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!
“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.”
“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.
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:
Premixed “metallic” black acrylic paint called “Black Pearl“
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.
So obviously, “She’s Like A Rainbow” is finished and I’m really really proud of her because in person, she just looks amazing but now I’m thinking about future projects and the things coming up and I’m becoming completely overwhelmed by it all. When I become overwhelmed, I’m unfortunately the kind of person to just sit down wherever I am and cry and I’m trying very very hard not o do that.
I really wish they made a suitable paper planner for me to keep everything straight because right now, my TELUS calendar is just not helping me. I miss my Big Fat 5-Star planner. I don’t know why they stopped making those, they were great.
Anyway…
The drop off date for The Square Foot Show, which Blake says I should submit to just to give me the exposure AND the option of going to the gala if I choose to, is 3 weeks away. If I don’t submit, that’s no longer an option. Also, there are prizes because it’s a juried show and it’s not like I think I would actually win something but it’s like the lottery, you’re not gonna win if you don’t play, so I might as well play. But what I’m stressing over is what to submit. What is representative of my work *and* what don’t I mind giving away for only about $100? (They sell the pieces for $200 & change but keep 50 friggin’ percent.) I’m allowed to submit up to 3 pieces and since I paid $20 to be in this show, I feel I should submit the maximum allowed. Right now I’m thinking “Sparkle“, “Shimmer II” and “Five O’Clock Abortion“. What do you guys think of that selection? I was thinking of maybe putting in “Turquoise Love Fairy” instead of “Sparkle” but I dunno. I just think it has to be one or the other because I don’t want two fairies in the same show. Personally, I like “Sparkle” better, but she’s been in my Etsy shop for the last 7 months & hasn’t moved so maybe I could sell her at Sq. Foot, is what I’m thinking.
Then there’s also the fact that there are 3 weeks left until the submission date which means I have enough time to do 1 more painting for consideration, 2 if I really haul ass and get productive. I have ideas and I’m going to start 1 tomorrow, but the 2nd idea is going to have to wait until I learn a specific technique in my art class on Monday and really, if that one goes as planned, I’d rather have it in my Etsy shop than Sq. Foot.
This is the shit that keeps me up at night, seriously.
Also keeping me up at night is the fact that Touched By Fire has already sent out their call for entries and I don’t know if I’m going to submit this year or what I’m going to submit this year. I think I have until October or November to decide, which is nice, but that also crosses into my Xmas season issues. I’m told, and I’ve seen this with my own eyes, that in October/November, Etsy kinda goes crazy with Xmas sales, so I want to have my shop as full as possible. That’s only like, 2 months & change away. It takes me about 2 weeks to do a painting and I can do 2 at a time. That means I have a lot of work ahead of me and I’m not sure if I can do Touched By Fire *and* stock my shop for Xmas.
Honestly though, Touched By Fire kinda pisses me off. The show is put on by The Mood Disorders Association of Ontario, which is why I call it “the remedial art show” and the first year they accepted me, my first year submitting, they chose “Mania in the Key of Psychosis“, which is apt, and they juxtaposed that with “Hope” and “Dream“, which also makes sense. But when I submitted last year, I submitted a ton of paintings, including my “The Devil’s in the Details” which I thought was appropriate for a show called “Touched By Fire” and they didn’t accept me. That’s cool, I can handle rejection, but the thing is that almost all of the paintings I submitted were shiny, happy paintings and I almost feel like I wasn’t accepted because I got better. My meds are working (for the most part) so I make shiny, happy paintings now and that’s not what they want. They want tortured, moody depictions of mental illness and to me, that kinda seems like defeating the purpose of the Association, don’t you think? I mean, isn’t the goal here to help people get better? So why isn’t that represented in the show?
So that’s why I might not bother submitting to that show this year. I don’t want to paint something dark and moody specifically for that show because if it’s not accepted and if it IS accepted and doesn’t sell, then what the fuck am I going to do with it? My online audience of customers don’t want that shit and I kinda don’t know if it’s right to paint outside of your own headspace/mood just to get in a show, does that make sense?
“The Two Sunnies” would have been perfect for the show, but I gave that one to my shrink, partially as a “thank you” because she HAS helped me immensely but also to show her “hey, this is actually what I do for a living so quit telling me I don’t have a job” (and she hasn’t done that since, as a point of fact, every session she asks me if I’m painting because if I’m not painting it’s probably time to adjust my meds).
