For Ferret's Sake!

Back in the fall, I wanted a pair of rats. But then I got a few messages from my friend asking if I wanted a ferret. And messages from her girlfriend about what a good ferret parent I would be. And snapchat after snapchat of said ferret. And assurance that the ferret was potty trained and the perfect fit for me as a person and... well, his name is Fenrir and I love him.

Look at that little face! 

So my little project last week was painting a portrait of him in his natural habitat- trouble. 

He inspired it, fittingly, by ripping the packaging open on this canvas while he was hopping around, chirping like a little jerk. 

I covered how I tackle pet portraits last post, so I want to focus on what made this piece especially fun.

The little toe prints that he's "in trouble for" in the painting. 

To get the ferret print effect without the fear of everything going to hell, we took Fen when he was placid (a rare occasion) gently dabbed his front paws on an ink pad and then pressed them against a sheet of paper. I cannot express that the only thing that made me feel more ridiculous than fingerprinting a ferret, was the fact that he went along with it so willingly. We took him to the bathroom to wash his little paws after and he grabbed the washcloth and wiped them off himself. It was criminally cute.

Armed with the prints, I carved little stamps of them. To make the prints on the canvas, I used the stamps and a very rough fan brush to lightly drag the paint like his fur would.

I was beyond happy with the end result. It ended up being the perfect cross between weird creativity that I crave and a flex of my technical skills (I even got to slip one of my hands in there.)

One for you, one for me

It's not Wednesday, but this is what I wanted to post about this last Wednesday, and by the time this coming Wednesday rolls around, I am going to want to post about the current projects I am working on now. So. Blog time.

I spent the last week or so working on a fairly large commission. 12 x 16 inches, acrylic, canvas, this:

I loved working on it. Genuinely, I really love working on commissioned work. Just knowing the painting is actually going to be loved and live somewhere besides my stairwell in what we affectionately refer to as the "limbo gallery" (or worse, in the closet) while it desperately waits for a home adds a whole level of motivation to my work. 

Commissions are where I really focus, use, and improve my technical skills.  

I start with the solid, well planned outline. Especially with pets I have to get general fur pattern and quirks down so that the recipient (in this case, the son of the client, it'll be a surprise birthday gift) knows it's THEIR pet. 

I usually start with the eyes. Sometimes I do eyes, nose, ears, sometimes I save nose and ears for later. Mostly depends what paint I already have out.

I focus, on all my work, really, the most detail around the eyes and rest of the face. The face usually takes about as long as the rest of the body combined.

I use reference pictures, of course. I used to use my laptop but now I print them out to size. Half so I can see them with my glasses off so I don't give myself a migraine and half so I don't get any more paint on my laptop. (Besides, I found printer ink for really cheap on amazon and definitely write it off as a business expense now, so I can justify myself.)

There was a time when my realism would be an aim for complete realism. It isn't anymore. I leave in brush strokes and raised bits of paint and little things that whisper "this is a painting". It's a lot less stressful this way, which makes the piece turn out better.

Cat number two, was of course added in the same way. Face, body. Then the white wall behind them sponged on, then the fridge painted in. 

Roughly, this took me 6-7 hours from deciding on the composition to finished painting. I only really spent about 2 hours at a time on it (I measure my time in Seabound albums, currently. So I'd listen to both their albums I really love and then quit for a while). 

And in between those times, I took a break from painting by painting. 

I had this idea for a mixed media painting with acrylic and oil floating around in my skull. When I sketched her out, I just had to follow through and do her.

She turned out, as my work often does when I am left to my own devices, a lot more grungy and dark than I had originally intended. Somewhere the whimsy was lost, probably in my mood this week. 

I let her oils dry before adding the rest of the acrylic.

And here she is. With wild flowers in her hair, waiting to be reborn. This was for me. 

It's funny, because if I were to pick between the two paintings to say "this is what I am capable of" I would tend towards picking her over the cats. I've noticed that time and time again, the pieces I like the most seem to be the least popular ones - wherever. If I post them on instagram or show people my artwork. Invariably, the work that I feel like is my style, my creativity, my spark, passion and good ideas merits a very lukewarm response compared to the rest of it. 

Which is, of course, a matter of taste and perfectly fine. Because canvas was buy one get two free so I got two extras both times I bought canvas for commissions this last week. I'll keep stretching my technical skills on what sells and my wings on what makes me warm.

Things that made my soul sing last week

Something a little different this week. Not because I didn't do any art, but actually because I did so much art very little of it is done or shareable at the moment. Here's a few things that made me happy and refueled my creative tank between glaring at business tax obligations and slowly chipping away at a 12 x 16 inch realistic cat portrait commission.

