Mermaids or When I'm being honest

Back in October I was playing along with the whole "inktober"  make something inky every day thing. I'd say it was a particularly rough month for me, but with how often I use that phrase I think it's just kind of a perpetual thing. 

Anyhow, I wanted to pretend to have some sort of inspiration so I could post something neat-o on instagram instead of another fucking hand. I started to go for a very safe, very cliche mermaid. And then I veered wildly off into what chronic depression / anxiety has felt like to me. That I am being gnawed at and fighting constantly no matter how well I look like I am doing or how much creative energy I am putting out into the world.

I came up with this little sketch and really liked the concept. It kept bouncing around in my head and finally last week I had time to revisit it. 

This started with redrawing the sketch with actual human anatomy in mind. I notice I tend towards the same simplified style when I am doodling, which gets the point across for me to redraw it later, is all I can really say about it. 

I tried to de-cute the depression fish monster a bit while I was at it. 

Carved a stamp. I like texture in my stamps, usually, so I tend to make sure to carve neatly so that any stray lines capture the form instead of just being wonky. Same concept as if you were making a drawing just with a bunch of lines, except you don't know for sure which are going to actually show up until it's done. 

Print of the stamp. Also how I realized I really need to buy an ink pad that costs more than a buck if I am going to spend so much time dealing in stamps now. 

I did a test print on a dictionary page. And determined I also need to just get some good printing ink and find where my brayer got off to. 

It amused me, in a sort of sad way, that one of the conversations I had when showing the prints off went like this:

"Look, I made a stamp."

"I see. It's a mermaid."

"Well, kinda. It's a woman being eaten by a horrible fish monster."

"Oh."

"See? She's trying to hold it off so it won't consume her completely."

"huh. She looks like she's doing well and pretty happy."

Which I guess just means I got exactly what I was going for in the stamp. 

place your bets now if next week will be back to pets. 

Gone to the Dogs

I have a hunch that two months ago I wasn't even entirely sure what a dog looked like.

Just a hunch.

But my friend, Elena, who runs a dog emporium  training business had a kind heart and a tight budget for the office space and offered that I could have her giant gorgeous wall to decorate with my art (so long as it was dog or at least pet related) and she'd be happy to offer prints of my work, or the work itself gallery style, in her space. 

This, this gorgeous giant wall.

I had pretty much no idea what I was going to do with this much space. Mostly because I have a tendency to work fairly small and detailed, and when the wall goes up ten million feet, you aren't going to be able to fill it with twinchies. 

I wanted something that would be striking and clean looking for the office space. We're in downtown Portland, after all, they seem to know about dogs and art here. (And beer, on a side note. We went to a nature park when we first got here and there was a flyer advertising what was essentially a get drunk and watch the birds afternoon, all officially organized. This is my kind of city.)

Besides, I wanted the art to be good because my best girl Penny does a lot of work here too and she deserves some good artwork to go with scratches and treats.

I spent a while thinking on this and got a few false starts doing fairly traditional acrylic paintings on canvas. They were alright, but I was worried they were going to look that cozy cobbled together look like the owner's best friend who was a hobbyist painter did her a solid and made art for her empty wall. (wait a second...)

Anyhow, I was sitting in the bottom of the shower thinking on this, probably either a bit sick or hungover or delirious because I stumbled out of the shower and drew the following schematic.

I'm an ARTIST

I tried to send pictures of my blueprints to Elena, and she showed a sort of vague I can't say anything negative or back out because we've been friends since high school enthusiasm. 

I soldiered on and got to cutting stencils.

The first two I did, I will re-do at some point because I hadn't found the right style yet. We'll take a look at the stencil for my personal favorite.

Meet Baxter. He's one of my friend's personal service dogs. Elena provided me with tons of pictures both of her personal dogs and clients of hers to work from. I decided for the office space I really wanted to stick to dogs that were hers because it seemed special and she has enough dogs... 

