Because Life Needs More Monsters

A friend sent me a link to some of Ben Heine's work (See one below and more here - http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.394490703615.169415.45292293615) and I couldn't wait to try it myself once I saw it.


It's difficult enough to match up drawing, paper, and real life, but it turns out it's even harder to work a camera into that mix and have everything line up. It was still a fun exercise, and despite getting really frustrated by the end I think I would like to try it again. I also need to find out if Heine cheats and just adds the hand holding the paper in Photoshop later, because that would be WAY easier.

Drawing water and being around water and listening to nothing but The Talking Heads for the last few days made me focus on Talking Heads' "Once In A Lifetime" which is about the meaning of life, so I'm including it here. I was going to complain about the linked video for Men Without Hats' "Safety Dance" having twice as many views and being about little more than moshing, then I watched it and smiled the whole time.

Eye Love You

I like to think of this new drawing of two cyclops each seeing something special in the other's eye as the spiritual successor to this very old drawing:
http://spiralsinlove.blogspot.com/2010/09/kiss.html

Call Us In Our Tiny Boats

My art was mentioned today on www.allthingscupcake.com because I am so beautiful. Or because I painted another cupcake. Right now the post is on the front page, but if you're slow you should be able to always find it at

http://www.allthingscupcake.com/2011/09/27/cupcake-dragon-art/.

Funny thing about this piece...it's one of the few I've done that ended up on paper exactly the way I saw it in my head. That almost never happens.

More Christmas Monsters Or Something Like That

Cupcakes Are So Passé

I've been pretty terrible about updating www.spiralsinlove.com or posting links to finished pieces on my art blog, but here are a few that I'm pretty sure I haven't posted yet. Prints can currently be ordered through these links (and any of the ones that are posted on imagekind or www.spiralsinlove.com), but I'm slowly working toward a process of fulfilling my own orders. This should be a minimal time commitment, since my 2011 online print order total is 0.

Sparklingly Christmas

I absolutely love Christmas. I am also pretty fond of monsters, so combining the two always sounds fun to me. This piece is essentially what I usually doodle in the margins of meeting minutes at work, but since I'm working on it in colored ink on colored paper I get to eventually hang it up and call it art.
This drawing has a rare quality in that my kids actually like it and it made them laugh when they saw it. Tonight I will be adding glowing colored lights which, as my daughter pointed out this morning, "will have spirals, OF COURSE."

I used a lot of adverbs in relatively few sentences here...

Start Wearing Purple

Even with an ink drawing, I still enjoy going over my own lines. This is an art walk doodle that started in black ink and ended with blue ink (my options were limited).

I've been approached by PanCan Puget Sound to donate another painting for their Purple Stride auction this year, so I've started to brainstorm relatively uplifting images that might look good in purple. I don't know if this one will make the cut, but I'm really taken with the idea of wings forming a heart. I like wings and hearts.

Final Art Walk Of The Season!

I'll be at the Columbia City Art Walk tomorrow from 5-9pm (or at least until it gets too dark to see art). This is my last art walk of the season and it couldn't be at a better place. Columbia City was by far my favorite art walk this year, and I'm excited for this final one. The Gloria Darlings should be there performing and there are a few new activities. Check it out here:

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

My next appearance after this will be a show opening in November at Monster Art & Clothing in Ballard.

We'll All Float On

Things are pretty wretched for me right now in a few areas of life, which makes it extremely tempting to draw pictures of droopy bat-monsters growing out of but also devouring a larger, much more docile and sadly smiling bat-monster. But I am loved and in relative good health so I’m soldiering on with more training doodles. This one was kicking around in my head for a while anyway, but then I saw a reference to it in a book I am reading and out came the rat in the head.

I’ve included some of my original doodles. The early ones are in black ink and I REALLY hated them. But they were a necessary part of the process. I don’t usually do that many rough thumbnails, but I was in a funny mood that night.

We Could Steal Time

Day job-style work has been keeping me down, but I was able to do a self-portrait of me in an endless training class. I'm fascinated by the type of person drawn to adult education. He started the day (week!) all chipper and full of hope but by the end of the first day he was just as beaten and brain-dead as the rest of us. At least I get to walk away at the end of the week...

Mind The Spray

While working on this, I forgot to move some in-progress paintings out of the way and spattered them with orange paint. It worked out though, as it added textures and contrast that I really like.

I wasn't kidding...

...about the decapitated drawings. Come on down. You can listen to this woman TIGER ZANE sing. Her name is TIGER ZANE. I like to imagine that Billy Zane had something to do with that, but I think the true story is that she rose from the ashes of an AWESOME BOMB.

Off With My Head

Today is National Beheading Day! (Thanks to Underneath The Juniper Tree for the heads up...or down...)

To celebrate, I'll be at the Issaquah Art Walk tonight from 5-9pm. Well...probably not all the way to 9pm because last year by 9pm it was totally dark and people were politely squinting at my art but not able to really see anything so I will likely start packing up when the sun-god gets beheaded and the sun plops below the tree line. Come by and mention this and I will draw you a picture of a beheaded monster.

I should be here:


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If you just want to celebrate the holiday in the peace and quiet of sitting in your underwear in front of the computer, you can do so with the new issue of Underneath The Juniper Tree here:

http://issuu.com/underneaththejunipertree/docs/utjt_sept2011

And by listening to The Offspring song "Beheaded", which is probably not OK for kids depending on how you feel about recreational dismemberment:

In Your Face

I feel rusty. Hand cramping, arm tensing, action figure with unfinished metal joints left out in the rain rusty. In theory, I'll cast off the crust of oxidation soon enough. In the meantime, I'm going over and finishing up old drawings and paintings.

I wish I could say come see me at tomorrow's Issaquah art walk (it's the final one of the year!), but I have heard zero peeps from the people in charge. Last time they called me the day of the event, so there's still hope. Even if they don't, if you live in the area I highly recommend swinging by downtown Issaquah for art, music, and good food. And maybe my pretty face.