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.