Purging and Painting

I seem to not be so good at doing much on a regular basis these days. Hopefully, unemployment will be one of those things. Yes, it has been 8 months, officially, this time around. Last time it was a week shy of a year, so I really hope to not get that far. I find myself increasingly more stressed and frustrated at my situation, and looking for ways to get out of this rut, you know, use some of that good old American ingenuity. One thing I am doing is going through my countless DVDs and CDs and picking out ones I can live without. Seeing as I am 99.999% digital these days, and most of what I watch and listen to is on my back up drive, I can live without most of them. So, I am peddling and pandering to anyone who will listen. If I figure out how to sell directly through my blog, I will do so. Until then, I started the ball rolling with a friend, and I am selling some of my DVDs through an online service. A few of my DVDs will get a decent amount of money, so for those, I am using that option. When I got rid of all of my CD jewel cases, I didn't keep the back cover, you know the one with the UPC code. So, without a UPC, I cannot sell to those convenient online places. I will have to take my chances with person to person sales or eBay.

In addition to decluttering my media collection, I am looking into what kinds of goods I can have made with my photos and designs. I am thinking about opening an Etsy store. There's so much stuff there, I will have to learn how to market. I also need to figure out specifics, so I can make a business plan and go on Kickstarter to try to raise my start up costs. I obviously do not have the money to take any risks with.  I will be working on reworking some of my more popular journal pages on flat paper, so I can scan them into Photoshop Elements and tweak to my liking as digital images that can be put on t-shirts, fabrics, papers, cards, keychains, calendars, etc.  If anyone has feedback regarding this and what kinds of products you would like to see, please look at photos from past posts and leave a comment.

About my work, it is obvious by looking at my past work, I like simple graphics with bold color and line. I definitely do that best, but I am also interested in growing my skills. I am not a great painter or drawer, hence my style. I have been largely self taught, outside of one high school painting class and one community college class in drawing. I have several weak points which I would like to strengthen. One is painting dimensional faces, and dimensional anything, for that matter. I am not striving for realism. As I have heard many artists say, "If I wanted realistic, I would take a picture. " This is my first experiment in painting a face in a dimensional manner.

Keep this girl away from the cheap self-tanner! Seriously, this was my first attempt. She looks okay, but very streaky.

This photo is blurry, but you ca see the improvement a few more layers made. I am very proud of her nose. I think it turned out quite nice.

My little stylized goth girl. She looks cute, but she could definitely use more layers of paint.

Through this initial round of attempts I learned the following:

• There is a reason so many mixed media artists use watersoluble crayons and pencils with gesso to create face. It would take far less effort for a good effect.
• Painting dimension in acrylics is kind of fussy. Watching people paint online, it seems like a simple process. Just swipe paint on and blend a bit. Maybe some people are that good, but for me, the top and bottom images are one layer. The one in the middle had two layers, then I gave up and gessoed over it all. Then, I created two more layers. I am beginning to think two layers is the minimum. I may change my mind as I learn.
• I have great respect for people who can paint fine lines with a brush. I just cannot. Too much coffee? Not enough coffee? Whatever the reason, I cannot seem to get a crisp clean line with a brush. I have even practiced by painting designs and thinning the paint so it flows more smoothly, but I am not there yet. Than God for technical pens and gelly roll pens. 
• I think I can get good at this. I know I can create unique faces by drawing, so I have a good base for painting. These are my first two paintings, and they look decent. It gives me a lot of encouragement. 
• I am not one of those people who puts faces and quotes on every journal page, nor do I really want to be. It just isn't my style and I feel it is being done to death. Even so, I like to know I can have options on what to draw and paint, another tool in my arsenal.

The goth girl and the other faces I drew earlier in the year have been glued into the pages of a couple of the signatures from that book I made from paper grocery bags. You can see the type of the bag in the goth girl painting, which I am not fond of, but I am not changing. The rest of the pages with type will be treated differently. I am hoping that I will be a pro by the time I finish that last face. I think that book will end up being the book where I practice new things. Of course, I do that in my other journals, but this will be intentional. I have a spread in another book I have designated for practicing painting spheres. Slowly, but surely, I am bringing myself around to more serious work, as serious as art work can be, that is.  It has taken a few months, but I am finally feeling the confidence to put in some time. If only my body would cooperate with me!

Journal Page Mania

It seems that my current state of unhappiness and discomfort over my length of unemployment have been good for me creatively. Over the last couple of weeks, I have been on a spree. Some pages are still very much in the beginning stages, and many are complete.

A crazy undulating mass of doodles.

This is only a background, but it was so pretty I knew I would mess it up somehow. So, I am keeping it just the way it is.

More colorful doodling.

This page is journaling, covered with patterned tissue paper, covered by paint and more journaling, then covered with gesso and Portfolio pastels. I got a lot of frustration out on this one.

The cover of my art journal. It is a nice small, manageable size. So manageable, in fact , that I only have a handful of pages left before I have completed this journal!

All of this frustration is also finally making me reach my melting point, so I started running on my mini-trampoline to get it out. Art journaling is just not enough. I find it amazing how many employers seem to treat me as un-hirable. Even in positions that I held for multiple years, ones I excelled in, ones that are entry level positions. When I actually do get feedback, I am told I did really well, but someone happened to have more experience or I am not qualified for the position. 13 years of clerical experience apparently means nothing if you have had a couple of bouts of bad luck. Anyway, I had a good cry this afternoon, put on some Tool, and pounded out my frustration and anger and everything on my mini trampoline. It will hopefully help me lose weight and the emotional load I am carrying. If people are using my weight as a reason not to hire me, I am going to do my best to take that away from them.

So, here's to getting through the rough patches with humor, integrity, and art. I got through this once (only a few years ago); I can do it again.

Ambitious knitting projects and rhinestones

When I lived in Baton Rouge, I worked with some folks who performed in drag. I, of course, became friends with them. I started knitting back then in order to develop a meditative habit. What I ended up getting was a full blown obsession with collecting kitting and crocheting patterns, a bunch of scarves, even more unfinished projects, and a couple of impressive projects for other people. I even sold a couple of pieces until a coworker who commissioned a scarf for her son went a little psycho on me when I gave her the final bill. That was enough to cure me of selling my homemade goods for a good long time. Well, when I started knitting, one of my friends who did drag asked me if I would knit him a dress, just a simple tube dress with straps. Because I am certifiable, I agreed. You see, I used to dive in when I learned how to do something new. I am surprised I didn't start out making lace shawls. The dress wasn't so hard, after all. Just very time consuming. I even made a hat for him, my first. That was such a hit, I made my other two friends who did drag hats in their favorite two colors. I wish I still had the pattern. I'd actually like one of those hats now.

When I was digging around for art journal fodder, I found the sketch Wes and I made of the plans for his dress. I threw it into one of the eclectic altered journals I mentioned in a previous post. (You really should take Christy's class. It really is fun!) I commemorated it with this journal page.

The stool is there because of a photo I once took in the "drag closet," the dressing room at the bar. His falsies were sitting on the chair and it struck me as humorous. I left them out, thinking I should be classier than that.

Wes now lives in San Francisco, a thriving costume designer. He making quite a name for himself, not that I am surprised. He used to design his own costumes, and some of the ones for his fellow drag queens and drag king. Some were quite elaborate, like the Titanic dress he used to perform My Heart Will Go On. He would dance around the stage, and during the climax of the song, he would collide with a large cardboard cutout of an iceberg. It was awesome! He also did a Scarlet O'Hara ruffle dress that rolled out into a giant rainbow flag. Today, he worked with Colleen Atwood, who designed costumes for Big Fish, Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland, Chicago, Edward Scissorhands, Memoirs of a Geisha, and I could go on. She has been nominated for 10 Oscars and won 3. Her work is extremely imaginative. I would be thrilled if this gives Wes some bigger opportunities.  So this page is dedicated to my dear, sweet, audacious, supremely talented friend Wes.

Getting it together

Since Friday. I have been battling migraines and other misc. ailments, so I have not done much in the line of art. What I have been doing is organizing, bit by bit, from the inside out. It still looks like a tornado blew through my studio apartment, but things are slowly getting organized. I started in my art studio space by going through containers of supplies. I had a few that were nearly empty, which seemed like a waste of space. So, I reorganized the containers. Along the way, I decided it was time I started organizing my paint by color family. I have so much, I would have to reorganize my container every time I used any paint. Unfortunately, I do not have any containers in the proper size, so that is a long term project.

Along with the organization of my art supplies, I have been digitizing my dvd collection. That is a massive undertaking. But I am unemployed, so I have the free time, and I have the space on my back up hard drive, so why not. Last year, I replaced my Mac mini. The new ones no longer come with a DVD-ROM. I have an external one, since the one in my last computer was bad, but it is a pain to go through the whole process of plugging it in and waiting for it to load. I have more digital movies than ones on dvd, so it really makes sense to have them in one place. I love the movies I own hard copies of, but rarely watch them because it is simply easier to just watch something I have on the computer. And I refuse to repurchase movies I spent good money on, when I have the technology to convert them. Legal/shmegal...I am not pirating them and I spent a lot of hard earned money to purchase them, so I should be able to do what I like with them within the confines of my home. After all, I can upload my music cds onto iTunes for ease of use, so why can't I legally do that with my dvd collection? Seems to be a double standard, if you ask me.

