Doodles!

Some of these were done from photos.  It is hard to find good photos of teenagers.  The best way to observe them is in their natural habitat: walking home from school.  In photos they either look like children dressed as adults or they are trying very hard to appear attractive.  In person they can't hide all their appealing imperfections though.  

Most of these are not even whole ideas.  I just needed to warm up.  I tend to give up on a drawing half way through if I think it's not going where I want it to.  That's probably not a good habit.  But I keep doing it anyway.  

Even though this was drawn on a huge slice of 16 field animation paper, somehow my favorite drawings are squashed up against, and cut off by, the bottom of the page.  Mer.

This girl is a prototype of the one from the color sketch.  I think I  did a bazillion drawings of her before I found one that I really liked.  My thought process was something like "This girl will have cute short hair.  What kind of shirt would a short-haired girl wear?  She will wear a skirt because she's afraid people might think she's a boy if she doesn't, because she doesn't know how cute and girly she is.  She wears a lot of necklaces for the same reason..." etc. etc.  Yes it's fun to invent people.  

That head right in the the middle is my favorite thing that I've drawn in a long time.  I like that shoe too.  I considered giving her motorcycle boots, but I like cowboy boots better.  Plus it fits the 'Americana' theme of the show.  

I like that girl on the left a lot.  I wish I hadn't drawn that creepy man head so close to her.  It looks like he's trying to smell her hair or something.  Gross!

I hope you still like me now that you know I do lots of ugly and awkward drawings before I get to a good one.  

(Whoooooaaa blogger is all different now!  I like it.) 

Till next time, when I will have a lovely finished painting to show off!

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.

tigers + galleries

I've been busy doing freelance stuff all week (and probably will be for the next while), so I had to dig around in the crusty archives of my tiny little computer to find something half way decent to show you. I found you some tigers and puppies. You love tigers and puppies!



I love tigers. Somewhere in the great gobs of stuff from my childhood that are gathering dust in my mom's garage there is a collection of stuffed tigers that I curated. I touched a baby tiger once. It wasn't soft...it was close in texture to dog hair. Not very baby-like at all.



I had to do these really fast, so they're not super immaculate in their presentation or anything. They're marker and colored pencil on animation paper.



Also, for everyone or anyone who has asked me when will you/have you ever/are you going to have your work in a gallery, I can finally say "Why yes, yes I will!"

I'm going to have a little show at the Occidental College Library this coming fall! A few quick facts about Occidental College, if you're curious: it's in Eagle Rock, Barack Obama went there for a while before transferring to Smart People Who Will Be President Someday College, and LOTS of movies and TV shows have been filmed there, including your secret favorite movies, Don't Be A Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood and Clueless. I realize having a show in a library may seem a little hokey-pokey but I almost can't think of a place more appropriate for me to display my stuff. I really, really love libraries and books and my second best job ever was working in the library at CalArts because I got to look at cool stuff in books all day and smell that paper-slowly-decaying scent. It's nice that it's so far in advance too, since I have time really get together a big body of new work for it (plus more time to procrastinate).

But that's not for quite a while. In the mean time:

I'll be in participating in a gallery show and weekend sale at the Partow Gallery here in LA on January 31st-February 2nd. More details to come!

I've been asked to contribute to Kevin Dart's forthcoming book "Seductive Espionage: The Art of Yuki 7", which is like the biggest compliment ever. There's going to be a show at Gallery Nucleus in July when the book is released, too. I'm really determined to do a super good job on my piece so I've already started sketching stuff and gathering my ideas together.

So yeah, not too shabby a start to the New Year, I don't think.

I'll have some new drawings for you next week. Really!

I promised myself I would update at least twice a week.

Who wants to go to a blog that's all stale? No one. I'm determined to keep updating at least twice a week, although last week I didn't do so good. I thought about updating several times, but it just didn't happen. I'm going to try harder this week! It's only Monday, there's still time!


Here are some designs that I did a while ago for a commercial that didn't get used. The ad was about cell phones and stuff, which is why all these guys have phones.




And here are some children who could have accompanied Mr. Cell Phone.




Meanwhile, here's what I've been up to:

-painting backgrounds for the Swarovski project
-handing out my business cards!
-getting ready for sweater weather and enjoying how much cooler it's been in Los Angeles these days (at least in the morning)
-sketching up ideas for APE like a crazy lady
-reading 2 books at once (not as confusing as it sounds)
-drinking lots and lots of tea
-setting up a flickr account
-preparing for a vacation get-away weekend real soon!


Well, at least I'm not boring.

By the by: I've turned comment moderation on for the time being. I guess someone thought it would be a real fun thing to come to my blog and anonymously sass me, but I don't think that's cool. Nobody wants to read somebody else's out and out rudeness, even if it's not directed toward them. So for your sake, dear blog reader, and for my own, you will have to have an ID of some kind to post a comment AND your comment will be moderated. For most of you that's no big deal, but for people who for some reason think I'm stupider than a head of lettuce and everybody else should have to read your opinion about that: tooooooo bad.