Red lipstick has always scared me. I don’t know why.
But I found one tonight that I liked so I bought it.
Maybelline Ruby Star #640

This is my other favourite song that they do, which is a Tegan & Sara cover called Hop A Plane:

The Independent in London wrote an investigative piece on the subject of the CIA using modern artists, such as Abstract Expressionist Jackson Pollock, as propaganda tools. Why you may ask?

According to the article: Why did the CIA support them? Because in the propaganda war with the Soviet Union, this new artistic movement could be held up as proof of the creativity, the intellectual freedom, and the cultural power of the US. Russian art, strapped into the communist ideological straitjacket, could not compete.

The existence of this policy, rumoured and disputed for many years, has now been confirmed for the first time by former CIA officials. Unknown to the artists, the new American art was secretly promoted under a policy known as the “long leash” – arrangements similar in some ways to the indirect CIA backing of the journal Encounter, edited by Stephen Spender.

(via Juxtapoz)

I’m featured in another Etsy treasury! This one’s called “Gifts For A Fairytale Princess“!
Check out the AWESOME leather journal shop she lists! Beautiful work all around!
I’m honoured!

So it’s 3:15am and I woke up because this house is a million  friggin’ degrees. I turned the furnace down and now I’m in my office waiting for my room to cool down a bit before going back to bed. It doesn’t help that my husband is a walking, talking ball of fire. Sometimes he puts off so much heat that I’m afraid he’s going to spontaneously combust.

Friday was good. I woke up to a manageable amount of work e-mail and got the pile clear around noon (I start working at 10am), which gave me the opportunity to watch really bad movies (like, really bad – one was called Helen and the other one was She’s Out of His League or something – both horrible) and work on my last 2 paintings of 2010.

I won’t keep it a secret: one of the two is an alternate version of “Just Like Honey“. The original version, which lives in Winnipeg, had a black and yellow gold background (on white) and the girl had black hair with yellow gold and black stripes on her bodysuit (for lack of a better term for what she’s wearing) and brown eyes. The one I’m doing now, because I didn’t want it to be a duplicate, has more of an orangey gold, black & metallic “espresso” background, the girl has metallic “espresso” hair, an orangey gold & black bodysuit and a mix of the gold & espresso for her eyes. I wanted it to be more or less the same, but different enough that it wasn’t a duplicate.

Also, I think this one is probably going to be just for me. In fact I’ve been giving it a lot of thought and I think from now on, most of the paintings I do are going to be just for me. At least until I figure out how to make decent prints, which I’m in no rush to do. I think what I might do from now on is post paintings on my site and say like, “if you want this one, it’s $XXX.XX + shipping, so let me know and I’ll put it in my Etsy shop”. Because this is the thing: I’ve never really liked selling my originals but I have because until recently, painting and the pittance I make on Camwhores has been my only form of income. Now that I have a job and I’m making pretty decent money, I don’t have to sell my originals. I still want to have an art business, so I’m still going to make ACEOs and maybe I’ll put a few paintings up on Etsy, just not all of them.

I’ve also been thinking about my grant proposal and I’ve convinced myself that it’s pretty unlikely that I’ll actually get it and I’ll tell you why: I think my last 2 grant proposals were rejected because the first year, I only asked for $1500 because I didn’t read thoroughly and didn’t see that they didn’t award partial grants. The second year, last year, my proposal was less an arts grant proposal and more like a business proposal and the grants aren’t there to further your business. Or at least that’s the gist of what I was told by the program co-ordinator when we were e-mailing back & forth all summer about it. Nevertheless, I inadvertently made this year’s proposal a little businessy with talk about children’s boutiques at the end of my artist statement and I think that may turn off the jurors.

I wish I’d have come to the realization that I don’t have to sell paintings anymore, I just have to paint them and that I could either keep them or give them away to say, the children’s corners of libraries was one idea I had, y’know how most of them have a story time area? I think ideas like that would have made a better proposal but I just wasn’t in that headspace. My goal is/was to get my art seen my children and the only way I saw to do that was to attract a new audience by way of children’s boutiques but now that money’s not a motivator, I see that there are other ways. Thinking along these lines, can you guys think of any other places that are public where children gather? Places that might like a donation of art? Another thought I had was hospitals. Really, all I want is for my art to be seen, ideally by children with imaginations or who may need the escapism.

I also won’t been this a secret: there will be another version of “Just Like Honey” in 2011, but she’ll be a brown girl. I haven’t planned out every painting for 2011, but since “Just Like Honey” was inspired by The Secret Life of Bees, that seemed like a good place to start.