Anyway, that is mainly what I have been up to. I have more paper grocery bags than I know what to do with, plus I found some in our garbage room that I couldn't resist taking to use. I spent a lot of time today cutting them open in  order to make journals out of them. Two journals is what I have in mind. I hope to finish them in time for the weekend, so you can look forward to seeing those.

In the meantime, enjoy a couple of pictures I took in my neighborhood.

Graffiti in an alley a few blocks from my apartment building.

The graffiti in context. I love seeing these little treasures out of the corner of my eye when I am walking around. It brightens my day.

Apparently, someone installed an electrified back door. The mind reels. This is the kind of thing that can only be found in the city, lol.

2013: A Year of Action

A portrait me at 18, before the weight of the world and consequences of my actions came down on me. The nose is wrong, but he made me look like a total goddess!

This is the final day of the year. Over the past week, I have been doing a lot of thinking about what I want to get out of the coming year. I always use the time between Christmas and New Years to reflect. I decided to get real with myself this year. After I thought long and hard about the current state of my life, I came to one conclusion. All of the problems I have faced are ones that came about due to lack of action. I am an Olympic level procrastinator and avoider. When I have problems, be they real or imagined, I shut down and retreat. This is a learned behavior. I have had a very tumultuous life. Stressful relationships from family to romantic partners have lead me to beat a retreat away from everyone in hopes of peace. Stress is one of the biggest triggers for depression for me. Depression and I have our own sordid history that I do not want to repeat, so I stay vigilant that I am only briefly graced by its presence in my life.


I am tired of all of this dragging my feet and avoiding things. There are certain things I do have to try to avoid, as hard as that may be (perfumes and chemicals, at the top of that list), but I avoid things that are good for me and that is going to end. I fully intend to embrace acting on things this coming year. I will exercise and do things that will result in weight loss. I will get a job. If I am forced to take a job I don't really want, I will work towards getting one I do want. I will clean my apartment and brush my teeth and all that stuff that you may slip on, especially when you do not have to be anywhere or see anyone. Above all, I will take action and live up to my full creative potential. I will inject myself into a community that embraces my weirdness and encourages me artistically. I will embrace challenges and develop my skills properly. I will learn how to make something and market it so I can start taking steps toward living my dream of making a living at my art. I will become fully myself, as I should have been all along.

What are you inspired to do in 2013?

It's the end of the world as we know it...and I feel fine.

Today the basis for what is our modern celebration of Christmas, the longest day of the year, the end of the world. Well, two out of three ain't bad. Somewhere, someone got an idea in their heads that the Mayan calendar ended today because it was the END OF THE WORLD. I guess no one stopped to think that it may be the end of the Mayan calendar because...well, their civilization collapsed and the calendar maker had to think of more pressing things to occupy his time. I find this apocalyptic paranoia somewhat fascinating. No matter how much reason or evidence is presented, some people refuse to believe that the calendar ending on this date is nothing less than a prophesy. Even the biggest rockstar astrophysicist around, Neil deGrasse Tyson, cannot convince them otherwise. Even the Ask an Astrobiologis guy at NASA cannot sway their belief.

The interesting thing is that this mass apocalyptic delusion is far from being a recent phenomena. It has been going on since ancient times. Paranoia about moral collapse, the need to control others, just wanting to stir things up out of boredom, who knows why this is such a pervasive belief. I enjoy the apocalypse in films, music, and literature, but I just cannot quite get behind it in real life. Sure, it is possible that civilization will crumble or there could be an energy/water crisis that causes civil unrest that takes us to or even beyond the brink. I have entertained the idea once or twice. I think that it is useful to learn how to do things the old fashioned way, as much for future disaster as for preserving history, but I am no doomsday prepper. I do not spend every waking hour and every cent preparing for a future that is only somewhat likely, or not at all.

Preparation is something that should be a back of your mind thing, not something you obsess over constantly. What kind of life is that? I live in the shadow of a giant rock that could explode and kill millions at any time. Mount Rainier is an active volcano. I grew up in Florida and lived in Louisiana for 6 years. I went through Hurricane Katrina. I was in Baton Rouge, but we were hit and faced a lot of aftermath from evacuees from NOLA. Disaster is always a possibility. We know that. We need to prepare, but more than that, we need to live. We need to enjoy what is around us in the present moment.

So, I made an end of the world playlist to enjoy today. I plan to enjoy the silliness and hope no one takes things too far. At the top of that list is R.E.M. I will enthusiastically sing along, badly and messing up the lyrics. It's the end of the world as we know it... and I do feel fine. I hope you do, too.