mission paletero

A paletero waiting for school to let out in the Mission.
(a couple years in the making!)

mapping my ride through golden gate park

i added a map of my well-pedaled route through golden gate park to the painting of my bicycle. starting at home, i pass the conservatory of flowers, the disco rollerskaters, the academy of sciences, the lindy hop people, the boats on spreckels lake, the bison paddock, the windmill and the tulip garden and end up at ocean beach, where there is the cliff house with juicy booties graffiti, the spray-painted sea wall, kite boarders, and surfers.

personal effects and other quotidian things

day-to-day objects that remind me most of myself.

l-r, top to bottom: purple & amber glasses, 1972 olympus OM-2n film camera, travel watercolors, hair clip, satchel, sketchbook, hawk quill speedball nib pen, mechanical pencil, pentel brush pen, pentel water brush, winsor newton series 7 size 5 brush (bought on first day of art school in 1996!), enamel tray palette, most wonderful boots ever–lucky buffalo exchange find, burt’s bees plum lip color, rumply frye oxfords on their last legs, winsor newton inks, chinese black ink in a higgins bottle, dr. Ph Martin watercolor, painting board, marks & spencer coat, levi’s black jeans, fantastic watch with italic numbers, amber necklace with bugs in the beads, rings (one made by a very talented jeweler friend), winsor newton white gouache, lactaid (of course!), green tea in a 25-year-old cup (made by my oldest friend’s mother), arches hot pressed watercolor paper in a block (fantastic!!).

my camera

my film camera, a 1972 olympus OM-2n. i will never ever ever give it up!

bicycle, bicycle, i want to ride my

my purple bike! it’s a public C7. we ride to ocean beach and back several times a week (and often get V for victory flashed at us by passing brits, as my helmet was claimed in the name of queen and country).

hazel

Introducing Hazel, a hobbitish semibold italic serif font that I hand drew with a hawk quill nib. For sale on my etsy page for personal use (email me to set up a commercial license). Enjoy! Send me a jpeg if you make anything lovely with it.

Special features: There are some fancy Zs in place of straight brackets (which come in very handy for a Liza living with one Mr. Hazel, but probably not for anyone else), a ribbony banner, a hazel leaf and a fern frond, a full moon and a star, a swooshy definite article and two prepositions. I think it looks especially lovely in all caps, and Goreyesque in the lowercase.

Hazel is a dab hand at the unattributed creepy old poem:

In its original, pre-digitized form:

batik experiment

Experiments in making watercolor-on-paper fake batik with the help of liquid masking fluid.

find the river

all the plants in Find the River by REM (at the end of Automatic for the People). i listen to it and Nightswimming a lot at this time of year for that mushy, end-of-summer melancholia feeling. “september is coming soon / pining for the moon”

here’s one with a title, i couldn’t decide which i liked better:

sisters making milo

milo is like a more earnest ovaltine. malaysian aunties make it for you when they want you to be distracted from what they are gossipping to your mother about.

besides the milo, some other very malay things in the painting are the bobtailed cat and the house geckos, or cicak. my grandmother’s house was full of them!

note the moths approaching (ominously?) outside the window. this is the second painting in a series i’m working on about a giant moth invasion. i haven’t written a story, i am messing around with painting things i like, adding words later, and hoping something interesting comes of it all.

funky

i discovered a delightful fact about my partner-in-crime this week.
me: one of your first tapes was purple rain by prince…?
steve: yeah, i chose it for the beautiful cover art.
me: …with darling nikki on side A??
steve: it sounded awesome on my fisher price tape player!

my 90s frocks

i attended high school with great sartorial exuberance. i’ve been working on this here and there for the past few months when i got stuck on other things (fantastic wacom tablet practice! i’m not afraid of it anymore). now what will i do to procrastinate?

work + play group show

hooray, i’m in! my illustration got picked for the upcoming ICON illustration conference Work + Play group show. it’ll be up at land gallery in portland from july 11th-august 17th. land is selling prints of all the participating illustrations. my print is here.

the painting was inspired by a recent tandem outing with steve, during which we had a terrible argument (naturally). surprisingly pleasant work getting lost in the swirlies of hairy orangutan.

drawing at yosemite

mother’s day

today i present all the dresses my mother sewed for me in high school. thanks mama!

giant moth invasion

new painting! it’s the house where my mom grew up (with large uninvited insect guest). one day i was looking at pictures of atlas moths and my mother, peering over my shoulder, mentioned she hated them. i prodded a bit to find out the reason for the strong reaction. apparently, her village was overrun with them!

One year we had these atlas moths invading our village. They were fluttering all around the house to try and get in! They left torn and battered wings all over the yard!

i always pictured the invasion looking like this. i’m gonna give it a stir in my brainpan and see if i can’t get a book to pop out.

emperor norton

letterpress project #4, Emperor Norton I, bay bridge visionary and a damn great san franciscan, with apocryphal canine companions bummer and lazarus.

>>a bit more about norton in an earlier post of mine<<

i printed norton on crane’s lettra paper. the texture is amazing!

instruments

all the instruments in our (one bedroom) apartment as of yesterday:

note: in the last couple years, we have given away/sold/fostered out 1) another acoustic guitar, 2) a heavy metal electric purple axe, 3) a bass guitar, 4) a keyboard, 5) a set of enormous outdoor-type speakers. we use 2 amps for nightstands. there are three. it’s like the polyphonic spree up in here. this is clearly a cry for help. steve needs to start a band, stat.

STARS

i love wood type! so much character. all the swirling galaxies and nebulae in each letter.

falling

letterpress project #3, a wood type poster in two colors. the text is from an uncommonly charming article in the sf chronicle i saved a few years ago on the perseids. meteor-watching tip #5: take someone with whom you like to sit in the dark.

i found a pair of little lead owls in one of the type drawers to punctuate my sentence:

one for sorrow

second letterpress workshop project — an old, creepy nursery rhyme on using crows for divination (with special guest star, the devil). i looked and looked for a bad little black bird to set with the rest of the type. there were hella owls, cute sparrows, some turkeys, a crane, and even a pair of seagulls wearing eyepatches and striped sweaters (?!!). i ended up having to paint one on each print instead.

behold, the magic of letterpress: