Mid-week Blogging

Preview of the "Piece that Must Not be Named".

 
I don't normally post in the middle of the week.  If someone was observant, or just bored, they'd notice I only post on the weekends.  Primarily Sunday evening.  But, since it's been over a week and a half since the last post and I didn't want to go too long with out blogging this time, I thought what the hell?  Not like I have anything more exciting to do right now anyway. (Kidding.)

Although I've had a totally exciting week and a half, most of it's been unrelated to arts and crafts.  Honestly I've been doing that thing where I try to finish unfinished items floating around the house again.  And that's what you see up above.  It's a snippet from the "secret" project that won't be unveiled until Halloween.  I'm doing a small series of paintings for that and what you see above is a small portion of the second painting.

I have an unhealthy obsession with Candy Corn Monsters.

 What else have I been up too finishing?  That guy.  Candy Corn is back for 2012 as a plush/stuffed animal.  I started conceptualizing him back in June, but finished him off for real last week.  I posted it over on the Fan Page and in the Crypt of DOOM!  So if you find yourself in need of more snazzy photos, go check him out in either spot.

I ran ALL over town trying to find a suitable sealant for my coasters.  Finally found a spray polyurethane (man does it STINK), but sadly the paint has to cure for a week if I don't want it to stick to the bottom of the glasses.  Still have to conduct a heat test, but the cold test on the sample that dried a week went pretty well.  I might just have to have a spot of tea.  No pics, you'll just have to take my word for it.

And lastly, Journal entries.  I tried catching up on the month of July.  Time always goes way too fast.

San Diego Comic-Con Re-cap. . . the 12th is missing, but believe me, it was just like the 11th and 13th, only with out getting the toys.

Carlos got a summer cold.  He's horrible when he's sick.

Little Things

Key L-eye-me Cupcake!!

Well, I had grand things in store for this post, but alas, they fell thru.  I had wanted to do a large scale comic about my adventures at the 2012 San Diego Comic-Con (in the same vein as my journal sketches), but the con was so exhausting that I found myself needing nearly two weeks to recover.  Good news, I got what I went for and the short story is that it took 3 whole days for me to get into the line at the Hasbro booth to buy it because soooo many people wanted the My Little Pony Exclusive this year.  Silly Bronies.

Anyway.  What have I been up too the last three weeks. . . not drawing in my Journal, that's for sure.  I now have too many days to make up.  But I have been tinkering around with new stuff for the Etsy Shop.  Shall we take a look-see?

First up (and if you're a Facebook Follower, you've already seen some of these):

Soul Sista Medusa.  She's having delusions of Pam Grier.

The original has been framed in an orange frame exactly like Marie Medusa's Lime green one!

So I've been wanting to add some Medusa's to the "Hair Style" series.  I've been seriously wanting to do an afro inspired style for a while now.  At first she was going to be more of an innocent hippie with a daisy in her hair, but the more I thought about possible names, the more I thought of Pam Grier and how AWESOME she is.  Since Medusa's kind of a mean, bad ass type woman that wouldn't take any crap from anyone (cause she'd turn them to stone), I thought big 70's shades, hoop earrings and a "Coffee" inspired necklace would be much better "Afro" accessories.  Unlike the other Medusa's in the series thus far, I changed up the color scheme a little.  I knew I had an orange frame that was exactly like the lime green one I framed the "Marie Antoinette" Medusa in, so I wanted to make sure the background, scroll and accessory colors complimented the frame.  *Fun fact. . . found out by accident last Halloween that this frame actually fluoresces under a black light.*

Next:

Test coaster.  Not quite finished, but far enough along to share.  Coaster number two in the works next to it.

Coasters.  When I posted the sugar skull print set in the Crypt of DOOM, a couple of fans started asking when I was going to make coasters out of them.  I thought they were nuts.  How the heck does one make coasters?  Who do you go to to have them made?  And could I sell something with my art work on it that I didn't personally make myself on Etsy and feel morally okay with it?