The other girl I’m working on as my last painting of 2010 has metallic white hair with metallic blue eyes and I love her so much I doubt she’ll be for sale either unless someone I like really really wants her. She was inspired by the girls in Mark Ryden’s recent Yak Show. She’s not meant to be an albino, just as I don’t think his girls are meant to be either, but I’m sure people will think she is one. The bodice of her dress is going to be the white sparkly paper I posted this evening, she’s going to have a white Swarovski crystal bindi (maybe, I might use them for “snow drops” instead) and the skirt of her dress is sparkly silvery white and will have white marabou trim. Her canvas is white crackle over light metallic blue, which I mixed myself, with metallic blue and metallic white splotches with the faintest bit of silver splattered across. I haven’t decided what colour of glitter to use. I have white glitter but that’ll be similar to the bodice of her dress so I probably won’t use it and I think silver is going to be too obvious/plain. I do have chunky silver glitter though, and that might look pretty cool. Anyway, I’m excited about her because she’s different from anything I’ve done so far and I think an almost albino looking girl is sort of apt for being my last painting of the year considering next year is going to be dedicated to quite the opposite. I didn’t plan it that way or anything but I did think tonight that maybe it was a subconscious thing.

Before I get any further into my own head, I do want to mention that my friend Robert wrote a book! I think he’s a fantastic writer and his book is about 3 teenagers who are in a mental institution and then there are 2 other stories in the book but I’m not sure what they’re about. I haven’t read it yet, it just became available tonight, but I think it’ll be good so I’m recommending it to you guys.

Anyway, by the end of next week these 2 paintings should be finished and the rest of the year, right up until January 15th, is going to be dedicated to my sketchbook for The Sketchbook Project since I have, oh, one page finished and it’s a crappy page. I haven’t even finished gluing all my pages together so there aren’t as many! I’m actually kinda scared that I won’t have time to do it the way I want to and that it’ll be a crappy effort, made worse by the fact that I paid for digitizing so the whole world is going to be able to see it. When I ordered the sketchbook and made myself part of the project, I didn’t know I was going to stumble into a full-time job. BUT if I can make every day like Friday and get these 2 paintings done as soon as possible, I should be able to make a decent go of it I think. Or I hope.

I think I might bring my drawing stuff up North with me over Xmas, which brings me to…Xmas.

Traditionally, this is about the time where I write my yearly post about how much I hate Xmas and how stressed out I am about it. But this year’s different: I’m actually looking forward to Xmas. CAN YOU BELIEVE IT? This year, since Xmas is on a weekend, I’m going to try & finish working around 4pm and we’ll head up North to my dad & Lisa’s like, the second I’m finished so we’ll be there in time for dinner where apparently my Aunt Sandi is making lasagna, Lisa’s making potato skins and a salad and I’m going to convince Blake to make salsa that they can all have as  an appetizer. Lisa’s going to make me a small Caesar salad because I don’t like “regular” salad (and truth be told, I think you should have Caesar salad with lasagna, although I couldn’t tell you why).

Then we’ll be there for Xmas Day, where I’ve asked Lisa if she’ll make me a box of Stovetop Stuffing because Phil’s oyster/pine nut stuffing concoction is way too gross for me to even fathom and I think stuffing’s the best part of Xmas to be perfectly honest. I’m going to be bringing my computer (naturally) and my monitor so I can take over their desk and be available to do my check-ins for work, which I told boss #2 I’d do. Then we’re going to stay over AGAIN so we’re there for part of Boxing Day and aren’t racing home in the dark or in a storm like we did last year.

I’ve already sent Phil a message on Facebook to please have the garage ready for the dogs, especially since they’re going to be there for 2 & a half days, so that stressor is out of the way. (Although he hasn’t replied…but that’s typical.)

THEN I figure the weekend AFTER Xmas, we’ll do Xmas with my mom at John’s cottage. Although I just realized that’s New Year’s Day so I’m going to have to talk to her about that…I have to work during the week and so does Blake, so I’m not sure how else we’ll be able to do it, unless maybe we do an early Xmas with my mom the week before while Blake’s off. Mother, if you’re reading this, e-mail me with your thoughts.

Our shopping is mostly done, or at least done enough that I’m not worried about it. I more or less know what else we need to get and Blake has the weekend before Xmas off, so he can do the rest of the shopping then. He’s also going to be a great help because the kids are home that week and the week after (I think) and I hate when they’re home now because while Madison’s old enough to look after Wes and I can close my office door, I end up policing them and getting pissed at them all day while I’m trying to work. I mean, my job’s not exactly a difficult one, but it does require concentration which is impossible when Madison’s driving Wes crazy.

I do have a tool to use against her if she does that though. For Xmas she’s getting a netbook which I can very well take away if she pisses me off and she won’t want that SOOOOOOOOOOOOO…

That said, I’m not worried about gifts this year because I started early and got people some pretty good stuff this year because we could afford to and we’re not going into (more) debt to do it.

Anyway, I think I’ve babbled enough for the middle of the night and it’s time to go back to bed. Also my legs are cold. So goodnight!

In the fine tradition of Elvis Costello’s classic Saturday Night Live performance of “Radio Radio” comes this great TV appearance by Nirvana on the Jonathan Ross show some 19 years ago this week. The band were scheduled to play ‘Lithium’ but played an aggressive version of ‘Territorial Pissings’ instead without telling the producers.