In This Place

Ever After

So for my final contest piece, inspired by Rebecca S.'s "Once upon a time they lived happily ever after...and this is how it all began"...

I have less than 2 weeks to finish the art for my Sketchbook... I thought  I was mostly drawn out, so to speak, but I am finding I'm somewhat obsessed with the idea of angels among us, and now I have several I still want to do. This is one.

Reading (mush)Room

The second of my contest winner suggestions:

For DalaHorse's "I put it under the magnifying glass and..."

Little did they know

Way (way) back in July I had a contest. I have been remiss in getting the winners' picks done. For some reason I can't quite fathom, my brain just wasn't going there. I've had a lot of trouble with this Sketchbook, actually... but I'm getting there (I'd better be! It's due at the end of the month!)

Anyway - I now have one done. "Little did they know" was Bella Sinclair's title. I'm sure, knowing Bella, she had something cute and whimsical in mind. However, for some reason, my mind went a little darker. Bella, dear, I hope you don't mind.

subway angel

Still reading (and loving!) all the poems from dVerse, but finished this and thought I'd go ahead and put it up here.
For the Sketchbook.

New art listed on Storenvy

I have a new shop at an online store: Storenvy! I'm going to be listing some of the same stuff I have listed at my Etsy stores, but it will have a lot of different things as well, such as the pictures from my Sketchbook Project from last year.

I have the following listed and more!

Wynken Blynken and Nod catch the baby stars

Wynken, Blynken, and Nod
by Eugene Field (1850-1895)
 
Wynken, Blynken, and Nod one night
   Sailed off in a wooden shoe---
Sailed on a river of crystal light,
   Into a sea of dew.
"Where are you going, and what do you wish?"
   The old moon asked the three.
"We have come to fish for the herring fish
   That live in this beautiful sea;
   Nets of silver and gold have we!"
                     Said Wynken,
                     Blynken,
                     And Nod. 

The old moon laughed and sang a song,
   As they rocked in the wooden shoe,
And the wind that sped them all night long
   Ruffled the waves of dew.
The little stars were the herring fish
   That lived in that beautiful sea---
"Now cast your nets wherever you wish---
   Never afeard are we";
   So cried the stars to the fishermen three:
                     Wynken,
                     Blynken,
                     And Nod. 

All night long their nets they threw
   To the stars in the twinkling foam---
Then down from the skies came the wooden shoe,
   Bringing the fishermen home;
'T was all so pretty a sail it seemed
   As if it could not be,
And some folks thought 't was a dream they 'd dreamed
   Of sailing that beautiful sea---
   But I shall name you the fishermen three:
                     Wynken,
                     Blynken,
                     And Nod. 

Wynken and Blynken are two little eyes,
   And Nod is a little head,
And the wooden shoe that sailed the skies
   Is a wee one's trundle-bed.
So shut your eyes while mother sings
   Of wonderful sights that be,
And you shall see the beautiful things
   As you rock in the misty sea,
   Where the old shoe rocked the fishermen three:
                     Wynken,
                     Blynken,
                     And Nod.

Minuet

Beauty and the Beast by Jaimes Alsop 1. The Beast Knowing how you loved the birds I fixed them to the trees so they wouldn't fly away. So you would stay. And you remained silent and never questioned my bloody palms or reproached me the birds because they didn't sing. It couldn't last, of course. No new birds came and those crucified were taken by small animals or simply disappeared from the nails. I was sure then that you would leave me. Finally I confessed. Trembling, I brought you the hammer and showed my broken fingers. Leaves and branches in my hair, the diagrams of Autumn on the sky. And you smiled and said it didn't matter about the birds and drank at my tears like a rare and fragile wine that they too would not be wasted. 2. Beauty I came to you so carelessly there were those who thought I had not been warned. I could only point to the false lovers who carried marks where you had pressed coins into their palms and admit I was impatient for your scars. The rumours followed us as easily as if you murdered me every night; hemlock in my evening wine, a loosened bannister on the stair. The dull villagers and daft princes waited still and at distances for grave news and relentless until I could only point again at their jealous eyes and whisper I had discovered why you handled me as though I were made of glass. I know they want to know about our bodies. Our virginity confuses them and they are reduced to words and silences. What shall we allow them to believe? We are a thousand years old, no histories and nothing to confess.

poem from  Endicott Studio

Hide n Seek

Snow White and Rose Red play hide n seek with Bear.
For the Sketchbook.

Artwork Ideas

So I'm trying to come up with ideas for this new sketchbook, Fill Me With Stories. I have a few. Some of them are just titles, at this point... so I thought I'd see if any of my faithful readers have any ideas.
Last time I did that I got some fabulous ideas!
So here's some of the "titles" I have in mind (each line is a separate "title"):

once upon a time there was...
and then there was...
then one day...
there was this girl...
and then there was this other thing...
and then i had this dream
and then what do you think happened?
the other day I saw...
i overheard...
and then something mysterious happened...
and before they knew it...
it was a dark and stormy night...
and off in the distance...
and they lived happily ever after...
...or did they?


I'd take a title suggestion, or even a suggestion for a picture.
Like last time, we 'll make a contest out of it! Whichever one(s) I decide to use, the person(s) who made the suggestion(s) will get a print of the final artwork.

Let's give it two weeks and see what we get, shall we?

"and then I had this dream..."

a Sketchbook Project 2012 piece for Fill Me With Stories.

So. Seattle...