Well guess what?  It's EASY!!  I checked out a few tutorials online and found that I didn't really need a whole lot to make a decent set of coasters.  Since the test coaster went well, I'm going to move forward with creating the full set of 4.  Hopefully I'll have that up in the shop before next weekend.

And then:

The multi-bat sketchbook was a test.  That one will stay with me, the others below will be in the shop soon.

On the left, two unlined/sketch Moleskin journals, on the right 3 lined journals.

Another Crypt of DOOM follower contacted me once about putting my artwork on Journals.  I'm pretty sure she was referring to the sugar skulls, but I was tossing the idea around in my head the other day and though it might be fun to give it a go!  And it gave me an excuse to get out my block cutting tools and make a custom stamp (which I haven't done in forever).  I looked up custom Moleskins on Etsy, and there's a ton of them.  But what I didn't see a whole lot of was black ones.  I thought a simple image of bats in a fun, bold color might be interesting to try.  Of course every one is different due to it being a hand made stamp and sometimes the block printing ink went on thicker than others, but hey, they're handmade!  And, it was a fun escape from the pen and pencil (stylus and computer?).

Until next time, thanks for stopping by!

Journal Dumpage and Super Grover

 

So, the trend you will probably keep noticing here on the blog this year is me following thru and completing forgotten tasks.  Well, not forgotten, but sidelined.  Case in point today can been seen above in my journal entry from the other evening.

My friend the PotatoFarmGirl has quite the eclectic taste.  Mostly people see that she likes super heroes, unicorns, cats, flowers, forrest animals, and of course, animation.  When I first met her 15 years ago, she also expressed a love of Super Grover.  Three years ago at Christmas time, I found the softest, most adorable little stuffed animal of Grover.  Although I think she would have been happy with him the way he was, it seemed kind of boring to be giving to a friend that was in their late 20's.  So I decided to give him a custom Super Grover Costume.  I bought the felt, and even gave her the doll and the pieces 3 years ago and said "He'll be Super Grover when I get done with the costume!"

And he is.  Now.  After he was locked up in my supply locker for 3 years.  Hence the lame joke that the locker was dark in the journal drawing.

Front.  The Logo is a brooch that can be removed.

Profile.  The helmet took forever, so needless to say I'm pretty proud of it.

Now onto the JOURNAL DUMPAGE!!  A good friend asked me why I only post some of my journal drawings since they thought they were all funny.  Some may assume it's because I'm not proud of the drawings or I think they're ugly.  In all honesty, most of the funniest ones are the one's I DON'T post because they aren't the most appropriate.  I usually depict exactly how I feel or a very particular something that happens on that specific day. Occasionally my political correctness, or kindness filter can, how shall I put this. . . be a tad bit off.  So I don't alienate and loose what few friends I have, or get them in trouble with their friends, I choose to only show the ones that won't be too offensive.  So enjoy the most recent Journal Dump!

Got up after 4 hours of sleep for lunch with the Ambitious Misfit.

Instead of going to see fireworks, we spent the 4th rearranging our house!

Up next for Carlos and I is the San Diego Comic-Con.  We weren't going to go this year, but then this happened:

I really hate Hasbro.  They have almost all of my money.

Pretty-Pretty Pirate Playset

"Pretty-Pretty Pirate Playset" 5"x7" Gouache; 2012

 Whelp, she's finished.  Thanks to everyone on the Fan Page that voted for their fave color comps.  As I mentioned last week, I went with an unpublished color comp that happened much later on.

The framed "Pretty-Pretty Pirate Playset"

Closer look at framed "Pretty-Pretty Pirate Playset"

 This painting has been 4 years in the making.  The original idea came to mind a few years back for one of the Gallery Nucleus "Power in Numbers" shows.  I can't remember exactly why this piece didn't get made then, but I'm fairly sure it had to do with the frame.  I knew from the very beginning that I wanted an antique oval frame for it and had trouble tracking one down.  That was before I found out about Etsy, obviously.

