So berry nice ..

.. to get to meet you!

;)

- Hey, you think sumptin's going on?
- Neh. Hard to say.

"The future ... "

... doesn't belong to the fainthearted; it belongs to the brave."



I may go off on many amazing adventures, but will always be a turbine blade gal deep in my heart. Few things sound as good as hearing on the other end of the line, "Hello.. Turbomachinery.."

All the better to

... combat the dogs of war.



OMG, Neen. Too funny.

added Jan 29, 2006:
No, I can't take credit for this. I am, after all, allergic to cats, for starters... Just stuff I find, cruising the Internet..

Collage class

I was at an artist's journalling class today. We all thought it might be sketching outdoors and coming back inside to embellish our books and drawings with objects we'd find along the way. It turned out to be more of a collage class, although, happily, no one was disappointed at all. You know the class is having fun when no one wants to leave for lunch!

We did the backgrounds in acrylic (these are like the gouache swatches I talked about earlier), then added images, or more paint...

You can click the images to see them at a larger scale.


This was a "use your hands" exercise. This was done as a two-page spread, which I've digitally combined.



This was the sgraffito exercise (you thought I was making that word up).
The swirly beach piece is also supposed to be a two-page spread, but I think it works better here as just the left half. The Camus quote was added digitally. I'm going to play with this more. I don't think the gold painted swirls show up very well in the digital image... It's a bit prettier in person.

Fun stuff :)

Added Jan. 29, 2006:
Here's a photo that shows off the gold swirls a little better...

Too much yellow

My Camry just wasn’t happy, even after an oil change last night. And, I realized that one of the headlamp bulbs was out, too. So I took it in and discovered that it did indeed need a new battery, on top of the bulb, and the ignition pump/valve something-something was getting stuck open and that caused the fuel to flood the engine something something something … and that’s why the car wouldn’t start when it was cold.

I thought, "Ohhh", and then thought (say it with me), "Cha-ching!"

>groan<
The only good thing about that ordeal, other than knowing that my car is dependable again (knock on wood) is that I had two hours to kill in the waiting area and could read and draw.

Oh, and watching the waiting area tv and getting to see Cooper Anderson on CNN, too. But I digress.
[Yeah, I know, cheap thrills.]
Anyway.


The greens didn't come out how I'd had in mind, so I think I’m going to spend more time just playing with color more - color mixing and gradations. Sigh. I love my Moleskines, but the paper just doesn’t have as much tooth (texture) as artist’s sketching or watercolor paper, so the pigment goes on and layers differently ... Time to just go back and play with technique, I think. It’ll be good. The drawing part seems to require more thinking than I feel like doing right now. The playing with different colors and papers - - it takes a different kind of effort and concentration than drawing, and that’s about where my brain is right now.

Stay tuned.

Sharp pointy objects

You could put an eye out with that thing!

Holiday fridge art

Here are some holiday gems from Mason (the multi-cultural holiday greeting) and Miyo (fireworks). Great, huh? :) Click each one to see it at a larger size.

gasp!

My regional cohorts will say "... and you took public transportation?!"
Yeah, I know.
With my bags and winebottle box and everything.
Crazy, huh?

Airport self-portraits

Back from my trip to SF. My outbound flight was delayed a few hours, since the clouds at SFO would've prevented our landing, had we departed when we were supposed to. I had some time to do some reading, get some coffee, settle in and do a sketch.


click/departure

The weather up north turned out to be pretty nice. I went to Napa on Sunday with Fritz, Renee and Sylvie. The skies were clear, bright, and sunny. What a great day to spend tooling around, tasting wine, eating really good garlic and sweetpotato fries! That trip begs to be done.. completely, at a much slower pace, in a convertible and with plenty of stops for cheese, pears and grapes, and fresh, crunchy bread. But perhaps without the drama of "Sideways". Or, maybe so.


click/return
Couldn't come home empty-handed.

Color swatches

My friend Nina is redecorating her bedroom and is thinking about colors to paint her room. In the spirit of this discussion of color (well, it’s sort of about color), I had to scan this. I’ve been meaning to for a while. These are swatches, from one of my gouache painting assignments (G – O – U – A – C – H – E. I’ll get it yet without having to look it up). You test the color you’ve mixed; see if it’s too watery, too opaque. You test making long strokes with the liner brush. Practice practice practice (I hear, "Glaze, Wendee!"). I have no idea which painting this was for. But, there’s a nice sense of fun in the swatch block, at least enough that I decided to keep it around. I keep thinking of doing a line drawing or something to go over it (digitally), but I’m also thinking that it’s pretty happy the way it is.


Which way should go up?