For the stencils, I worked over the photograph in a sort of daze marking where I wanted black. I really can't describe the process better than this. I don't have any pointers for stencil making besides intuition and again, plastic dividers. I cut out the design painstakingly with an x-acto knife.

Part A. The black details.

Part B. In two variations. You'll see why in a second.

After the stencils are made (and these are clearly used) I sponged on the background first. Doing these in sets of two so that there were white dogs with colorful backgrounds and colorful dogs with white backgrounds. 

Once that is dry, the black details get sponged on so I end up with... 

This. (forgive my poor lighting today, the background is white)

And this. Honestly my favorite of the prints.

I did this process 6 times just for her office art. I talked to her and her girlfriend about what colors they thought they wanted for the space and jokingly threw out rainbow to celebrate their incredible gayness. We decided to give rainbow a go.

They looked so snazzy on my floor we got some dollar store frameless frames and tasked my dear, tall, husband with hanging them in the space.

Voila.

I can now confidently say that I know what dogs look like. Also, I think they look perfect up. I plan to re-do the orange and yellow dogs because I did them first and after the fact they don't look quite right with all the others, but they are fine for now until I get around to it.

It cheers me up every time I go into the office space (which I do now and again to help with some very minor tasks- mostly giving Penny treats.) I have to say it turned out far better than I dreamed.

I've also found, starting to take commissions of peoples' pets even though I was initially reluctant to, it makes me so happy how happy people get at seeing art of their pets. It's just fucking contagious and I can't even begin to complain about people randomly messaging me pet pics inquiring about commissions- even if they don't end up commissioning anything I still get little surprise bursts of cute and joy.

next week- maybe I'll finish my current *not dog* project and post about that? maybe.

Festive Ferrets

I wanted to do something new and actually make my own Christmas cards. I woefully underestimated how many I wanted to send and need to make another batch, but here's my design and process.

I've done a lot of fiddling with stencils lately and feeling ambitious I went for a 5 part stencil. The most I have ever done successfully before is 3.

It started with this sketch of a ferret in a santa hat I just kinda woke up to. I leave myself notes when I am half asleep a lot, usually they are a lot less clear.

Traced the different layers onto bits of plastic divider. No joke, this is my go to for stencils, it is so cheap and holds up so well.

Carefully (ha, not really, more like maniacally) cut out the details for each stencil.

Also spent 75 years cutting down postcard size bits of paper. I was not about to make envelopes and, to be honest, saving a few bucks on postage sounded nice too.

Layer one, dark brown. I brushed the acrylics on going for a more flat look.

Tan.

There was a white layer then a red layer. I missed getting a pic of the white because it really wasn't that exciting.

And finally, layer five, the black details. If I do make another batch, I am definitely doing the first four layers and drawing the black parts on with a sharpie by hand. The details were just a little too fine and the acrylic a little too blobby. But there's a 75% chance anyone I missed the first batch is just getting a store bought card or forgotten because I am pretty much the worst at sending out cards for any occasion and the fact I got 20 out is nothing short of a Christmas miracle.

Where the Magical Mess Happens

I've been blogging and babbling for how many posts and still haven't done a "craft room" walk through? tsk tsk. 

I should have done this back when I first started blogging and had my very own office to myself. Since we got the kid, I have been demoted back to a corner of the bedroom. In some ways this sucks, ok in most ways this sucks, having an entire room to myself was great, but it actually was a good opportunity for me to pare down and thin out. More art work has been created in this little space already because I am not as overwhelmed by all the crap. 

Without further ado. 

My desk.

And surrounding area.

But not the closet where I store all my extra crap because it's terrifying. 

Kabam! It's a desk from Ikea. It's covered in some starts to a mixed media project today. I have no idea why or where it's going, I'm thinking I want to do some smaller scale of the oil portraits on mixed media background I really love doing (we'll get to those in a bit).

Over the years I have been stickering, modpodging and painting on random crap to the front of the desk especially. I've grown quite attached to it and have no desire to trade it in for a less gross desk any time soon.

