Christmas cards on Artfire

Snowflake Christmas cards are available for a limited time at:

 SunshineSight.artfire.com

 12-pack, deer on blues

 10-pack Christmas themes on earth tones

 10-pack midnight deer variety pack

10-pack Christmas themes on pink and green

 12-pack deer on blue watercolors

12-pack Christmas themes on blues & greens

 12-pack snowstorm valentine collection

12-pack snowstorm spice berry variety

Have a Very Merry Christmas!

butterflies

Enjoy your Memorial Day, whatever it is that you do.

I spent the weekend mostly indoors, and well, it was what it was. I don't feel spectacular, and I was thinking maybe Monday I'd make a doctor's appointment, and then remembered it was Memorial Day, and just kind of sighed.

It wasn't an entirely lost weekend. Somewhere, somehow between sleeping and eating, there was some art created. Yeah, there was some cheesy bread and cheeseburgers and orange sherbet and cheesecake and chicken nuggets and potato salad, and a lot of Dr. Pepper. It was one of those kinds of weekends... plus I caught up on the last 5 episodes of Revenge while I was working at the computer.

Anyway, I worked on the fantasy butterfly series, because for no reason other than it occurred to me to do it — I designed a couple new sets of wings and then went through the process of converting new sketches into fully finished images.

 chalcedony angel

ruby cypher

So, in addition to the majestics, the swallowtails (okay, so maybe those are a little less fantasy), the duchesses, and the fairywings — now there are the angels and the cyphers (and eventually the gliders and that new one that I finished this morning that I haven't named yet).

glider

 the yet unclassified fantasy species...

And, of course, I have 2 more sets of butterfly templates that I have yet to fully work through. Maybe this week? Maybe not. I've never been one of those plan things in advance people...

Anyway, to all the United States peeps — have a nice holiday, and the rest of you — enjoy Monday!

long rambling post

I wonder sometimes why I bother to write blog entries. Is there really a point to it?

Not to insult whoever it is that comments on my blog, and wow, yes, those are sparse, but is anyone really reading this because they want to?

I mean, I assume someone from HR scrolls through this thing every once in a while to suffer the disappointment that while I occasionally mention that I have a full time job and it is relatively far from my house — otherwise nothing is ever said about who I work for or what I do; much less any sort of juicy gossip or comments or opinions or whatever. 

Like I imagine the HR person thinking: yeah, the blog is a slightly different shade of purple and has more pictures of flowers or trees or some painting of nothing or whatever, but is otherwise about nothing salacious and lacks anything interesting like drunken photos of partying at a bar or treasonous diatribes. Next!

Don't worry, I fucking hate captchas, so, you could actually comment, anonymously, I might add, even if you're secretly from human resources...

But anyway, back to the thought I was having: why am I doing this? I wonder that most of the time when I sit here in front of the computer and try to think of something to write.  I've wasted a goodly amount of time writing things that have never seen the light of day, because for a long time I tried to practice the ideology of "would grandma approve?"

You know, like would I say "fuck" in front of my grandmother? Possibly, accidentally. But my grandmother doesn't have a computer or a smart phone or a tablet or the internet.  And my other grandmother is dead... plus she grew up on a farm in the mountains of PA, so, really, was there anything that I ever would have said that some much more colorful local yolkel hadn't already blistered through? Besides, I was / am fond of all 4 of my grandparents.  And everyone talks out-of-turn (as it were) about other people at some point.

Anyway, I assume my one remaining grandparent isn't reading this. Of course, you're never supposed to assume anything. But really, I do assume that when someone loads this blog and they see a giant block of text they probably make some face and then simply click away... because I do assume that a lot of you are drinking lattes or fancy flavored coffee while sitting in front of your computer (on looking at your phone or tablet) with the thought that some stranger on the internet is going to provide some level of entertainment... and since we're 6 paragraphs in, I assume very few people are actually reading this, because who the hell am I other than some faceless (avatar aside) stranger on the internet.

I was on vacation this week, and other than driving 17 miles to the doctor's office (and that is asinine, considering how many practices exist between my home on the one approved of by my health insurance — if you're American, then I implore you to vote for Democrats).  I probably should have made the appointment 3 months ago, but well, I didn't. I mean, I should have scheduled a teeth cleaning in February, but I didn't get around to that until the end of April... I should also probably floss more, but otherwise the electric toothbrush seems to be working out.

Anyway, skipping over the details, I have been physically ill. It isn't typhoid or lockjaw or shingles or whatever, so, it was just like one of those background nagging kinds of things (and yes, one person's version of nagging may vary wildly from someone else's; most of you probably would have made the appointment a lot sooner). But I work midnights and the doctor is far away — and those are my excuses, besides, maybe it'll just run its course, and I won't need to. Unless you're devoid of hope — I think we all consider that last one as a possibility.