I have to address the frame again.  I fell in love with this frame as soon as I saw it in the Little Byrd Vintage shop on Etsy.  I knew it would be perfect for this piece as I thought it would help "tell the story" of the ship wreck.  Or at least match the shipwreck, if not add to the "story".  I also knew that I HAD to get a double oval matte cut for it with a burgundy flocked/velveteen and the gold matte.  Although the frame is beat up, I thought that maybe using the velvet and gold together would subconsciously add to the story of shipwrecked treasure.

Any way.  Yeah.  4 years later she's finally out of my head.  The Creature from the Pink Lagoon has a second piece featuring her now and I must say she looks FABULOUS!

P.S. Not quite done matting and framing the piece exactly, hence why you can see tacks and some black masking tape on the wall.  I'll be finishing her off properly for the first time, which means she'll be getting stapled in place and having brown paper backing on the frame with a fancy hook.

**Update**

I finished the final framing today.  Cut a new gold matte as it had some scratches from when I expanded the opening from 4"x6" to 5"x7".  Also cleaned the glass really well and made sure there were no dust or paper flecks on the matte before I sealed them in forever with some glue and brown paper.  Very excited to have "professionally sealed" sealed the frame on my own.

Sunken Treasure-y Type Stuff

Well, finally got a little motivation towards the end of this last week.  I've been sorely lacking any since finishing the last painting.  (As I probably mentioned in the last post.)

Although I can't show you one of the two paintings I'm currently working on, I can show you stuff from my new pirate treasure themed painting.

Early pose concept.  Her legs got a little long.

Early color comps.  Actually chose the unseen #8.

Last but not least, time for a new mini painting!  I love little scarab beetles.  As you can see in the photo up top, the little beetle below was put in a very tiny 1.25" by 1.75" frame I bought quite a few years ago at an antique store.  Even though I tried to make him small enough to fit in the opening, his little legs and tips of his antenna are bumping into the edges of the frame.  As a side note, the June Bugs are out a little late this year here in Burbank (usually see them early May), so I've had fun seeing large, brown beetles with no antenna on the patio.

Speaking of the patio. . . I've managed to not kill my little garden yet this year AND I brought my hydrangea back to life.  I think I'll be calling the hydrangea Zombie Plant 2.0.  The first zombie plant was a desk plant I had back when I was at Neopets that I would forget to water for a while then once I remembered it would come back to life.

The elusive Nico and her Cat Grass.

Zombie Hydrangea and Garden

That's it for this week.  Next post, hopefully the Treasure Painting will be finished and titled!

Another Year Wiser

Whelp, it's my birthday.  What do I have to show for it?  A couple more gray hairs have been added to the streak at my temple. Although I normally try to hide this patch with some completely unnatural hair color, every two years or so I let my hair grow out so that I can get back it's natural moisture and strength. On the plus side, to the gray hair con side, I'm now 15 pounds lighter which means I can fit back into some of my older jeans!  (Translation:  I don't have to go buy new ones!)

The last month has been relatively uneventful.  With no hard deadlines looming on anything I've gotten a little lazy.  Not sure if that's a good thing, since I was nearly pulling my hair out while I ran all over the place getting the "Just Desserts" show ready and some would argue I could use the break, or if it's a bad thing. (Speaking of, Monkeyhouse just asked me if they could extend the show til July.  You can see the show online by clicking here.)

Most of the things I have been working on I can't post online yet.  Some of them have to wait until after Halloween.  But be sure I'll be doing a HUGE post after Halloween chock full of Voodoo Doll goodness.

