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.
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."Despite the fact that the bulk of my art blog/site traffic is coming from spam URLs in Russia, I continue to post new work. I like to think that the little SpamBots get bored with their work (it’s so repetitive!) and appreciate a little distraction in the form of a monster eating a cookie or something.
Anyway, I finished a few things and it turns out I had even more things finished a while ago that I forgot to scan and upload so that’s done now too. Prints can be ordered from the following links or by contacting me directly at spiralsinlove@gmail.com.
Instead, here is a little more work on a kiwi bird.
Prints of "The Purpose" are now available at http://www.imagekind.com/The-Purpose-art?IMID=577fd50c-9f54-483c-a3ef-ad9ae6bae553. The pink words are not on the actual print, but you could always buy some pink letter stickers and add them yourself.
I'm not really big on drawing attention to myself, but since I recently starting showing up on film again (mirrors too!) I suppose it's worth sharing when someone takes pictures of me with my art.
I'll Catch You If You Fall - Ina Mar
I finished/scanned/uploaded a few things in the last couple of days. I'll update the galleries at http://www.spiralsinlove.com/ soon, but at least for now you can view the finished pieces at imagekind using the links below.
I'm probably getting the story wrong, but my mom recently showed my current art to someone I went to high school with (I don't talk to anyone I went to high school with so I guess she's my liaison) and they responded with surprise..."That's what he's doing now? He needs to go back to what he was doing in high school. THAT was what he was good at."
That story got me digging through my piles of art to look at what I was supposedly so good at when I was 15. I was lucky enough to have an art teacher who let me do what I wanted and gave me access to a full range of art supplies. I wasn't that angry, but all my friends were so I spent a lot of time trying to come up with something edgy or with a hint of violence, like the red smears on the otherwise pretty basic study above.
So I signed my name as an "A" for anarchy and made silkscreen vampires, but while my friends were carving ankhs into their skin I was making sure that the vampires were having the best time an undead parasite could.
Honestly, bright colors aside, I see vampires like the one above as much bleaker than any that I might have drawn in high school. I think the biggest thing for me right now is that I've been working in a consistent style for almost a year, which is by far the longest I've stuck with anything art-wise. Maybe I'll paint something violent soon, for old times sake.
Sometimes you have to make your own sunshine. Sometimes it's a full-time job.
My son goes to a school with a sun-referencing name and they're having an auction soon (remember these?). He asked me if I could donate a painting of my own; I was game as long as he helped me with the idea. He described a race of alien creatures that looked like squat birds and in place of heads they each had a tiny sun.
A few years ago I drew the doodle above and wrote a corresponding poem based on Jonathan Richman's "I Eat With Gusto, Damn! You Bet". I'm taken with the idea of making your own light when the world gets dark, so I was especially happy to start in on the sun-headed aliens. Because, uh, I make sunshine, damn! You bet
That sunshine comes for free!
You like the shade?
Then hang out there
But the sunshine? That's for me!
This started as a goofy doodle of a dog with a grotesquely deformed (that's my favorite kind of deformed) foot while I was on the phone with my dad who is currently having foot issues. The dog also has a massive burrito, which wasn't related to anything in the conversation and if pressed I would have to admit that I prefer tacos to burritos even though sometimes the shell cuts the roof of my mouth. I'll write more about my recurring giant foods in another post at some point, once I figure it out a little more. 
So I have my sad dog and nasty foot and gargantuan burrito and start tossing trees in the background. Not realistic trees (since I can look out my window and see those), but the trees that live in my mind. I'm pretty sure the Jonathan form of "tree" has been this way since I was a kid, and I am a weak writer for not being able to explain its origins. But it's a tree that looks like a puffball mushroom crossed with a sci-fi building from 1960s futurist art.
I'm going to see this crippled dog through to completion, but at the end of the day I have forsaken him in my heart for the forest behind him. I've been hooked on figures since I started this Spirals In Love thing (www.spiralsinlove.com, buy buy buy), but at some point I now want to fill up the biggest piece of watercolor paper I have with nothing but trees. It can be our little forest, and we don't need any dogs or burritos.
Wouldn’t it be nice
Your room could be much better
If you bought my art
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!| Time | Friday, April 1 · 5:00pm - 8:00pm |
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| Location | happy delusions 924 S. 3rd St. Renton, WA, 98057 |
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/.