..was grey and cool, which is typical for Seattle, so I really didn't expect anything different! It was kind of nice to get out of town after all the medical worries with Secret Agent Man, plus all the family being in and out and all, we kind of needed a little break.
The drive over was lovely, I love the Highway 2 route over Stevens Pass.
Seattle traffic, however, nearly made me want to turn around and go home! I don't know how people can live in those types of metropolitan clusters without losing their minds. Well, maybe they don't, I guess.

We splurged for a water front hotel since it was a special occasion and all (plus a late anniversary thing) and it was kind of nice to be able to watch the boats come and go. I love being that near the water. One morning I woke up and found this outside my window:

Except that from the room it looked more like this:

Ninja cruise ship,  never even heard it pull in!
I don't know where it was going, but one day I would like to be on it! I think a cruise would be awesome. Although, I suspect it was headed to Alaska, which would be okay, but I'd really like a nice Greek Isle cruise, eh?

The main reason we went, of course, was to look at my Sketchbook again, as well as visit some of the other Sketchbooks in the project.
The gallery opened to a large waiting audience:

Um. Yah, well, it was early yet. By about 1230 there were maybe 20 people in attendance. I had to keep telling myself that it was Friday, after all. I think they did better on Saturday.
Once inside there were dozens of shelves holding all the Sketchbooks. Some of the books looked very interesting:

 

My biggest disappointment was that you couldn't just pull a book off the shelf to look at (I really, really wanted to look at that furry one, also one that was about 4 inches thick, sparkly and had bits hanging out of it...) and since you couldn't see the library number on most of them, there was no real way to ask for specific ones. You had to go to the desk and ask for (only) two books by theme, artist, or random, which was mostly what I did.

Of course, I checked mine out again (I really need to get off my butt and print out another one. Or three.) and then I checked out a friend's book.
Here are some pix from some of the other books I checked out:

I really liked the cute  beagle drawings by this artist, Maria Conforti. I would list all the others, but the Sketchbook Project website is not fully functional yet, and there's no way to search by artist, so I'm not sure at this time who's stuff is what, even though I have a list of names... One of the books was one big sheet of paper, all folded up and it looked interesting, but unfortunately the "gallery" was not set up to view something like that, which brings me to my second disappointment:
The gallery wasn't much of a "gallery".
We were stuffed into a grungy staircase, which from what I can tell is the actual gallery.

I understand that space in Seattle is at a premium, but I wish they had done some more research before choosing this space.
It was just not functional for such a showing. There was no place to sit, other than the stairs, and not many of them either. You had to actually take the books outside, which of course meant standing around or sitting on window sills. Then you have to worry about rain, bird poop, or the occasional scum-bag-punk-passerby like the one who tried to grab the book out of my hand, or that someone would walk off with one they really liked. Not ideal for looking at someone else's hard wrought art work.

(FYI if anyone from the Brooklyn Art Library reads this, next time bring the show to Spokane. Better galleries available, and we LOVE artsy-fartsy stuff! Seriously!)
 
As far as the books themselves, I liked that there were books of all kinds, some serious, some not, some done by children, and some by quite "serious" and obviously professional artists. I wish I had had time to check out more books, but it was such a tedious process, and S.A.M. just didn't need to be standing around there so we left.

Maybe after I've done four or five projects, and am wildly famous, we'll go to the Brooklyn Art Library and try again!

Sketchbook Tour in Seattle This Weekend!

At the form/space atelier!

Now that Secret Agent Man is feeling better (thanks for all your prayers and well wishes) we are headed over for the weekend.  I'm excited to see my Sketchbook again, along with the others on exhibit. I'm hoping they will let me take some pictures, which, if they do - I can post here next week.

And speaking of Sketchbooks... I have been working a little at a time, when I can steal a minute or two, trying to get my first page done of the 2012 book, Fill Me With Stories. I think I'm finally happy with it. Although, I've been known to obsessively tweak stuff from time to time!

Thanks again to Brian Miller for his poem:

fill me with stories

Those of you that have been following me around the interwebs for a while know that I participated in the 2011 Sketchbook Project. I am, once again, going to participate, which will be better this time around because I have almost a whole year instead of just a few months! (Little late to the game, last time!)

Last year's book included these images, along with others, under the theme "Submersibles & Dirigibles" 

This year my theme is "Fill me with Stories".
Brian Miller, from Waystation One, who did the previously posted poem here, wrote a poem for me last year also:

and has graciously agreed to write me another poem for this year's Sketchbook!
His work is amazing. If you haven't been by Waystation One yet, go there and check out some of his fab writings!

fill me with stories:

Sketchbook 2012

I just signed up for the new Sketchbook Project for 2012!
I had so much fun with the last one, I thought it would be good for me to participate again. Plus this time I will have twice the time to do my drawings (maybe three times as much!) so I should be able to include more artwork. I'm thinking I may have some new contests as well, for ideas and so on.

The theme I picked this time is "Fill me with stories". Should be fun! Now if I can just find a short poem for my opening page...anyone got any suggestions?


Random, unrelated picture:

Adios Sketchbook

So, it's all packaged up and ready to go in the mail tomorrow. (It has to be post marked by Saturday. Nothin' like waiting til the last minute, eh?)



...sigh...



I'm kinda sad to see it go. But I've decided I'm going to make another one, 'cause I'd like to have my own copy for keeps.



Sometime in the next couple weeks I'm going to offer the pictures in a limited run of prints.





I'm not sure what Etsy shop. I'm going to be re-doing everything here pretty soon. All of the shops, Etsy, and Artfire and everything. On top of work! Phew!



So I'm gonna be busy. Oh - and check out the Project tour dates, maybe they'll be coming to a city near you!



But I'll be around.