Well, it didn't, and it wasn't going to just run its course... plus, it had started to wake me from my sleep. If you've never worked midnights — sleeping during the day is a chore, and as soon as you lay down there is always some moron vacuuming out their car or operating a leaf blower or a chainsaw or mowing their lawn or acting like poor white trash and doing doughnuts with their truck in the field out behind your house. You know what? That one day in the spring when it rained and you got your truck stuck in the mud? I laughed, a lot, particularly since it happened right behind my house. What would be really funny is if you went out there and your truck was swallowed up into a giant sinkhole. I would probably actually put down the binoculars and walk all the way out to the edge of the back yard and laugh and point and heckle...

Anyway, I don't thrive on less than 8 hours of sleep. I have a co-worker who thinks that like 2 or 3 is acceptable... it isn't. Of course, whenever you talk about sleep with people, the first thing that seems to happen is that they can prove that they need very little sleep and that you're a total pussy for wanting the full 8 hours. You know, shit, even my children sleep less than that. 

Well, congratulations, they're probably going to grow up to be spree killers or axe murderers; their prefrontal cortexes shrinking a bit more with each lost hour of sleep. People need sleep. I prefer mine in 8 hour+ increments, uninterrupted. So, waking up hours before the alarm clock was scheduled to go off was not rocking it. And it's not like I was waking up full of vigor and sprightliness. No, it was more like if "ugh" could encompass a state of being.

I would look at the alarm clock, blearily, and in my head would just let out a loud moaning "Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!" Because even if I curled up in a ball and shut my eyes and thought about nothing, I was awake, and the remainder of my planned sleep was gone.

I have slept through thunderstorms, tornado warning sirens, more thunderstorms... but all of a sudden I couldn't sleep for more than 5 hours, and when I was awake — I was a freaking zombie. 

So, I just spent 5 days on vacation, and the furthest I went was to the doctor, ironically, not for sleeping pills, but for that thing that I presume kept waking me, otherwise, I guess we have ghost with an irritable personality...

I feel no more rested and relaxed today than I did on day 1 of my vacation. But I did watch a lot of tv and sleep for however long I wanted whenever I wanted, and I got some drawing done, so I guess it wasn't a total zero sum. It wasn't exactly like I had some calculated plan for the five days or something, aside from finally making that doctor's appointment.

I do feel like less of a zombie, but come tonight - the grind just starts again, and I suppose goes on until I finally just drop dead, although mortality isn't one of those things that I spend an awful lot of time thinking about. It's probably why I was never a goth, plus, I like colorful stuff, albeit not necessarily as part of my wardrobe.

 

travelogue

I mean, technically, this is me, although, thematically, this is not me. Traveling just ain't my bag. Although I do have an old blue suitcase. Plus, really, if that was me, that plain black t-shirt needs some Pink Floyd graphics smacked on the front of it...

I guess I'm dark and sardonic and maybe a little antisocial, and that isn't fun whimsical light fare for morning coffee... and maybe I had to inadvertently become a sleep deprived zombie to realize that I don't get any joy or delight or simply relish the idea of trying to play against type in order to offend the least amount of people. And my grandmother (living or dead) isn't reading this anyway.

I talk about myself on here (or if you know me online, wherever we are - I talk about myself mostly there too) and I lead a fairly mundane life — aside from making things that look like earthworms in dirt in my spare time...

 

worm assemblage plaque

C'mon, admit it, it's at least nominally humorous, even if it does take some sarcasm to appreciate.  Plus I photographed it outside on the rabbit hutch (which is the closest thing I have to the etsy canard of barnwood).

Anyway, I talk about myself mostly, because it's easy and it's the least argumentative thing.  In many respects I am a character, but I'm an obscure character and who really has strong feelings about me one way or the other? It's not like I'm some anti-women's-lib homophobe like Rick Santorum or something. Seriously, republicans, why do you hate gay marriage and universal healthcare? 

See, when we were just talking about me you could just roll your eyes and yawn, and since you're many many miles away, I'd never notice. But when we talk about stuff — that's when people start to get pissy and annoyed. So, for everyone who had ever taken the time to take a pot-shot or make some glib off-hand remark referencing just how much of me I tend to talk about — that's why. Aside from issues of quantity - me talking about me rarely offended you, and as it turns out - I live a fairly creative carefree life that mostly revolves around such inert things as watching tv, listening to music, occasionally being outraged by brazenly stupid shit, taking photos of flowers and trees and naturey stuff, and mostly making a lot of art that is neither political or offensive; and the rest of the time I'm sleeping or at work.

My pre-vacation illness-induced sleep deprivation zombie experience was the deal breaker. For reasons that were mostly unintentional or accidental or simply the path of circumstances — I realized I was someone that I didn't want to be.  It didn't really take five days of vacation to arrive at that conclusion, nor did I have to travel far to get there.  It simply is what it is.

