ATTENTION family, fans & friends!
A new batch of 9 green & gold and red & gold ACEOs are up in my shop!
Check ‘em out!

Check out this artist I found while searching for Marie Antoinette screencaps!

“I feel that it is important for me to sell my work directly to my fans, without the needless expenses or pretension of a gallery or middleman.”
- Jasmine Becket-Griffith

Check out her Etsy shop! It’s full of cool paintings like the one above!

So we went to The Square Foot Show last night after debating the idea for the past few weeks, but intensely over the past few days. What it really came down to is that if I didn’t go, I’d probably regret it for the rest of my life, so we dressed the kids up, stuffed them in the car and off we went to The Big Smoke (aka Toronto).

After much debate, I ended up wearing my ruffled Free People dress because it was easier than the other two outfits I had planned. I bought the Free People dress specifically for this show and why it was even in debate that I might not wear it is because when we picked the kids up from Muskoka (up North) where they’d been up visiting Phil & Lisa for the week, we were all outside talking and I got about a dozen & a half mosquito bites. Y’know, I’m not implying that I’m some kind of unique snowflake in saying this, but mosquitoes LOVE me and worse, I seem to be ultra allergic to them in that the bites itch so bad that I scratch them into bloody scabs in my sleep (sometimes I sleep with gloves on to prevent this) and even after they’re gross, bloody scabs, they’re STILL itchy for up to a month or more.

Unfortunately, most if the bites I incurred up North were on my legs so I didn’t really want to wear a dress that showed off my legs because the bites looked like lesions from some nasty illness or something. I tried my very best not to scratch the bites since I got them, but that was impossible and I ended up scratching a few layers of skin off. To prevent further damage to myself, I got Blake to buy me this stuff called AfterBite, which I don’t think is sold in the US, and what AfterBite is, is basically a mixture of pure AMMONIA and “natural oils”. And it stings like nothing else I’ve ever experienced. It doesn’t make my mosquito bites any less itchy longterm, but for about half an hour or 45 mins after putting it on, I don’t feel itchy. But it’s just a temporary solution and I still scratched the shit out of my legs, the result of which won’t be totally healed until, oh, October, because I just don’t heal very fast.

So long story short (too late!) that’s why I didn’t want to wear my dress. My other options were a new pair of jeans that my friend Charlie bought me and this corset-like t-shirt that he also bought me, which is so cute and super lacey and I love it, but the jeans are brand new and about 5 inches too long (which always happens when you’re 5 feet tall) so that meant I’d have to cut the bottoms off, or get Blake to, and then wash them a few times so they’d fray evenly and we didn’t have enough time to do that so that outfit idea was a wash. My other outfit idea was this white tank top I have that’s like, embroidered with eyelets (I forget what that’s called), that I’ve never gotten to wear because I didn’t own a white bra until a few days ago, but the jeans issue was still a problem so I had to go with the dress. (My other jeans are all way too big because of all the weight I’ve lost but I haven’t lost enough to fit into my old jeans yet.) So dress, grey tank top, knee high Doc Martens and my crystal necklace it was. I blew dry my hair to give it more volume but the rain & humidity killed that so I don’t even know why I bothered. Also the lipstick I wear ALL THE FUCKING TIME seems to be missing and I’m really pissed off about that because it’s only ever in 3 places and it isn’t in any of those 3 places, so where the fuck is it? GRRRR. I can’t afford to just replace it either. :o(

The drive to Toronto was pretty uneventful. Blake knew where we were going because it was the same place we dropped the paintings off to last weekend and it’s actually pretty easy to get to. The actual show is in a theatre building a few doors down from AWOL Gallery and you have to go upstairs to get to it. So we went there and a security guard stopped us at the door because they were only letting so many people in at a time as not to crowd the space. (Really, I think they should have been more diligent with this because there were too many people and seeing all of the paintings was difficult with so many people milling about.) There was free food there, like baby carrots and dry bread with some kinds of dip and a fruit platter type of thing that as mostly grapes which I forbid the kids to eat because god only knows who double-dipped and it’s an events like these where people get sick the next day from food poisoning.

