Monsters In My Coffee.

Again, I'd like to reiterate that I like ceramics but am not a champion of them. That being said, I recently made this awesome mug at a crafty birthday party for my dear friends Sean and Audrey! 

IT IS A MONSTER.

Normally it would have been a lie to say 'monsters in my coffee' like I did in the title (which I did because of the song "You're So Vain" by Carly Simon... 'clouds in my coffee' and all that), but I just got a french press and now I can make it! Success!

Anyway, it was a really fun party where we got to pick and paint our own pottery at The Little Shop of Crafts... so I naturally made a mug even though there is no room for any more mugs in my cabinet. Smart! It was great fun, regardless, with birthday shenanigans and wine and karaoke afterwards. The wine part may have effected my mug-painting skill set but how much is hard to say. Ceramic panting is tricky at the best of times - the paint doesn't look the color it will eventually turn out to be when you put it on, colors all look the same once their laid on the pottery, and there is no going back once it's done. YOU JUST HAVE TO LIVE WITH THE CHOICES YOU MADE, LAURA. That is unless you have a lot of time on your hands and are crafty about fixing it. Which I didn't and wasn't.

But my mug is a mug and it's pretty nice and I like it and I had a good 'ol time doing it with these monsters:  

You guys are forever awesome no matter your age. 

Oh Snow White, how white you are.

If there ever was a princess whose name leant itself to describing how she looked - it's Snow White. I went ahead and took it a step further with mine, giving her straight up albino complexion. Therefore making her more... white snow colored. So here you have it:

Snow White

beginning... 

 ... and end

Oil, 20"x 30"

All three of the driptastic princesses that I did ended up with exciting hair... but hers is all tucked away as she is probably peering out that window to call to some chickadees or baby deer or the like. That's what I would do. I love baby deer.

On the topic of Snow White, one of my favorite retellings of her fairy tale is the short story by Neil Gaiman, "Snow, Glass, Apples". It is told from the perspective of the 'evil' queen and lends itself to a generation of people who looooove themselves some supernatural business in their stories. I highly recommend taking the 10-15 minutes out of your day that it'll take to read it (if you haven't already). WORTH IT.

Costume Masters Extraordinaire!

Yesterday, before we knew that there was going to be an epically cold rainstorm/snowstorm, my friend Audrey and I were hired to make some costumes for a couple going out to a Halloween party. They wanted to be Infinity Nets by the artist Yayoi Kusama. They come in a variety of colors and styles, but we were working to make them look something like this: 

Infinity Net, Yayoi Kusama

We used some metallic fabric paint and small brushes to essentially paint what would be the negative space in the paintings. We set up on the floor, mixed our paints, and went to work. The goal: paint one silk dress and one velvet suit jacket. I got the jacket, while Audrey worked on the dress. 

I'm not going to lie: fabric painting on velvet is NOT THE FUNNEST TIME. You have to apply and reapply it as it sucks the paint in and THEN deal with all of the weird furry edges that are still left. All that we could really think about while painting this was how it kinda ended up looking like the SVA flower....

Audrey worked diligently with the dress, which was turning out really shiny and awesome. It also kinda looked like a stained glass window... and then an elephant. And then a fancy ball gown. And then mosaic tiles. We saw all kinds of patterns as the blue one went along.

FINALLY, about 7 and 1/2 hours later we had reached this point ↑ here. And that was where we stopped. It took so much longer to do than any of us thought it would, and they needed to wear them that evening, so we worked until it made sense to stop and still looked good, blow dried them, and called it a night. I think that they look pretty snazzy. And I never could have gotten it done without Audrey... not in a million years. THANKS GUY~!! We always go for the win.  

Don't worry - We're professionals. 

Mermaids.

DO YOU KNOW WHAT I LOVE?

I will tell you.

I love mermaids. They are all floating hair and whimsical bodies and MAGIC. Plus you can give them neat fish ears.

I thought for a while that mermaids were going to be the new vampires (just like vampires were the new pirates and pirates were the new... wizards? I think it may have been wizards. I guess I can't remember that far back... ) which really pissed me off because MERMAIDS ARE MINE. Back the hell off. However, it now seems like zombies maybe coming back as the new vampire... or that could just look like the case because it's real close to Halloween and that's a really easy costume. Whatever. 

The bottom line is that I love mermaids in all of their ridiculous, biologically impossible glory. 

While doing the drip-paintings, I thought it would be fin (← accidental typing pun. Leaving it.) to do the Little Mermaid as she would probably look if she were a real fish lady chillaxing under the sea, shoving any crabs or flounder unlucky enough to cross her path into her fanged jaws. And still managing to look saucy enough doing it to entice a prince or two:

The Little Mermaid

Oil, 20"x 30"

...I've also done some colored pencil illustrations for the original Little Mermaid Hans Christian Andersen story, but those came later. You'll be sure to see them eventually, don't worry...

P.S. On the topic of zombies, I recently read a book called "Warm Bodies" by Isaac Marion which turned out to be pretty damn good. It's from the perspective of a zombie which I imagine is hard to do while making an interesting/coherent book. Plus the cover art is neat. If you want an easy, different, and entertaining read you should check it out: http://www.isaacmarion.com/. Feel free to ignore the fact that Stephenie Meyer has anything to say about it.

I like princesses. Especially when they look weird.

I am really, REALLY overtired today, but I AM DEDICATED TO YOU, INTERNET VIEWERS. Seriously guys, you have no idea. 

ANYWAY, I made some weird princess drip-paintings last year so I figured that I'd give you the inside track into my (sort of) process on the first one:

Rapunzel

underpainting

in-progress

final

Oil, 20"x30"

In this, I wanted to give the heroic princes an obvious reason to face all the perils that they do for one random chick - and how the princess in question would be dealing with her ridiculous fairy tale situation.