I'm not a person of absolutes. There are things in life that are constant, and there are far more things in life that are variables.  And probably, mostly, I have tried reasonably hard to succeed at whatever happened to be in front of me... until I tried so hard to get a certain result that I failed to notice that in doing so I was no longer really me — and that's a thought that applies to a number of things.

I am not always a grandma-approved conversationalist, and I'm not an apologist. And the amount of time I've spent trying to offend the least amount of people hasn't really made me happy.

Against my better judgement, I wandered into town in the early morning a couple days ago with my camera to photograph whatever... but I wasn't really in the mood to do it, and my back hurt, and I wasn't feeling stellar, and it was hot out... and really, I just needed to go buy groceries, which I don't like to do when everyone else is out doing it — because working midnights you tend to be buying groceries at 7am when everyone else is asleep or eating breakfast — so the store is like a ghost town... anyway, I took 70 photos, and most of them were crap...

Except this one:

nosy gnome

I'm not big into gnomes, nor do I own one... but there was something about this particular random moment in time that amused me.  It's the trite, silly, and downright absurd that generally provides the memorable moments. Plus, it's just about time for me to put on 'people clothes' to go out and buy groceries for the coming work week...

Have a good week and pursue some happiness just because it's something to do.

my paper heart

Things tend to be relative, and unconnected or seemingly unconnected things can hold some amount of influence over other things... There's currently a story popping up on various sites that I frequent about a woman in New Zealand who drank a gallon of Coca Cola a day or something ridiculous like that. Evidently she ate very little and also smoked a pack of cigarettes a day and then died of a heart attack. You know, really, no sh**? *sarcasm* Duh, that's unhealthy.

At 32 years of age I'd love to know where my universal healthcare is. You know, like the stuff they have in England or Canada. I'm insured through my employer, but my insurance company for whatever reason would like to keep my premiums low by having me enroll in some (expletive deleted) non-specific diet plan... I mean why the (expletive deleted) would I not want to log onto the internet every day to have to report what I ate for breakfast, lunch, and dinner on some random form compiled as statistics in some computation storage file somewhere on the internet.  *eye roll* 

Evidently keeping my premiums low involves wasting my time.

Regardless, a couple years ago I attempted this diet plan (expletive deleted), and well, 25 extra pounds later I can tell you that it didn't work. Funny thing, before I started "adjusting" the food I consumed — I had never gained weight that quickly. The form for the enrollment in the new year is due at the end of the month. I'm not wasting $20.00 + a day of fasting to do this crap again. I'll just wait for my universal healthcare and continue to feed the pyramid scheme that is insurance — considering my average of 2-4 doctor's visits a year (2 of which are almost always for some form of cold that I picked up at work).

Anyway, the one thing that my dentist (insurance actually worth buying) established years ago was that I drink too much pop. Yes, that's what we call it here: pop. Ironically, my carbonated beverage of choice is Classic Coke. I sure as hell don't drink a god damned gallon of it a day— you hear that, dead lady from NZ? But I also don't drink coffee, so it is my source of caffeine... when it's on sale. Otherwise, I will settle for Pepsi, Dr. Pepper, or A&W Cream Soda (which I was surprised to recently learn contains caffeine).

However, pop was eroding my tooth enamel, so my consumption needed to be curtailed.  And so, I became one of those people who drinks tea, at least while at work. I'm not sure calorie-wise it's healthier, but apparently it's non-acidic and otherwise not eroding my tooth enamel.

When it comes to tea I'm particularly fond of:

Twinings African Honeybush, Mandarin & Orange

Twinings Spiced Apple Chai

Bigelow Red Raspberry Herb Tea

Bigelow Raspberry Royale

and

Bigelow Pomegranate Black Tea

With the exception of the Red Raspberry Herb — I usually make them all with a dose of vanilla coffee creamer.  I like the Red Raspberry Herb with Torani Vanilla Syrup. Yes, I know: it's sugar.

 I accumulate 5 tea bags a week. And at some point it occurred to me that tea grounds were an art supply waiting to happen... because way back when - before people hated Nickleback - in the days of grunge music I was a teenager and I did this project for my AP art class that involved making worms out of polymer clay. Fast forward 15 years and I spend my spare time thinking about making artsy-craftsy stuff, and well, polymer clay worms entered back into the arena of possibilities... So, the tea grounds were how I was going to having feces-free dirt. In other words: tea grounds = simulated dirt.

 So, I have a supply of spent tea grounds. Yeah, no, those are not Pepperidge Farm Pirouettes, that is my canister full of tea grounds, in the event that anyone is poking around in my studio and thinks that I have some treats sitting around. And one day while I was catching up on episodes of American Horror Story and emptying out the dried-up used tea bags - I happened to notice the pattern on the tea bag filter papers.  And I thought "well, that's cool... I bet I could make something with those." And so, I saved a bunch of them and put them in a pile somewhere, and a couple months later I was probably supposed to be doing or thinking about doing something else and I came up with a project for my tea stained filter papers: paper hearts.

