my heart on my sleeve

Dear Universe,

You suck. I know, that's a little harsh, but come on now. Why do you have to break my heart? Every six months, is this the new theme for me? I don't deserve this, I really don't. I am good person, I have so much to offer, and the only people capable of seeing that are the ones to whom it doesn't even matter. That's not fair, I don't deserve for this to happen. Is it too much to ask that there actually be someone out there for me?

Don't tell me to get back on the horse. I can't even think about it that for a long time.

Please send Cupid down there, I'd like to kick his cherubic little booty into the next century.

The 30-30-30 Project: Day 4

30 days, 30 art pieces, $30 each.

Day 4:




This will be posted on etsy when I get a chance (a couple days max) but is available now.
$30
California residents add 7.75% sales tax.
US shipping $1
outside US shipping $2
packaged in a clear archival bag

I submitted an application to the 20th Street Gallery's 50-50 show today. I should find out next week. I also went to see the Warner Brothers exhibit at the Crocker.

It's been a rough day.

The 30-30-30 Project: Day 3

30 days, 30 art pieces, $30 each.

Day 3:




This will be posted on etsy when I get a chance (a couple days max) but is available now.
$30
California residents add 7.75% sales tax.
US shipping $1
outside US shipping $2
packaged in a clear archival bag

The 30-30-30 Project: Day 2

30 days, 30 art pieces, $30 each.

Day 2:




This will be posted on etsy when I get a chance (a couple days max) but is available now.
$30
California residents add 7.75% sales tax.
US shipping $1
outside US shipping $2
packaged in a clear archival bag

January 11 work in progress

I don't know if I'm doing this right. This is not a good photo either, I didn't feel like getting lights all set up for this.


Tiger engraving
~1 x 1.5 inches on copper

I've made a lot of progress on the scrim piece but have not inked it so there's really nothing to see yet!

30-30-30 Project: Day 1

Okay, if you didn't catch this in an earlier post, I'm working on a new project, I call it the 30-30-30 Project. Starting today, ending February 9th. 30 days, 30 art pieces, $30 each. All images will be 2 x 3.5 inches. The theme is pretty broad, anything I find around here, but I have to work from life and not from photos. That's not something I do often. I also have a self-imposed time limit for each piece, as I tend to work very slowly. I really have no preconceived ideas of what I'm going to work on, part of the adventure is finding something every day. I'm excited about this! :-)

So here's day 1:




This will be posted on etsy when I get a chance (a couple days max) but is available now.
$30
California residents add 7.75% sales tax.
US shipping $1
outside US shipping $2
packaged in a clear archival bag

a weekend of chickening

It's been a while since I've been to a show. And it'll likely be a while til the next one...

I'm just going to be totally straight out with this. The rumors are flying that I'm getting out of birds. I'm not. I'm likely going to cut way way back and may get pretty close to out, but I love the birds and the people too much to let it go completely. There are a couple of reasons why I am doing this, I just don't feel like getting into all that right now. I am not sure yet what I'm going to do, there are several options. I need to do a little "chicken inventory" and give it a lot of thought. I don't take this decision lightly.

But I will ALWAYS be the chicken lady. :-)

Anyway.

I left here at 4:45am Saturday morning, and if you know me at all you know that's really not prime time for me, as the ultimate non morning person. I'd actually gone to bed shortly after 8pm on Friday but that was pointless, I tossed and turned til after 11 anyway. Sigh. I must say traffic is very light at that time of day. I'd been concerned about fog but other than a few light patches the night was clear and VERY cold, and it was beautiful to watch the moon sink down over the mountains as the sky started to glow in the east. I wasn't too perky on Saturday. I took 13 birds (5 colors). I don't have anything in super condition right now and did not expect to do much damage. And indeed I didn't. I was very much beaten! That's okay, I had some tough competition there with very nice well conditioned birds.