You can submit work to the show that’s not for ale, but I’d kinda feel like a dick asking her for it back, if only for a few weeks. Especially if something happened to it (the Touched By Fire people were NOT gentle with my work when they sent it back to me…).
And then there’s just trying to get my shop as full as possible for the Xmas season. Of COURSE I want to sell things the second I put them up, that would be great! But at the same time, I need to have a full shop by like, mid-October which means that I need to start painting my ass off (which I’ve been doing, I finished 3 paintings this month!). And that’s fine, I can do that, but things like Camwhores and WoW are going to have to get to the back of the line. And YES WoW is totally a recreational thing and I can see how the outside observer might be like “well not playing a video game is pretty easy” but when you’re an officer in a guild, especially, it’s a little more involved than that. People count on you. Camwhores? Well that’s just another can of worms.
For someone who “doesn’t do anything”, I sure seem to have a lot on my plate right now and I don’t really know how to make time for everything. I think painting has to be my #1 priority, WoW on weekends, Camwhores when I can’t sleep.Oh and there’s yoga too, can’t forget that…the art class I’m taking too….
When the kids go back to school, I’ll have more time to get things done, which will help a lot, so I have that to consider as well, especially when it comes to fitting Camwhores into my schedule.
Anyway, as I said, this is the shit that keeps me up at night. Hopefully now that it’s all out of my brain I can finally drag my ass to bed and sleep like a normal human being. Maybe?
It truly is the perfect food. Well, “junk” food. I think I read somewhere that dark chocolate like, boosts your endorphins or dopamine something and that’s a good thing. All I know is that I love it, especially late at night when it’s hot and humid and I don’t want to go to bed yet because tomorrow’s going to be even hotter and more humid, so I need to use the night to get work done.
I’m taking an art class right now that is so fucking awesome that I honestly couldn’t be happier. My brain is exploding with ideas and I’m frustrated that my hands don’t work as fast as I’d like them to and paint doesn’t dry as fast as I’d like it to. I just want all of this creative energy out of me and into the world! I want to paint a million paintings and have them in homes all across the world! I’m close to that, which I should be proud of, my paintings are all over the US, a few in the UK and one – ONE! – in my homeland of Canada! If I could get one to Australia and Japan, I would feel immensely successful.
I’m still undecided about The Square Foot Show. Like, whether or not I’m going to do it. Blake says I should at least submit and be part of the show, but not commit to actually being at the artist’s gala bullshit thing that I totally do not want to do. Like, in the slightest. I barely made it through my friend’s wedding last weekend, I don’t know if I can deal with a bunch of Toronto strangers.
I guess we’ll see how it goes.
Oh one more thing about art before I switch topics: my art teacher? Totally awesome. I e-mailed her, asking if she could teach me how to shade people of colour because I learned how to shade my girls in a very specific, Caucasian way and I don’t know how to adapt that method to work for darker complexions. Shading is just something that doesn’t come naturally to me at ALL. So she e-mailed me back, actually really excited about the idea of darker complexions and said that in week 3 of the course, she’ll put up an extra video (it’s an online art class btw), teaching us exactly what I asked for: how to shade people of colour. I AM SO STOKED. I have had a billion ideas for girls of different ethnicities as it’s one of my goals in my artist’s statement to express Canada’s multiculturalism, but until now I haven’t been able to and it’s been making me CRAZY! Learning how to do this thing may be the difference between me getting a $5000 arts grant in the spring and not getting a $5000 arts grant in the spring. The same goes for The Stupid Square Foot Show.
So that’s art right now.
But let’s talk about yoga. Oh my god people, I LOVE yoga and I am in a continuous state of SHOCK that I love yoga. I literally failed gym class every year of my life. I can scan my report cards and prove it if you don’t believe me, it was pathetic. (How do you fail gym class? By not showing up, my faking injury or illness, by having a doctor who didn’t mind writing notes, getting kicked OUT of gym class for calling your gym teacher things you’re now too ashamed to admit you said…)
Anyway, yoga. It just works with me, it clicks, I can’t explain it. I feel both relaxed AND energized (and SORE!) after every class, it’s like I’m full of this weird energy or something. My teacher knows I’ve never done yoga before so in the beginning she took it easy on me but as we’ve gone along (I’ve only been going for 5 weeks), she’s been going harder on us and I think she’s a little surprised that I’m keeping up and practically begging for more.