    

In this corner of my desk I keep a spearhead for no real reason. And the acrylic paint has moved in from its proper home in the closet.

A closer look at part of my ledge. Incense holder, homeless atc's, origami and elephants with their snouts pointed towards the balcony door.

But what's that curtain hiding, anyway?

Oh cool. It's the stairwell.

Some moron decided these townhouses all really needed a half wall in the corner of the master bedroom. I'm not even joking, the kid and I tried to recreate this townhouse in the SIMS and the SIMS wouldn't let us put half walls here. The mother fucking SIMS knew it was a stupid idea.

Anyhow, the blackout curtain and having a stereo helps a lot. Eventually I am going to paint on the curtain but haven't gotten to it yet.

More of my ledge. Mascot, business cards, the scissors mug. The "queen of fucking everything" mug was an anniversary gift from my husband. We're romantic.

My chair is an awful little folding chair with the cutest quilt my mum sent me for Christmas last year. I have a list of things I aspire to own if I can get a few more commissions. A colander, a decent chair and windex are at the top.

Also shown here is newspaper on the floor, that's where prints or whatever go to dry when I am working on things. Which is pretty much perpetually right now.

One of the things I really loved about this desk when I picked it out was the built in shelves. On the bottom front are my manuscripts, kinda, mostly, some of them.

On the top shelf in the front is an assortment of books I use often for reference. The main bookcases both live downstairs. Most of these are writing books... scratch that, all of these are writing books except the book on Dutch. I just don't tend to use art books that much if at all. 

Most importantly. The crap on my wall to the left of my desk.

This is where I pin photographs and things I get in the mail that I really really love. I have had one of these walls at every place I lived and every time I move I get to take it all down and start from scratch. By the time we move from here, I expect the entire wall will be solid.

It's also where the paint towels live and the little mirror. The taco monster is my earliest in tact drawing, my grandpa had it laminated and my mum found it in his desk after he died and gave it to me.

I also have two kinda giant paintings up. They're my favorites I've done and really a style I wish I worked in more often because it feels the most like "my style". Heavily textured mixed media backgrounds, grungy details and muted portraits in oil. That's what I aim to do with the (much smaller) canvas that's on my desk right now waiting patiently for its next layer.

Another week, another blog post.

p.s. getting two photos side by side should not require swearing, googling, weeping and satanic rituals, blogger. get your shit together. 

Sourcing Inspiration pt. 2

Way back before I had a 15 year old (so about 6 months ago) I wrote a post about sourcing inspiration because at that particular moment I was so incredibly inspired and had so many irons in the fire creatively, it seemed obvious to enthuse about my inspiration.

Today I want to go back and punch that smug asshole in the face.

It's not that I am struggling for inspiration, it's that that post reads like so many books I have read on writing where the author is talking about how whenever she needs inspiration she just pisses off to her cabin in the woods and consults her zen master and rides her bicycle to the cafe to have conversations with biker gangs about how she's writing and how she's struggling to find the time to really write anymore because once a week she has to teach an hour long class on underwater basket weaving to the local animal shelter which she has been thinking of canceling but you know, think of the kittens.

Like, that's great for you, lady, but I got these weird humans stinking up the house asking about dinner and laundry and haircuts before they go to school/ have an interview. Unless my zen master wants to come sit at my kitchen table and talk to me while I make these 96 zucchini muffins because my relatives sent me home with more zucchini than they stock at the farmer's market, I think we're going to have to rain check.

My life right now feels less about sourcing inspiration and more about scheduling inspiration. Which looks like a lot of half jotted down thoughts, a lot of artwork that feels tedious, but is necessary, "write" and "paint" listed in my to-do lists in my planner along with "laundry", "kitchen", "start the kombucha" and "eat".

Anyhow here are five small things that inspire me.

Ridiculous moments (and all the other moments)

One of the most common things that gets me stuck in writing especially, but art and correspondence as well, is that I start to take my work and myself too seriously. 