So, I went through my pile of gouache (got it!) boards, and all the little swatch test pieces. I have to say that they’re more fun than the finished assignments (sorry, Richard). I need to mat and frame these, or scan them and use them as backgrounds for ... something. There are some funky color studies for that weird-futuristic-humongously-tall building painting (the Syd Mead wannabe ones. If you were there, you know the assignment), and a dreamy fun periwinkle/navy gradation. Ooooo. I’ll scan them a little at a time and see if I can work them into anything. I had them propped up in a row, on my mantle, before the holidays. I really want to just frame them, though, and put them up on a wall, give them some mysterious name.
Sigh.

Maybe I should crop my assignment paintings into the parts that are actually pretty loose, too, frame them, put them up, and get some enjoyment out of them that way. Or sell them on eBay! Yeah, it's not like I could actually bring myself to chuck them out...

And, oddly enough, there was a start of a sort of homely (wanting to be ‘sporty’) car, on a sort of burnt-orangey banana-colored background. Banana... I think the banana cars are calling again, for just one or two more good, finished renderings. The project that inspired the banana cars, mercifully, might be almost done. If I do those last couple banana cards that I’m thinking of... they will represent closure for that whole mind-numbing episode. Or at least for that particular chapter (knock on wood). Stay tuned.

Last night

... Is it 'sporty' ? Is it 'Porsche' ? It is 'European' ? I think, "OMG! Who cares?! What it is ... is too late to still be at work! Yargh!"




Well, at least I get to do this:

Mmmm. A small and brief consolation. I think the scribe is feeling worn out.

Brown bottles

So, I decided to clean out my fridge, throw out all the food still left over from Christmas, you know, stuff like that. For a long time, all I had in the fridge was hot, spicy mustard and ice cream.

Don’t ask.

(note, the photo is current, so that's why there's more than just the mustard bottle)

If you look carefully at the pumpkin carving photos, you will be assured that I’ve gotten back to stocking up on real food and will note (if you are very observant) that I like curly rotini pasta (and store it in resealable plastic bags), red meat sauce, diet coke, pesto, eggs and possibly Sprite (No, not so much. I had to give it away). And that’s just what you can see.

So anyway. While throwing out really old split-pea soup today, I noticed that I have this collection of beer and decided to organize it (Trust me: it’s not like anything else here is very well organized. Don’t know what came over me). You know there’s too great a variety of beer all in one place when the bottles can actually be organized. And it’s not like a sampler pack (just one bottle of each).

Oh gosh no.

Seems like I’ve managed to collect a whole bunch of stragglers. I thought, "Where’d they all come from?", and then realized that I’d bought them all, over a period of time. The only one I know I wouldn’t buy for myself is Newcastle, and I have my suspicions where those came from.

So.
Apparently I prefer brown bottles with yellow labels (with a nod to bocks and hefeweizens).
And clearly, I don’t actually finish off a 6-pack before deciding that I really need to get more beer.

Hmmmm.

And Joe commented that I left off "Drink more beer" from my list? Hah. Right.

Woo! Party at Wendee's!

Rededications

2006!

I was going to post a meandering list of resolutions ("My new year’s resolution? 300 dpi."). Then, I read a few resolutions that several of my favorite bloggers posted, very deep and meaningful goals for the new year, and I stopped dead in my tracks, feeling very trite. [Sigh]

I spent a few days not worrying about it, finished more Christmas cookies and I’m now back on track. Whew.

First, this idea of resolutions... I don’t think we should wait until January first to decide what we want to do to be better people, make the world a better place. It should all be an ongoing thing, that you reassess as often as you need to, really. I’m going to consider these rededications and renewals, not so much resolutions. Some of these I might have posted somewhere else before; if they sound familiar to you, then good for you for finding your way here. They do still ring true.

If I write them down and post them for the whole world to see, am I more accountable? I don’t know ...

Stay better hydrated. Run more. Tell the people that you care about that you love them. Be brave. Be strong. Be gentle and tender. Show compassion. Have no regrets. Go to the beach. Cheer for the underdog (that goes without saying). Draw more. Share a smile with someone new that isn’t expecting it. Try new foods. Show forgiveness. Try using semi-colons; They need love too. Recycle. Dust. Eat ice cream and feel no remorse. Call an old friend. Call a new friend. Read more. Be a design advocate. Motivate the terrapins and other lurking readers to post comments. Sleep in. Wake up early. Be patient. Start preparations for Christmas earlier. Know what you want and go get it. Throw out the socks that you can't put into matching pairs. Believe. Recognize and really appreciate the ease and comfort of the back-and-forth. Commit in ink. Show up with champagne. Finish. Eat and type more mindfully. Go fast; Really, really fast. Hold on. Let go. Think more and seriously about the Mustang (Convertible. ’67. Preferably white or ivory). Find a real coffee table. Run some more. Draw some more. Dream big; really really big. Say "No". Find a way to get rid of the stupid ants. Support the visual and performing arts. Make lists and do everything on them. Make more lists. Trust your gut. Go ahead and put it all out there. Push the "send" button.

Yeah.