The paintings…it was a good mix of awesome and awful. I think my favourite was one of a turd with a smiley face that said “War is poop.” My other favourites were the two Tascha pieces that leapt off the wall. One was a Frida Kahlo riding a bicycle down a hill and the other was a fortune teller with a glittery crystal ball. They were awesome. Everything else was kind of a blur to me. With so many people in the room I was feeling a little panicky and the sheer amount of paintings was overwhelming. I think we should have gone with our original plan to come today (Sunday) instead, when there would be less people. Basically all we really did was do one circuit around the room to try and see everything and we also tried to find my paintings.

“Shimmer II” got NO love at the show as she was hung on the very bottom row (H64 if anyone’s planing on going to the show) which was just about to the floor, where you couldn’t even see her shimmer and shine, but hey, someone’s gotta be on the bottom, it’s no big deal.

“Red & Gold” got prominent placing, just a row or two below eye level (F101) and there were people talking about her, according to Blake when he did another circuit of the show without us, trying to find “Turquoise Love Fairy”., which none of us saw when we were looking at all the paintings.

Here’s the thing with Square Foot: when you give them your $20 participation fee or whatever it’s called, you are only guaranteed to have 1 of your paintings in the show, even though you can submit 3. This is because of the sheer amount of people who contribute to the show and the sheer amount of paintings there are as a result. There’s only so much room. The overflow, they said, would be hung at “an off-site location” where it “could be seen by request”. So with the way it was worded on the application, it sounded like one of your pieces not being in the actual show was a bad thing.

However, I don’t think that’s the case. Some paintings, the supposed “overflow” were hung at AWOL Gallery itself and that’s where “Turquoise Love Fairy” ended up. Personally, I think that’s better than being in the mess of the actual Square Foot Show and when we looked in AWOL’s window to see if we could see my painting, it seemed as though the paintings hung there were less crazy than a lot of what was put in the actual show. So I think being hung there was a good thing.

“Turquoise Love Fairy” is at the second row from the bottom, 4 paintings in from the left (M10).

I wish the gallery had been open when we were there so I could have seen all of the paintings hung there, but it wasn’t so we just took that picture with Blake’s Blackberry through the window. In the pouring rain.

Next year, if we go to the artist’s reception, I’m bringing my camera. I didn’t bring it last night because I think it’s rude to take pictures of other people’s art, but at the show EVERYONE was doing it so I guess it’s an accepted thing? My anxiety at the show was through the fucking roof, so we only stayed about 15 or 20 minutes before getting out of there. And also next year? I’m wearing jeans and a hoodie. NO ONE was dressed “nicely”, so next year, fuck it, neither will I. I also think that next year we’ll go on the Sunday and skip the artist’s reception altogether.

So that was my Square Foot experience. I don’t think any of my paintings are going to sell there, but that doesn’t really matter to me because the whole point of doing the show was to have it on my resume. I would like to do more art shows like that in the future, but I just don’t know where they are or how you find out about them. It also sucks that they all seem to be in Toronto.

The call for entries for Touched By Fire is in a few weeks and I don’t think I’m going to be submitting this year unless I get all 3 of my paintings back from Square Foot, in which case I’ll submit those. I just don’t have time to paint anything new for the show. Square Foot had me so stressed out that I couldn’t paint at all so I spent a lot of this week in my Sims Bunker instead.

Anyway, I need a friggin’ sandwich and I have nothing else to say except that if you want to go to The Square Foot Show an see my stuff in person, the info is here.

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it before, but I can’t art journal to save my life. “But anyone can art journal!” I’ve been told when I’ve said this out loud, but that’s not true. I mean, unless you don’t have hands or you’re blind or something, yes, you can physically art journal (and I’m sure some people could even overcome those obstacles and make beautiful journals!) but I don’t think everyone is particularly suited to it and I think I am definitely one of those people.

