Long Post Is Long (Crafts, Illustration Work, Book News)

Oh where to begin? With all the social networks out there it's easy to forget about blogging. At least for me. Honestly the best way to keep up with what I'm working on is to follow me on facebook, deviantART, or Behance or just periodically looking at my web site. I should probably look more into this tumblr thing the kids are into these days.

Anyway besides illustration work I've been doing a lot of craft projects around the apartment, ranging from humongous to small wall doohickeys. I might make some "how to" blog posts if anyone is particularly interested.

Here's some shots of the bottle lamps I've been working on:



Kraken rum bottle makes a nice accent in my dining room. I need to look into some LED bulbs, as this guy heats up. Regular string lights strung up into it, after drilling the hole and an extension cord. The Fish Eye one isn’t finished yet, as I need to get a shade for it, and I have plans on stenciling some jellyfish on it. Lamp bits kit, drilled bottle with the lamp cord threaded up into it and filled with different marble things to make the base heavy enough to support the lamp part but also ‘cause it looks cool. Thinking about trying to sell some wine bottles filled with lights, but as Etsy never really picked up for me I’m not too keen on posting variants of these guys up there.



Annnnd here is the monster that took up the dining room (the biggest area I had room to work on it in) for months, as it took me awhile to gather supplies and work on it in shifts. I tend to do craft projects on impulse, and I bought this dresser at the salvation army completely spur of the moment (stare at it, I want it, grab the ticket so no one else can) and then called my sister for assistance with moving it as she has a mom van. I wanted it to be blue, and after looking on the internets for ideas on painting and tips I decided it was to be crackle paint. So a large jug of Elmer’s, giant can of Behr paint, a small can of Minwax polyurethane, one replacement knob I had to modify to fit the massive screws, and lots of blow drying and now I have a very eye-catching dresser to help contain my massive amount of t-shirts.

Since I have a good amount of that paint left over I’ve been using it on random ideas, like wall hooks for jewelry and picture frames. I still have so much.

And how about some illustrations? Here’s a card I did for Hanukkah, a Venice jester based on a photo by Robert Anthony. (Here’s the link for the ref photo and a close up of her face and also a somewhat macabre scene my brain visualized while listening to some Florence + the Machine, the "Seven Devils" song in a particular. The girl with the jellyfish is what I'm currently working on.

And oh yeah! My book was published. Yay. So I was able to post some of the work I did. You can see more of them here. And you can see the book’s site here, with my work all over it.

There’s been more stuff I’ve worked on but I’m not going to make this post any longer. And if anyone wants to hire me to doodle all day and make crafty things that would be great, as my graphic design job just laid off 40 people and I’m not exactly thrilled about my job security.

George Looks Out of Place

Spent most of the night on my painting due at 2 today. Still not happy with it. Here it is currently:



The background and figure don't seem to go together very well. Bah. I should work on it more...

There's something moving in my room. >.> <.< It's not the cat, because he's in my lap...Just investigated, can't find anything, though the noise seems to be moving around. I evacuated some of my stuffed animals to the common room. Yes, I have stuffed animals. Well, a stuffed paopu fruit and a Ninja, and then the others are animals. I bought myself a blue dragon one for my 21st birthday. I'm not weird at all. Anywho.

Back to the art aspect of the blog, though the bug noises are distracting (it sounds angry), here's a blurry pic of my New Yorker cover idea:



We're supposed to do a cover for "New York during Halloween" and we kept a look out for ideas while we went on our bus trip to New York. We saw a random girl dressed in a suit and wearing a skull mask, handing out fliers. Well. That's my roommates cover idea. I didn't get a picture of that, but I did of this:



Which I incorporated in some of my thumbnail sketches for ideas, a witch fashion display. But I eventually went with my first idea, before even going to NY, and that was the Statue of Liberty dressed up as a ghost. I like the cartoony-ness. This is just the color comp, the finished one will have the yellow and orange applied better, but I like the texture of the scratchy lines.

Update on my hair-coloring attempt: I dyed more of it last night, but it just seems to be making my hair darker, more then coloring it. I have yet to get in some direct light however.
I really should get back to working on the painting...