What awesomeness is this?!!

I was blog snooping again, and I found this...It's on this neat blog called Modish with a link to the Library of Congress. I was looking around at the Library web page and apparently you can order prints of their photographs!!! I could have this on my wall. To bad I have a shopping list a mile long. At least the fantasy is cheap. Now I'm going to go shopping.

Fiber Is Good For You

 

In my free time, I've been building a portfolio for the Display Coordinator position at Anthropologie. While I was researching project ideas I came across a book I bought on Amazon, but never got a chance to look at. In between each project there is a collection of artists who work with unusual materials. Since I've been messing around with crochet, I was particularly drawn to Abigail Doan, a fiber artist. She makes the most beautiful installations using various crocheted fibers.

 

I came across her blog on google, and have been spending too much time trying to read all her older posts. The artists she blogs about are truely inspirational.

My Etsy shop is OPEN!!!

It's finally happened! I've been working on opening up an Etsy gallery for a very long time. It's so exciting to finally see it all put together, I hope you will all take the time to check it out. If you have any feedback I would really appreciate it. Now it's back to painting (and fine tuning the shop).

Miss Olive Snook

A couple of months ago my best friend called me about an abandoned litter of kittens. One of her friends found them when he went to get his little brother's ball out of the neighbor's back yard. His neighbor's cat had delivered a litter of kittens six weeks earlier, and I guess they decided not to take them when they moved out. He kept an eye on the kittens for a couple of days, and when it was obvious that the mother cat was not coming back, he took the kittens. They have all found homes by now, and I know for a fact, that one of those kittens is horribly spoiled. Her name is Miss Olive Snook, after the character on Pushing Daisies. 

I have had a few cats in my life, and all of them have a very definite personality; adorably grumpy, dangerously mellow, paranoid, homicidal, and persistently, obsessively affectionate. It was immediately clear that Olive is cheerfully disobedient and adorably annoying. She wants to be a part of everything. She has already figured out how to open doors, and cabinets, and has been in, and on, almost everything in the house! She has to play all the time, with anything she can get her paws on (feet). I thought cats were supposed to sleep more?

maya*made and farm houses

Lately I've been dreaming about living in a farm house or an old barn. I was on flickr looking up reconstructed barns, when I came across this great blog called maya*made. She lives in the country and her mother just converted an old barn. The pictures are AMAZING! I felt like I was on vacation after visiting her blog. She has so many neat ideas I don't know where to start. I think this is my new favorite.

Hand Lettering

I came across this blog a while ago and fell in love with all the hand lettering. I've mentioned before, my interest in typography. I love how expressive something so simple can be. It's a great blog to look at if you are interested in graphic design or illustration. It is so simple. Just a black marker and paper, but she has obviously developed a great sense of line and layout. If I were a teacher I would use this as an assignment for my students.

flickr

I've been looking at other people's photographs more carefully lately trying to figure out how they get the results that they do. One photographer I am particularly fascinated with right now takes some really great portraits. I don't know how he does it. I imagine taking great photographs of people is really difficult. I came across New-ars photographs a few months ago when I was doing some design research for a DVD cover. I don't know how he has come across so many great subjects especially since he seems pretty young. Maybe he just has a group of really beautiful friends? Anyways, when I look at some of his work I feel like I'm seeing something hidden and private and If I look long enough I might learn a secret. That, and it's always nice to look at pretty people ;)

First Attempts

I started using my new camera this last weekend. I was playing with different f-stops and aperture speeds, trying to see what would happen. The results didn't vary as much as I had hoped, but then that is what experimenting is for. I finished reading Creative Camera Control, which is a really great book to start out with. I had to read it a couple times to understand everything, but now I understand the basics of how cameras works. I think I'm going to get THIS book on low light and night time photography next. Anyways, two of the pictures are of roses in front of my parent's house and the last one is a picture taken by the guy who sold me the camera. (his are better)

Yay Nikon!

I bought my first serious camera on Monday! It's a Nikon 35mm SLR camera kit that I found used on Amazon. After calculating cost on having slides done professionally against doing them myself I decided I'd rather DIY it. As an image junkie I've dreamed about having a "real" camera for years. The closest I've ever come is a crappy point and shoot pentax digital, that never took great pictures. I want to take pictures exactly as I see them in that moment instead of slightly darker and with different colors. The art world still hasn't caught up to the digital age, and requires that all portfolios be submitted in 35mm slide format so I didn't have to spend too much on a great camera. Now I can start selling my paintings, and document them as they are finished. Maybe I'll even start blogging more if I have some decent images to share? I've actually completed a bunch of projects over the last few months but I would have had to borrow a camera in order to photograph them. Maybe now I can blog about them.

New Painting

Here is a painting I have been working on. It's still in progress, but you can get an idea on the direction it is taking. I'm doing something a little bit different on this one by using right angles and implied squares. I am thinking of how dappled light through a window looks on an interior wall.