It was a fun weekend anyway, winning really isn't everything. It's nice to win, but I'm not one of "those" people who can't handle it if I don't (you chicken people know who I'm referring to). ;-) I had a great dinner and conversation with DW that evening, and was able to hit the road and head home pretty early this morning.

Oh, I do have to complain about the hotel. Because I like to complain. This is the third or fourth year I've stayed there and I've always been quite impressed and felt it's one of the nicest places I've ever stayed. This year they completely failed to impress me. When I checked into my room it REEKED of ant spray. Okay, I'm pretty easy going, ants happen, I get it. But when I found dead ants all over the bathroom, in the bathtub, and piled up (seriously, piles of dead ants) along the walls that was a little much for me to take. I went and asked for another room. The next one also smelled of ant spray but at least didn't have any carcasses so I just opened the window and by the time I went back in the evening it was fine. But I hadn't really noticed til later that the bathroom countertop had streaks of what looked like soap scum all over it, and when I pulled back the covers on the bed ewww! Seriously, if the sheets are that disgustingly stained, throw then away! Good thing this room had two beds, the second one was much less offensive. But the heater rattled so loud there was no way I could sleep through it, so I had to turn it off. I woke up shortly after 4am so cold that all my joints hurt. I grabbed the two extra blankets out of the closet and threw those on the bed and managed to fall asleep again til my alarm clock went off at 7. Another sleepy day. There was a 2-hour nap with my name on it when I got home. So as much as I'm not too good at "roughing it" I kinda hate hotels too.

Anyway, here are some pics of my birds:

Black cockerel, I really like this guy and thought he might do well. He didn't.

Blue cockerel (out of the Blue Brassy breeding pen).

Golden Duckwing cockerel.

Blue Brassy Back pullet.

a head full of ideas

Gah, I really need to catch up on emails! I've been slowly chipping away at them, but I need to just sit down here for a few hours and get it done. It's newsletter time, but I have this whole guilt complex about sending people a mass email if I haven't yet answered a personal email. Maybe tonight I can chip away at that a bit more.

So my brain is kinda all over the place about art. Obviously I'm going to be focusing pretty hard on scrim and engraving. I have not forgotten about drawings and aspirations for galleries. Jackson Hole still bounces around my head a lot and I WILL be submitting work up there. Why have I not done it yet? Because I don't have enough of the type and caliber of work that I need for a place like that. Obviously I have a lot of art, just not enough samples of a particular genre and media. So that's all still a work in progress, and I ought to start on another large drawing for that.

No, I have not heard anything from the Miniature Show yet. I don't expect to hear anything until March.

I want to make more stuff. I need to have projects to work on, I need to wake up and think "okay, I'm working on this today" so that I don't fritter away time wondering what I should work on, and doing silly things like ceaselessly logging into Facebook (OMG addicted!!!). So I was sitting here last night and BOING this brilliant idea popped into my head, my own little spinoff of something that a local gallery does (they call it a 50-50 show, it's 50 art pieces in 50 days). See, a lot of you tell me you love my stuff but can't afford it. So I thought well, I ought to do something people can afford to collect. You guessed it, that means it's gonna be really small!

Therefore, I am going to have my own little thing going on, and I am going to call it the 30-30-30 project. 30 days. 30 art pieces. 30 bucks each (plus tax and shipping). This will start January 11 and finish February 9 (bonus points if you catch the symbolism here). Each piece will be 2 x 3.5 inches (the size of a business card). Media can be graphite, colored pencil, ink, acrylic, or any combination thereof). Subject matter: "stuff I see around here." Yeah that's pretty broad, but I have to work from life, not from photos. Could be still life, animals, botanical, self-portrait, etc. I must do one per day, though if I'm out of town I can do two in a day to compensate. I will post one per day, unless I'm gone and then obviously I'll do it when I come back. And I'll try to draw interesting things.

ARE YOU EXCITED??!?!?! Get excited! This is exciting! Come on, gimme a woo hoo! Your chance to own a piece of my stuff at a price that doesn't break the bank (though by all means feel free to buy the big stuff too!)