 I made a heart template, and then sat there on my breaks at work tracing hearts onto filter papers and cutting them out with tiny scissors...

The coloration on the filter paper really is created by the tea.  The dark pink color comes from the raspberry herb tea; as does that bluish color. I'm not precisely sure how or why - but when I put the raspberry herb tea bag into hot water it gives off this blue-purple cast first before curing as 'tea colored.' So, when I glued the hearts to the illustration board - initially the blue cast returned to the paper — although later on it subsided again...

I had to format my project into something stable and useable... I decided that 5X7 inch pieces of illustration board would do the trick. I actually considered a litany of things from painting to collage to assemblage, but ultimately settled on the simplicity of illustration board.  Of course, it's not pictured, but in order to get everything standardized — I made a template.  So, while every heart is unique in its own way — it's positioned the same on the illustration board.

 I decided to finish them with paraffin wax. I'm not precisely sure why, it just seemed like the thing to do.  In retrospect I suppose I could have just used varnish... but, well, I didn't.

my paper heart encaustic mixed media collages at sarahknight.etsy.com

Relatively speaking, this project began with a healthcare form and a blood glucose test... and relates to something completely different — my worm assemblages — which originated some fifteen years ago from my enjoyment of Pink Floyd's "The Wall" and ceramics classes I happened to be taking in high school. Life and art random and relative like that.

Enjoy your weekend, but don't drink an entire gallon of Coke or smoke a pack of cigarettes in one day. I'd probably skip the cigs altogether (as a lifelong nonsmoker)... anyway, enjoy your weekend in responsible adult-like insurance company approved moderation!
; )

love is like jazz...

I think I heard this song on the satellite radio at work, or maybe on one of the music channels on the television... because, as much as I am remiss to admit this, I haven't exactly just turned on the actual radio in a while. Anyway "Love Interruption" by Jack White. Oh. My. God. I am infatuated with this song.  I think the first arc of the infatuation was trying to figure out that the hell he was saying in the chorus, because I'm a tad deaf like that (there were a lot of hearing tests taken multiple times when I was a kid)... but after figuring out that it was "I won't let love disrupt corrupt or interrupt me" — I still have a desire to play this song repeatedly like a 12-year-old hopped up on the Bieber-juice. So much so that I looked to see if the album was available in a store, and then subsequently checked Amazon. Evidently "Blunderbliss" is available on April 23/24...

Yeah, I'm old (32), I still buy cds. I like having the actual thing.

I'm a casual Jack White fan.  I'm not exactly a devotee, I don't think I'm hipster enough for that.  The White Stripes were something that had to kind of grow on me... because Pink Floyd really does take up a lot of the oxygen when it comes to the atmosphere of my favorite bands (well, that and Dylan, Zeppelin, Cat Stevens, and Everclear...). "Elephant" was actually the first White Stripes album I bought.  I also got the next 2 White Stripes albums, plus the Dead Weather and the Raconteurs records.  So, when I remember some time in April, I plan to buy this one as well.

Anyway, until then I'll just be playing that video on repeat and letting the serotonin take over my brain every time it comes on that station at work...

Aside from saying that "Love Interruption" is just a damn cool song with interesting lyrics, an engaging lyrical structure, and an perfect harmony of sound, I really can't tell you anything about it beyond the fact that really, I like it because it's cool. So, I suppose the same model that applies to the way I like a song also applies to the way I produce work sometimes. 

orchid honeydew dawn

I apparently made this painting on 4 August 2011.  According to the calendar, that was a Thursday.  And, vaguely, apparently I did actually blog about it in the abstract.  But I don't really remember making this painting, like what I was thinking or what I was 'watching' on tv at the time — in that most things are made while I sit in my living room in front of the television while my eyes and attention are on whatever I'm making... So, I guess I was playing with gouache for one of the first times, and obviously salt and watercolors, but nothing quite jogs my memory to the specific moment when I made this.  Given the cumulative amount of random things I remember at any given moment — having no recall of precisely painting this painting amuses me.

But I like it, because it looks cool.  It's the wrong answer to give in an art school critique, but it's the simplest answer. Technically, it doesn't look cool; in that the individual and overall tone of the colors is warm, but, well, sorry Paris Hilton, I'm not one of those people that wanders around and exclaims "that's hot." So, yes, I'm declaring that I think it looks cool, which I guess might be me being egotistical, but well, I'm actually not completely neutral when it comes to the things that I make, and I like some of them more than others... that's why there's a keep pile. Sadly, I cannot keep them all. Well, I guess I could, but no, I can't.

I didn't get much made this week. Some weeks are more productive than others. I mean, redesigning my business cards doesn't really count as making something? Does it?

Maybe it does...
Watching Tabatha Takes Over, Criminal Minds, CSI (yes, I have a little girl crush on Spencer Reid too), and WWE Raw, probably ate up a couple hours of time as well. It can't all be Supernatural and Grimm all the time. Besides, the Rock sang for us. Yeah, I will never understand the appeal of John Cena... Rock 3 / Cena 0. That's all I'm sayin' particularly in the event that anyone was keeping score. Yeah, I know you weren't. Yes, I know, I know, people, the outcomes are pre-determined as we say.

Anyway, after 15 years with the 19 inch RCA, I finally bought a new tv. So, uh, now I guess I have to get that thing of the box and figure out where the red and yellow and white chords go. I figure this should be fun, and by fun I mean unnecessarily difficult. I guess that's really my project for this weekend.

*Update! I have now stepped into the 21st century! The television is assembled and functional. Woo-hoooooooooo! It's time to break out the cream soda and the pizza or something, or finally get around to watching The Rum Diary now that Johnny Depp's face will be life-sized.

Picture Story: calla lilies & tree swallows

calla lilies & tree swallows

Of all the pictures I have ever created, this one has always been my favorite. Shh, don't go telling my other pictures, they'll be all jealous and stuff.

With the exception of the birds — I drew the sketched the entire composition... and then followed the process of converting the sketch to a blue page, inking that, printing out a color fill and then coloring that with colored pencils, and well, a whole bunch of editing... you know, that same paragraph I type up virtually every time I explain how I translated a sketch into an illustration.

Yes, this was once just an outline on a white sheet of paper, before it was an entire production combining a digital scan of a painting, a digital scan of a colorized print-out of my calla lilies, and a digital scan of my drawings of tree swallows.  The tree trunks and the leaves were done with photoshop filters - as this picture pre-dated me owning a digital camera (otherwise I surely would have photographed some tree bark).

Anyway, there are 2 things I remember most vividly about this picture.

One is that I re-edited the calla lilies about 3 times, because there was something that I just didn't have right about the outline around them - and actually ended up mostly painting in the outline in photoshop until I was happy with it.

And the other is that the tree swallows were the first set of birds that I simply drew out on bristol - absent of any actual composition, to scan and cut.  Back in the olden days - when I created an illustration I drew the entire thing on one sheet of paper by hand... this was really the first time I drew the parts separately and put them together.  These were literally the first bird graphics that I meticulously removed from a white background in photoshop.

It's a strange thing to remember - but it's what springs to mind the most when I look at this image - as it was a point in a learning curve.

Anyway, calla lilies & tree swallows has always been one of my favorite illustrations, albeit simply for the visual.  It's intricate choreographed chaos.

earthworms...

By all accounts I was missing in action for most of September, or at least from my blogger account. Since I'm not a meticulous planner, I cannot say it was a planned absence, circumstances and life just kind of dictated that it occurred...

Part of what I was doing in that period of time (aside from sleeping, working, driving, eating, and watching television) was working on a project: the worms. Yes, worms.

I first "made" worms when I was about 16 years old. They were part of an art project I did either for AP art or ceramics when I was in high school. I suppose they were inspired in a way by Pink Floyd; more specifically the iconography of the film "The Wall." Pink Floyd is one of my favorite bands, and at the time actually seeing "The Wall" was kind of my white whale.

When I was in high school, this was back in the nubile days of 1996-97 when the internet came to people through landlines. Yes, there was a time before broadband and netflix and onDemand and, well, you know the rest...

Anyway if I really wanted to see "The Wall" I would have had to have rented it from our local version of Blockbuster... which I could have done if it was ever there on the odd chance that I happened to go to the local video store, which happened maybe 1-2 times a year. "The Wall" and "A Clockwork Orange" were never there, just that damned VCR case indicating that someone had rented it...

Yes, so anyway, I finally saw it somehow on some trip somewhere... but in the mean time, I was doing this project that involved making worms out of polymer clay.

Well, years passed, and projects came and went. And some time this last spring and summer I found myself standing in that aisle of the craft supply store where they sell the polymer clay... and well, just like riding a bicycle, I remembered the formula for mixing the colors and how I got the segment effect, and voilà: worms

Well, okay, so it actually takes some time to warm up the clay so that it's pliable so that colors can be mixed. But one Saturday afternoon over the course of watching "Medium Raw: Night of the Wolf" I cranked out a batch of worms. And then proceeded to cook them according to the directions on the package.

And then, while watching what was quite possibly one of the cheesiest Lifetime movies ever — "Pretend You Don't See Her" — I applied a coat of gloss varnish to my worms to give them the appearance of looking wet.

Now, some of the worms were created for a series of assemblage pieces. These were made out of a combination of illustration board, spackle, acrylic paint, varnish, and tea grounds. Yes, I said tea grounds. I wanted something that looked like dirt without actually being dirt... tea grounds, as it turns out, look like dirt. Fortunately I drink tea. So, this project incorporates some Twinings Spiced Apple Chai, Twinings African Honeybush, Mandarin & Orange Herbal Tea, and some Bigelow Raspberry Royale.
It took an afternoon of trial and error, because after laying down my spackle and then waiting for that to dry I knew I needed a coat of what would essentially serve as primer. So I had to mix up some brown-gray paint, and then paint that with a coat of umber colored acrylic... and then I needed to figure out how to get the tea to stick... some elmers glue, more umber paint, and some gloss varnish later - I had my formula. Of course, then I had to wait for that to dry too. A lot of time is spent waiting for things to dry...

Wow, that's a crappy photo!

Yes, after everything was spackled and glued and painted and sprinkled with tea and finally dry - then everything needed to go into the frames... and then the pieces needed to be photographed. From an idea-on-paper standpoint, simply photographing the piece is much harder to do well than one would hope. There were a lot of bad photos. Largely because it's hard to photograph something glossy and shiny (the worms) against a background that is dark and matte (the tea dirt) in a frame that has a shiny faux metal finish. Yes, there was some swearing and consternation and a lot of flipping thru the camera settings and trial and error and probably like 150 photos taken of 6 pieces, many of which were just terrible. Indoors, outdoors, with flash, no flash, lit... hell, I even set them up in the bathtub hoping for better light...

The other problem (particularly if you feel you take the best photos outside) is when the weather doesn't cooperate. Between just being dark and overcast it also rained, and rained, and rained, and rained. Things look wet in this picture because they were wet with rain.

The back of the old rabbit hutch is an ironically "etsy-ish" place to take photos... old white paint weathered on wood, and it faces away from the sun... plus I could just hammer a nail into it.

Yes, somehow that's the sweet spot for taking pictures, except for the relatively minor problem of the green grass reflecting on my faux metal frame...

These are my finished pieces:

digging in the dirt | tilling | fertilize
earthworms | unearthed | undulate

The rest of the worms were divvied up between two projects.

Yes, worm earrings. Ew, yes, I know. But they're polymer clay, so they won't nibble on your ear lobe, pinky swear.

You can see them here.

And now I have to get cracking on that other worm project...

for the birds

I spent the weekend working on a spur-of-the-moment project (I mean, you know I thought about it for like 2 whole days before embarking on it, technically)... so, hopefully I'll be done with it soon, and then I can get back to the butterfly mobiles.

It's been hot out, apparently so hot that we had our first power outage of the summer. Yes, you know because I had just arrived home from running errands - it was like 80˚F - and I went to put the cold groceries in the fridge and was surprised that it was dark in there. And then I looked around at the rest of the kitchen and noticed the clock on the microwave was blank, etc. Fortunately it came back on within 2 hours...

Anyway, there's a male cardinal out in the yard pining for some company. We had 2 of them out there the other day chasing each other around and otherwise jockeying for territory... at least cardinals have a pretty song (as opposed to robins which always just sound like they're yelling).

what they sound like: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9LNexIoCW0

This is one of my cardinal illustrations: cardinal couple
It was part of the project that I have been working on this weekend.
Here's a little preview:



Yes, it involves my bird illustrations (which you can see at sarahkdesigns)
or
if you're more curious...

There's a cool giveaway at danielleorama's blog, that bunny is adorable :D

Now I think I'm going to sit here in front of the oscillating fan and catch up on Haven (season 1) - which I have been watching via dvd. It's an awesome show.

Hopefully you had a lovely weekend : )

The lost week...

Sometimes the weekend finally comes and I sit here at my computer and wonder where the last 5-7 days went... and then I remember all the mundane things that ate up my free time. The last two mornings (because I work midnights, and that's what's left when I get home at the end of work) were spent on dentist's appointments. My teeth are clean, have been treated with fluoride, and I now have 1 less wisdom tooth... and now my mouth hurts.

So, if I disappear this weekend or this post seems exceptionally disjointed - that's why.

"midnight mist"

I made this painting probably about 3 years ago. And I finally got around to listing it on etsy. I also recently used its digital copy in my butterfly project. Which you can see here or in the picture below:

I sample or recycle my own creations a lot, I suppose. I mean, when I painted that painting 3 years ago I wasn't specifically thinking "I'll scan this for this specific project that I plan to do at this date." Because, really, I'm not a plan-on-a-schedule type of girl. I think things happen separately, simultaneously, and often cumulatively. And sometimes that means having an idea, letting it sit there for a long long time, and then finally just doing it.

Long before I finally actually did the butterfly project or painted that painting I was thinking about how cool it would be to decorate with butterflies — like as ornaments — as evidenced by my summer decor from this post. All those monarch butterflies were sort of a preliminary learning curve with photoshop and printing and aligning the front and back of an image on a print so that it could be cut out without any off-set... and that I used fishing line to hang them was probably an due to something from the 3D class from my freshman year at the University of the Arts. We had to build a cube frame out of balsa wood and then fill the cube without gluing anything to the frame - the easiest way to accomplish this was by suspending things with fishing line - which is thin, clear, and almost invisible and made to support X amount of weight...

