Happy (belated) St. Paddy's Day

Traditionally, I'm all giddy about chasing after people who are not wearing green and pinch them.

This year, though, I decided to be nice and made little green shamrocks and leprechauns from green construction paper for them to wear.  I made 8 in all, but only about 70% of the people actually wore them, which definitely defeated the original purpose of my little St. Paddy paper accessories.  Though a bit flattering that those who didn't wear them immediately put them away in protective folders and such.  That was cute.

Unfortunately, I didn't take record of any of my little creations....

Sad but it happens. all. the.time.for.me.

Anyway, I made one for myself:

Look at these cutie pies.

Oh?  Want a better view?

Your wish is my command.  Here's a scanned version for your viewing pleausure (of seeing all the mistakes and unerased pencil marks.  It's like a game of Find Waldo!!).

Things I draw that is found around work

Sooooo.  It's been a while.   Rather than draw new things, I present you Things I draw at work.

I often  draw really random things and leave them for people or draw signs for people to see, to make things interesting.  These are some of my work found at my workplace.

Things I've drawn for my boss:

I was going for the "Apple for a teacher"-kinda thing but I was too cheap to buy an apple so I disguised an avocado as an apple.  The avocado is no longer, but the shell  is still in existence.

Conventional Zombies are boring.  It's all about the zombie parrots and pug harpies who walk their pets of flying munchkin kitty and flying scotties 

My boss went on a vacation and people kept on asking about her, so I drew this and posted it on her chair.  Miss someone? Draw them.

Signs I drew:

I was hoping to grab people's attention.  I think a creepy girl with crazy eyes, creepy smile and creepily long neck would definitely get people's attention.

...There was more to this sign....It got cut up into pieces and this is the only piece I see around now.  If you look carefully, it's like the Terminator is scanning his ID in.


Random things I drew:

I was bored one day at work and I wanted to draw an epic dragon to protect that spanned across the whole counter.   It didn't even go halfway across before I was, "Ugh, fuckit. Taping paper is so hard."

A random dragon, a random goat, and leaping cat.  I don't even know.

Add caption

I don't even know...I guess zombies and spoon-armed...monster?

I....am speechless.  I don't really know anymore.

Whiteboards are fun.  Pet dragons are cool. So are random animals. You cannot convince me otherwise.

Things I've drawn for people:

My coworker as mythical creatures, manticore and the scorpian king.  They didn't accept my gift.

My cute and adorable regular wanted a Donald Duck drawing....so this is what I whipped out as a reward for her hard work.

Things unrelated to Work:

Sometimes I like to personify gift bags and this was one of  those times.
Done with Copic Markers and prismacolor pencils

Beginning Inspirachannel Themes

There is an artist named Carli whose work and ideas I quite like.  She created this blog community, Inspirachannel, to inspire and motivate fellow artists or creative beings.  This is a fantastic concept because, I, myself, am a lazy artist so if I don't have an art class I tend to stop drawing all together. The way Inspirachannel works is that Carli posts a new theme almost everyday, and we submit our work to the blog so we get to see what everyone else did.  It's pretty sweet.

Theme 1: Self Portrait

100% caffeinated painting.  Well, with exception of the occasional ink intrusions

I hadn't painted in coffee for awhile, so I thought I would give it a go.  As I was going along, I wanted to give up because it looked like a huge brown blob of blehness, forgetting how difficult rendering in coffee was.  But around 60% into this, it started to look like a person, well, like me, so I was pleasantly surprised.  Now, I feel this painting looks prettier than real life me.  Does this mean that if I douse myself  with coffee, I'll be a beauty queen?  It'll be the greatest beauty discovery ever.

Theme 2: Spiritual Animal

Just chillin' on me tree with me hibiscus laced coffee.  

 To be honest, I don't have the same intensity in affection towards sloths like Kristen Bell, not even 50%, but I do think they are adorable and I move kind of slow, like a sloth.  Also, I smile and laugh terribly a lot.  It's quite ridiculous.

Theme 4: Greek Mythology

Seriously, Daphne got the short end of the stick.  I mean, in summary, she got stalked and then was immobilized.  The story of Apollo and Daphne sounds like a plot for a really bad American horror movie.

When I was a child, I used to love reading a beautifully  illustrated Greek Mythology book and one of the stories was Apollo and Daphne.  Basically, Apollo is a cocky bastard who pisses off Cupid, (FYI, bad idea lady and gents) who in turn makes Apollo fall in love with Daphne.  Now Daphne is a rather modern-like maiden with the radical idea to not get married.  As Apollo vigorously pursues Daphne, Daphne pleads to her father, the River God, to help her escape her stalker and her father turns her into a tree. Yes, that was her father's solution to "help" her, to turn her into a tree that has no means of running. AND then Apollo proceeds to feel her up and use her barks and leaves for his beloved rituals.  For young Rie, this story sounded romantic for first 30 seconds but seemed mostly unsettling  and unfair for Daphne.

Theme 5: Horror

Sadako is groovin' by crawlin'.  Apparently, the TV is not as spacious as advertised. 

Hands down, Japanese horror film Ringu is more terrifying than its American counterpart. If you don't mine, I prefer not to talk about Sadako because she scares me shitloads and I prefer not to dream about her tonight.

Oh, it seems like I miscounted?  Well dear reader, excellent observation skills. I actually haven't drawn Theme 3: Shuffle song yet. Saving it for next time.

Also, Carli said she liked my work and I was like:

OMG THANK YOU

Name Tags with paws and The Sneetch

The past 3 weeks I've been working on these sweeties:

Let's be honest, the true star of this picture is the premier laminating machine.

I was making these name tags for some of my co-workers.  There's an inside joke, but I can't tell you because then I would have to kill you for finding out too much about our secret sect and our ultimate plan to take over the world. 

I'm kidding, of course.

Or, am I?

Anyway, since I've been kind of lazy and heat weary, and it's been increasingly harder to hide my art adventures at home, it took me 3 weeks to make these. 

My boss had to teach me how to laminate. Lamination takes great knowledge and skills.  And practice.  Use the Lamination wisely, dear friends.

These aren't for my coworkers but for my friends:

Everyone loves kittens.  You cannot deny this fact. If you understand the reference to the top kitty, we should be friends.  As soon as possible, if you don't mind.

In my academic life, I'm taking an anthropology class that has an assignment in which I need access to a child and read Dr Seuss' The Sneetches.  I actually don't have any confidence in dealing with children.  In hopes to win the love of little children and avoid judgement from their innocent all-seeing eyes, I made this:

Yo, I'm a Plain-Belly Sneetch.  Whaddup?

There's a star upon thars. Thou art a Star-Bellied Sneetch now.  Go Forth Chosen One and become a Plain-Bellied Sneetch.

The Sneetches is a brilliant book, by the way.  Y'all should read it. Let us hope the children won't eat me alive when I finally do read to them.

My Board-- mostly because I couldn't think of an intelligent title

For two weeks or so I  lugged around a 10" x 24" wood panel to and from school to work on a "late" project for my illustration class.

Ready for Painting Adventures, I was.  Readily equipped with paints, gessos, water containers, and different types of brushes.  Ready, I was.  Very much awkwardly, too. And, my arms got exercise. Yes, they did.

I wanted to avoid painting at home, so I tried to paint at school as much as possible, leading me to paint and ink in public often.  Consequently, I got interesting questions/conversations from random strangers:

I originally wanted to respond, "With paint and paint brushes."  But, I thought that that might be rude to strangers, so I pretended that I didn't speak English.

Also, For motivation and to help me to stay up at nights, I decided to take pictures of my process, and I even posted some on my Facebook.

1.) Phase One:

At this point, I was kind of feeling good about myself. =D


2.) Phase Two:

Still feeling pretty good at my progress...

3.) Phase Three:

Despite the fact I spent some quality time with Google Image looking at tube images and I had been marching band for 6 years, I did not seem to know what a tuba looks like.

Also, at this point I was pretty much:

4.) Phase Four

Barbara Streisand Fish is riding a float made from flowers.  Such fun. And look at 'em rain clouds turn into roses.

Also, I was starting to feel a bit of despair because it seemed no matter how much I worked on it, it never seemed to be close to finish:

5.) Phase Five

Done! Or, close to done as I could get.

Oh. If you're curious what the actual assignment is, it was to illustrate three phrases.  My three phrases were:

Don't rain on my parade.-- Funny Girl
And when it rains on your parade, look up rather than down. Without the rain, there would be no rainbow. -- Gilbert K. Chesterton
I think fish is nice, but then I think that rain is wet, so who am I to judge? -- Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

If you look closely, you can see these phrases throughout the panel.

I used a combination of acrylics, regular and clear gesso, and FW ink.

Coffee painting and fan brush

Since I'm taking illustration again, I am once again playing around with coffee and FW ink because it's my "thing".

...and I got a fan brush using a Blick's (art store) gift card...

If I'm using it right, it's amazing.

If I'm not using it right, it's still amazing.

This is a self portrait sketch based on a picture I took of myself with a mini ginger bread that sits on a mug of hot chocolate that my lovely artsy friend made for me. It was amaaaaaaaaaaaazing

I actually had a right hand that was holding the mug but I royally f*cked it up so now it's just a big smudge of coffeeness.  Also, I got lazy in rendering my hair so it's a little bit WTF toward the back of my head. At the time, I had long bangs, so no, that look wasn't because I wanted a "sexy" look or because I was lazy...I really had long bangs covering my left eye.

This is a painting I am working on for my class...that's kinda late and should have been done, last week?

It's a cup of coffee painted in coffee.  Hahaha, get it?  I'm not really sure what to get either.