Thursday, March 31, 2011

The Boy Who Could Fly

My art is on a flyer! Art walk season is kicking off so in addition to the wonderful people at www.gotgotartart.com putting my name out there on these flyers I am going to actually leave the house sometimes and make appearances at art walks and show openings. Like the one tomorrow night at Happy Delusions!

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=118565178221108

Time
Friday, April 1 · 5:00pm - 8:00pm

Location
happy delusions
924 S. 3rd St.
Renton, WA, 98057

Wednesday, March 30, 2011

A Really Good Poisonality

My son has been illustrating an activity book filled with terrible puns and fill-in-the-blank monsters. He asked me to paint some of them, and Gumble was my favorite so far.


Is Gumble drooling alone in the woods because he is poisonous? Or is he poison-free but just so spacey and disgusting that no one wants to be around him, even other monsters? The glazed but horrified expression could indicate that he has just found his spirit animal and is having his mind blown that his spirit animal is A GUMBLE.

No matter what the situation is that has stranded this nude and fingerless freak in the wilderness, I think we should be happy for Gumble. It's a beautiful day, and he's getting some fresh air. That's more than I can say for myself right now.

Two Steps


I'm listed here now: http://www.maggieschneider.com/#1101218/Seattle-Visual-Artist-Directory

Special thanks to my parents for having a last name that starts with "A" so that I'm at the top of the list.

Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Dear Diary,


The only thing worse than not selling any art is not being able to give it away for free. So far I have exactly zero entries in my facebook “Like” competition since my mom got me a bunch more likes (you’re awesome, mom!) but bowed out of the contest. The rest of you have a little less than two weeks to get into the game. The original contest information is here: http://www.facebook.com/notes/spirals-in-love/do-my-bidding-get-free-art/172078159508439, but basically you have until 4/10/11 to refer people to “Like” the Spirals In Love facebook page and the person with the most referrals wins a piece of original art.

On a marginally related note, I wish I had someone to tear my art apart. Granted, I’m pretty much a hermit, but one of my hopes in putting my art up on the Internet is that I could get genuine criticism. The only thing I’ve ever gotten out of praise is embarrassment – critique is key to artistic growth. So I am officially giving any of my readers license to say mean things.

“That yellow doesn’t look any better just because you put sparkles in it.”

“Change the direction of your lighting once in a while.”

“Why does that creature’s body eclipse both its legs if I’m looking at it from the side?”

You don’t have to be able to draw or paint to criticize me (I’ve always hated the “don’t say anything if you couldn’t do it better yourself” argument) and I will appreciate anything you have to say as a chance to understand what other people see when they look at my art.

Anyway…I’ve been reading and sleeping a lot and that 12-painting auction project took a lot of time so I haven’t made a much progress on my own work the last few days. I have big painting plans for this afternoon and evening though. In the meantime, I’d like to share some graffiti I saw on Seattle’s public graffiti wall (http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/georgetown-graffiti-wall/Location?oid=447646). The face on the wall was very reminiscent of a series of “Catrina” paintings and drawings by Rebekah Joy Plett. I don’t know if the graffiti artist was familiar with Rebekah’s work or if it was a coincidental transfer of ideas across some artistic hive mind. I’d like to think it was the latter. One of the original drawings is below – you can see more in the archives of Rebekah’s blog at http://rebekahjoyplett.blogspot.com/.

Monday, March 28, 2011

Dark They Were, And 20% Off

http://gotgotartart.com/?p=340

Price: $200
Sale: $160

I won't post these every time the price drops on one of my paintings, but part of the deal with www.gotgotartart.com is that when an original goes unsold it drops to a sale price before leaving the site completely.

So go get $160 before it's too late. I heard you can make a lot of money selling CUTCO cutlery to your friends and family. I wouldn't know for sure though, because I walked out in the middle of a Vector Marketing CUTCO "Interview" when I was 16 after realizing it was a scam. I did get to see them cut a penny in half with some scissors before I left though. Make sure you carry those scissors when you become an official CUTCO representative because ever since then I've wanted a pair to cut up all the pennies in my change jar. I'll give you $160 for them.