I've been thinking about my artist statement and about what I would say about this series of paintings. I've written a couple, but they never feel quite right. While I was working on this painting I was thinking about how I work and what my intentions are. This is difficult because my painting is much more intuitive than deliberate but I had an idea on how to put this process into words. Here is what I have so far.

"My process for almost everything I do is very organic. I don't like to plan too much. i create a little unfinished elements and then I put them away in a box in my closet. Sometimes I'll put them up on my wall, and stare at them for a while and then put them away. I like to take these elements out, from time to time and put them together in different arrangements. Sometimes these arrangements will inspire me to create another element or an entirely new painting. Sometimes I will fix these elements together on a canvas and paint over them. My paintings can take months or even a year as I stop and watch what happens on them. I find little spontanious moments that almost seem to be telling a story. Each painting is a very personal history of self exploration and at the same time it becomes a relationship between my viewers and I as they find their own reflections within the canvas. It is my quiet personal way of speaking/ relating to others in a way that is beyond words to that way of mind when we were all children, before we understood words."

I am also looking into having slides made of my paintings so that I can apply for juried art shows. I found this place called Art Works in L.A. that will make professional slides of your work for about twelve dollars a piece. This might sound expensive, but if you order five or more slides then it will only cost about four dollars a slide. I'll talk more about my experiences with Art Works once I have tried their services.

Copyright Laws

Since I've started this blog I have been thinking about legal issues, such as how to protect my ideas and images from theft. I want to share my work, and ideas, but I am afraid I will be putting myself at risk. At the same time I want to make sure that I use other people's words

and images properly. 

Since I am a bit shady on copyright laws I decided to do some research. Looking on Google, I came across one of Lorelle VanFossen's articles on WordPress. She has a great article titled,  "What Do You Do When Someone Steals Your Content". VanFossen discusses how to discover if your content is being used improperly and how to deal with this situation. There is also more information on keeping a blog in her book "Blogging Tips".

Further searching brought up two interesting articles, "Copyright Information For Artists", and "To Watermark or Not To Watermark"on emptyeasel.com which provides more specific information in regards to posting artwork online.

Finally, Brad Templeton has two articles that give a bit more of an explanation as to what copyrights are, and how they work. In "A Brief Intro to Copyright" Templeton informs, "Under the Berne Copyright Convention... every creative work is copyrighted the moment it is fixed in tangible form." Templeton explains even more in his article, "10 Big Myths About Copyright Explained", which is very helpful since I'm not sure I could handle a more involved explanation. 

After reading all of these articles, I am SO glad I simply jumped into blogging. I would be too frozen in fear to have ever started this project! There is so much more to blogging than I even realized, but I also think that it is alright to learn about these things as I go along. Hopefully this blog will see an evolution in content, design, and coherence as I continue to grow and evolve.  I am so grateful to Marissa Haedike for giving me the nudge/encouragement I needed.

Type Can Be Fun!

I just completed a typography class at UCLA Extension with Andrew Kutchera. Our final assignment was to choose some text from a poem or song and then design 3 different posters using only type and no image. This was the first assignment of the entire class that we were to explore hand lettering. I was perfectly happy to ignore my computer and play with letterforms. I looked at a lot of other designer's work and surrounded myself with tracing paper and sketches. I also cutout tons of letters with an xacto knife, which is what I ended up using for one of my final pieces.

This was a great assignment and I really got into it. The point of the assignment was to really explore letterforms and play with different ways of presenting them.

Looking back at some journal entries, I realize that I was already thinking about type in a more playful way. Type seems more alive to me, now that I realize that letters can be creative and fun.

These were used in Italian window displays in 1925. This image can be found in Steven Heller and Louise Fili's book "Italian Art Deco". If you appreciate art deco or design, I highly recommend this book. It even has images of old perfume bottle labels!

If you enjoyed this post check out my list of typography websites. I will continue to add to this list as I come across additional interesting sites.

Just Do It!

Earlier this week I was listening to Marisa's podcast, Creative Thursday. As a young artist trying to earn a living doing what I love, Marisa's podcasts really resonate with me. In one podcast she discusses perfection and how we are always waiting for things to be perfect. This gets me to thinking about the things I am waiting for (this blog for example) and I realize that I could be waiting forever.

Keeping a blog is especially scary for me because I am not totally confident in my writing skills, I have a terrible time spelling words correctly, and I often write things that later make me wince. But that is part of what made me want to start a blog, the desire to improve my writing skills. Why am I waiting for it to be perfect?!

After listening to Marisa's podcast on perfection I look back at all the times I have been frozen, waiting for things to be perfect. I am starting to realize that I will be more productive if I shift my focus from perfection, to exploration. I am starting to realize that success is in risk, not perfection. That being said, I would like to share one of my imperfect paintings.