So, every now and then I think about how nifty it would be to take the idea for the ornaments and convert that into a mobile or a wall hanging... so that's what I'm going to work on this weekend — which is also what's in the last 2 pictures. First I had to line up my images, and now I have to cut them out. Only time will tell how long it takes me to getting around to actually suspending them from something...

Have a good, relaxing, productive weekend — and a Happy 4th of July!

butterflies

I think everyone has a romanticized version of themselves. Like if you had to define yourself as a person - the words that you would choose are a projection of the qualities that you desire... and to some extent every person thinks: I defy labels. Really, we don't, but we all think that.

Labels, of course, are subjective.

So, what I know is that I probably have little use for "the rules," whatever those might be. If you've visited this blog semi-regularly, you may have noticed that there is a lack of format (which, unless you have OCD and you check here daily) is due largely to the fact that I do a blog entry when I actually have something to share, as opposed to having a format.

I don't desire to abide by a format in my free time, which I consider this blog to be. Formats are just like rules, and usually they're kind of arbitrary and eventually they get boring or feel like an obligation. Obligations come with expectations and guilt, particularly when expectations aren't met... and I like to avoid that. Formats also involve a time table and repetition. I'm not really a format kind of girl.

When I was a child I had a lot of toys, particularly Barbies and Cabbage Patch Kids. And one day I was downstairs playing in the Barbie Section (that was the name of the area in the basement that had been apportioned to me & my sister as a play area) and realized that I had no desire to be a doctor or a lawyer or an astronaut (or whatever the third rung of that analogy is supposed to be). My childhood ambition was either to be a princess or a hairdresser...

I mean, I styled a lot of doll hair, and I had all the latest dolls from Herself the Elf, Rose Petal, Hot Looks dolls, Strawberry Shortcake, She-Ra dolls, Golden Girls (not the sitcom), Barbies, Maxie dolls (like Barbie), Jem and the Holograms... some of those probably also account for my princess aspirations (besides the fact that princesses had pretty dresses)... Anyway, I am neither a princess or a hairdresser.

I'm not a goal-obsessed person. That's probably why I got that art degree.

So, every now and then an idea for a 'thing' will pop into my head. And I may write it down or draw it in the back of my sketchbook, or I might not. And if I just remember it - that's fine.

So, for a long long time I had this idea about a project with butterflies, and really, I didn't sit down and meticulously plan out the details... I just finally did it. So, one Saturday morning one of the showtime channels was playing "Ripple Effect" and I sat there and sketched out butterfly wings... and realized that I think that Forest Whitaker plays phenomenally annoying characters (yes, I've seen the Criminal Minds spin-off).

And eventually, I scanned those and inked them, and scanned those, and made a 'body' and then 'antenna'... and piece by piece, slowly, and perhaps organically the project finally came together. And I realize that I tend to think of my work in process terms - like I scanned that, inked that, etc — because generally, those are the givens. The colors, the shape, the composition — I think of those as simply being inherent and I suppose, beyond explanation...

And sometimes I think things have amusing and unintentional parallels and connections. Because to 'colorize' the butterflies — I used scans of my watercolor paintings. And perhaps, when you were a child you had a watercolor set and made a butterfly by painting half and then folding the paper in half and pressing it together. I don't remember ever having done that at home — I actually only remember doing it in the fourth grade...

But then, I paint watercolors that don't follow "the rules." According to the rules - if you use some sort of gimmick - like salt on watercolor - you should do it sparingly, just in an area or something. Oh, pfft to that thinking.

When I paint with watercolors, other than knowing that I will be using paint, salt, water, paper, and a brush — I don't plan my compositions — they happen. It is what it is, which must be very wrong to the people who will tell you that there are rules...

So, I finally finished* the butterfly project that I've been thinking about for about a year now.
*finished is a relative term.

morning dew fairywing

rose madder majestic

morning aurora swallowtail

You can see the rest of them at my sarahkdesigns shop as they trickle into the butterfly section.
I suppose if I had planned it and put it on a time table - it would have been done a long time ago. But, that's just not how I work.

Now, since this is the last day of my 'vacation' — let's see which new project gets my last day of vacation, so I'm relaxed and focused attention. Will it be the calendar graphics, the bird project, the dancers, the 'portraits,' the watercolor over photographs, or the girls? Or, maybe I'll finish cleaning the living room. Okay, yeah, the living room probably isn't going to win that one.

Have a lovely weekend, and do whatever is going to make you happy : )

Bluebirds...

So, the bluebirds...
Yes, I think I've mentioned the eastern bluebirds a gazillion or so times. When we're lucky, not only do they visit our backyard, but they nest there. So, below is a picture of the old nest box... it is no more. It was old, and it was literally falling apart. That's what happens with weather and age. My father made that nest box. And my father made the new nest box that after some swearing and consternation was installed in it's place.

