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.

tumblewords

hooray, tumblewords is available in the itunes store! this means i’m a video game illustrator!

tumblewords is a word game for apple-type devices from minicore studios in austin. i illustrated two of the themes, “mushroom forest” and “painted desert.” it’s actually pretty addictive, i spent several hours on it last weekend and managed, with considerable joy, to wrest 150 points out of it by finding “philistine.”

so, do step into my world and find some juicy words. i painted all that woodgrain for you!!

click here to download tumblewords at the itunes store

all of my tumblewords bits and pieces:

malaysian moon moth

my favorite kind of moon moth. coincidentally from the same neck of the woods as me!

welcome eliza jane

for wee eliza, born this spring on the day of the solar eclipse. i was there for her birth! (thus the ferns. i know, i am so sneaky)

bike basket pies for bicycle times

For Bicycle Times issue #11 (out on June 1st), I made a painting of Bike Basket Pies’ baker and biker, Natalie. (Some friends pointed out that I have a nifty start to a food delivery bike oeuvre, what with having illustrated the Soup Peddler a few years ago as well.) I was just gonna draw Natalie and her bike, but I know she delivers in the Mission district and thought it would be fun to make up a little storefront. I love papel picado, so I made up some bicycle ones, and a San Francisco bike rack really needs a guerilla knit cozy (knitta please!!).

here’s where I started:

You’ll notice I got a hold of one of her pies, a yummy but important step in my research.

here’s step two, with a photoshopped actual storefront temporarily standing in:

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:

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.

holiday cards

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.

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

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.