I’m not very strong yet, but I am naturally flexible, so I’m better at some things than others. Like today we did pigeon pose and I rocked the shit out of it because my legs are super bendy and I sit like a freak all day in my computer chair anyway, pigeon was a cakewalk. But plank? Oh my holy lord do I fucking hate plank! My arms and upper body just aren’t strong enough to do plank-like things, like these crazy bitch push ups she made us do a few weeks ago? My god I was dripping with sweat and was sore for a full week afterward – BUT IN A TOTALLY GOOD WAY.
Honestly, I wish we could go twice a week, but we don’t have the money to do that and I think her classes are all full because her studio only fits 5 or 6 people right now. She’s planning on expanding, but I don’t know when that’s going to happen.
ANYWAY…*deep breath*, it is 3:34am and I think I have just enough energy left to get the paining I’m working on into the final steps of being finished. So I’m going to go do that and wish you all a happy tomorrow. :o)
This is my sign. Blake screwed it to the outer wall of our house, right beside the “front” door, so that everyone who enters will know the deal.
Before it was put in place, I asked Blake, “do you agree with it?” and he said “absolutely”.
After it was put in place, Madison read it and said she liked it. I said to her, “but do you agree with it?” and she said, “yes, even though I probably do a lot of shitty things that you write about”, to which I replied, “not really” because there was only one shitty thing she’s done so far that I found was worth writing about and I made it a friends only post on LJ. (She stole a necklace of mine that my grama gave to me which my grampa, now dead, gave to her, that had a HUGE crystal pendant and then some kid stole it out of her desk so now it’s lost forever.) Anyway, she & I agreed that that was probably the shittiest thing she’s ever done.
Anyway, if you’ve been reading my site for any length of time, you’ve probably seen me say what’s on this sign multiple times because it’s true. I write about pretty much everything that happens in my life, or at least the important stuff and often times, “the important stuff” is the shitty things people do. I can’t say that I write about all of these things publicly all the time, but they are usually written about either on my site, my LJ (publicly or friends only) or my paper journal, but usually online in some way, shape or form. That’s just what I do. That’s what I’ve been doing for the last 10 years of my life and if you have a problem with it, don’t be in my life. It’s really that simple. And really, is it so hard to be a decent person who doesn’t do shitty things? Because if that’s difficult for you, we probably don’t want you in our lives anyway. And that is a sentiment shared by everyone in the Sunny, Blake, Madison & Wes Crittenden family. I know this because I ASKED.
So that’s my sign. Probably the first of many. As I pointed out to Blake, I am now the crazy neighbour who makes signs. :oD So be it.
So, I mean, I’ve been around…I just haven’t been updating with anything of too much importance or excitement or anything and this post is really no different, but I figured I’d tell you all what I’ve been up to.
Mostly I’ve just been keeping my nose to the ground and trying to win this contest over at Camwhores where I can win Blake a pretty cherry new laptop, which he could really use because his laptop’s basically held together with duct tape. That’s why I’ve been going so hard with the Camwhores posts, but don’t worry, at the end of the month I’ll stop pushing as hard as I am right now.
There’s also the fact that right now I’m #1 on the site (I could be #2 by now, I haven’t checked – Kaitlyn looked poised to overtake me last I looked) which means I can do shows every 3 days instead of every 7 days and I’m really trying to make the most of that as my Camwhores earning potential decreases in the summer months because the kids are home from school. And the truth of the matter is, the proceeds from this week’s hardcore camming is primarily for the kids, so I have cash money in my wallet to send them to McDonald’s for ice cream or so I can send Madison to the store on her bike to get the ingredients for pizza or so we have the money to get subs for dinner and eat them on the beach after Blake gets home from work or so, if Madison needs $20 worth of fabric to create something with her sewing machine, I can give it to her. So I can buy my kid Lunapads when she has her first period. Blake’s income has no room for things like this, but mine does, so I’m trying to make the most of it right now. Tips are appreciated, by the way.
So that’s the deal with Camwhores. That and I’ve been having a lot of fun over there as I tend to always do. And you probably would too. I’ll shut up now.