Yeah, it's a wooden box bolted to a metal pole. The bolts holding up the old box were rusty. One of them had to be removed via hacksaw because the wrench and the can of WD-40 just wasn't going to cut it. Good thing my father bought me that hacksaw for Christmas, I guess...

This was the old box.

So, anyway, the bluebirds have been hanging around the yard again. They watched the demolition of the old house. There was much squawking and wing waving. And then, hours later they were in the backyard, nesting materials in beak, building a nest in the other nest box... you know - not the nice new one. Birds.

So, anyway, it is now Father's Day. So, if you're a father: Happy Father's Day!

Father's Day is one of those kind of annoying sneaky holidays. It creeps up on me every year. I love my father, don't get me wrong, it's just that Father's Day has this annoying habit of being on or around my birthday. No one likes multitasking on their birthday... There's a 2 day delay this year, but I still have to share it with the first day of summer.

Anyway, every year there is a last minute Father's Day gift... so this is this year's. Yup, it's a drawing of a male eastern bluebird. Yes, I draw a lot of bluebirds, you can see them here.

I sat down in front of the computer whilst catching up on the Daily Show & Colbert on hulu and drew the bluebird on a branch.

Then that was scanned into photoshop. I cleaned up the scan and adjusted the layer to just black and white. Then I blocked the scan and started filling it in with colors and used a photograph for the background.

This was the photo I used for the sky. I took it on Thursday morning while it was sprinkling on and off. Stormy skies are generally the most interesting to look at. Obviously, when I used it in the picture I adjusted the colors and levels.

I printed out the colorized scan of my drawing onto some 2-ply plate bristol and began coloring it with my favorite medium: prismacolors.

And there it is. Well, I have to sign it and slice off the border so I can fit it in a picture frame, but otherwise it's done :D

Have a Happy Father's Day!

Picture Story: spring sing

Technically, I was on vacation this week. Vacation, as it turns out was mostly about sleeping and not having to wake up at the sound of an alarm clock. Plus it was about getting some work done on some projects that I have been procrastinating on for a long long time. I am a hell of a procrastinator. But, I did finally take all the snowflakes down — my winter decor consists of my ginormous collection of plastic / resin glitter covered snowflakes (see this post for my hilarious prediction).

Anyway, now I have to hang the butterflies and the hummingbirds... which I just haven't quite gotten to yet.

In the mean time — a picture story: spring sing.
I finished this illustration in the spring of 2009 (see last graphic), but I probably technically started it around 2005. This first graphic is actually a painting. It was painted with acrylics with details done in prismacolor on illustration board. The original is actually 11X14 inches. But via the magic of a scan and a size format change in photoshop it became an 8X10.

What I actually did was I flipped the image horizontally, and then lightened the resized copy of the painting in photoshop and then printed that and drew an outline around everything. Then I scanned that outlined copy and adjusted the file until all I had was the outline on a white background.

When I have an inked copy, then I make a sample fill of every part as a separate layer. So I fill all the tulip flowers with one color, all the petals with one color, the grass, the tree trunks, the leaves, the sky, and the clouds. Because I am going to use scans or paintings or drawings, or digital photos to actually fill in the those parts.

This is a size reformatted portion of a scan of an 11X14 acrylic painting called "geranium sunrise." It's what would eventually become the background of "spring sing." Of course, I had to reformat it 8X10, and then I would go on to lighten the entire painting by creating a layer of white, playing with its opacity and then merging that to the layer of the scan of the painting.

The yellow warblers that appear in the painting were drawn separately. They were drawn with prismacolors. That drawing was scanned, and all the white space was removed. The clouds were created using the paintbrush in photoshop, and then using a layer fill style over the background. The sheet music that appears in the background was scanned, and then manipulated using the warp tool so that it is wavy instead of linear.

The leaves of the trees were created from a digital photo that was manipulated and resized. The original image is actually of maple leaves on the ground. The tree trunks were created from a layer I created by layering several different colors with several different brushes and then using filtering effects in photoshop.

The grass was also created from a photo. It's actually a picture of the grass in my neighbors yard (and this particular photo has been used in a number of my illustrations when I need grass, which I always think is kind of funny since my neighbor will mow his lawn on a diagonal and this shot is clearly of some grass that hasn't yet been cut) . The tulip flowers and leaves were both taken from the same scan that was used for the background.

And through the magic of layering styles all these things come together to create the illustration. You can see the finished piece here in my "sarahkdesigns" shop on Etsy.

If you're anywhere near Tecumseh, Michigan: Friday 29 April 2011 is the annual Tecumseh Art Walk. I'll be at Timeless Stitches, so if you're in town, then please stop by. The event is 6-9pm.

I hope everyone is enjoying their spring : )