Happy New Year

I get the day off today - Yay! Unfortunately, I think I'm getting that sore throat that's being passed around the office. I guess I'll just have to take it easy and do some art instead of cleaning and throwing out stuff and taking down Christmas decorations.

Christmas was great and very quiet. I received another fun new gadget to go with all my other fun gadgets - a Wii, with Wii fit and some games, plus some other nice things. It was nice to spend the day with my family and dog. I had to work the day previous and then the day after, but it was a nice break in the week. Here are some of our holiday photos, unfortunately I forgot to take pictures of us on Christmas morning....Doh!


Christmas Roxy









I have some art to show - one is the tiger project. I made a tiger box and was having trouble with stylizing the clouds. I think the clouds came out fine; I'll just know better what to do the next time I attempt something like this. The box is premade, from Michaels, but I should have prepped it much more like I did for the Matroishka doll set. I am going to fill it full with a tongue-in-cheek Chinese Horoscope book, a bar of Tiger soap - it looks like the stone, a tiger stone stretchy bracelet, a glass tiger Christmas ornament, watercolor tiger postcards, tiger stamp, tiger striped socks and chocolate caramel kisses that look like they are wrapped in tiger striped foil. I also have a Tiger calendar that doesn't fit in the box. I'm going to try and do some watercolor bookmarks of tiger eyes. I don't know if I'll be able to get the tiger paper cut finished. That would be an extra item and I have so many projects to do...but I'll see what I can get done today. Here's the box.


Tiger Detail


Tiger box for Mae


Inside of box

I'm focusing most of my creative hours on the other card site - Illustrated Art Cards. I love the fantastic art and artists on this site. I also feel like my art is better due to the challenging swaps & trades. The feedback on my cards is wonderful and really touches my heart.

I am sure that art was suppose to be my real work in this lifetime. I've tried to make a go of it, but my destiny took me down a different road. I'm definitely learning all about the energy of money in all it's aspects. I just need to get a lot more of it so I can do my art! Having money would mean having plenty of time and resources to do the really fun things in life. I still have fun and am still learning & growing, but I have to grab it here and there. Work does takes up a lot of my time and attention. Though, sometimes at work, an image will pop up in my mind and I have to grab my note tablet to try to sketch it quickly as my sketchbooks are at home. Or I have to make note of it and then try to remember this (my memory is going) and sketch it out when I get home. I'm wondering if those other artists who have different day jobs have as much trouble balancing the time in their lives. I'm thinking our homes may be on the messy / dusty side. I need someone to clean my home, take care of my laundry, and shop and pick up my dry cleaning! My other option to have all the hours I need in a day to do art is to give up sleep...

I joined another Art History 101 swap which is on the artist Claude Monet. Although I find his art full of expression and romanticism, he insists that they are merely impressions of a subject and the time and light of the day that he is capturing. Well, he certainly did pick some pretty subjects didn't he? I think he was just being kind of manly by saying he is capturing impressions like it was some kind of laboratory experiment. I think he passionately loved beautiful gardens, flowers, people, architecture and nature and how it all interplayed with each other. I think he captured the fleeting beauty he saw at a particular time of the day/month/season. When I look at his paintings, I love how he saw and felt about the world around him. He is one of those artists that I would have loved to have known. All I can say, Claude, is that although you say you are merely capturing the impression of the way light hits your subject matter, you certainly have given everyone a beautiful way of seeing the world through your eyes. Here are my attempts in acrylic paint at doing a card in the style of Monet:


Water Lilies ~ after Monet


Vase with Flowers ~ after Monet


Regatta at Saint Adresse ~ after Monet


Monet's Garden ~ after Monet

I am currently working on movie star portraits. I thought I'd start out with the ones who were hot back in my parents day and are still legends. I'm finished with Liz, working on Marilyn and then I haven't figured out if I'll do Marlon Brando, Paul Newman whom I adore, or James Dean. I want to do two of the most beautiful & entertaining women of the 50s and then two of those beautiful & entertaining men. I'm also going to do two silent screen stars - Louise Brooks of whom I'm reading a biograpy and I can't decide who else. I'm trading with another artist who does incredible portraits. She likes Greta Garbo and I may do her. I may just end up doing a few of them because I love Charlie Chaplin, Mae West, Gloria Swanson, W.C. Fields etc, and I am fascinated by these people and how they lived considering the times were pretty stifled. Louise Brooks, in particular, who was so very smart and so very human, pretty much gave it all away. I also would like to do the 30s and 40s stars - especially Rita Hayworth, Bette Davis, Katherine Hepburn, Lauren Bacall, Humphrey Bogart, Gary Cooper, etc. I hope I can participate in a lot of these swaps, because I would go through all the ages to present. I love doing portraits of particular genres of either entertainers, artists, musicians, writers.