Life is ridiculous. Life is making a petty as fuck art display out of the mess your husband leaves on the counter daily and your kid coming into the kitchen, pointing at the squashes, asking "is this a squash?" and then giving an awkward thumbs up before running away. Even the most serious moments are ridiculous. There's snot and awkward laughter and bad ringtones at worse times. 

If I feel like I've been stuck on a scene or whatever, I let something ridiculous happen. I let the characters be human, accidentally laugh, mispronounce a word, throw a cup dramatically across the room only for it to not break. It brings it back down to human again and makes it less intimidating.

Limiting myself (fridge poems)

Sometimes creating just seems overwhelming. I have to think of a subject, a composition, a style, a theme, and a million other details with a billion choices each. 

When this happens, I take away some options. 

I sit down in front of the fridge and compose poems using only the power ballad themed set of word magnets. I limit color scheme or pick just one medium. Sometimes I give myself time restraints, whatever I can do in 45 minutes. Taking away the options that don't matter leave more room to focus on the ones that do. 

Bric Bracs

Likely pretty self explanatory. I keep a lot of little objects around the house, sentimental shit, stuff people send me, souvenirs, things that seemingly magically appear. Asides from collecting dust, they are always an endless source for something to draw or something to describe or to write the real (or fake) story of.  

Retelling the same stories (again and again)

I have my go-tos. For art, it is hands right now. For writing, it is one period of time I lived with my sister. 

(and had a haircut like a tropical bird)

If I am stuck, I can always draw a hand or write that same story. Sometimes something new comes up, some little unexpected snippet, other times it just gets me comfortable enough to spring off into a new direction that hasn't been done to death. They are spring boards, the same trail head for a mountain with infinite trails. 

The mundane (many balconies.)

Life is ridiculous, it is also a lot of quiet little moments. 

Not getting caught up on not having big things to write about (especially in regards to correspondence or blogging or whatever) can be incredibly difficult, but your mundane is often someone else's novelty. 

Like my house, where we have a porch and two balconies, one of which is so small you can hardly walk on it. I've been here long enough I have gotten used to it, but when I tell people about it or we have someone over who has not seen all the balconies, there are always giggles. Because who designed this house? It looks like something I'd design in the sims. 

Mundane is in the eye of the person who lives there.             
           
I started drafting this post back in September and just now got around to finishing it. In case anyone was wondering where the hell I got zucchini in November. But hey, blog posts two weeks in a row? tight.           

The Goddamn Dishes

On October 31st, 2014, I lived in a one bedroom apartment with my husband a bit south of San Diego. There was a hostage situation involving midgets 2 blocks from our house and the dishwasher didn't work.

My sister started to poke at me that November was National Novel Writing Month and I had to do it. I had to. Had to do it. Had to. Being the good little sibling I am, I told my husband to ignore the dishes in the sink, I was going to write a novel.

So I sat down at my desk and started writing the first thing that came into my head, loosely based on a memoir I never wrote, a short story I never finished, a dream I had and some mysterious notes I found on my desk one afternoon that had been preceded by some serious shower vodka. I finished that novel, and then the next issue arose.

I did not want to edit.

So I wrote a new novel, that, conveniently, could allegedly be read before or after the first novel and either way would give new information and revelations, which sounds ambitious, but is a fancy way of making sure I had an excuse not to polish off the first novel, because naturally they both need to be open at once.

And I finished that novel.

And I still did not want to edit.

So I painted, did the dishes, went to the dentist, got help for my severe depression, completed EDMR therapy, started a garden, found some semblance of religion, taught myself to crochet, moved to another place where the dishwasher also did not work, started buying paper plates, started a blog (hello!) and then I started to rewrite and edit.

But there was another problem. I needed to write a sex scene and I could not get through it without sitting arm's length from my laptop and making a constant ewie eew eww ewwwwwww face. So I practiced for a week until it felt natural so I could go back and do those rewrites on my novels. Armed with all the knowledge I needed...

