there is just one moon, and one golden sun

....and a smile means friendship to everyone!

This is my piece for the Gallery Nucleus It's a Small World show that opens this Saturday, September 17.  I made a diptych, which is fancy speak for "two paintings that are supposed to go together".  They're both about 10"x20" and acrylic on board.

I wanted it to capture the happy, peaceful, slightly psychedelic feeling that you get from the ride.  I have been on that ride (at Disneyland, and once at Tokyo Disneyland!) a lot of times.  Once, we got stuck inside in the same spot for about 15 minutes, which could easily be obnoxious, but there's so much amazing design to look at that it was actually nice.  Slightly hypnotic, but nice.

Messing with the colors was a lot of fun, and I actually indulged and bought new, non-bargain price paint for this project!  Well, I say "indulged" but most of my paint was pretty much dried up crust in a bottle and not usable.  Plus I've got more gallery shows coming up and I like to be prepared!...or try to be.

Classes at CalArts started today!  I'm teaching a class about making awesome portfolios (a class I wish had existed when I was there).  I'm slightly nervous, more because it's hard to get up in front of people and talk than anything else.  My first class is Friday, so I still have to time to prepare!  I'm going to practice my lecture on my dog.  We'll see how that goes.

Work work work!!

simone and dottie and speck

Hey out there!  I'm super crazy bizzy with making books, going to weddings, painting paintings and stuff, but I had to stop and breath and update!!  A whole month went by.  Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?

I'm in the Pee Wee Herman show at Gallery 1988 this month, and these are my pieces.  I seem to gravitate towards to peripheral characters when it comes to these themed shows.  Since Pee Wee's Big Adventure is one of my most favorite movies EVERRR, and because I don't think these ladies get enough credit for making that movie as great as it is (Dottie is adorable, and Simone is super soulful!) I dedicated them to paint.

PS, I've been to Cabazon, where those dinosaurs are, and it's actually much weirder than it is in the film.  Plus there's a stupid BBQ restaurant or Burger King or something right in front of them.  

Dottie!  I like you Dottie, LIKE you, LIKE!

Both of these gals are available on Gallery 1988's website now.  They are all framed and pretty.  Take them home and love them forever.  

Okay guys, there are lots of updates in the near future.  I actually have a lot of things to share, but not the time to post about them yet.  Soon!

kim and jim

So, I was invited to be in this show. I watched this movie and did a bunch of sketches, and then decided that I'd feature the 'villain' of the story in my piece instead of the hero, because while Edward gets a lot of love, poor, beefy, angry Jim (Anthony Michael Hall) gets nothing.

Also, I thought it'd be fun to document my painting process. Why not? I'm not sure that you'll be able to glean any "secrets" or "techniques" or any of that stuff from these pictures, but at the very least they're interesting to look at!


I started off with a little doodle of what I wanted the painting to look like! This sketch is really only like 1 1/2" tall. It doesn't need to be much bigger than that to get its point across. You can pretty much tell what's goin on, compositionally.

I scanned it, brought it in to old photoshop, and did some color stuff! I did a bunch of different color ideas but this one (which was pretty close to what I'd imagined) was the best.

I got this big piece of very cheap board from an art store and cut it down to the size I wanted. I didn't gesso the board, I just gave it a coat of really ugly bright magenta paint. I don't have a good reason for choosing that color. I just had a really big bottle of pink paint that I wanted to use up. Anyway, once I had a layer of paint down the next few coats of paint had something to grab onto, so that's what that's all about. Please note: my paints are mostly of the cheap-o variety.

I took a big turquoise colored pencil and sketched in my dinosaur bush, Jim and Kim. For some reason I suddenly felt that I should switch Kim with Jim so they're different than they were in my first sketch. I don't know why! It just seemed right! Also I started to lay in some paint, mostly just for texture and rough shapes. It looks awful at this point, doesn't it??

Nooooow it starts looking a little more like something, although not much more...

It's slowly coming together, but only sort of. Usually somewhere in the middle of working on a picture you have a moment where you think "This is awful. This isn't going to work. What was I thinking? What IS THIS??" I was having that thought about here. If you recognize that feeling, you know it eventually goes away if you keep working...

I don't have a hierarchy of what I work on first or last or whatever. It's usually more like, "What do I feel like painting now??" I felt like getting Winona resolved. Winona Ryder is hard to catch a likeness of. She's pretty and all, but she kinda doesn't have any really defining features. Anthony was pretty easy. I just had to make him look angry and red.

Finally past that "this is garbage" feeling! It's starting to look like a painting!

OH! THAT'S what it's supposed to look like! The piece is BIG (for me at least!) and won't fit on my tiny scanner, so you will have to be content with these grainy iphone pictures of the finished product. I like how it came out.

It was missing something, so I added leaves and branches to the ground around the dino-topiary. It gives you the feeling that Edward was just there, even though he's not in the picture at all.

Grrrr!!

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.

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!

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...

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!

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?