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!

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:

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.

malaysia

^^click for notes!

a tiny little painting about malaysia. it includes stuff i thought about as a kid: 1. the copious amounts of milo ( a chocolate-tasting drink sort of like ovaltine) my aunties made me, 2. the plants which snapped shut that i played with all day, 3. why do malaysian cats have no tails?, 4. ketupat, little woven packages of steamed rice my nenek used to make, 5. mom’s curry puffs (delish!), 6. mangosteens, my favorite fruit, and the rambutans from nenek’s tree, 7. cicak, the little house geckos that scrobbled along the ceilings and ate bugs. everything else i thought about later, like the carnivorous plants, giant moths, fishhead curry, and whole families weaving in traffic on their motorbikes.

the layout is based on this carson ellis poster i just love to bits kind of inexplicably. carson ellis is amazing, by the way.

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??

depression sisters homesteading

tea-ed and colored! based on the whinery family of pietown, new mexico.

none of my grandpeoples lived in america ever. they were kicking cans in various other locales during the great depression. if you wanna tell me a grandparent depression story, please do!

blackberry baby

butterfly scooter love

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.

origami paper planes

wheeeee! it’s sunny in san francisco. could it be possible that i don’t need the heater on when i go to bed tonight? here are some celebratory origami paper planes. the original is for sale, click here for the listing.

postcards: moths, daisies, trike!

i got some postcards made of a couple tea paintings! 3 for $5, one to keep and two to send. click on the pictures above to go to their listings.

i’m hoping to do a few more of these in the near future, and maybe a few mixed sets. look at those hip rounded corners!!! eheh. man, i wonder if in 50 years that will stylistically mark them as turn of the century etsy postcards.

the backs look like this:

moths — done!

i like it. time to mail! good bye little moths!

spanish moon moth, malaysian moon moth, luna moth, hyalophora euryalus, io moth, and the very rare and mysterious japonica origamii moths.

moths and fascinators

almost done! these were taken yesterday, today i was outlining. hmm… i wonder if people would be interested in a smallish moon moths tea painting.

of course there is time to stop and mess with a fascinator.

moth delivers a message / unexplained on your collar / a simple excuse

think think think.