Portrait with Striped Scarf

I just finished this portrait moments ago! You know what is difficult? Photographing wet paint. You know what else is difficult? Painting hands. This is a self portrait with one of my favorite scarves. 

Creepin' on you on the T

I spend so much time riding the T (Boston's public transit system for you non-Bostonians) that I have started bringing my sketchbook with me. I'm sneakily drawing people's portraits. If you are reading a book or, more likely, fiddling around with your phone and are not paying too much attention, I might be doing a quick contour drawing of you with a thin sharpie... 

I was very excited about the pilot!

Girrrl!!! Chapter 4!!!

At long last, the fourth chapter of Caitlin's and my comic Girrrl!!! is UP. Our last post was in May. I would like to take a moment to explain why it took so long and also the process we go through to create a new chapter.

STEP 1
Caitlin writes the chapter, emails it to me.

STEP 2
I give her any feedback I may have, email it back.

STEP 3
She makes edits, sends it to me. (Sometimes we repeat steps 2 and 3 a few more times).

STEP 4
I sketch out the comic, photograph it, upload the photos, and email them to Caitlin.

STEP 5
Caitlin gives me feedback, sends it to me, I edit. (We repeat steps 4 and 5 a few more times).

STEP 6
I ink the comic! It takes an hour to an hour and a half per page.

STEP 7
I scan and edit the comic, add text and clean up any rough sketchy lines or mistakes I made while inking. This requires a scanner and photoshop. When I was in Ithaca, I snuck onto Ithaca College's campus (a 40 minute bus ride from my house) to use their technology, as I own neither a scanner nor photoshop. IC had a scanner in the library that I could use to scan onto my flash drive. After that, I would head to the only computer lab on campus that didn't require an IC user name and password. I would plug in my flash drive and access their photoshop program for all of my editing needs. I would store all of my files on my flash drive, take the bus 40 minutes home, upload them to my home computer, and send them to Caitlin.

STEP 8
If Caitlin has any edits to suggest, I repeat step 7. If she doesn't, she puts it on the website and people read it!!! Hooray!

SO June was spectacularly busy for me, and IC was closed for the summer. July I spent on a farm off the grid in Vermont. August I spent working and IC was still closed for the summer. When IC opened for the Fall semester, I was getting ready to go to Mexico and move to Boston. I spent September in Mexico and Guatemala. In October, I moved to Boston and all of my abundant free time went towards getting a job and finding a new source of free photoshop (sneaking into Tufts? Northeastern? The public libraries don't have it). Then I got two jobs and all of my free time went towards working two jobs.

Now it is November and I am in the throws of NaNoWriMo, BUT I managed to finish inking this bad boy. Turns out one of my housemates has a scanner, and Caitlin, brilliant woman that she is, had a rockin' good idea: download a free program that does the same things photoshop does, but it would be free and I could use it from my own computer. We did some research and discovered Chocoflop which sounds like a store brand breakfast cereal but is in fact an image editing program. It is confusing. It is temperamental. But it is mine and I don't have to take a bus 40 minutes to use it! Expect more frequent Girrrl!!! updates from now on.

National Novel Writing Month

As you may have noticed, it has been a while since I posted any artwork. The reason for that is I am putting my creative energy elsewhere this month, as I am participating in NaNoWriMo. People all over the world are attempting to write a 50,000 word novel in the month of November. That's an average of 1,667 words per day. So far I am over 4,000 words behind schedule. This is daunting, but I have written over 17,000 word in the last two weeks. That's pretty cool, right?

I am discovering that when I spend three hours writing, I feel like I have done a whole lot of nothing. If I spend three hours painting, I feel great! Perhaps novels just aren't my medium. I miss painting. I miss drawing. You might be wondering why I don't just do both at the same time. Well, you try writing a novel in one month and hold down two part time jobs and have a social life and tell me how much time you have for other creative outlets.

Sorry I'm so cranky. I just miss painting so much. Maybe I'll rebel and paint instead of writing one of these days.

This image borrowed from the NaNoWriMo website.

Occupy

Now that I am settled (or at least finished with the initial unsettled stage) in Boston, with two new jobs: part time catering as well as Front of House staff at a theatre, I am going to make more time for art. Thus, hopefully posing more.

