Come On, Paint Something Already

I do have a few paintings going right now, but since I'm posting from my phone post-board game all you get are doodles right now.

Something Is Happening

I'm not really sure what's happening here, but something sure is happening.

Day Of The Bunnies

Pretty obviously inspired by John Wyndham's "Day Of The Triffids"...

Cyborg Kitty Needs Hot Sauce

I think cats are ideal cybernetic soldiers. When the robot uprising happens next year, they will be the perfect bridge between technology and biology, possibly even fighting on the side of the humans. I will probably never paint this cyborg kitty or any of the doodles like it, but I always enjoy adding extra parts to drawings of people or animals. This is not exclusive to robot parts - one of my other favorite things to draw is a fusion of plants and people. For a while everyone I drew had flowers or leaves growing out of them and half the time was bound to the ground by a root system.


I didn't have time to get too far on it, but I worked on my cake zombie a little bit more the other night. I'm especially interested right now in getting sharp lines and contrast using only watercolor paint instead of partially relying on my acrylic inks for definition. The two zombies below are a pretty good example of what that looks like, but I think that I can still do more with the paint.

I plan to still apply ink to a lot of my paintings, but I want to give myself the option not to if it fits the painting. In addition to liking the way the ink looks most of the time, I absolutely love the process of applying it and corralling the paint like a reverse coloring book. More and more though there are times when I want to let the paint roam like free-range watercolor.

The Hug Gnome

I'll be at the Columbia City Art Walk once again on Thursday, July 21 from 4-8pm. Tell everyone you know to empty their bank accounts and buy some stickers, prints, and fancy art boxes from me and then get a hug. The hug isn't from me though - you have to find the secret "hug gnome" who lives in the alleys of Columbia City.

http://communityartscreate.org/Community_Arts_Create/ArtWalk_%26_Street_Fair.html

I might also be a gallery artist this month, but since the event is in two days and I haven't heard anything I wouldn't count on it.

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msid=215220059461156030924.0004a1ddda17d1a2a04a3&msa=0


View Columbia City ArtWalk, Bohemian Backstreets in a larger map

The Occupation

I've been wanting to paint Pobobawa for a while. He's a terrifying dude.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popobawa

Sweetness Disability

Whenever I come back from a break I like to paint a zombie or two. In this case, one zombie has no arms and cannot lift the cake to his mouth. The background is a continuation of my mountain goat painting from a few weeks ago.

Tiny Bubbles

I've gotten in the habit of including song lyrics with these art posts, not as a way to avoid actually writing something substantial, but because my mind does jump to song lyrics quite a bit. I know pieces of the lyrics to loads of songs, but right around zero complete songs. In this case the small globes floating in the background of this painting which might be planets but which might also be bubbles brought me to Don Ho's "Tiny Bubbles":



So here's to the golden moon
And here's to the silver sea
And mostly here's a toast
To you and me



I've been trying to recall the name of the artist who painted ominous floating spheres to tie into this as well, but as much as I love the paintings of oppressive and heavy-feeling objects hovering over landscapes I can't remember his name at all. It's possible that I'm fabricating an entirely new artist from false memories of paintings like the one by René Magritte pictured above.

Instead, here is a little more work on a kiwi bird.

The Ghosts Of The Sailors

I've been posting from my phone lately, which means I haven't been able to write much to go along with the pictures. Thank you to everyone who came to see me at the Mercer Island summer festival last weekend. The weather was perfect and I had a lot of fun hanging out with my co-artist Alexandria Sandlin and seeing the response to some of my newer pieces.

There were some slow moments, which is when I did the ink drawings from this post and the previous one (http://spiralsinlove.blogspot.com/2011/07/i-made-these-for-you-because-you-werent.html). It's been a while since I drew in just ink and it felt great to get back to it. For all the different mediums I've worked in, ink has been a constant for me since I was old enough to realize there was life outside of the world of crayons. While I do rough out my paintings in pencil, I prefer drawing in ink because the finality of it forces me to make decisions and run with them. I had a drawing teacher in college who would rush over and snap at anyone who tried to erase a line. I hated that teacher until a few months after her class, when I realized how much more confident I was in my drawing ability and how much easier it was to visualize an end result before committing a line to paper.

As far as the drawings I posted go, I'm happy with three out of four of them. The face pieces are something I've been wanting to try for a while. Jumping from surface to surface in connected works of art has always felt a little gimmicky to me (or at least like dentist office art), but now having played with it a few times I do enjoy implying the lines in between without actually drawing them. The monster with the flowers got some shiny bumps all over his head and a heart-shaped box in his other hand, but my lines were awkward and tight feeling so that's my reject of the bunch. I try not to throw anything away any more (I used to toss a lot of my finished drawings), but if I wasn't practicing art conservation this one would definitely go in the recycling.

The cats with their lower jaws dropped on the ground is my favorite by a long shot. It stemmed from a discussion Alex and I were having about dreams. Immediately following me talking about how I don't like to depict ideas from my dreams I drew the cats which are a loose depiction of an idea from a dream I had about 10 years ago. I've been forming an entire forest of rounded shapes in my head lately and feel like these cats aren't all that far away from my burrito dog (https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGAaIrBsRsZpoAVOQWosLug-ZhvodjSaf11c-LOb1r3IjCi4SQZKk9BD-HXob6XuietzYWuVa_kZ9SHZcM2di2l29XaqlfH9jbEJIlu1aJCHkEYxeUVIVvaw-kIdqtCqoxTUiyhFZ1dm8/s1600/saleprice.jpg). I feel like the cats are done as they are, but if I do end up with a forest I might paint new versions of them as the board they're drawn on won't hold up to watercolor paints.

As for the mermaid, that was cribbed from Alex. In an effort to trick people into coming into our tent and buying our art I drew spirals and arrows in the middle of the road with chalk. Since the chalk was out, Alex decided to draw a bony mermaid with webbed fingers. I was out of room on the ground and tired of the feeling of chalk, so I drew my mermaid on another backing board. I like the weight of it and especially the dangling arms, but I wish I had made her tail pass between her arms rather than behind both of them. She was spectral enough that when I was posting the picture I had these lines from Cracker's "Dr. Bernice" (http://youtu.be/b4dWh2x_4gY) running through my head:

And the ghosts of the sailors who died on the rocks

Feel not a twinge of regret

Though the wind may tangle the hair on your head

You sing like a siren to me

I Made These For You Because You Weren't Here

A Box Full Of Nothing

I love small containers with lids. If you do too, I have a few handmade art boxes available at this weekend's Mercer Island show. And if you hate art but love basketball, it looks like they're setting up for a tournament near my table. Maybe I'll get lucky and break another frame!

Put On Your Shiny Boots

I will be at the Mercer Island Summer Festival this weekend sharing a table with Alexandria Sandlin (http://cherrybones.typepad.com/blog/). Come buy some stuff from us!

http://www.mercergov.org/SectionIndex.asp?SectionID=61
http://www.mercergov.org/News.asp?NewsID=1407

We'll Take Turns

Playing the folded paper monster game with a friend.