renegade 2010

my notes on this year’s renegade craft fair in san francisco (a little late due to comatose computer!):

^^^click through for biggerer!

sunday morning bowerbird

good morning! i finished painting a bowerbird on a panel last night. i’d like to make it the first in a series of animal collectors. next: a magpie with a nest full of string and shiny silver things. then: a long, sinuous ferret with a bunch of toys and knickknacks. i’d like to do four, but the only other creature i could think of was a pack rat. i’m not even sure if it’s a real animal.

this panel is so pretty and shiny in person! i used some gold acrylic paint for accents and felt naughty about it. do real illustrators give in to the lure of gold acrylic paint?? it doesn’t reproduce very well. i should have just used ochre and made it look like gold instead, but oh! so sparkly. i will probably be selling this, i’ll post again when i come up with a listing.

march was hard! either the young man or i have been sick since the last week of february, except for a brief respite over a dear friend’s wonderful wedding. april has been sunnier and i’ve been listening to happier kate bush this week to lift my wheezy spirits. cloudbusting: “i know that something good is gonna happen / i don’t know when / but just saying it could even make it happen!” also, morning fog, because it sounds so wake up and enjoy.

i have been remembering a conversation i overheard while i was sitting outside the academy of sciences in the sunshine. it took place between a 7 year old goth-in-training and his little sister:
brother: Somebody DIES every day! there is a funeral EVERY DAY.
sister: Somebody buys an ice cream every day!

they were both irish and so actually it sounded more like “soombody buys an ice-crrreem every deyy!”

gentleman fox knickknack wall

more fotoshoppe coloring practice. click. click. click. click. hunch. i like painting so much better!

holiday cards

my birds came in!

^^click for listing!

i think they turned out really well. they’re an interesting size but fit in a business size envelope so you don’t have to worry about weird postage.

sunset

sometimes i have to remind myself of things. like, skies don’t have to be blue. it’s a hard habit to break! also, people can be green or purple. meg hunt is very good at remembering those things. take a look at her work if you haven’t seen it already! delightful patterns and colors.

i might have to sit on this picture awhile, it’s a bit late in the season to make postcards (fall on the wane!) maybe next summer in time for september-october-november, i’ll print up some promos and a few to sell.

there used to be words on the ribbon, but i decided i liked it without. what do you think?

winter approacheth

these birdies are letting each other know that it’s time to get outta dodge. i loved painting that ribbon! it’s not actually red, it’s brown madder. i’ll holiday cardify them in the next week or so — 4×9″ flat cards with envelopes! neat, eh??

we went to the fair

my notes on the renegade craft fair, which took place over the weekend:

finally, GICLEES

i got some giclee prints made! i’ve already popped them in the shop, CLICK CLICK.

they’re the first ones i’ve ever ordered of my work. i guess i’ve always been nervous about quality and having to package everything up myself (this is why i like thumbtackpress for my alice prints!). they turned out really well — they’re printed on kind of a rough stock that looks watercolorpapery, and the colors are accurate so far as i can tell.

oh yeah, if there’s something you’re interested in getting a print of that’s not listed, let me know and i’ll see what i can do.

lauren & alexa woodward at the velo rouge

we have had traveling musicians, their Danes, and their vanagon around the last couple days. our old pal lauren a.k.a. linky (a gentle giant) has come through town on tour with alexa woodward. lauren plays the washboard, and alexa plays the banjo and they sing together. it is beautiful!

why does the virgin have 8 arms?

MAHARIA

esther was telling us about how in 19th century california, men from india were marrying mexican women. there were laws against brown people marrying white people*, but indian-mexican marriage was ok. they had similar material cultures (chilis, rotis, household altars, etc.) so one would think it would work out beautifully. but sometimes it didn’t, and we were picturing a terrible argument starting with “honey, why does the virgin have eight arms?”

*‘These marriages were more than a matter of individual choice, however, for the fact was that miscegenation laws prohibited marriages across racial lines in California until 1948 [<---OMG!! --ed.]. Most California county clerks saw the Punjabi men as colored, or “brown,” the word they used most often on the marriage license to describe the men’s race. Thus the women the Punjabis married also had to be perceived as “brown,” and that generally meant women of Mexican ancestry.’