So first of all, for those wondering “what is an art journal?”, allow me to explain: an art journal is simply a book full of art, kind of like a scrapbook and sometimes using scrapbooking elements, but usually an art journal has more homemade elements in it than prefab ones. Sometimes art journals have themes, sometimes not. Most of the time it’s in a diary format in that each page is expressing something emotional or personal, but there usually isn’t a whole ton of text like you would have in a written journal.

I have many friends who art journal such as Eveline Timeless, Sirens Idyll, Nolwenn and Poetic Dreams and if you follow the links on their blogs, you’ll find both instructional videos on how to do art journaling, but also the blogs of other art journalers all across the internet. Suzi Blu, Julie Pritchard and Willowing have taught classes on how to art journal (and I’m sure there are more people out there teaching classes on it) and there is even a magazine dedicated to it. In the online mixed media world, or at least the corner of it I seem to frequent, art journaling is all the rage.

And I totally cannot do it.

I tried though! You can use any old notebook or sketchbook to use as an art journal but the standard is the good ol’ Moleskine, which I used it my latest attempt at making an art journal. Behold:

Introducing myself on the first page to any potential readers should I accidentally leave the book somewhere. I thought I was off to a pretty good start.

Page 2 was done shortly after laparoscopy #4 when the doctor wanted to put me on Lupron.
If you read my page on endometriosis, you’ll see how I feel about Lupron.

And then…

….

…yeah. :o/

The thing is, by the time I basecoat a page with whatever colour I want to use and wait for it to dry I’ve either forgotten what I wanted to express OR I’ve already written it all out and gotten it out of my system in my written journal, of which I have many many many many. Basically, art journaling for me, is way too slow of a process. I would LOVE to leave behind beautifully illustrated, mixed media books when I die for future generations to marvel over but I think they’re going to have to settle for just text because it seems as though that’s what I’m best at and writing is just how I express myself. (Although since becoming medicated, I no longer write hypergraphically so I’m not going through a notebook every month. This is both good and bad. Good because notebooks are expensive. Bad because I miss spending whole days just writing writing writing and documenting every little thing.)

In my written journals, I don’t even doodle. Sometimes I decorate the covers, like this one for example, but most of the time I leave the covers as they come and I almost always write in them using my beloved Pilot V5 extra fine pens in BLACK, although sometimes I’ll use Uniball Fusion pens because they come in colours, but that’s still pretty rare because I don’t like their tips. (Like, in a few weeks my current journal will be full and the next ones up to bat are a pink journal and a blue journal that are both sparkly and identical except in colour and I have Uniball Fusion pens in the corresponding colours – although Uniball Fusion pens are expensive and don’t go far so the ends of the books will probably be in my regular black ink.)

Anyway, the whole point of this post is that I’m envious of people who can actually express themselves through art journaling and I’m hoping that after participating in The Sketchbook Project, I’ll maybe dust off my Moleskine and give it another try. I think another part of it is that I’m actually pretty utilitarian and so my lizard brain is all “why make it pretty when you don’t have to? Writing’s faster!” and then there’s also my inner critic, who has the voice of my evil grandmother, saying, “you could be spending that time on art that pays your bills blah blah blah” and I really need to learn how to beat that voice back. Perhaps this will be my new year’s resolution for 2011.

In other news, my pink & green girls are coming along fabulously and if I didn’t need the money, they wouldn’t be for sale once they were finished because I am absolutely in love with them. Each girl is going to be on her own canvas, which is what I’ll be working on today, and be her own piece, but really, I envision selling them as a set. I doubt that’ll happen because when I make paintings intended to be sold together, it never happens, but hey, I still try. Here’s a sneak peak at my pink & green girls that are going to simply be titled “Pink & Green I” and “Pink & Green II” because I’m original like that:

And with that, I’m off to find breakfast and get back to work on these canvases. I hope you all have a wonderful day!

The Flower contrasts a utopian society that freely farms and consumes a pleasure giving flower with a society where the same flower is illegal and its consumption is prohibited. The animation is a meditation on the social and economic costs of marijuana prohibition.

“Decorative” is sometimes the meanest word you can use in art, a real no-no.

