two for mirth
for two mirthful ladies, melissa and jill, on their wedding day. i liked this one so much i made one for myself!
based on a very old rhyme i love to bits:
black birds
a series of animal collectors.
crows love shiny things. there are seven here, for a secret.
a magpie collects things for its nest.
bowerbirds love the color blue.
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:
blue bird
to remind me of the little mountain bluebird that wouldn’t sit still for a picture last year in truckee.
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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?
Filed under digital, illustration | Tags: birches, birds, mushrooms | Comments Off on sunsetbrush pen
i’ve been at the family compound the last several days without my usual art supplies, so i’ve been drawing with a pentel brush pen. usually i hate brush pens, but i’ve actually been having fun with the darned thing!
more birches. i will probably try coloring this one sur l’ordinateur.
gentlemen, along with bears and screenprinted bicycles, are in the air. here are their accoutrements. while looking for pictures of macassar oil bottles (for keeping the gentleman’s hair well-groomed), i found out that there is a thing called privy excavation. basically, there are these dudes that find old outhouse holes and dig them out. i didn’t know people put anything down there but your standard numbers one and two, but apparently they were used for trash chutes as well. so these guys that excavate them have been finding dolls that girls’ evil brothers threw in the toilet and hyatt’s infallible life balsam and hair oil bottles.
this is kind of a strange one, and will probably make more sense if i color it in. i was picturing it as something like “The Lady of the House Returns to Her Cats After a Long Antipodean Journey.” i stole her fox fur from this photo of a 20s sydney inmate. there is also a tin ceiling, a fainting couch, and a picture rail.
i think mama took this picture in kyoto. some of the flavors in katakana read: ba ni ra (vanilla), ra ben da (lavender), ro su to pea na tsu (roast peanut), me ron (melon), mee ru ku (milk), and ba na na.i thought it might make a nice print. could be satisfying to use a bajillion different colors.
my flickr page has all these biggerer.
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click picture for a bigger version!
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??
Filed under illustration, tea painting | Tags: birches, birds, tea painting | Comments Off on winter approacheth
