Blake just got back from checking the mail. Did one of you get me a gift subscription for BUST magazine? For reals? I FUCKING LOVE YOU, WHOEVER YOU ARE! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! <3 <3 <3

Hullo internets. I am typing this post instead of having a nap (I tried) or working on my painting (I tried that too) because really, I don’t have a whole lot else to do at the moment and the things I do have to do, I don’t wanna do, so here I am.

I don’t know what it is about this painting that makes me not want to work on it. It’s been sitting on my coffee table since the end of September half-finished and I sit here and I stare at it and as I’m trying to fall asleep, I think about it, but there doesn’t seem to be any goddamn resolution to the sucker that it just sits there some more. I’ve shown pictures, it’s the one I’ve dubbed “The Two Sunnies”. The background is done, the two girls are done, now I need to add the elements to tie the whole thing together, sign it, slap a couple of coats of varnish on it and it’d be done, but I still can’t seem to find those slippery elements to tie the whole thing together. I keep thinking about doing hearts hanging from strings like I’ve done in older paintings, with the happy site being bright magenta hearts and the sad side being black hearts with skulls but for some reason I keep rejecting that idea. In the beginning I wanted to add the sentences “Je suis heureuse”/”Je suis triste” above their heads but that wouldn’t leave very much room for embellishment of any kind and I think that would make the painting too plain. Just now I was thinking that it’d be cool to glue a bunch of pills, like stars, to the left (happy) side and have them taper off on the right (sad) side but my pills aren’t the right colours, Blake would probably kill me for using my pills to do that since he pays for them and I don’t even have enough to do that anyway. Yeah, I could do paper pills but there’s no fun in that so the pill idea is officially dead.

I’m giving this painting one more week to come together and if it doesn’t, then it’s going in the closet to be forgotten about while I work on something else. What is that something else? Why Hester Prynne and Pearl, of course, from The Scarlet Letter, but I have to read the book first, which I’m currently working on. I guess the book no longer holds a copyright so it’s available online for free HERE if anyone, like me, has never read it but wants to. What I’m about to say will no doubt make some of you cringe, but I really really don’t like old books and what I mean by that is that I find books that are written with “older language” really hard to follow. I even tried to read Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf which isn’t even that old, but the language bored me so I never did finish it (sorry Raya!). The Scarlet Letter hasn’t been too bad so far, it’s really only when the characters are speaking that the language gets “old”, but it’s still probably the oldest book I’ve tried to read, not counting Shakespeare (*snore*) or Bram Stoker’s Dracula. It was written in 1850.

Anyway, the book’s been interesting so far. I only started Friday night though and didn’t have time to read any of it last night, so I’m only on chapter 6.

Last night Blake and I went to see 2012 which was…well, disaster-porn at its finest. The plot was totally cheesy and you had to leave reality and science at the door, but I’m glad we saw it on a big screen rather than renting it and watching it on my 13″ TV. The kids stayed with Wayne & Judy while we went and they also had a good time, especially because Courtney had a friend sleeping over so there were the 4 of them.

Today I went over to spend some time with Judy and get her set up with Gmail and Facebook and she told me that it was verified, that both of their dogs have fleas…which is something I told them 2 months ago when Lily, the golden retriever, started scratching herself bald at the base of her tail. So, since I have two bottles of flea shampoo, I brought one over for Judy and somehow she sweet-talked me into helping her bathe the dogs. She was soaked, I was soaked, the dogs were soaked, the bathroom was soaked, the hallway was soaked, the kitchen was soaked, but at least the dogs don’t have fleas anymore. I also brought over my trimmers and clipped their nails, which were really bad. Both of their dogs have white nails, so I was fine with doing them and I got them really nice and short, but I won’t do our own dogs’ nails because Hoover’s are black and I’m too freaked out about cutting the quick and I figure if Blake’s doing 1, he might as well do the other.

Anyway, after the dogs were groomed, so to speak, I helped Judy vacuum the carpet, wash all of their bedding and then put the beds back together once everything was dry. AND I didn’t have my eggs this morning so I did all of this running on empty. In fact yesterday I had my eggs for breakfast but then all I had for the rest of the day was popcorn at the movies and I keep wondering how this is going to affect my weight loss progress this week. Oh well, I’ll do better the rest of the week and as long as I don’t gain, I’m golden.

Tomorrow night is the Leonid Meteor Shower and NASA has this neat little thing that shows you when the height of it is for your viewing area. Unfortunately the peak time for us is at like, 6am Tuesday morning and while it’s supposedly going to be the best showing of the Leonids in our lifetime, I’m not sure about waking up at 5am and getting the kids up to go outside in the cold to watch. I’m seriously considering it though! I’m gonna take it up with them tomorrow after school and see if they want to. I figure I can make everyone travel mugs of hot chocolate and we can dress warmly and watch from the swings at the park across the street where there are no streetlights. We should get a pretty decent show from there, if the calculator is to be believed and the kids are up for it. Madison will probably be up for it, I’m not so sure about Wes and I’m really doubting Blake’ll be into it at all. I’ve been wrong before though.

