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.

sweet schwinn fastback

love that banana seat and awesome gear shifter.

i saw a schwinn jaguar while out to brunch this morning:

bicycle postcards

these postcards are now in my etsy shop! they’re reproductions of a set of original ink/watercolor bicycle drawings on tea-soaked paper. i picked them because i thought they were particularly lovely specimens of bikehood: the pashley mailstar, my favorite, is used to deliver mail in england; the public d3 is made locally here in san francisco, and i see them often coasting picturesquely on the walkway by ocean beach; my friend esther worked for a while making mission bicycle co. bikes; and, yes, the haley model 1 is a trike and not actually a bicycle — but it is quite adorable!

good night!

goodbye, nighttime stories! it’s packed up and sent on its way to the brooklyn art library. soon it will be on tour. here it is minutes before mailing:

nighttime creatures

more from the nighttime stories sketchbook.

patient fox and time-lapsed stars.

out near the pedernales river in austin, texas!

from my favorite episode in David Attenborough’s Life of Mammals — the insect eaters.
hedgehogs are adorable. and the grunting! such grunting.

arctic nighttime

some more nighttime stories for my sketchbook project! it turns out that the aurora borealis is really pleasant to draw in prismacolor pencils on dark paper.

i would do this if i were an arctic fox.

arctic denizens: the aurora, snowy owl, arctic fox, arctic hare, musk ox, polar bear, cute tiny baby seal.

the moon & planets beaming down at the aurora borealis.

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.):

bicycles

Ink and watercolor bicycle tea paintings! For sale tonight at the Mission Bicycle Company during the Mission Holiday Block Party. They’re gonna be $50 each unframed. Check out the Pashley Mailstar, English postmen use it to deliver the mail!

new prints available

thumbtackpress.com has updated their website and also added a bunch of my tea paintings (in addition to my alice in wonderland pair) for sale as prints!

^^click image to go to my thumbtack page!

thumbtack press makes giclee prints on heavy white stock. i’ve always been really happy with the quality of their work. their shipping is also fabulous, no crinkled paper rolled up in mashed tubes!

ghosts

ghosts eating cake:

ahh, a good color, ghost white.

nighttime stories

i finally got started on my sketchbook project! my theme is nighttime stories. i have a small list of ideas so far… no ideas for actual stories yet, i seem to be dancing around it (unsurprisingly) and thinking about nighttime instead. moon gardens, moonburn (it exists!–apparently), a night train, a bat house. anyway, here are my inaugural pages.

wee penelly

for penelope’s 2nd birthday. i started it when she was six months old! she used to have far less hair with far more lift.

la chuparrosa

in english:
Hummingbird, the Rose Sucker.
She is hungry.
She is thirsty.

inspired by my friend esther, who, like a hummingbird, must eat and drink constantly or become woozy and fierce. it turns out these two qualities are not mutually exclusive!

the sketch:

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!

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.

bowerbird 2è

2nd edition bowerbird, for sale HERE.

goccopocalypse recovery

the goccopocalypse* continues to be a major bummer, but i finally took a screenprinting class to see if i can keep making prints for my etsy shop. it turns out i am really bad at screenprinting.

but maybe not so bad, considering where i started!

clearly, i’ll be needing more practice. the screenprinting class i took was at this place near my apartment called workshop. if you live in san francisco, let them teach you something! they’re really nice, and despite my screenprinting inadequacies, the class itself was delightful.

*goccopocalypse: noun. what happened when the only company that makes print gocco supplies stopped making them.

blue bird

to remind me of the little mountain bluebird that wouldn’t sit still for a picture last year in truckee.

alexa, wolf, & crow

the other night, i went to see alexa woodward play with her friend hunter paye at the bollyhood cafe. wolf & crow played first, which was a pleasant surprise, i’d heard good things about them.

i also made one with purple lettering <--click

alexa told a story about growing up in north carolina. she would bring her cool 90s grungy friends home, and her uncle doug would spoil it all by saying, “let’s go out for ice cream — hallelujah!” (everything ended in hallelujah, he was a preacher.)

here is the wolf & crow bassist:

black shapes, so pleasant and inky!

when she packed up her case to go home, it reminded me of this:

a little girl in white ankle socks bent over double under a yellow flowered cello case, struggling down divisadero like sisyphus.

alexa caught me droring: