new love!!

oh dear. i have found a new love. encaustic painting!!!! it's got everything good. texture, luminosity, it's both additive and subtractive. subtle, delicate, weird and antiquated, plus it smells heavenly and is slightly dangerous.

i'm hooked. i'll post photos when i come up with something worth seeing.

sorry about the no caps...still carpally, but my ebay empire is growing!!

packing is the worst part

Like I said in the title, packing is the worst part of doing ebay. It can take a mighty long time to get those items packed and labeled and ready to go. Today I did 16 packages in just under 2 hours. (including 15 minutes for lunch). It surely sucked a lot away from my paypal balance too! But I have made $333.00 in the past week, and I have lots more auctions still to end today.

I should get one of those big world maps to hang up and then stick pins in every country that my items travel to. I just sold a shirt to someone in Luxembourg. How cool is that??

oh boy!!!

I am super excited about the upcoming postcard swap. We have 25 participants (possibly 26 if Jackie wants to do it too.) This should be very great. There are lots of art swappers from outside of the U.S. and that's quite exciting.

In other news....I'm working harder on ebay, doing many more listings and hopefully raising funds for the computer that I need.

If I list more artwork for sale, I'll write about it here. The three paintings I sold earlier this week went for nice and cheap, but they all sold.

this week

*send out emails about postcard exchange (which is now full!)
*finish up open studios paperwork
*work on website for my art
*ship all those packages
*list like crazy again on ebay
*photograph items for business
*try to come up with new blog template
*pay car registration

art day in the city

Thursday I went down to the city to spend the day making art and hanging out with Laurel and Mati. I love their studio spaces. It would be so nice to have a dedicated space like that, separate from your house. Laurel's studio is painted in great bright colors and it was really a good place to work.



see!

Sadly, the amazing drawing that Laurel did, would not print! It was highly frustrating, and we even tried twice. It was weird.

Mati's beautiful bird drawing did print though, and she used it to make super cool onesies for her baby-having friends.



here you can see Mati hard at work, with mr. Fargo doing his dead dog impression on the floor.

It was good to be able to spend some time with those guys and talk about art and life and draw stuff and share the gocco and eat lunch at Atlas. Next time...silkscreens!!

Oh and I've really been thinking about the jungle collaboration idea. That really needs to be done. It would be cool if Mati could make some of her people to walk through it, as sort of big lifesized colorful paper dolls maybe?

float

floatsmall, originally uploaded by monster town.

This is the print that I made at the studio day with Laurel and Mati. This copy of it is on commercial fabric, printed just with black ink and then colored in with marker.

Illustration Friday--Nourishment

Ink painting on an old dictionary page.

"It is only by drawing often, drawing everything, drawing incessantly, that one fine day you discover to your surprise that you have rendered something in its true character." —
Camille Pissarro.


Wouldn't that be nice? I'm not at all there, not even on the same continent as that. But here's a drawing...

goodbye brian

This painting of Brian is for sale on ebay right now, starting at the low low price of only $12.00

what's new, bunnyhead?

Well, things are happening around here, not super great things. My computer, we think, has officially kicked the bucket. This is very sad for me. Scott fixed one problem, but now it's having new ones, and the death of the motherboard is imminent.

Scott (who will soon be getting his merit badge for being the best boyfriend ever), put my hard drive into his laptop, and let me borrow it until I can scrape up enough money for a shiny little apple G4. This is extremely kind of him. He knows that I need to have a computer to do my job, and he doesn't want me to be without income!

I'm working extra hard now so that I can earn enough soon, and give him his machine back. I found one for $1649.95. I'm pretty sure I have $49.95, the rest will take some time!

In art news...I am drawing a lot in my little handmade sketchbook. I'm going to have to make another one soon. Maybe I'll post a how-to when I do that. I'm also working up a little curriculum for myself. Sort of an intensive DIY art school,because I'm wanting to do a lot of things with my artwork right now and my hands can't yet produce the images that are banging around in my head. I have a solo show in October, and SF open studios that month too. Both are exciting but scary.

I have listed three paintings on ebay. I'm going to list more drawings and paintings this week. I don't know if this is a good idea, because sometimes they don't sell, and that makes me sad, or they sell for super cheap which makes me even more sad.

clematis

may 011, originally uploaded by monster town.

Here's a photo I took of the clematis vine growing up the wall of my garage. I planted it a few years ago as a mother's day gift to myself, and it makes me really happy. I can see it from my kitchen window.

Postcard Exchange Further Explained

Alright! It looks like we have plenty of swappers for the postcard exchange, so here are the details.....
1)If you for sure want to participate, send an email to me monstertown at sbcglobal.net so that I can make an email list of all the swappers. Please do this as soon as possible. The list will be closed by May 20th.

2)The cards should be made, not bought, but you can draw, paint, print, use your computer, take a photo, sew....whatever you'd like. You'll have to make one for everyone who is participating (probably around 20 people, but I'll know for sure once I get the emails)

3)The theme that we came up with "Summertime Creatures" can be openly interpreted or ignored entirely. That part doesn't really matter. Just make some art that you want to share.

4) We have quite a few international participants, so you have to be willing to mail your card overseas.

5)The deadline for mailing the cards will be June 20th, further details about how it will work will be sent out to everyone participating as soon as I get the list together.

Yay! Art + Mail = great!!

ouch and damn

I've been away for a few days due to catastrophic computer failure and an infected splinter in my finger on my left hand, the hand I use for everything!

Now I'm catching up on blog reading and auction posting and email.

Will post further details about the postcard exchange tonight or tomorrow! (thanks Mati!)

I spilled water on my favorite drawing pen and now it won't work, and I had to draw with a regular pen and it got all smeary. Darn. 

happy mother's day

The day I got my desk, I pretty much happily sat there for about 8 hours, half doing work, half admiring my new desk. I'm considering it my mother's day gift to myself.

I got some wonderful little handmade gifts from my kids already, they gave them to me Friday morning, they couldn't wait. They were little ceramic tile trivets for hot things. They are really pretty, and I'm going to use them every morning, when I set my hot teapot and cup of tea on my beautiful desk. Wouldn't want to mar the wood!

I don't usually care much for mother's day. It always makes me kind of pissed off because my mom is dead, and I never got much credit from the kids' dad. This year should be alright. I'll take the kids for a morning walk to the cafe (if it's not raining), and over to their dad's house and then go and do something with Scott for his mom. Then later at night, I'm going to go out dancing with a bunch of other moms, and I can't wait. I've really been craving it.

I found this cabinet at the thrift shop yesterday. I saw it and fell in love right away...the shape, the color of the wood, the fact that it opens with a key!! A key!! And then I opened it up and saw that it had all kinds of shelves inside to hold paper. I didn't look much more closely, I scampered to the front desk to buy it before someone else swooped in and broke my heart. 

look how pretty!! My new lovely cabinet! 

Check out the insides!!! Shelves built for holding papers...and all those other shelves!! 

Oh look! The top opens...I wonder what's inside?!?? 

I found that it is a desk inside!! A desk!! With built in inboxes and little hollowed out wells for pens and paper clips.... 

Illustration Friday...."Ambition". I wish that I had come up with something better, but the good part of it is it's in my sweet new sketchbook that I made myself!