I did the roach stuff to keep decorators, or the kind that buy art to match the furniture or to put over the sofa, away. Although, my art would fit over the sofa because it’s long and thin, so it’s a joke! I don’t know how many people want to hang The Process, the giant, scary one of someone who worships Christ and the devil over their sofa, though. That’s what I like; it might be sofa sized, but not sofa-subject appropriate.”

- John Waters in Juxtapoz magazine

“Red & Gold” is now finished and…not for sale in my Etsy shop because I’m submitting her to The Square Foot Show, along with “Shimmer II” and “Sparkle“. If she doesn’t sell there,  I’ll put her up on Etsy when the show’s over, which is September 5th. (The show starts on August 21st at AWOL Gallery in Toronto. I’m still undecided if I’m going to go to the artist reception…I’m leaning toward “no”. But still, it’s a cool show if you happen to be local and wanted to go.)

Anyway, here’s pictures of “Red & Gold”, which was my first real painting of a woman of colour, which I’m more or less pleased with. (I think her shading could have been done a lot better, but I think she’s pretty good for a first attempt.)

I used red and gold chunky glitter for her background, which I’m actually kind of in love with. The chunky glitter, that is.  After using it on this painting and my last one, regular fine glitter just seems to pale in comparison. It has its uses, don’t get me wrong, I used a fine glitter mix for “Red & Gold”‘s eyeshadow, I just don’t like it as much for the backgrounds.

I also made a video today showing “Red & Gold” and “Shimmer II” and how they shine, which you can watch right here. I just uploaded it and it’s not done totally processing so the quality isn’t the greatest yet. I also said in the video that “Red & Gold”‘s dress is embossed black paper, which it is, but I discovered after I made the video that the varnish I use is thick enough that it erased any trace of the embossing, which is unfortunate, because now it just looks like a plain black. Which is FINE, but I wouldn’t have used embossed paper had I have known it was going to do that.

So that’s “Red & Gold”…now I have to get back to work on “Pink & Green”…

My red & gold painting (creatively titled “Red & Gold”) will be ready to varnish tomorrow when I wake up and I’m thinking I’m probably going to enter her into The Square Foot Show, along with “Shimmer II” and “Sparkle“. Drop off for the show is Tuesday night but we have yoga, so Blake’s going to drop them off next Saturday instead. I’m still undecided if I’m going to go to the artist reception on the 21st or not. I’m mostly thinking “not”, especially because I don’t want to ask anyone to babysit and I don’t want to take the kids either.

At the same time, it’s a juried show and I’m kind of superstitious about things like that. Like, if you don’t show up, you can’t win. The universe won’t let you. Not that I’ll win anything if I DO show up (pretty unlikely) but if I don’t go, then there’s NO chance I’ll win anything. And if I didn’t go and I DID win a prize, I wouldn’t know about it until I picked up my unsold work in September and not knowing that long would probably kill me.

But at the same time I really don’t want to go, so…yeah. :o/

Anyway, this is what I’m starting tonight while “Red & Gold”‘s arms dry on my coffee table:

The chunky glitter on the left that looks kinda gold is actually  a light, yellowy green called “olivine” and the pink paper is actually a metallic light pink that came crinkled like that.

When we went to Curry’s on Saturday to get watercolour pencils, I got a whole bunch of papers that are apparently going to be discontinued soon and I’m wondering if I shouldn’t go back and scoop up whatever’s left because there were some awesome Asian & paisley prints that were pinks that DO NOT turn orange when I apply varnish on top of them (I bought one and tested it – at $4.95 a sheet, you’re goddamned right I’m gonna buy a tester first). I sold “The Devil’s in the Detail’s” today (well actually, I guess I technically sold her last month because that’s how Blake & I got to go see Hole, but my friend paid off the rest of her today so she’ll go out in the mail on Monday) so I could buy up that paper, but at the same time I’m broke as fuck right now and waiting on a cheque (that’s mostly going to go towards school supplies/new clothes for the kids) so I probably shouldn’t. It’s a shame to let those papers go, though. I wish you guys could have seen them.

That’s enough babbling out of me for tonight I think. Better get back to work.

