My CSS subscription is about wear out here. Having poked around on blogspot, where you can tweak CSS and have your own banner for free, I am moving. I’m starting to set up shop here.

It’s always a pain to move blogs, but also it…isn’t. Not really. WordPress is okay but I am rather put-out by the lack of design control — particularly when I’ve used diaryland where you can literally build your own template in an empty HTML box. I also hate the way the archives are structured, and you have to do an epic amount of coding to get them to do anything else, as far as I can tell.

So. Click the link and come join me. I’m moving a couple posts, and then I have a NEW thing. woo!

Here is a shamefully quick one to let you know about my new portfolio. It’s through Carbonmade, which I know nothing about. Ain’t that how it goes.

Portland comes ever closer. There is a chance I will be living in a studio, which means that the art stuff will be front and center. And even if not, the whole me-in-Portland-and-Anthony-in-Eugene thing should mean lots more art than Ive been doing. Which is good.

Fantastic design. Absolutely spot on.

Do you know what I’ve been doing?

Everything but art.

I am trying to set aside time everyday but it’s hard, since I’m also trying to pass classes, graduate, move to Portland, and get all my ducks in a row so I can move to Portland.

I have a meeting later this week with a marketer which should (hopefully) give me some good illustration ledes for getting solo books off the ground. OH YES INDEED we are hopeful.

Bosch-esque

Fresh and wonderful

The robot batteries one is great

Tear gas.

Just tear gas, and what it means. It’s a weaponized grief, it’s what people use on other people to quell riots — the idea, I think, that sadness trumps anger.

Gassing people wasn’t always benign, I’m thinking of mustard gas and the fumes that were caused skin to slough off after The Bomb, but then it’s not really all that benign. It is a weapon after all.

Love this.

i. IN GENERAL

- Need to get back into a routine. Need to start doing stuff again.

1. FIBERS

- Just made another napkin, need to get more fabric again.

- Made a makeshift curtain which has a nice look to it.

- Will start the new quilt soon. I want it to be not as small and piece-y as the other two, although I still want to do an invaders quilt. I want something NOW, to cover a comforter maybe. Something with larger patches of fabric.

- Need a lunch cloth that holds the new lunchbox.

2. DRAWINGS

- I need to just start some stuff for the portfolio. Ideas lately: reaction to Benazir Bhutto, puzzle piece mind/person, flaky friends and what I do to try and be with them, world vs. gamer, my problems with the church,

- The boring landscape plus all the things that don’t make it better (i.e., my remedy for internet shopping).

- I always lose myself in the world of the cats. (Is this a drawing or a painting?)

- Posters. Posters, posters, posters.

- Think about ink pen again, since that’s the only thing Mark seemed to really dig. Approach the sketch-style in other things?

3. PAINTINGS

- collage paintings, like what I saw in the museum in Eugene. Fabric or paper plus the paint. Some sort of portrait series?

- finish the street dancers, ducks.

- The dancer’s perspective? (part 3 of 3)

4. BOOKS

- Figure out slide book — dk. paper with green gouache? Simple, maybe. But that simple?

- Initially I was thinking the “pack up” book would be all line drawings and no color, but actually I think it’d be a chance to get some good rich color theory in there. Distracting colors, depressing dank colors, happy simply color pallet in the end. [I need more ideas here anyway, story-wise]

- Also been thinking again about “I can’t do [x]“/ “you can do [y(+n)]!”

Apples!

So satisfying. This took me no time at all. A nice release from all the lame stuff going on lately.

What do you call a Maggie that has been told, for the third time, that she cannot take art classes at the university she is attending?

Super-Pissed

I am going to pay my dollar I owe Etsy and then pull my paintings. It’s just a waste of time and money at this point. I am also going to pull my indepublic page, since it’s mostly useless. I’m not really sure why I started it in the first place, other than it seemed like a good idea, and it seemed like a lot of other people were doing it. And that’s a dumb excuse to do anything, yo.

My job last week was to go around and find interesting articles to illustrate, but instead I ended up going to a memorial service and kind of let my brain get sucked out of me for a few days. So I’ve barely drawn anything since Last last Tuesday, which is pathetic. Today I am going to try and play some catch up, possibly go to the zoo, and add a little color back into my life.

Some unrelated projects I’ve been up to:

1. I made a lunch bag out of fabric — modeled after a small paper sack and made with a green plaid homespun and this great fabric I found in the shirtings section of Joann’s that is light green with aliens all over it.

2. Paper leaves to put up around here and on this horrible post at work.

3. I’m going to decoupage my mini-cooler with pictures from a few Golden Books I picked up at Goodwill yesterday. This cooler is one of my bosom buddies, something I stole from my Mother’s house and that has traveled with me ever since on many-a-quest. It’s time for it to reflect me a little better.

I don’t take bad pictures of my stuff on purpose, but since there is little feedback here (and really, not a problem — this is mostly for me anyway) I just can’t be bothered to strive for perfection. If you want to see better pictures let me know or come to my house and see them for yourself. I am showing you these in the smaller size, because honestly they look better that way.

This is exploring the idea that people are more trusting of pre-wrapped candies from great big corporate conglomerates than of home-baked goods. Every Halloween there are articles about people who found needles in apples or caramels, and an equal amount of articles about how needles in apples are a myth and are disproportionately reported for shock value. I have an abiding memory of seeing a news spot about it when I was about 5, and there was a shot of candy going through a kind of candy x-ray on a conveyor belt. It was ludicrous, and kind of creepy really. Why bother going trick-or-treating in the first place if you’re going to be all creeped out by strange people touching your candy?

The the apprehensive one is saying “syringe”, which doesn’t show up to well yet as it’s in pencil. After the initial blocking is done I’ll need to go back and re-terrify her, and re-gender both of them, give them hair, make the eyes less stark. Make the hands tangible.

The sketches. The final composition — quite divorced from this stuff — turned out fairly effective I think, although I really loved the image of the person cowering by the window. There was just not enough visual reason as to why. It was too general: they were just afraid of their neighbor. Putting it out on the stoop has a nice balance to it, although realistically a person afraid like this probably would see the person coming (as in the sketch) and then not answer the door. But hey, this is illustration people. You want realism, take a picture. A boring picture.

And really, she’s not anti-social, just paranoid about food.