Oils. Good lord, oils put some life back in me. I pulled them out to start a large mix media portrait and while I had them out, did a "quick" little painting of my hand on a spare background. I think this is my first oil "from life" and I loved doing it. Note to self. More oils. More oil hands. More oil anything.

Speaking of hands. We went for a long walk downtown and really spent some time looking at a couple of the murals. This one in particular, which of course I didn't take a full picture of, we stood in the empty lot and talked about the technique and what we liked about it and I explained to the kid, approximately, how it would have been done.

We got up close and personal and really admired the little splotches that gave away the fact it was spray painted. And I was in love with the cracks from the paint underneath.

Note to self: buy spray paint. Do a mural.

On this epic of a walk, we passed a tea shop and I mentioned that we could have a tea party for a hell of a lot cheaper at home where it would actually be dairy-free and quiet. So the kid says "Can we have a tea party?" Yes, yes we can.

We got all dressed up and after our tea we were discussing themes for future tea parties. A "retro futurism" themed tea party came up and he called his grandma to ask what she thought now would be like in the 50's. She went off on a tangent about the cold war and how gay used to mean happy and I snapped this very very Norman Rockwell -esque picture. Which I cannot wait for a spare moment to paint in oil.

Finally, it snowed. Which got me all geared up for winter as a concept and, well, was a novelty anyhow. My husband forbade me of posting photos of my snowman on the internet because he's censoring my art, but it was a good time.

Now back to the soup, and the laundry, and that behemoth of a cat painting.

12-17

Continuing my portrait for each year of my life, this post will cover ages 12-17.

twelve-twelve was a less awkward year than eleven but that's not saying much.

I was straightening my hair at the time, or attempting to, anyhow. Thanks to the PNW drizzle, by the time I got to school one side was straight and the other was just crazy.

I am wearing a hoodie my sister had printed for me at the mall and my glasses frames were indeed a pretty awful for my complexion shade of red.

At age twelve I was big into choir, I was in the main one as well as the select one and did some solo contests. I sang rather well, but didn't feel like I fit in very well with the "choir kids". I distinctly remember telling this gorgeous girl a year older than me that she looked like an angelfish. I meant it as a compliment, she did not seem to take it as such.




thirteen-

If we're being honest here, I should have made my hair a lot greasier for this one. I was being really really kind to myself.

At thirteen I was in this advanced algebra class, but algebra is boring so I sat in the back of the classroom and started teaching myself German instead.

There was this guy I was friends with and also had the biggest most obnoxious crush on. After winter break I walked into algebra to find this jacket folded up on my desk with a folded bit of notebook paper which read something to the extent of "Christmas, merriness, new year, whatever".

I wore it every day. Literally every day. I slept in it sometimes. I wore it so much that I can still feel on my arms what that fabric felt like and part of me wishes I hadn't had the sense to let go of it at twenty. 

fourteen-

I could have just as accurately put myself in the German camouflage jacket again, but at fourteen I really did wear this jacket a lot and it was also a bit ridiculous. It's a black faux straight jacket. I would also like to point out that the jester's had was not for special occasions. I just dressed like this.

Fourteen was gold make-up, neon, and hair-dye. It started with dark red streaks, on to bleach blonde, cotton candy pink, Lola Rennt firetruck red before becoming a mohawk which honestly I just bleached out and redyed every two weeks, no use even trying to keep track of all that nonsense.

Fourteen was also when I really got into art. I definitely had kinda sorta drawn a little before, but I had to take art, band, or choir. Band was out because I don't play anything, choir out because I didn't think I'd fit in, so I had to go art. And what a godsend. Fittingly, the self portrait we did in that art class I was wearing this jacket for, it was that drawing that caught the teacher's attention enough to tell me I really ought to keep taking classes instead of just doing the minimum to get the required credits.


fifteen-

fifteen was the year I attempted suicide. This shirt was one of the shirts I had on one of my stays at the mental hospital (the second of the three, I think).

One of the things I remember about this stay was the nurse telling me that she didn't understand why I was there because I was so incredibly polite and well behaved. I told her that just because I wanted to die didn't mean I wanted to make her life difficult. We weren't allowed to have erasers in our rooms because you could self harm with them, but she gave me one because I was drawing constantly in the living room area and she wanted me to be able to during down time too.

There are so many things I could say about this year, but I think that will suffice.