I was up for hours last night thinking about this. I'm excited!!

And then today I got to thinking about the actual 50-50 show, and I looked up the info and the submission deadline is next Wednesday. Well heck, I'm gonna enter that too, and if they accept me I know EXACTLY what I'll do. :-)

And in other news today I washed seven roosters. Tomorrow is the hens' turn. Show time!

January 6 works in progress

Hmm, at some point I'm going to have to do another ginormous painting or something just to offset the minisculity (I know that's not a word) of the artwork on which I am focusing these days.

I completed the image transfer for the swan scrim. I can't quite decide if I should do the whole swan and THEN the background, or vise versa, or just work on everything at once. I'll sleep on this.


I decided to do a tiger image for the wee little piece of copper. Step one (after doing a sketch, of course) is to transfer the image. Mmm, this is harder than it is with scrim (where I tape the image on and "dot the outline"). On the copper I took a piece of polymer clay and squished it on the surface til it got that cloudy filmy stuff on there, and then I taped on the image and put a piece of carbon paper in between, and traced it. That worked pretty well. This is out it looks with the carbon transfer:

And then I lightly scribed the outline and wiped away the film. Actually I first scribed too lightly and had to go over it a second time. Live and learn. This is entirely new. I'm going to jump headfirst into a technique I've never tried. This may crash and burn if I screw it up too badly, but I'll keep you posted either way! :-D This is photographed in the vise, just fyi (the copper is now superglued to a chunk of aluminum, which is clamped in the vise jaws). Metal is going to be a real beast to properly photograph. Scrims are so easy, I can just scan them!

random crap

Wow, time keeps slipping away somehow.

I drove 200 miles north with BM on Saturday to visit JC and DC for our annual Christmas visit, which turned out to be a slightly after-Christmas visit this year because of our crazy schedules. It was a whirlwind trip and very cold up there (I was quite amused by the horses crunching around on the frozen ground Sunday morning) but great to see everyone. :-)

Pretty view toward Mt. Lassen from their ranch:

Can you believe these colts are the same age? That's Aidan (Gypsy Horse) and Doc (Azteca). Doc is really tall!

I started a new scrim project today, it's a swan in full color. I only managed to get the image prep done today, I'll work on the transfer tomorrow. Shown below is the original sketch, the polished ivory, the scanned/shrunk image I'll use for transfer, and a color swatch. This is a pale image, lots of pale blues and grays and browns, so the challenge will be to portray this white bird against a largely white background, keeping the colors soft but allowing enough contrast, all the while dealing with a surface that isn't even white! Hmm, a challenge indeed. But I've been wanting to try a color image that is really subtle, so here it is.

I also cut down a piece of copper and got that all polished and ready for engraving. I need to just jump in and give bulino a try. I have been studying and drooling over the books I got for Christmas (thank you P family!). I did a little experimenting with graver geometry tonight. I have one "real" bulino graver that Rod gave me (I think it's a 60 or 70 degree V-point) and I compared that to how it would look with a round-point scrim tool, just for kicks. Definitely better with a V-point. But I don't like the hand position I have to use with a normal graver handle. So I ordered another pin vise so I can rig up another one of my little nifty handled creations. Plus I don't have anything in the way of good sharpening equipment, but that and the new Airgraver ought to be here within a couple weeks. I have not decided for sure on what image I will put on this little piece of copper.

I need to make an armrest for use with the engraving vise. I can see why people cut a half-circle out of their tabletops and put the vise in that space. I'm not too keen to chop up my table so I'll clamp a board on there first and see if that gives me somewhere to put my arm.

It's all so complicated! ;-)

Oh!!! Early warning, I will once again be performing with the Arabian Jewels bellydance troupe at the Rakkash Festival (yay we got in!) on March 14th at 6pm at the fairgrounds in Vallejo. More info as it gets closer!