Sunday, March 27, 2011

The Children Are Finished

The 2nd grade self-portraits I transferred to canvas a few weeks ago were painted by the class in teams of two. As we all know, children are terrible at everything so once they were done I had to go in and touch up the paint on some of them and then add a colored border to each. They're going up for some public school auction so for all you public school auction enthusiasts out there...you should probably look it up and figure out when it is because I have no idea.

Friday, March 25, 2011

This Is Happening


Friday, April 1 · 5:00pm - 8:00pm

happy delusions
924 S. 3rd St.
Renton, WA, 98057


http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=172781006107554#!/event.php?eid=172781006107554

I will have four pieces in this show, provided I remember to drop them off this weekend. I was supposed to do it last night and totally forgot. Oops.

Cool For Cats And Kittens

I read in Harper's recently that original art is cool for both cats AND kittens. If you consider yourself to be either of these (you know you do), you owe it to yourself to get one heck of a great price on some original art. The piece of mine that's up today (BUYBUYBUY http://gotgotartart.com/?p=344 BUYBUYBUY) is actually one of my favorites that I've done because it captures the simple serenity I feel whenever I go in the water. Which, fun fact, even cats and kittens can appreciate.

http://gotgotartart.com/

At The Gates

I have a lot of black paint coming my way and wanted to practice with what I already had before I got it since black watercolor is a lot harder to work with than other colors. This was supposed to be a quick doodle that somehow ended up taking me all night, and I didn't even finish. At least it has a cupcake so I can use it to cash in on the cupcake fad. Unless that's been supplanted by something new. Maybe I should be painting dueling piano bar monsters instead.

Thursday, March 24, 2011

Bub-Bubs

So here I made this big bid for new fans and then I fell off the map for a few days. Sick kids, science fairs, and nice weather really take away from painting time. I got a little work done though, including these bubbles. I don't know if I'll finish this (it's part of a larger painting), but I've been wanting to paint bubbles for a while so this was a good chance to play with a few ideas and decide how I wanted to represent bubbles.

Sunday, March 20, 2011

Do My Bidding, Get Free Art


It's a contest!

I want 100 facebook "likes". Since I don't have a personal facebook account and am terrible at promoting myself, I'm bribing YOU to do it. The Spirals In Love fan who refers the most people to "like" my facebook page wins a free 9" x 12" painting of their choice from the following:

Cold-Blooded: http://www.imagekind.com/ColdBlooded-art?IMID=afb9dabf-7605-46d8-b348-2bc68d59114e

I can't figure out if there is a way to track referrals on facebook, so in order to receive credit for referrals you MUST have each person who "likes" the page e-mail me at spiralsinlove@gmail.com or send me a message on facebook with your facebook profile name so I can keep a tally.

This contest ends on 4/10/11. As long as the Spirals In Love facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/pages/Spirals-In-Love/134433636605970?sk=notes) has 100 "likes" on that date, I will contact the winner to have them select their choice of painting so I can pack and ship it. If the page does not have 100 "likes", there will be no winner and I will cluck my tongue at you in disappointment.

Saturday, March 19, 2011

Moonface, Floating In Space


Tonight's the night. Go outside, look up. If you're really lucky, Moonface will drop Moon Pies and then moon you. I think the giant, glowing moon will be a pretty fantastic treat all by itself though.
Tomorrow night is the spring equinox, but that's much harder to turn into a cartoony painting.

Friday, March 18, 2011

The Station Agent

One of the first scenes of Sergio Leone's "Once Upon A Time In The West" has a close-up shot of an incidental character teetering between fulfilling his duties as the station agent and fearing for his continued existence. The movie (like all of Leone's films) features many wonderful, lingering shots of faces, but the depth of this one short scene sets up the tone for the rest of the movie.

