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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
new arts!
sometimes, even though you’re in the thick of research and you are thinking about science all the time and you’re sleepy you just have to stay up til 2 am and finish a few paintings.
at least i do.
all these froglets are available in the store! buy art to fund science. backwards, but true.
my grandmother’s gonna be 90.
also, my grandmother is 90 times cooler than you and your grandparents put together. here’s her birthday present. please don’t ruin the secret.
(p.s. my grandmother’s birthday is also MY birthday. try to out-cool that.)
(p.p.s.) our birthdays are december 6th if you’d like to send a note and wish us well.)
forgotten works challenge 2010!
i’m doing the forgotten works challenge again. i’ve gotta finish 30 paintings in 30 days. folks, did you know i’m quite possibly the world’s best procrastinator? doesn’t this sound like the worst endeavor for a person like me? the last time i did this (the very first one, a decade ago) i painted them all in 3 days. good thing i learn and grow from my experiences. i’m sure this is the same personality flaw that causes extinction.
here’s all the canvases that are still without a speck of paint on them. did i mention the due date is this sunday?
one is aaaalmost finished – i just gotta put on the glitter.
anyway, stay tuned. this is gonna get exciting.
guerrilla swing installation.
summer means piles of discarded yet endlessly useful equipment in the hallways outside the labs, like webbing and scrap wood! here in forest resources, we recycle these things lovingly into something useful.
new paintings – swimming
i’ve gotta find some swimming holes, apparently. i can’t stop drawing fish and mermaids this week.
all of these guys are sitting in my etsy store if you need some art!
new paintings
a kind reader asked if i’m still painting since i hardly ever post my own art anymore – it’s true, i do! here’s a few from the farmer’s market set last week…. and some are for sale at etsy, since i retreated from the rain before i sold out!
Behold, the Moss Bathmat!
You are not the only one to think i’m insane to want a moss bathmat. G, who shares this bathroom with me, was entirely skeptical of this idea. but look at the glory of this thing! it’s not nearly as elegant as the bathmat I used as inspiration, but you can’t say this isn’t just as fluffy and delightful.
live on, bathmat, live on.
a few favorites from the farmer’s market line up
they’re the best of buds once they’re back in the port.
pugtastic.
i will stay up all night with you.
painting is happening again! here’s the first finished piece, already waiting in Etsy… 
also, i’m terrified that i’ll leave my space heater on in my new office and burn the whole department down. i made myself a reminder to hang near the door.
wanna learn how to make a terrarium?
so, painting has been a little slow lately – but plant dorkiness is in full force. for some reason terrariums and bell jars have become an unhealthy obsession of late.
first things first – find yourself a container. this is one of the last jars in my house that doesn’t already hold a plant. i had to dump dog biscuits out of it. no container is safe anymore ’round here.
this is a one is a little small, but it’ll work. it’s about the size of a big jelly jar. it has a lid, so it’ll hold onto its moisture longer. that means a minimal chance of me forgetting to water it and then murdering the thing, so that’s good.
here is the fun part – go find yourself some plants. not any plant will do, though; it’s gotta 1) like humidity and 2) be small. midgety small, even. ferns are good. moss is too. extra points if you wanna put carnivorous plants in there, because that means you gotta feed them bugs by hand. it seems a little cactus would be awfully cute in a little jar – they’re awfully gonna be awfully damp and awfully dead before long. don’t do it.
now for the planting bit. put down a thin layer of charcoal, so the whole bottom of your container is covered at least 1 piece of charcoal thick. you can be fancy like me and buy horticultural charcoal ($4 for a decent sized bag!) or you can fish around in your fireplace or you can rip open an extra aquarium filter and use the charcoal in there – it’s all the same stuff. it’ll sweeten your soil, which is just another way for me to say it’ll keep your soil from getting too acidic.
next you’re going to want to add a layer of crushed rock, about 1/2 an inch thick. this adds a bit of drainage to your terrarium, and separates the charcoal from the soil so the charcoal doesn’t decompose too quickly.
you know what else works for this? pea gravel! tiny chunks of broken glass! little bits of cement! if you find little bits of cement aesthetically pleasing, that is. i won’t judge.
next – time for potting soil! soil from your backyard is not going to cut it, since there’s all sorts of molds and microscopic critters out there that are gonna get antsy living in a jar. you should pour at least 2 inches of soil on top of your gravel layer, and then make little pockets to place your plants.
this terrarium is too teensy to hold more than my lil polka dot plant, but if you haven’t used up every big jar in your house yet, you have the fun of creating a little ecosystem! mix tall & short! fluffy & needle-y! light green and dark!
please don’t be the kind of person who takes plants out of their plastic pots and just plops them in the dirt. you’re going to end up with roots that are too afraid to venture out into the new dirt, and they end up circling around themselves until it starves. no one wants that. gently massage those suckers and tease the roots apart. take out some of the the old dirt from in between the roots and spread out the roots when you plant it. let them know that it’s okay to try new things.
last – water! it doesn’t take much, just until it’s a bit moist. you’re going to find that you won’t need to water it much if you’ve got a top on your container, since the soil will just absorb from the enclosed air the water vapor that the plant transpires. smart little beasts, those plants.
you might need a critter or two…
1. yes, i am alive.
2. grad school is great! thanks for asking!
3. no, i don’t have time to blog.
4. see you soon, though.
oh my, it has been a busy month. my little booth at I Heart Rummage in Chop Suey went marvelously, and it made my living room table look like this for weeks beforehand:
and it involved lots of these sorts of messes:
and i was surrounded by lots of familiar themes. i am sure you know them by now:
bikes!
trees!
birds!
and dinosaurs!
and to make matters worse, i made things in the kitchen as well.
thanks to everyone who came to visit. I’m trying to wrangle a spot at the Fremont Market on Sundays, and I’ll let you know if that ever comes to fruition….
Happy New Year!
.minimum wage art. 
