into the woods

my illustrator pal carrie sometimes drags me out of the house and we have a ball drawing at cafes and cackling. here are some woodsy things i got up to last time we met up.
party animals:

i got really excited about labeling my party animals in logs and ended up drawing a whole alphabet:

heh, check out my double-l ligature! i am discovering the usefulness of alternate glyphs at my design job.

sweet banana seat

schwinn stingray krate bikes doing awesome jumps, where awesome=freaky, rickety, kid-built, corroded plywood, bust-your-teeth-in. i wanted a banana seat bike so bad in the 80s! a friend of mine had a beautiful blue one with a white wicker flower-bedecked basket in the front. mine was a blue and yellow boys’ huffy, clearly inferior and much less magical.

fruit corset giclee prints

new to my etsy shop, lovely giclees of my Fruit Corsets in History painting.

i am a sculpture!

my friend david is afraid of the internet. i made a little website for him and he is making a sculpture portrait of me in return!

david is one of the coolest people i know. look at his shelves of little dudes.

take a gander at his website, http://davidlubin.blogspot.com. besides sculpture, he does amazing watercolor landscapes and can spin an excellent yarn.

gnomes

happy holidays, everybody! at my place pretty recently, we had a tree-dressing get together (i.e., an ornament factory in which elves are paid in nog) featuring a gnome-making station. now my tree is full of gnooomes!

 
classic gnome & a jolly old elf.

 
starry gnome & saint lucia gnome.

you can make your own gnomes too. shrink or enlarge this template to fit your gnome heads (cedar moth balls, large bells, etc.):

my studio

my studio this weekend. i have a couple tea paintings in the works.

my uncle & his pygmy chickens

it seems like people are talking about chickens, chickens, chickens lately. urban chickens. building a coop, gathering eggs for the best omelets. it made me think of a weird photograph i took last time i was in malaysia. i rooted it out from my photograph boxes and made a little painting of it.

when i went to visit nenek’s house one afternoon about ten years ago, my uncle udin was there, tending to his pygmy chickens. i asked if i could take a picture of him with the chickens, and he agreed. i assumed we would be taking the picture outside by the chicken coop, but he brought a pair of the tiny little chickens inside and sat on one of nenek’s chairs for a real portrait.

we went to the fair

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

fascinating!

my sister gave me a birthday fascinator!