The station agent knows his place in the world of the movie, and he quickly transforms from an attempt at authority to complete subservience in the face of potential violence. The actor is fantastic in the few seconds he gets onscreen, conveying a pleading desperation...but his part is so small that he doesn't even get billed in the credits. In fact, there's a discussion on imdb just trying to discover his name (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064116/board/nest/170242011?d=171519400&p=1). I was especially taken with the lines and shapes in the actor's face - deep wrinkles are fantastic.
I actually did the initial sketch for this much darker and more definite than I usually do for a watercolor painting, mostly so that it would show up for a picture here. I started with a very direct translation of the still below, but you can see in the sketch above that I have already started to add twitchy lines. I had a drawing teacher once who talked about the way lines moved, even on a stationary object. I haven't decided where this painting will go, but my normal process is to mold the lines to the paint and allow the feeling of the paint to overtake the stodginess of the lines.
Henri Matisse made sculptures and paintings showing the process of artistic abstraction. I don't claim to consider myself a fauvist, but I've always loved being able to see the way design choices take something "real" and claim it as their own.



Thursday, March 17, 2011

We're Not Old, Old At All

I started the afternoon planning to work on a couple of happy paintings. I really did. But within minutes of working on them I was pulled away by this image that had been pulsing in my brain for most of the day. A couple of years ago I heard The Antlers' "Hospice" album for the first time and was completely drawn in. I'm a sucker for a cohesive concept album, and this was one of the best I had ever heard. It sets a mood and tells a story, and not a very happy one. I like my fiction to confront me and tear my guts out, and this album did that.



This painting is a very literal interpretation of the song that I think of as the turning point of the album - "Bear". I highly recommend listening to the entire album, but if you'd like to hear the song in question you can do so here:


Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Yeti, You Bet-i!

I don't know if the paper will withstand my abuse, but it's buckling under the 5-6 layers of paint and water I've already applied.

Got Got Art Art

Today I met with the owners of the new site www.gotgotartart.com. The site has only been up for a few days so there's not a lot of content yet, but it is a "deal a day" site (kind of like Groupon or Living Social) for original works of art. I was especially drawn to their goal of providing emerging artists with sales and exposure. I've signed on to be one of their artists and hope to be one of the daily features soon. I just need to finish some paperwork, which is much less fun than doodling slug dinosaurs (they were totally a real thing and it's not my fault you slept through third grade and missed the lesson on slug dinosaurs) shouting GOT GOT and holding ART ART signs.

Sunday, March 13, 2011

How's That For Turnaround Time

Turns out I paint a lot faster when there is a kid lecturing me, "Dad, that is NOT how Pikachu looks."

Poopachu

Apparently the time changed tonight, which is bad news because I stayed up late painting this ridiculous evil Pikachu for my son. The good news is that I don't believe in time.

Friday, March 11, 2011

The Price Of Doing Business


Yesterday I mentioned possibly participating in another show. I just got the details and now I'm looking for a show of hands from anyone who reads this.

I've been asked to participate in an event hosted by RAW on Thursday, April 7. The show is a private art party with DJs, live music, a fashion show, and visual artists. My art would be highlighted by the DJ at some point in the evening, I would be featured in a video interview as well as being in the photos from the event.

http://www.rawartists.org/seattle/art

The most recent RAW Seattle event:
Video - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knCK9J99aHE
Pictures - http://www.flickr.com/photos/rawartists/sets/72157626221381454/

The catch is that participation costs $200 (that, and I hate loud and crowded clubs). Since my work isn't very big or expensive, I would have to actually sell quite a few pieces to cover my costs. Some of that can be covered by me pre-selling tickets at $10 each. It was suggested that I post the link on my facebook page and then my hundreds of rich, outgoing friends would easily cover my costs. Except that I don't have a personal facebook page and only talk to about three people on a regular basis.

So it comes down to a question of someone wanting to back me (probably to take a loss) or promote the show on my behalf or some combination of both. I have 24 hours to get back to the director - if you or someone you know would actually buy tickets to a show like this, please shoot me an e-mail at spiralsinlove@gmail.com. I cringe at the idea of selling things to my friends, so please be honest about wanting to attend or not.

The Anthologist

I was going to write a proper review of this book, but I decided that anything I could say would detract from the beautifully casual writing. I wanted to post it though, because in addition to being one of the best things I've read in years it is also a fantastic insight into what it feels like to be an unrealized artist. Plus, you get to learn a lot about poetry.

