Slugs are my new favorite.
If you feel the world does not need more sparkly-trailed slug paintings you’d better tell me now, because all i wanna do from now on is paint TONS of slugs.
runnin with the pack
that’s my dog, toby, right in front. he’s too scared of bicycles to really be the leader of the pack, but he’s noble in spirit.
super-quick sketch time!
because so many of you have asked what it must be like living with the world’s cutest dog, i have illustrated our sleeping arrangements for you.
Oh flapjack.
The blueberries wish you had bought that handlebar- mounted basket
$18. Now for sale at bluebird ice cream on greenwood.
On luck and foxes.
remember how i used to post images of other people’s amazing art on this blog? i’ve decided instead to use this as a doodle and painting blog of my very own doodles and paintings. this means you may see some sub-par and messy quick sketches occasionally, folks. take for example the moderately surly bear below. sub-par, but still posted.
i hope you’ll still like me.
but also, paintings! here’s a little fella for my dearest friend who mails me packages WHEN IT ISN’T EVEN MY BIRTHDAY. or even my half birthday, which is tomorrow. Do you know a luckier girl? no. you do not.
she deserves foxes because foxes are carefree and lovely and frolic-filled, just as every summer day should be. and pretty much every day should also be filled with california poppies.
Saturday! December 10th! Crafty Goodness in Wallingford!
folks, there’s nothing festive-ier than craft fairs. come visit me and 44 other artists!
DIY menagerie!
what is the best solution for an artist who needs to paint lots of things for an upcoming show and can’t commit to any one thing for longer than twenty minutes? SEVERAL HUNDRED TINY ANIMAL PORTRAITS! there’s only 20 portraits right now, but the population is growing fast….
and you, dear readers, can buy each and every one of them at my etsy shop or at i heart indie holidays show in Wallingford on December 10th.
all ready for a stampede.
it is always bastille day with mr. le hors.
my love for you is a stampede of horses just alerted me to this crazy beautiful book of firework studies by pierre le hors.
isn’t it fun forcing other people to look at your vacation photos? you know what’s MORE FUN? making people read your vacation comic book! yay!
when we go on exciting trips, the comic book comes too. every day is illustrated right before i go to sleep, which means every illustration in drenched in sleepy sloppiness because all that adventure is kinda exhausting. vacation comic books, though, are exactly 30,000 better at helping remind me of our trips… even when they involve sea snakes and mating sea turtles and ear infections from satan. you can’t photograph ear infections and my camera isn’t fast enough to photograph sea snakes and mating sea turtles – but being in the comic book is vacation memory IMMORTALITY.
wanna see mine?
30 Canvases in 30 (or 6) Days Art Challenge
deadlines are fun! i view them like dares. can i write a brilliant paper in 8 hours? can i prepare a lecture in twenty minutes? can i draw detailed diagrams of the nuclear signaling pathways of cryptochrome 2 before my meeting in an hour? yes, yes, yes! ready go!
which is why i love the 30 day challenge so very much. last year i painted all 30 canvases in 3 days. even i realized this was absurd. this year, i decided to sleep a little and paint them all in 6 days – much better! also, i was simultaneously writing a grant proposal and a thesis proposal as well as organizing an overnight biology field trip and packing for an international vacation. too bad i can’t get paid for multi-tasking.
wanna see a few of my faves for the show? themes involved: ponies, glitter, ocean, glitter, bicycles, and glitter. Its opening December 1st if you’d like to come!
glowing fireflies and meat-plants.
I just finished a painting for the Artist & Craftsman’s Glow Show – you should stop by any time this month! Any opportunity to play with things that glow in the dark is a good one, and I decided to up the complicatedness by also making little clay lightning bugs and embed them in resin inside the painting. I am still not convinced this was a good idea, but it was s u p e r fun.
LESSONS LEARNED FROM THIS PROJECT:
1. any inherently messy person (exhibit a: me) painting with glow-in-the-dark paint will unknowingly end up with it everywhere. i went to bed last night thinking i was in a crime scene investigation.
2. resin has wanderlust. sticky spots abound.