In other news, I have a garden. A garden that seems to be filling in nicely. These pictures were taken last week and it started raining on me today or I would have gone out and taken new pictures because the lettuce is starting to come up.
Beans!
Peas!
The whole shebang!
The tomato vines are getting pretty unruly, so the plan for today is to tie them to the cages as opposed to staking them, just to get them up off the ground. The stalks of the pepper plants are turning kinda woody at the bottom and the plants are getting big, which is good. The ones at the back are still a liiiiittle piddly though, but I’m not sure there’s much I can do about it. Peppers need a long, hot growing season and for the past week or so, it’s actually been kinda cold. Last week I even wussed out and turned on the furnace for a day because it was only 12 degrees (C).
We’ve also had a lot of rain, which means the peas and beans are almost twice the size they are in these pics and next paycheque (next weekend), we have to find some way to give the peas something to climb up on that’s CHEAP CHEAP CHEAP. My suggestion was to get a piece of wood lattice the length of the garden and just stick that in the ground but I’m not sure how much that costs or how feasible it is. We’ll figure something out. There are wire “pea fences” you can buy, but the ones I saw in the Vesey’s catalogue were like, over $50 and I’d need 2 of them so screw that.
I haven’t even looked at the herbs I have growing in pots on the porch, so I have no idea what they’re doing and truth be told, I kinda forget what I planted (thyme & rosemary?). Oops. The front garden is filling in nicely in the parts that were established last year but the part where we cut the sod earlier in the spring is taking its sweet assed time. The filled-in part already has a metric fuck tonne of blooming bachelor’s buttons and the cosmos are about ankle high. The part we sod cut? So far all I see growing in there is more goddamn GRASS despite planting literally LBS of bb & cosmo seeds there. Hopefully with the rain we got this week and the heat we’re supposed to get next week, those seeds will start growing.
I am pausing this post because an oldschool song just came on my iTunes that I feel I need to share because to me, it’s such a summer song. This band (Chaka Demus & Pliers) has another song I like called “Tease Me”, which I’ll also embed:
Okay I’ll stop being random now. I’m gonna guess that Dirty will be the only person on my LJ friends list to appreciate those two videos haha
ANYWAY…
I’ve been making art. Quite a bit of art actually, I’ve been fairly productive over the past two weeks or so. I have two paintings almost finished, a new one started and I’m painting a very mysterious sign that’s going to hang beside my front dor which I will reveal as soon as it’s ready.
So here’s what I’m working on right now. This is the turquoise version of “Love Fairy” that of course needs arms, but don’t they fucking all…*grumble*….I haaaaate dong arms….anyway, here she is (and she should have been finished two weeks ago but I got sidetracked by too many things – oops):
The turquoise love fairy or “Love Fairy II”, as I’ve been calling her, is exactly the same as the original, using confetti glitter as opposed to rounded glitter, the only difference is her palette and her lips are bigger than the pink one’s. All she needs to be complete is definition of her wings using white metallic paint, arms of course, a wand, my signature and a 2 coats of varnish, all of which I should be able to make happen this week if I stop procrastinating. (Or as Jackie says, “procrasturbating” lulz.)
Also on my coffee table is “Shimmer II”. The original “Shimmer” had a kid-related accident and can no longer be sold. I’m still gonna hang her in my house, but she’s got some cracks now and she just can’t be sold, so I’m painting a new one. Because I can’t really paint the same girl twice, despite it looking like they’re all basically the same, “Shimmer II” and “Shimmer” actually look quite different and since I sold “Shine” last week and the triad (?) is no longer complete, I’m debating as to whether or not I should actually write “Shimmer” across the top like the original or if I should just leave it plain. What do you think?
With “Shimmer II” there are quite a few differences between her and the original, some intentional, some not. First of all, her background is a lot more turquoise than the original and that’s basically because I’ve forgotten how to do backgrounds the way I was doing them a year ago. That’s another strike, I think, in the column for not writing “Shimmer” across the top because she no longer fits with the other 2 paintings in her series because of the different backgrounds. If you were to hang all 3 side by side, you could tel that “Shimmer II” was painted at a different time.
Also, I fucked up her hair, but I didn’t realize it until it was too late. The original “Shimmer”‘s hair was a custom mix of champagne gold and metallic white so it would look more sun-bleached and I forgot to do that with “Shimmer II”. You guys would never be able to tell the difference by pictures, but putting them side by side in person, you can tell.
