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.

Only Rabbits 2011

It is 2011. I am all about the ladies, science, aquatic life and poetry. The title here taken from Saul Williams' book ,said the shotgun to the head where he writes "i cannot make your past disappear, only rabbits my love, only rabbits". 

Sketch of an angler fish that later became a watercolor painting.

Cover idea for one of my earliest zines, although not what I ended up going with in the end. 

Ladies, fish, ladies who are fish...

I always love the pages where I know I got a new art supply. Here I am first trying out water-soluble oil pastels.

And continuing to have fun with them with some loose sketches of women.

Self portrait. Big hair.

This here, is a formative page. I did a series of sketches of the same general idea and after I had settled on one, I photocopied it and turned it into one of my earliest stencils.

Which I consider to be one of my most iconic stencils I have made to date. I went through a lot of spray paint that spring...

More stencil play, the door was opened.

Oh, this bad joke.

"And when in doubt, draw a lizard."

Let's Jam

Steph and I decided to do a bit of a postcard jam between us. We've done a few collabs together, including some absolutely fantastic artbooks (which, she thankfully blogged about because I was not on the blog train yet). It's always fun to work with her because our styles are so different. We overlap at mixed media with her super powers extending to collage and mine extending to uh, drawings of half naked ladies and lizards. You heard it here, folks, that is the spectrum of art.

Anyhow, setting out to make backgrounds I wanted to do something she will hopefully be excited to work on. I thought: bold colors, lots of layers, repetition, abstract. 

11 x 14 inch mixed media paper. I started off with a dodgeball pattern in a tasty rainbow of gelato sticks. The hashmarks are totally an homage to the fact she uses them on everything.

I then promptly destroyed the hashmarks. I blended the gelatos using the tea bag from my tea because I was too lazy to get up care deeply about recycling and reusing materials.

Flowers stenciled on in black. The stencil was made for my mother's day cards this year and was its own ordeal.

More stenciling! Some white acrylic sponged on over a torn strip of paper.

I added a few more layers during a phone call (speaker phone is a godsend) and forgot to photograph them, but I cut a circle out of paper and sponged around that with white and then used black and grey to redefine some of the original flowers. After those layers dried, I coated everything with gloss varnish and sprinkled a tiny bit of charcoal glitter over the top. I sponged the glitter lightly to make sure it was embedded in the varnish and will hopefully not emigrate to Steph's floor.

I ended up with these 6 roughly 4 x 5 1/2 backgrounds to send her way. I am really happy with how they ended up looking and excited to see what she does with them. Unfortunately, I was reminded, yet again, that gelatos do not play well with, um, any other art supply. The paint and varnish are both fairly prone to peeling because of this and they got a tiny bit distressed during trimming. I imagine by the time Steph is done with them though, they'll be sturdy enough to survive being hoarded forever mailing into the world.

Sketch to Stencil

For some unknowable reason, a couple weeks ago I pulled out an old sketchbook, tore out some dozen old pages of halfhearted sketches and notes to self and just painted for the hell of it. I have not kept any sort of sketchbook or art journal for ages, but I guess that's a thing I do now.

My first spring back into doing more art to art was this watercolor.

Portraiture, especially of women, has always been my pretty much favorite. I liked the composition of this a lot and wanted to do something more with it. I considered carving her into a stamp, but I wanted to keep the image fairly flat, she's too sleek for a lot of texture to slip in but not quite simple enough to pull off without some sort of shading. So I decided as a true return to form, I would make a stencil. 

I'm lazy, so the stencil process begins with three photocopies roughly mounted to some mixed media paper. 

Stencil carving in multiple parts is fiddly, but pretty easy. On one copy I cut out everything I wanted red (lips and background) copy two cut out all the grey and three the black. When I got to the black I wanted to punch myself for not thinking through how much of a pain in the ass the slits in the middle of the dress were going to be. I had to alter the design a bit due to the physics of paper having to be attached to stay together.                     

Layer one, just the reds. 

Plus layer two.

Plus layer three. At first I was going with watercolor, but the first water color black didn't look great so I did an ink pad on the other. I liked the ink pad a lot better for the black.

I did a set with ink pads for the pink and black (fun fact, I don't own a red ink pad...) The grey on the far left is watercolor, the other two are done with a kid's airbrush. I like both ways.                 

                 

This stencil is destined to be the mascot for a zine series I am working on (I have the writing done for a handful of them, just need to illustrate) and will likely find her way into a lot of mail boxes on postcards.