3. dealing with resin means your house will smell like a meth lab for 72 hours.
mr. dan mccarthy and his paleobsession.
i love dinosaurs. i love forests. i love secrets. i love skeletons. i love anything that glows in the dark. can you imagine the level of glee, dear readers, when i first saw dan mccarthy’s new print? its got just the right amount of new perspective to make you feel adventurous just by looking at it.
extra bonus: whose eyes do you think you are looking through? what could possibly be brave enough to be deeper in a cave fulla dinosaur skeletons except for a BIGGER, FIERCER JUST-OUTTA-SIGHT DINOSAUR?
ms. rachel caldwell and her hairiness.
rachel caldwell is really good at drawing hair. that doesn’t seem very impressive until you realize that hair is full of lots of fine lines that overlap and intersect and maze themselves out. ms. caldwell’s got it down. observe.
things i just made.
folks, did you know screenprinting is super awesome? did you know its even awesomer with glow-in-the-dark ink?! i know, i can hardly believe i know how to something so great myself. if you’re in seattle, get yourself over to the vera project for their amazingly cheap class right away. i’m so excited about how much knowledge they gave me that i’m feeling like i need to give them a little donation. what fantastic folks those vera project people are!
anyways, i’ve had a patron commission me for two swimming scottie dog paintings over the past few weeks. this is why i love commissions – why else would i paint sharks and terriers together? how else would i realize that painting kelp is super fun? these little guys were done in 2 hours tops. quick paintings = cheap paintings.
insane watercolor blending with krylon.
just ran across french group csx’s flickr set of some gorgeous graffiti. this crew has the lion’s share of rattlecan talent.
these first pieces are from zoer…
kryo’s in that crew too – he put up this lovely little bit of paint for you to see.
bumber by number at bumbershoot this weekend.
bumbershoot, seattle’s all-consuming music-visual art-comedy-film-performance festival, used to cost $12 to get in back in the olden days. now it’s a bank account massacre over there – $45 makes my wallet cry. but i’m going, gawddammit, because there’s some insanely fantastic art in there and its worth the ramen dinners to see it.
flatstock in all its doe-eyed, heart-rate-increasing, butterflies-in-the-stomach beauty is my favorite thing to ever happen. ever. every time. last year my arm brushed against jay ryan (s w 0 0 n). i actually built up the courage to say hi to daniel danger. i nearly dolphin-squealed when i saw all of dan mccarthy‘s prints there IN PERSON. ohmigoodness. awesome.
but i’m almost equally thrilled about bumber by number, where artists take paint-by-number canvases and make them awesome.
here’s lisa petrucci‘s cute lil number…
and here’s the ever-impressive mary iverson….
the before-and-after vivisection from janet galore…
and my mostest favorite – ponies with opinions about finance from aaron huffington. thanks, slog.
the most epic piece of printed material ever.
so, my post about two and a half seconds ago lavished love onto mr. josh cochran. that was before i saw this.
prepare yourself for…. the battle between unicorns and zombies. yes, you read that correctly.
i know, i know. i can’t stop looking at it either. it’s made up of dreams.
mr. josh cochran, throbby love, and superpowers.
i’ve got a friend who once asked what my superpower is – the one thing that i can do better than anyone else. i’m pretty certain i can see better than you can. not in terms of visual acuity or in noticing that you got a haircut, but in picking up on details. especially the planty, animaly kind of details.
exhibit a – an actual conversation i had during a bike ride with a buddy:
me: wasn’t that hawk AWESOME?
buddy: what hawk?!
me: the goshawk we passed back there on the side of the road! in the butternut tree! eating that house sparrow outta his claw!
buddy: ?!?!?
anyways, i just stumbled across new yorker josh cochran. then i found this awesome print of his. and then, in that blushy flustery way, i fell in love and just wanted to tell E V E R Y B O D Y about how awesome mr. cochran is and how he clearly made this print just for little me and how he knew how to use just the right colors and how did he know that i love ocean mammals and isn’t he just DREAMY? oh mr. cochran, you’ve made me want to go make a mess of prints and have a little artistic fling with my paint right this minute, which i entirely plan on doing. thanks for that.
p.s. – what’s your super power? i wanna know.
shane waltener and his insanely precise little messes.
being a girl who would rather have a colonoscopy than wear anything with an inch of lace attached, i am peculiarly excited about lacy things lately. shane waltener‘s installations are just extraordinary. perfectly cobwebby but meticulously crafted. the quintessential sign of untidiness suddenly transformed into the symbol of a well-kept tidy home. each of these installations has a thoughtful story behind them – it’s worth a visit to his site.
mr. yoan capote has some stress.
but at least it results in some beautiful sculptures. just looking at these pieces gets me tense – which, i suppose, is exactly what mr. capote intends since he named this first piece ‘stress’. it seems hard to make bronzework that isn’t another naked wood nymph or an america-loving eagle, but yoan capote has absolutely found a way to make thoughtful pieces out of a usually trite medium.
more from yoan here.
.minimum wage art. 