This weekend I went to Occupy Boston in Dewey Square. There is a whole community of tents there, and it is full of signs and food and discussions and music. I was very struck by the passion of every person I encountered. The people who are protesting are really committed to making the US a better place for everyone and they are doing it in as peaceful a way as possible. I sketched some of the things I saw. Cheers to the Occupy movements all over the country!

Sorry faithful readers

In case it is too small to read, this graph represents the time I spend putting together my life in Boston VS the time I am able to spend blogging. Basically, I don't have time to post any new art right now.

...but on the plus side, I'm a little bit in love with the SMFA. 

Maybe I will go to school there.

Mexico Trip Paintings Part II: Yucatan Peninsula

This post is comin' at you from Boston, MA as I am moving into my new apartment!!! Most exciting thing ever. I'll post more about my artsy adventures in Boston once I have actually had some. At the moment my main concern is groceries and getting a job and things like that.

Soooo... The second part of my trip in Mexico started in Cancún and took me to Isla Mujeres and Chichén Itzá. I met an unbelievable number of really great, interesting people from all over the world through the hostel where I stayed in Cancún. If you're going to Cancún, you should stay there too. You will meet Julio, the front desk man/breakfast chef/dance partner/ wonderful human being and probably a large number of Australians as well. I miss Cancún so much.

 

These first two paintings were done in the backyard of Quetzal Hostel. Gorgeous!!

Isla Mujeres Day 1

More Isla Mujeres paintings. 

I ended up painting under a beach front palapa bar at sunset and was on a painting frenzy.

Isla Mujeres Day 2: Tortugranja (Turtle Farm)

Punta Sur, painted at a cliffside restaurant. The waitstaff stood between me and the view and asked if it was too late to be in the painting. I drew them a couple of stick figures falling off one of the cliffs and said, "Aaah! Se cayeron!" (Aaah! They fell off!).

We all had a good laugh. 

..........Good story, Laura........

This set of paintings is from Chichén Itzá. This first one I did while I was covered in tiny bees.

Quetzalcoatl

Adorable umbrella'ed tourist group.

Ancient wall and jungle.

The giant pyramid! This is the one that has a shadow that forms the body of a snake crawling down the stairs on the fall and spring equinox. I was there exactly on the fall equinox completely by accident. Though I am sorry to report that I did not see it. maybe I wasn't there at the right time of day? 

I DID however make friends with a small boy named Marco whose parents were selling crafty tourist objects. He told me all about a camping trip he's going on and wanted me to paint a picture of him. Sometimes his Spanish was too fast for me to follow, but he was a fun kid. 

I also went to Guatemala to visit Abby for a couple days and it was spectacularly gorgeous on Lake Atitlán but I was there for such a short time that I wasn't able to do any paintings. 

And now I'm in Boston, so we'll see what happens!

Mexico Trip Paintings Part I: Cuautla

I am back in Ithaca again after a pretty incredible trip in Mexico and Guatemala. I took my watercolors and painted pretty much everywhere I went. Now I have a stack of more-or-less postcard sized paintings that altogether look like a visual journal of my trip. I think of them as little sketches that I could do more with or not. 

My first stop was Cuautla, Morelos, a town where I spend a semester in the fall of 2008 living with an incredibly sweet and generous host family, working with a local artist, and learning about Mexican history, literature, social movements, and Spanish. On this trip, I was able to visit a lot of people who were very important to me that semester as well as see some places surrounding Cuautla that I had never been to, namely Tepotzlán and Cuernavaca.

I mainly painted places rather than people. Places tend to hold still longer than people, so they were easier. Also, when you paint people they tend to want to keep the paintings, so that is also why I don't have many. I have a habit of giving away portraits. 

Without further ado, These are places I saw in Cuautla, Morelos during the first part of my trip:

Emiliano Zapata Grafitti! Viva México!

Three small children were very interested in watching me paint this:

While I was painting this one, this old guy started reciting poetry to me in Spanish:

The painting below was my personal favorite from the Cuautla set. It is the ex-convent of San Diego turned train station/art space/theatre/studio for karate lessons/make out hub for local high school students/museum. I love Mexico.

Laundry Time

I painted a mural in the laundry room of my house! I started it almost a year ago with help from my friends Marika and Abby and then I forgot about it until this week. I am heading to Mexico tomorrow to visit many, many people including an amazing artist who I worked with while I was studying abroad there. We collaborated on a mural so as I was planning this trip, I was like, "Hooray for seeing Rolando... Maybe I will see the mural we painted... Murals... Oh right, I was painting a mural wasn't I?"