I'm A Busy Bumblebee


Except for the fact that I don't have black and yellow fur, wings, or a stinger, I'm EXACTLY like a busy bumblebee. The kind that finally finishes a bunch of paintings and then scans and uploads them. If only I had a queen to proudly report my progress to. I guess I could always secrete royal jelly from my jelly head glands and feed it to a larva for more than three days and then BUZZ I would have a queen to put me in my place as a drone. After swapping my gender, because I think only female bees can make royal jelly.
But before all that, I could look at the new paintings I uploaded and that are now available for sale as prints:

Thursday, March 10, 2011

In The Spotlight

Every time my daughter sees my pearlescent paints she asks me to paint something pink that sparkles. I remember before I had children thinking that I was going to be so careful not to assign gender roles and other similarly idealistic and ambitious ventures. What I know now that I didn't know then is that my child lives and breathes pink sparkles, no matter what. And since I live and breathe for my kids, pink sparkles it is!

What Do You Know, It's A Show


I just found out that I had four pieces accepted into a show! It's a fantasy-themed show, and even though I hate elves and most "fantasy" fiction I do love monsters. I'll post more details when I get them, but the basic information is here (thanks for the tip, Sarah!):

http://happydelusions.wordpress.com/2011/01/19/the-mystical-realm-art-show/

While I've had my art hanging in stores and done plenty of art walk-type events, I've never been part of "a show" before so I'm excited for the new experience. Especially since I think I've been invited to be part of another "a show" that I'll post about once I've confirmed it.

Also, another trio of paintings have been scanned and uploaded so now you can all buy four of each as April Fools' gifts for your loved ones.

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

For Sale


I've been pretty bad about uploading paintings when I finish them (having zero sales in over two months is not a huge motivator), but I finally put a few new things up and updated the http://www.spiralsinlove.com/ galleries last night. I finished even more paintings that I didn't feel like scanning - have I mentioned that I hate working on the computer? I might be participating in an art event in April and art walk season is coming up, so in theory I will be more active with the self-promotion. Although I still don't understand why strangers don't just send me money anonymously so I don't have to leave my house or interact with anyone.


Tuesday, March 8, 2011

It's A Manticore

Frolicking with flowers. There are some yeti waiting in the wings. Stay tuned...

Sunday, March 6, 2011

Troubleshooting

The other night, I spent over an hour trying to get ink to come out of my pen nib. I tried three different pens, bending the nibs, tilting the ink...I was getting a little frustrated. I finally gave up in frustration after almost destroying a painting with scratchy, desperate lines. Then on a whim I tried a different kind of ink. A kind that was in a full container. A container full enough to actually get enough ink on the pen for it to work. Which it did. Just fine.  I wish I could say I had learned something, but the sad fact is that I've learned this lesson once every few months for the last 15 years.

This painting doesn't even have any ink on it, but it does have a lot of fun zig-zaggy lines that I really enjoyed painting.

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

I Watch Care Bears So You Don't Have To

I was watching a Care Bears movie with my sick daughter today and was really taken by the first 20 minutes or so since it seemed like something I would write. The idea was that everything in the floating cloud city of Careington (or whatever the heck it's called) was going well and everyone was happy and content. Funshine, the Supreme Leader of the Care Bears whose tummy power seems to be WHATEVER HE WANTS, ends up in a horrible funk because no one needs his help. Here is the Überbär in a world of already exceptional bears and the only thing that makes him happy is when other people are suffering. Without someone to depend on him, he loses his whole identity. Of course, in the end everyone finds a way to fail so that his furry little life can have a purpose again.


The movie ends with an extended sequence where the Care Bears talk about harvesting something called "rainbow butts". I asked my daughter what they were talking about and she looked at me like I was an idiot and said, "DAD, they are butts that are colored rainbow."

Also, for some reason the green bear in the movie doesn't have anything on its tummy. I told my daughter it must have caught a disease. That's what she gets for making me feel dumb for not knowing about rainbow butts.