Since joining a certain Live Journal community that I’m a little iffy about and slightly afraid of posting in, I’ve learned the word “ableism”. This is what “ableism” is:

“a·ble·ism
–noun
discrimination against disabled people.”

Here’s Wikipedia’s entry on ableism, which I’m not going to put in quotes anymore because now you know that the word exists too and you know it’s a real thing.

As I’m learning about ableism by reading the posts in this Live Journal community, I’m learning that ableism applies to mental health because mental illness is a disability and the thing with mental health ableism is that most of it is inadvertent. Because people can’t see your disability they assume you don’t have one, but a lot of the crap I’ve experienced over the years by people who full out know I have a mental illness is also ableism, but a more insidious kind because it’s meant to degrade, hurt or devalue a person’s very real problem.

Want some examples?

My mother while I was in the hospital due to psychosis lamenting on the fact that she didn’t have the “luxury” of losing her mind.

People telling me to “just get better”. The whole “pull yourself up by the bootstraps” argument that no one would ever give, say, a diabetic, but for the mentally ill, it’s okay because it’s all in their head anyway, right?

People saying I’m lying about my mental health issues so I don’t have to work/don’t have to drive/don’t have to do groceries etc. Because psychosis and a 14 day stay in a psych ward is such an easy, fun thing to fake. And psychiatrists are so stupid, they all fell for it. Damn I must be a GREAT actress!

People saying I’m lying about my mental health issues AND taking all the pills I take for attention. Yes I’m taking approximately $1000/month worth of powerful psychiatric medication for attention. Ya got me.

These are ableist statements and most of them have come from people who are supposed to love me and support me. But now that I know that these statements have a name? Have like, a category? I can compartmentalize them in my brain as such and have them not affect me anymore.

So that’s all I really had to say. I just happened to see another post on this Live Journal community about ableism and then this Post Secret showed up today so I thought I’d make a short post about it.

And it’s always been my goal to reflect that in my paintings. Now I’m a little bit closer with thanks to Tam for the inspiration to quit humming and hawing and standing there with my mouth open and just try. Like really really try, not just a half-assed attempt.

So what I did this week was I got up early on Monday morning, watched Tam’s videos for this week for her World of Whimsy 2 class which included a video on how to shade girls with darker complexions that was a result of me asking Tam how to do so and directly after watching I took 3 sheets of watercolour paper, drew lines on them cutting them into quarters and started drawing girls in each box. Then I painted my ass off all week until my hand ached from holding a paintbrush.

Admittedly, the first two pages were a bust with a lot of shading mistakes and poor colour choices, but the last 3 girls did I were pretty good so I figured I’d share those ones with you guys now, plus a 4th girl who was intended for a full painting but I’m not sure I’m going to because I’m not sure I like her shading.

This one was done using a dark brown watercolour pencil to do the shading, then painting over it with a mixture of acrylic paint and acrylic glazing medium. The tricky part in doing all of these girls was in trying to get their complexions even and as you can see, this one’s complexion, especially above her nose and between her eyes, is pretty uneven so that particular paint mixture wasn’t optimal. A final wash of the same mix, but thinned with water was put over this girl before I called her “done” and that helped even out her skin tone a lot. She has a beauty mark because some kind of black schmutz got on the page and it wouldn’t come off.

For all of the girls’ hair I had two options for black:

1. Premixed “metallic” black acrylic paint called “Black Pearl“
2. Mixing my own metallic black using black acrylic paint and DecoArt’s pearlizing medium (available at Michael’s)

I went with the latter because I thought it looked more authentic in that it appears a little texturized because the pearlizing medium does make it a little bit texturized. The Black Pearl paint would have been too smooth and is also a real bitch to draw on after the fact if you need to do touch-ups on the lines in their hair, which is the main reason I don’t like to use it.

Anyway, the girl above was definitely better than the first 2 pages of girls I did, but she still wasn’t there. The first 2 pages of girls were basically experimenting with colour and getting frustrated that I couldn’t get their complexions even. By the 3rd page I figured it out.