My new years resolution is to take care of myself healthwise. I never took vitamins, now I'm doing that. I need to move around more, so I belong to a gym, have a Wii and just recieved a Jillian dvd from The Biggest Loser; I think she's very effective. I need to eat better food and less of it, so that's my personal goal. I also need to throw out a lot of stuff and slowly make changes to my home so that it functions better for us. That's it. I hope this year brings wonderful things to everyone. We're on better footing at least with this exceptional new President, Barack Obama
and we should be close to the bottom if not there already financially, so there is only up to go.
Happy New Year!

This Week

I've been on the road a lot for work this week, but thankfully there have been no trips outside San Diego county. Last Monday, I was returning from a downtown appointment on the 805 north back to work, and as I approached the Nobel Dr. exit, the fog seemed extraordinarily thick, but it turned out to be very thick smoke. The smell was different from the San Diego brush fires from several years ago and what a surprise to me to have this kind of fire knowledge. To my left or west towards the ocean is a canyon that was billowing smoke and traffic heading south was at a standstill. Helicopters were hovering about and that's always a bad sign. As soon as I got to my office, I found out that a F-18 jet, due to mechanical failure, crashed into someone's home in UTC and that there were 4 people missing. On the evening news, I witnessed incredible graciousness - here was this man, the owner of the demolished home, who lost his wife, both of his baby daughters, his mother-in-law, and through his incredible grief, showed kindness and understanding towards the pilot who had ejected to safety. I'm sure that this pilot will carry a very heavy burden of guilt for the rest of his life. I suppose it doesn't matter now, but there is some question about why the pilot had to return to Miramar over the heavily populated terrain of civilians instead of the much closer naval training base in San Diego bay (he was doing landing/take off maneuvers on a aircraft carrier in the Pacific). Our motivational quote on our bulletin board this week says something to the effect of how each of us are given many burdens in life to bear in order to find out who we really are. The horror and pain of losing your family and the pain and guilt of causing it all is just to incomprehensible. I pray that both men find healing and peace.

So now it's pretty silly of me to want to whine about all the things I have yet to do and what will not get done. It doesn't help that the house on the corner has a new, obnoxious Christmas decoration which is a count-down to Christmas window sign...it just pisses me off every time I drive home from work. Arty (my fake Christmas tree) at least is up and ready to be decorated and the house has new white/blue icicle lights around it and the light deers are on the lawn. The candy cane posts need to go around the hedge & the entry arbor and the door needs to be decorated. Only more parcel needs to be mailed, cards completed, and then I can concentrate on completing my shopping list on family & friends. I still have a batch of chocolate ginger cookies - courtesy of a Martha Stewart recipe, to bake. First things first, I have to catch up on housework, laundry and then pay bills. I'll try to get some painting in today. My Tiger box is coming out okay. I had a design all sketched out, but the box decided that it's going in a different direction. The Tiger box is going to a friend who is extremely witty and verbal, and who is also a very talented artist. I wanted to incorporate one of the natural elements and chose the "air" quality because it's associated in all horoscopes as the element of communication. I wanted my tiger to represent the Air or Wind Tiger and therefore, my tiger is up in the clouds. I'm working out all kinds of problems of design, color and then painting on wood itself is a challenge. The "zen" thing is not happening. It's been a week since I've put the box down and today, I'm hoping I'll have fresh eyes and new insight and the zen moment will happen and the box will finish itself. There's some consolation as I found a few cute things to go in the box: tiger soap, tiger eye bracelet, tiger socks, tiger stamp, and I also plan to do a tiger eyes bookmark and perhaps some notecards and stuff it full of gold foil wrapped candy. I hope it will be a nice New Year's present even though I was wrong about the animal. I guess I just don't care much for a beast of burden like the Ox and unintentionally mistook 2009 as the Tiger year, As for the ATC cards, well I better get on them because I sure did sign for a lot of swaps & Pats on IATC. I've signed up for another art history - this time Monet is the featured artist, and then I've signed up for favorite movie scenes. There's so many movie moments to just narrow down to 4 cards. I've also signed on to a favorite artist Pat where you do a card in the style of a person's favorite artist within your group. There's some fantastic artists to learn about - it truly is a way to study an artist. It was hard to narrow down which of my favorite artists I wanted, but I chose Jennifer Bartlett a California artist:

She's just an artist that speaks to me so much and you can see her influence with my koi painting below, though my painting pales in comparison. I can't wait to recieve my cards! I've also joined a Favorite Movie Pat and what great movies everyone in my group has chosen. One artist want's scenes from the movie "Heroes" - the Chinese movie. There's so much beautiful imagery in this movie and I've narrowed my scene down to do a card of the character Snow, dressed in a red gown. She's sword fencing with Moon in a wooded area with trees all in gold. I learned something new and important - my son taught me that Asian fencing isn't as efficient as European fencing and if the two were to dual, the European would win. It seems that Asian fencing is mostly about stabbing and slicing, whereas European fencing is about evading this ....I think my samurai relatives would take exception to that! Back to the cards, this pat isn't due until April of next year, but there's quite a few movies to sit and watch. I'm going to pencil in a lot of cards and bring them to work with me with colored pencils. I can try and get some of the cards underway during my lunch hour, that is if I can break away for lunch.
We had our collective company party yesterday which was fun. It's been a hard year, but we're perserving through the market. Next week, we'll begin the festivities for my fund which has narrowed down to 2 days of Secret Santas and the final day at a nice restaurant in Del Mar where we will bring out our most competitive selfish natures and fight each other in the ornament exchange game! I usually have someone in mind when I get my ornament and this time I bought a beautiful Lion and Lamb ornament when I was in Sedona, AZ. I'm hoping the person I had in mind will get this ornament, I know she will love it (to post an image later). This whole year has been very challenging and hard and it has streched me in ways I never imagined. I'm really growing with my work even though it's been difficulat due to all the defaults. And now, we're running down to the final two weeks left in the year which is 4th quarter and year-end all at once. I know I come off as this gentle, soft, fluffy, calm person, but at my core is a warrior who wants to survive this and live to tell the tale. Take that 2008!

Post Thanksgiving

Another year older, another trip around the sun...I'm so grateful for all the people in my life that I love and who love & support me, for everything that I have, and for all the knowledge & wisdom gained this year. I'm especially thankful for that little voice within that notifies me to take notice of what is before me. What is usually ordinary and mundane, like my hour commute each way to work on the freeways, turns into the extraordinary when that voice says look up and there is a beautiful red-tail hawk sitting on the lamp post or soaring in search of its meal, or the way the sunlight plays on the hills, things like that. I need to pay more attention to that voice especially when I'm getting bogged down by so much work. Sometime's, when I feel sorry for myself and am feeling pretty inconsequential, that little voice pops up and lo and behold there is another handiwork of beauty.

For the Art History - master painter series, I wanted to do my cards after Modigliani, Peter Max, and Hokusai. Modigliani did beautiful, highly stylized portraits. He was a student of Klimt, but his life was so tragic and sad. I painted the Modigliani cards in acrylic paint and in doing so, I learned so much more about the face as a landscape or stage of expression of the inner soul. He used delicate lines, beautiful rich colors and exaggerated the features especially with the eyes and the telltale long neck. I love everything about Peter Max, especially all his "hippie" art from the portraits of the Beatles to his current art. Andy Warhol's paintings, though beautiful and unique, are in my eyes cold and impersonal. Whereas, Peter Max's paintings are so alive with beauty & color and they invite you into his wonderful world. Then there is Hokusai, the best Japanese wood print artist whose work highly influenced Impressionistic European artists. It's very humbling to know that before he died he said something to the effect of how he wished he had more time so he could learn to draw...


Soldier - after Modigliani


Woman with Black Cravat - after Modigliani


Asia - after Peter Max


A Shower Below the Summit - after Hokusai

I traded a set of cards for an elephant request with another artist depicting a mother elephant watching her babies play in the river. At first, I was going to split them up and give each card to different recipients, but after looking at it closely, I decided that the babies could be misinterpreted. It's important to emphasize the size of the mother in relation to the babies. I think my trade partner was happy to get the two for one! I, in turn, received a beautiful golden fish painted like stained glass window. It is lovely!


Elephant Mom Watching Babies Play in the River