I've started my first personal Monster Kid painting (translation: not created for a group show of some sort).  I still have no idea what to call that series of paintings, but as it grows I think I might have to figure something out soon.  Monster Kids just sounds lame.  I digress.  This painting goes back to one of the first monsters in the series, the Creature from the Pink Lagoon and I've been dying to do this painting for a couple of years now.  Found the perfect frame on Etsy about a year ago, so I've kind of been working backwards on it.  Got the frame, then got it matted, and now I'm doing the sketch so that I can size it to fit in my mat since I knew exactly how I wanted to present it

Then, when I wasn't procrastinating on my voodoo doll project, or my Creature painting, I had my first sugar skull commission thru Etsy.  I don't normally do commission work due to my work load from my day job, but since it was sugar skulls representing the client's kids, I thought I'd give it a shot.  Got to try a couple ideas I'd been tossing around in my head for future skulls, namely trying to make a boy skull, incorporating a diamond into a skull, and of course, fire.  The client was gracious enough to let me post the finished skulls here on the blog and on my Facebook Fan Page.

It's ALIVE!!

A selection of the awesomely sweet artwork from "Just Desserts"

I sincerely thought that leading up to the "Just Desserts" show opening I would have done a million blog posts, but alas, I did not.


First off let me give a big THANK YOU to Mayra over at Monkeyhouse Toys for letting me fill her walls and shop window full of delectable artwork from a bunch of exceptionally talented artists.  I was honestly amazed by the turn out opening night and I don't think I'd be exaggerating by saying I think we had close to 450 people come out to see all of the artists hard work.  I showed up half an hour early to set up the refreshment table and there was already 10 people there viewing the artwork, and the number of people only grew as the three hour opening progressed.  Granted there were lulls, but the "lull" was that there was maybe only 20 people in the shop before the next rush of 50 or so would show up.  Sincerely awesome.  Seeing the turn out, the happy faces on the guests and seeing old friends I hadn't seen in years made busting my ass for the last three months totally worth it.  (You can view more photos from the event by visiting Monkeyhouse Toys Facebook Page and the Just Desserts album.)


You know what else made busting my butt for the last week heading up to the show worth it?  These two!  Meet two new additions to my little monster universe.  Freddy (Frankenstein) and Igor.

"It's ALIVE!!" 8.5"x 10.5" Gouache 2012

After years of drawing my monster foods, I can finally say with pride, I now know where they come from.  Freddy and Igor got bored after making Hugo the Frankenstein Monster (see "Ice-Scream Social") and decided they'd rather put their skills for creating life to a more demonic use.

Freddy, as you can see in these early sketches took quite a while to get out of my head (there is actually 4 more pages of sketches, I just chose the better looking of them to show).  I really wanted to make him look a little like Peter Cushing, but cute.  Do you have any idea how hard it is to make Peter Cushing cuddly cute?  Lets just say it took over a month to figure out.  Igor was MUCH easier.  He was pretty much ready to go after the first sketch.  I tweeked some of his shapes a bit and gave him a more up to date outfit (and braces).  Tee hee, he has a cross between emo and Justin Bieber hair, but his cute piggy nose makes that okay.

Doesn't really look like a young Cushing, but I tried to bite his hair from the old Hammer Films.

What kind of sucked was that I had a working thumbnail sketch for my painting a month and a half or so before it was due. . . but because Freddy took so long to come out of my head, I only got the final sketch done one week before the painting was due.

Then. . . because it's me and I can't do anything the easy way, it took two hole days to find a color comp I was happy with.  Once it was done though, I got right to work.  Thought I'd share an in progress I posted on Facebook.

It took 4 days to get this far.

Oh, and in case you're curious.  The Monster Foods/experiments are as follows, starting on the top left hand shelf.  Orange Flavored Pop-cicle (behind coil; it is also Baron von Cicula from my shop), a couple of cantankerous chocolate bars, three Monster Cupcakes, Two slices of Monster Rainbow Cake and a Deviant Doughnut.  Second shelf, starting on the left, a batch of brownies, an Ice-Cream Sundae in a fish bowl, Experiment #01 went so horribly wrong they keep him in a shoe box, and of course, the Grape-tastic Monster Cone (which you can find in my shop as a cellphone charm).  On the work table, in front of Freddy and Igor, is their latest experiment, a fantastically ferocious fruit tart!