I started another novel.

I broke my personal record and hit 50 thousand words in two weeks and lost interest.

So I did the dishes, took a vacation, started the process of obtaining my very own child, wrote the end of the novel, hated the novel, started learning Dutch, deleted half the novel, got the child, moved to Oregon, made the child do the dishes in the dishwasher that actually works...

and finally finished the novel.

So where is this going, you may wonder. Did Met start a fourth novel? Is Met announcing that one of her books is out in the world for people to read? Are they looking for beta readers? Moving to the mountains to be a hermit? Promoting child labor?

No to all of those.

I started a fucking etsy.

Here's the link if you are interested. The link is here if you aren't interested too.

I'm going to try to get back into blogging. I lost this last month to NaNoWriMo, the four day hangover that I experienced after Halloween, some depression bullshit, setting up business stuff and apparently partnering with my friend at Pawsitive Pooch Training getting artwork done for their office space.

To thank the 5 people who read my blog and play favorites, until the 23rd of November, 2017 you can use the code "GODDAMNDISHES" to get 15% off your order. It's our secret. shhh.

All my productivity is just thinly veiled procrastination...

inktober 2017 part 1

It is October. It is cold. I really want to just hide in bed with my electric tea kettle and weep softly to myself. But for some reason I am doing inktober and just keep showing up. Here's my first eleven drawings. 

Day one. I never use the prompts for things like this. Prompts are hard enough for me to work from anyway, but I just generally don't like restrictions. So I started off perched in the corner of the bathtub watching over the beardie I've been babysitting. Trust me, it was nerve-wracking since I am using  the backs of the pages in the full sketchbook from last post.

Day two. A hand. Really my go to now, as you all know. I've been struggling a bit with inspiration, so I keep just falling back to hands.

Day three. One drawing exercise I like is drawing a self portrait, looking down. It's good practice in perspective and also makes for a pretty interesting drawing. 

Day four. I tend to over do shading when I draw because I always bee line towards realism, which is weird because I don't actually follow through with the time it takes to achieve realism, so I end up with a lot of shading stylized. Anyway, I tried not to do that and really liked the results. I've been trying in the other art I have been doing to put in more bold colors and interpretation instead of beelining for the comfort zone of crappy inefficient photocopier.

Day five. I just was not feeling it. I started in for a super detailed lizard hand (because I almost started another me hand) and just lost interest. The result is a sketch I really enjoy because it gets the gist across fine without a ton of extra. 

Day 6. Back to hands and messy shading again. Although I do still like the hands and I enjoy doing them, and enjoy doing art I enjoy...

Day 7. ...I really really want to not let this be my new rut. At least today has some color, although I still went right back to that sloppy ass ugly cross hatching. I need someone to come 'round with a spray bottle and watch me while I draw.

Day eight. I actually missed a day and made this up the next. It might be yet another hand, but the bold lines and minimal shading please me greatly. This style feels so much cleaner while still looking like "my" style. Well, kinda. My sloppy crosshatching and over shading make everything I draw look kinda filthy, really.

Day nine. Just wanting to goof around a bit, I started with drawing some ceramic teeth I had lying around and then decided to give them a mouth and a monster. The kinda realish and gory look of the mouth teamed with the derpy ass monster cracks me up, even though I wish I had taken the rest of the drawing to the same level as the mouth.

Day ten. Oh gee. another fucking hand. Started painting with the inks a bit though, which is divine.

Day eleven. Almost blew it off. Almost did a hand. Almost did a cliche' mermaid. Ended up doing a little conceptual deal of how I have been feeling especially the last few weeks. No matter how much light I sprinkle on, how much I create, how much I get my exercise and sleep and three meals a day and blah blah blah, I still feel like I am being consumed by a black mass. But I keep showing up and sprinkling the light on and hoping it will feel less that way tomorrow.

That's all I got this week. Keep sprinkling on the light and I'll show up again next week.