Yesterday was my birthday, and I spent a lot of it napping and painting this mural. Just livin' it up over here, in Ithaca! The mural is based on some photos and watercolors I made last summer in Vacaville, California.

See? Now when we're ironing, we can pretend we are in the central valley in the summer time and not a basement! And on that note, I won't be posting again for another month or so because, as I said, I will be in Mexico.

¡Nos vemos!

Tiny Couch and Some Art Also

My dad is visiting me this weekend! Yesterday we went antiquing. It is sort of a tradition of ours that we go antiquing whenever he's in town. He knows so much about so many things that people have made, particularly American art and craft from the Civil War era through the mid twentieth century. One antique place had an old rope bed. It is a bed with a wooden frame and where we now have things like springs, they once used ropes to hold up the mattress. When the ropes got loose you had to tighten them so your bed wouldn't sag. This is why we say, "sleep tight." Isn't that cool?

Also we bought a tiny couch!

We think that the tiny couch was either used for small children or it was a salesman's sample. Furniture salesmen used to travel with these mini versions of the furniture they were selling so that people could see all of the things they could buy without having to lug around a ton of furniture. Now it is the perfect size for a stuffed dragon.

Behind the tiny couch and dragon, you might notice the infamous ugly apartment painting that I have yet to complete (but I DID work more on last night). I thought it would have been funny if my dad didn't like this painting because he finds that building so ugly, but he does indeed like it. He says it reminds him of a southern plantation.

I also painted a quick little sunset piece last week. I usually don't paint in pink and purple, but it looks like candy. Also it looks sparkly because it is they view out my bedroom window through a screen and that makes lights look kind of fancy and twinkly. Now when I look at this painting, all I see is pink and purple and sparkles. All it needs is a unicorn. 

I must be doing something right though, because I already sold it. Hooray!

Yup, I'm still working on this

Work on the ugly apartments painting continues. I mostly worked on the willow tree on the right and I added the beginnings of the pink chairs. 

It is taking forever. I don't know if I will be working on a scale this large very much from now on, but here's where I'm at:

I am eating Insomnia Cookies!

I am eating Insomnia Cookies.

They are cookies that you order like a pizza and they deliver them hot and gooey, right to your door. This is the best idea ever. I have nothing else to say about Insomnia Cookies besides: yes.

Oh and here are some more drawings I did at Bread and Puppet for the cheap art bus:

Vermont Paintings

While I was apprenticing at Bread and Puppet, we spent one evening down the road at The Museum of Everyday Life checking out a great exhibit on matches, drinking Long Trail beer, and getting devoured by mosquitoes. Once it got dark, we settled on the lawn in front of a makeshift movie screen (read: sheet) and watched a film from the 1960's by Jack Smith. I had never heard of Jack Smith before, but learned that he was a contemporary of Andy Warhol. They did collaborations and things but Jack Smith was against using consumer culture as a vehicle for his art the way Warhol did, so he is not nearly as well known, but he should be! His work is a little bit elusive because he tried very hard to make it unable to be reproduced, but some recordings are available anyway.

The film we watched was called Normal Love and there may have been a plot, but I wasn't too concerned with that. I was too focussed on what a cool sensory experience I was having-- It seemed to me that it was almost like many paintings in motion. I loved the music as well. Here is a few minutes of Normal Love that I was able to find on youtube:

It was like watching beautiful image after beautiful image lit up on this square in the middle of a very dark, mountainy Vermont landscape with a ton of stars. I wanted to imprint that image on my brain so that I could paint it when I had access to my oil paints.

So that is what I have been doing. I started out using film stills and movie clips from Normal Love that I found online and then started transitioning to filling the movie screens with my own images. It is a series-in-progress, and so if any artists out there in internet land wanna throw some constructive criticism my way, I would be grateful.

I wish the image quality had been better on the owl one. Alas! I have a couple more in the works.

The following has nothing to do with Vermont or Bread and Puppet or Jack Smith, except that those experiences are getting me inspired to paint again, which has led me to finish up some projects that I let fall by the wayside. I wanted to post those as well.

This first one is a landscape from Ithaca.

And this next one is a nightscape I did waaaaaay back at Earlham and never finished. I still don't know if I would call it finished, but I am certainly done with it.

Three cheers for painting!