insta-life

Hey guys, I have a new painting to show you REAL SOON!  

In the mean time, did you know I'm on Instagram, making stylish photos appear in my iphone that I could never manage to produce with an actual camera and film?  My username is missbrigette, if you are of the Insta-persuasion yourself. 

Most pertinent to this blog, I often Instagram my works-in-progress, like so!

That one is almost done!  Just about a bazillion flowers left to paint, is all.

Ooooh yeah, there's a Beatles thing on its way, too.

 There's a lot of kitty-doggy pictures...

I can't help it.  I hang out with these two ding dongs all day and they are stinking cute.  

She was chasing a rainbow, you guys.

It's kind of handy, actually, because having all those neat filters reminds you to take pictures of places you go and things you see, with the incentive that you can make whatever it is appear up to 900% cooler than it actually was.  

But also I kind of think I go to a lot of cool places, too.  The Hollywood sign almost always looks fantastic.

Even freeways look cool through a vintage filter!!

Sometimes I just take pictures of stuff around my dusty old apartment.

Just kidding.  I take pictures of this apartment because I love this apartment. 

Also...I love my dog.  

My cat is not too bad, either.  

And sometimes I take pictures of my own fashionable choices, so I can remember them foreverrrrrr!

That horseshoe necklace broke!  Sad! 

See, it's working.  I'm remembering stuff.

It's hard to take a picture of the top of your own head.

An occasional picture of food.  Not too big on food pictures.  If food pictures is what you want, you've come to the wrong place.

Next time more art!

the kitty: mostly photos, a painting and some drawings

Did you know I recently acquired a cute baby cat?  I did.  Her name is Pyewacket, but we pretty much only ever call her 'kitty'.  And even then it's usually 'kitty stop that!! no biting! KITTY!'

 Look at those claws!  Fierce!  Ferocious!

Here she is in action, trying to eat the buttons off my shirt.

Button consumption causes sleepiness.

So this weekend, when I was asked last minute to do a painting demonstration at Nucleus during the It's a Small World show opening, the little squirt became my muse.  What's a painting demonstration, you ask?  It's when you paint with a bunch of people watching you.  It was actually pretty stressful.  I was sweating like crazy, but you can't tell, thank goooooodness!

There were two other artists doing demos: to my left was Israel Sanchez, who whipped up a flawless gouache sailboat, and to my right is Patrick Awa, who made this totally lovely piece appear out of nowhere.  We had about 45 minutes, I think.  

Here's what I ended up with:

Except kitty never really brings me pretty flowers.  In fact I think she hates plants (she destroyed the potted plant in our living room by shredding it, the booger).   When I finished it was raffled away to a lucky winner.  I hope they like cats!

I didn't have a sketch or anything for this, I just did it on the fly!  It was very small, only 5"x5", and you can tell from my giant paint tubes that I used acrylic.  I did, however, have a little practice drawing the kitty:

She is hard to capture.  Like most cats, she has a very serious, and often psychotic expression, yet she is also stupidly cute.  

A got a couple good Lila drawings in there, too!

In case you were wondering if my household was turned upside down by the arrival of kitty, let the following photos assure you that she is fitting in quite nicely with Lila the dog.  

She's much bigger in this second photo...Lila likes to look out the window into the courtyard and then bark like a crazed banshee when anyone gets close.  

Yay for pets!  Furry little muses.  

my fun fun fashion blog

I started a style/fashion/clothing/I'm obsessed with shoes blog with my good former classmate/hilarious friend/fellow artist ED Juan!

We really just started it for fun, and because we are both constantly and consistently preoccupied with clothes. It's been getting a pretty positive response from our friends and the like, so I thought I'd share it on my 'real' blog.

What's on it, you ask? Stuff like this:

Drawings of my outfits...

Cute pictures of my mom from the 60's...

Very poorly taken iphone photos of my clothes...

It's located right HERE!

It's been a ton of fun to update. Good times.

dress shoppe stationary

Hello to you out there in the blog-o-sphere! I know I've been neglecting my blog, and that's not fair. My little bloggy blog has
done a lot for me, and yet I ignore it. No more!! I'm going to start posting more regularly now, I promise. I've even got a few ideas for regular/weekly/feature type blog updates so that even if I have nothing of my own to show you I can at least post something. Keeping it fresh is important, dontcha know.

In the mean time, just to prove that I have not just been sitting around my apartment eating bon bons and painting my nails (although I do so in moderation when the mood strikes), I'd like to present one of the projects that has kept me away from bloggin' as I should: my Dress Shoppe stationary set! I know I mentioned it before, but I got the thumbs up to do a more in-depth post on it, so here goes...


I wanted all the gals to look different but like they are from the same universe, too. This first lady in the suit might be my favorite. She's like the ultimate chic housewife of the decade. I imagine that she wears this outfit to the supermarket to buy 50lbs of meat to store in her giant freezer in her turquoise and pink kitchen. "Off to buy some haaaaam!"




This gal might look familiar because she is a re-incarnation of my Librarian Paper Doll. She was the inspiration for this set. (I still really want to do a straight up paper doll book or magnetic paper doll, by the by.)


I love this color combo: red orange, pink, minty green.



And one last sunny yellow dress! Actually, this might be my favorite. She's more 60's looking than the rest, but I love her flats and pink gloves. I pretty much gave her an outfit that I'd like to wear.

I made the set for Chronicle Books and I have to say, they really do a bang-up job on the graphic design end. The style of the set is super girly and very 50's, and I had the pleasure of working with folks who totally understood what I was going for and had a lot to add to it. Look at the little photo shoot they did for the back of the the box:

So perfect!!

It comes with stickers so you can stick accessories on the gals, like little glasses and purses and flower brooches and hats. And pink envelopes! Did I mention that they stand up? They do. (PS, please excuse the general crappishness of these photos.)


Anyhoo-a, you can pre-order them on Amazon
OR on the Chronicle Books website, but you wont be able to play with 'em til March. :)

pics from the show!

As promised, some photos from the show this past weekend, courtesy of Jules! (As you may know, dear blog reader, my camera has resigned to paper weight status, and so I have no pics of my own.)



Sorry to anyone in these pics who would rather not be. If it makes you feel better, there are pretty much no flattering images of myself to speak of.





Bert approved.



Cute children and cute dogs liked the show, too...(that's my friend's baby Kaitlyn and my sister's baby Bambi).



Yep. Good times.