If you look at the original “Shimmer”, you can see that her boobs are a lot more, hmmm, is “siliconey” a word? With “Shimmer II” I tried to make them a more realistic shape for someone who’s never worn a bra in her life. She will, of course, have jewels for nipples, but I can’t do that until I give the poor girl some arms. After she has arms, all she needs is my signature and 2 coats of varnish and she’s done, but I’m still really torn on the “Shimmer” issue. Seriously, do you think I should write “Shimmer” across the top or should I treat her like a whole new painting? This is why I’ve been procrastinating on getting her done, I just don’t know what to do. I’m leaning towards not putting it and just leaving her plain, but I just don’t know.
And like I needed to start another painting…but inspiration struck…here’s what I’m calling “She’s Like a Rainbow”, inspired by my internet friend Megan who just had her hair dyed this way:
She doesn’t even have a dress yet (and I don’t have one in mind) or a canvas prepped (which I usually do first but with the other 2 on my coffee table, I don’t have room!) so I’m not really sure what I’m doing with her at the moment, but there she is all the same. All I know is that she will probably have a purple bindi jewel on her forehead and her dress is going to be of the petticoat variety, although I don’t have any papers in mind yet.
Annnnnnd last but not least, I’m working on a sign for the front door of my office (which acts as the “front door” of our house, even though it isn’t actually our front door) and this project is priority #1 right now. In fact, as soon as I’m finished with this post, I’m probably going to finish watching The Runaways (is it just me or is this movie really really ungood?) and work on this sign. What the sign is going to say is top secret for now, but it’s something you’ve all heard me say (or write) a thousand times before so it should come as no surprise to most of you. It is also going to be the first of probably 3 signs that will hang next to my front door. So, saying all of that, I’ll show you the girl I made for it, tell you that it’s on wood as opposed to canvas and leave it at that:
Lettering always makes me nervous, so I’ve been practicing on paper first and it will be the absolute last thing I do on the sign. Really all that’s left to do is her dress, which will take like, 10 minutes tops, and then the lettering which I know is going to be metallic red, possibly with a black outline…I haven’t decided yet. Part of me thinks the outline will look really awesome, part of me is thinking “why make it more complicated than it needs to be when you suck at lettering to begin with?” So we’ll see.
So as you can see, when I haven’t been whoring it up on Camwhores this month, I’ve been pretty busy creating and the rest of this month is dedicated to actually finishing. I signed myself up for The Square Foot Show, which is August 21st-September 5th at AWOL Gallery in Toronto but I have no idea what I’m going to enter yet. The original plan was “Sparkle”, “Shimmer” & “Shine” and they were painted expressly for that purpose last summer, but things happened and I didn’t do it last summer and now “Shine” is sold and the original “Shimmer” is damaged, so all that really remains is “Sparkle” sooooooo I’m just going to work my tail off creating from now until the drop-off date (August 10th) and just see what I come up with, then pick 3 to put in the show and that’ll be that.
The shitty thing about The Square Foot Show, which I know I talked about last year, is that you have to pay a $20 fee to get your work in, first of all, and then they sell your paintings for $224 each – which is fine since that’s only $4 more than I usually charge if you don’t count the exchange rate – but then AWOL Gallery takes 50%. And that sucks. But that’s apparently how galleries work and according to the people who give out Ontario Art Council grants, you’re not a real artist unless you show your work in galleries, so that’s the price I guess I have to pay. *shrug* I’ve decided that if I get turned down for another grant next year, I won’t be applying again and will just focus on building my business myself through Etsy. So far I think I’m doing pretty good, my only hang up is that I don’t get the work done fast enough and because of that, my shop is a little bare right now, as far as variety. All summer my focus is going to be 12×12 inch paintings, which is the size I prefer to work in, but I plan on doing some works on wood in the fall, as well as getting back to ACEOs since people seem to like those. (Although I wish people would buy up the ones I’ve already made! I have red & gold, black & gold, green & gold and purple & gold!)
Anyway, that’s what’s what. Blake is up now and I think we’re going to have breakfast sooooo I’m going to stop writing now and pay attention to my family. Hope you’re all having a great weekend and the rain’s not gettin’ ya down!