In it's fancy frame on the wall.  Happy accident that the mat matched the painting exactly!

 
So yeah.  To wrap up.  The gallery opening went off with out a hitch.  I managed to get my own piece done just in the nick of time, figured out the front window display, made three sets of felt cookies for the shop (two to sell and one for the window), helped Lori set up the window for her puppets, and managed to not hide in the bathroom because there was too many people around on opening night.  All in all, a success.

Now I'm off to send samples of my monster paintings to Halloween Town in Burbank to see if they'll FINALLY let me show some of my work there.  I'm not holding my breath.

Felt Play Food

 Well, it's not what I'm supposed to be doing (once again), but this is what I've been tinkering with for the last week or so.


The art show is only a little over two weeks away now and I'm frantically trying to make sure I've got all my angles covered.  Mayra, Lori, and I are working on a window display for the front of the shop to help draw people in to the shop.  We decided to make Lori's SUPER AWESOME puppets have a tea party in the front window, but what's a tea party with out treats?  Especially in a show devoted to sweets?!

So yeah.  Felt play food cookies.  They were relatively simple, the hardest one being the ones that look like little Keebler Fudge stripe cookies.

 I'm FINALLY going to finish coming up with the design of the new "monster" for my piece this weekend (hint, it involves Peter Cushing).  So if you follow me on Facebook, keep a look out for in progress photos.  If you don't, you'll see a whole blog post devoted to the new painting once it's complete.

Let me just add, my coffee table is pretty awesome.  For the first time since we bought it we switched out the art under the glass.  I must say adding the larger images has tidied up the overall look of it and getting to look at Charles Addams comics, a page from a vintage bird guide and Bettie Paige by Olivia is more reminiscent of what goes on in my brain on a daily basis.  You know. . . all over the place.

"Just Desserts" is Coming

Facebook Event invite HERE

*** Update 05/04/2010**

It has been brought to my attention in the comments that there is a Reality TV Competition Show that goes by the SAME NAME.  This arts and crafts show is in NO WAY affiliated with the TOP CHEF spin off by the same title.  It is only a ONE MONTH, non-reoccurring arts and crafts exhibit that happens to have the same title.  This show was titled "JUST DESSERTS" for two reasons, the first being because it's primarily about DESSERTS and secondly because of the slightly twisted connotation the phrase "You'll get your just desserts" implies.

Ahhh. . . I never thought the day would come where I'd be grateful for having worked on the Millsberry.com website when I was working over at Neopets, but I am!  Thankfully when I was working over there I had to do some graphic design type stuff and had I not, this flyer would probably be pretty boring.

What's this flyer for you say?  Well a few weeks back I alluded to the fact that I had been working with Mayra over at Monkeyhouse Toys on organizing a group art show.  Well this is the show's flyer.

An entire show devoted to desserts.  Pies.  Cakes.  Ice cream. Cookies.  Candies.  Everything.

Opening Night will be Saturday, May 19th, 2012 from 6-9pm.  If you're in the area come check it out.  More updates on both my piece for the show and show details in the weeks leading up to opening night!

Frida Sugar Skull Redux

 Greetings all!

I found myself a bit overwhelmed and down in the dumps this week.  As a result my brain is more scattered than usual and I find myself procrastinating on the things I'm supposed to be doing.  What you see above is what I chose to do instead of starting my "Just Desserts" show piece.  I have a solid monster concept, but I just couldn't bring myself to sketch it out this last week.

So while I was frantically hitting refresh on my e-mail browser, I decided to listen to a friend of mine who suggested that my first Frida Khalo inspired sugar skull wasn't as cute as my previous ones.  Not only did I discover she was correct, but I also discovered that as I drew more of the sugar skulls, they started to become more detailed.  I had high lights on high lights!  So I took this one back to basics.  I used the first as inspiration, but simplified both the design and the rendering of it.

Now that I've gotten the re do out of my system, hopefully I'll be able to focus on what I need  to work on now.