This is the one I personally like the best because her skin tone is even, her shading is a lot more apparent than in the other examples I’m going to post, I like her expression and I like her hair style/colours (the reddish brown colour is called “Royal Ruby” and is a dark metallic red that isn’t showing up well in the picture – trust me though, it looks cool). How I got her skin tone even was that I used the watercolour pencil to do my shading, then I went over it about 50 million times with a mixture of acrylic paint and glazing medium that was really thinned down with water. Like, too thinned down. The next time I use this shade (which is the same shade as the last girl, but she had her problems which I’ll explain when we get to her) I’m going to thin it a little less so I don’t have to do as many coats.

Obviously with this 3rd girl, I was going for a darker complexion and an even one at that. I think I was mostly successful, but I think if I were to do this colour again (I have a lot of practice left to do!) I might try using either a dark purple or possibly even a black watercolour pencil to do the shading because with how dark the skin tone is, a lot of it was lost. In person the shading sows up a lot better, but when I took pictures in natural light you get what you see here. Again with this one, I used the thinned down mixture of acrylic paint and glazing medium, but because this particular colour is a highly pigmented one, she only needed 2 coats to be considered finished. If I did any more, all of her shading would have been lost.

So those were my practice girls, which I’m pretty proud of. Of course I’m not showing you my other 2 pages of mistakes because they were REALLY awful, just know that I made them and we’ll move right along…

This girl was supposed to be “the real deal”, the one I made an actual painting out of, but now I’m not so sure because I don’t really like her hair and her shading got washed out by having to do so many layers of watered down paint. (Granted, her shading doesn’t look as ashed out in person as it does in this picture, but still…)

Originally I painted her to be a white girl that looks identical to everything you see here, but for her skin tone obviously. In the finished piece, she was going to have a black petticoat with red underskirts and a large red bindi jewel on her forehead. The background of the canvas was going to be red, black and gold splatters on a crackled white background with red and gold “chunky” glitter sprinkled over top. But now I’m thinking…should I go through all that effort  and use all those supplies on a girl I’m not even sure I like? I have two weeks until The Square Foot Show so realistically whatever I paint right now should be my 3rd painting for the show and I’m not sure I’d want to put this one in because I’m not sure I like her. At the same time, I’ve not liked girls at this stage before and the finished product has ended up being some of my favourite pieces so I should probably just keep going with it.

Being the August long weekend here in Canada, my plan is to forget painting for the next 4 days and play WoW with Blake so in that time I’ll give it a lot more thought and by the end of the weekend I should have my answer. I didn’t mention it but the paper I’d be using for her petticoat (I don’t even know if that’s what it’s called – the outside part of her dress) is black and embossed with vine-y flowers. I think at the very least I should give her a dress, even if she’s only going to be put in my sketchbook as a failed experiment.

Anyway, as far as art goes, I think I have the women of colour thing pretty much worked out and out of all the paint I have, I have 3 main complexions I can do: sort of a honey brown like the 1st and last examples shown, the darker one shown and one I haven’t actually used yet because I just found the bottle of paint this morning, but it’s actually called “Chocolate Brown” and that’s exactly what it looks like. All 3 of these colours can be darkened or lightened. (I have like, 10 different shades of browns, not counting metallics, but these 3 were the only ones that look like realistic skin tones.)

My next art objective is to figure out how to draw and paint Asians without them looking like bad caricatures, but I think that’s going to be something that’s kind of on the back burner while I perfect my women of colour. I cannot even tell you how excited I am to be able to, after the stupid Square Foot Show is out of the way, go back and recreate some of my favourite pieces with girls of darker complexions. And I keep saying “darker complexions” or “skin tone” or “women of colour” specifically because my girls don’t have a race necessarily.  They just have colours. Like, the one that may become a painting? She could be Indian or Black or Hispanic or even a multicultural mix of races. I’m not gonna specify. Does it matter? No it does not. I’m just happy to be able to paint them and have them be beautiful, that’s all.

So that’s what I’ve been up to this week and what I intend to be up to for quite some time.