When I work on things like this I sometimes struggle with whether or not to share my fight with depression, and if anyone is wondering why I am sharing it is because I think I need to. Not for me but for all the people who are struggling with depression and at a worse point than I am now. It's important for me not to hide it or act ashamed of it because a lot of people go through depression without realizing how many other people have gone through it. I remember it being isolating at the time that no one talked about it.

sixteen-

When I think of 16 year old me, I don't really think of me. I was still on a lot of medications from fifteen and I guess I just don't recall most of the year very well. The parts I was there for, I wasn't really myself.

I did living history at the medieval fair and enjoyed that a lot. I took art and did a lot of very normal almost bland creating.

It's the year that would get glossed over with a sentence or two if someone was writing my whole life story.

And here is where I say, again, depression is ugly and while I am not ashamed of it, I am not proud of it either. I say this because I know the sentences sixteen is boiled down as I already wrote them in my short memoir.

"These were the summer months of enlightenment, where everything was going to be alright and I was capable of anything. A particularly inspired talk with a friend of the family, who played the herdy gerdy and crafted traditional marionette puppets, inspired me to quit taking my medications..." 

seventeen-

I reiterate that I definitely do not think I made a wise choice at sixteen in just electing to stop taking my medications. I was on A LOT of medications. It was dangerous and stupid, but at that point no one was listening to me saying that I could not feel anything and that my hands shook too much to draw and I was done with it. 

But with that in mind, at seventeen, through will-power and glue and the delusion of invincibility, all the things that I identify as my personality now burst into life. 

I started doing a lot of mixed media art, I did stop-motion animation (mostly claymation) staying up all night in my room so I could control the lighting. I got heavily into photography and would spend hours laying on the patio by the pond photographing dragonflies. I bound books and did martial arts and got in ridiculously good shape and just kept my sock puppet doppelganger, Damien, in my backpack hoping to be prepared to add a little absurdity into the day. 

I was me. 

The previous post in this series covered ages 18-24 and can be found here. 

Did I promise a mail related post last week?

I lied. Here's a short story I wrote last year for a swap. The prompt was "an approximately 500 word story about winter" which was a vague and horrible prompt and I can say as much because I am the jerk who hosted the damn thing. It's gathering digital dust on my hard-drive so I may as well put it up here while it's still chilly out. 

The Architect

I sat at the college station, smoking a candy cigarette and waiting for the four fifteen bus back to the less interesting side of town. Generally in writing you list what someone is doing in order of importance, so trust me, at that particular moment, the candy cigarette was the important part. I exhaled carefully into the atmosphere, the cold making my breath into a trail of smoke, before boarding the bus.

It was a single bus with plenty of room to spare. I took the seat across from the exit and watched the sunset out the side windows as the bus slunk across town. With every departure, my legs were assaulted with a cold rush of air. I turned my collar up towards my neck and pulled my scarf over my chin. With every passing second I considered moving to a different part of the bus, but some masochistically neurotic part of me was convinced if I moved I would somehow be violating my manifest destiny of sitting in this seat and watching the sunset.

When the sun had nearly set, the lights inside the bus flickered on and the windows turned to mirrors just in time for the next group of bus people to board. I caught a glimpse of a familiar face in the reflection and smiled under my scarf. The architect. I knew it was him by the scar on his nose and the way he locked eyes with each passenger, one by one.

In a warmer month, we had spoken. He had sat next to me and commented on the chain of flowers in my hair, asking if I was on a quest to bring back transcendentalism. He wanted to know what my plans were, if I had any, where I was heading to. He informed me he had been an architect with the same level of flippant certainty that he told me I was a wanderer. At the time, it felt like an affirmation, but at this moment, it was another disappointment. Here we were, different stop on the same bus route, concrete evidence how little I had managed to wander.

He sat near the front of the bus, facing towards the back. I could tell he had noticed me, but not if he had recognized me. The same small part of me that wanted to move to a warmer seat wanted me to walk over and talk to him, but the rest of me was still adamant that it was my destiny to sit here, cold, staring at the emerging stars in the indigo sky.

I listened to him laugh and chatter with the people in neighboring seats, most of whom seemed less than amused to be making small talk, until he stood, walked towards me with a warm smile, and departed the bus. He disappeared into the poorly lit side streets before the bus had a chance to continue towards its next stop.

The wild part of me still wanted to wander, to find snowflakes to put in my hair, but as I disembarked my tired feet took the same path home as they followed every night and morning. At the moment, it was a disappointment. At the moment, I did not know how many more moments it would take to become a triumph that I lived by words I had spoken instead of ones I had been told.