I think I’m finally getting the plague that Blake & the kids had last week. My throat is sore, my glands are swollen and I’m pretty sure I had a fever earlier. :o/

Alright, it’s time for me to stop typing now and find something relatively productive to do. Maybe I’ll just sketch out Hester Prynne and continue ignoring this painting. Maybe I’ll just go to fucking bed.

A new month of Buttercup begins today! Check it out! (Especially our hot ass cover. ;o))

Buttercup is an independent e-zine for persons seeking a female-focused atmosphere that celebrates diversity, individuality and creativity.
We launched September 1st!
Come join the party!

I always get really giddy after finishing a painting. Last night I finished the two I’ve been working on over the last several weeks and it was killing me waiting for the sun to come up so I could take them outside and take pictures of them to post for you all to see. Because I was so hasty in my picture taking and because, as we all know, I’m no art photographer, the colours are a little off and what’s actually pink may show up as more of a red on some people’s screens. This always happens when I use the metallic pink paint I use all the time (that I only have ONE bottle left of and they’re not making it anymore! DAMN YOU, AMERICANA!), usually it shows up as more of a red or magenta, especially on Mac screens (even my own), but I figure it’ll be especially reddish on some people’s screens today because I took these pictures at dawn when the sun’s a little bit red-toned to begin with.

Also, I re-sized the pictures a little bigger than I usually do so the detail shows up better, so click on any of the images to embiggen. (Both paintings are 12 x 16 inches, mixed media on gallery stretched canvas.)

The first painting I call “Binary Ballerina” and this is the one that may appear more red than pink, but I assure you, it’s very very pink and very very sparkly.

“Binary Ballerina”‘s background is white, metallic pink, metallic silver and washed over with a LOT of silver sparkles that shimmer and shine like jewels beneath the triple thick gloss varnish. Her hair is a shiny metallic brown and the bodice of her dress is made from light metallic pink cardstock. The bottom of her dress is made of course tulle, like a true tutu and is finished at the waist with matching pink ribbon. Around her neck is a pearl necklace.

As for what she’s thinking…well, there are two kinds of people in the world: those who can read binary and those who can’t. Obviously this ballerina fits into the former category making her something of a…oh, what’s the word I’m thinking of? ;o)

The next painting is simply titled “Flower Girl” and obviously I painted her in the same vein as “Binary Ballerina” (with two more similar executions to come!).

“Flower Girl”‘s background is crackled white, metallic (pearlized) white and metallic silver with a healthy wash of irridescent sparkles, which again, shine like diamonds beneath the triple thick gloss varnish. Her hair is painted with metallic “champagne gold” and her makeup is a custom mixed light pink metallic to compliment her metallic blue eyes. The bodice of her dress is made of white, finely glittered cardstock and the bottom is made of layers of fine white and silver tulle with silver ribbon at her waist. In her right hand she holds a basket of pink rose petals, which she scatters before the unseen bride. At her neck is a pink jeweled necklace.

As the unseen bride marries her prince charming, our young flower girl has other things on her mind. In my imagination she’s not Canadian, but American and it is my hope that when she becomes an adult, her world will be a more equal place. The triangle is again, not as red as it appears, it’s actually made of metallic magenta cardstock.

And finally, because I was paranoid that the sparkles wouldn’t show up in still images (as they tend not to, traditionally), I made a little video illustrating that detail. Please ignore my HORRIBLE voice and heavy breathing, I’d just literally run across the road and across a field to the park to utilize the bench and I was a little out of breath.

These paintings aren’t for sale yet and won’t be, I don’t think, until the other two in the series are finished, but let me warn you all now that I plan on selling these ones for a small fortune – unlike all the others – and I’ll tell you why:

• These paintings took me almost a month to make, not counting procrastination time. (With these kinds of paintings it’s all done in layers and it takes time for those layers to dry, bond, sew, whatever.)
• Certain materials, such as the pink metallic paint, are no longer available, making them somewhat precious.
• These are larger than previous works.
• These are ONE OF A KIND. There will never be prints of these paintings because the materials used make it impossible to get an accurate digital copy and thus, making prints is impossible. I’ve tried two different cameras and a scanner and the glitter and metallics just don’t translate so these ORIGINALS are all there will ever be. I reserve the right to repaint the same picture by hand, but truthfully, I hate repeating myself and even if I did, there would be differences and imperfections making another painting an original too.

I keep going back & forth on pricing so I don’t even want to give a ballpark figure, so I’ll just say that these are going to be more than previous ones.

Anyway, it’s 8:15am and I have other things to do, so I better get to it and I hope you like my paintings!

1. Suicide Girls Do Fight Club (interesting since they’re named for a Palahniuk book, Survivor, I think)

2. “Rap Chop”

ENJOY!

RAWR!!! *flex*

It’s finally done!
Mixed media on 12 x 12 inch wood