New art!

I went to RustyCon this weekend, primarily because Jeremy was on a number of panels, talking about writing and gaming and such. We had some time to kill, so we stopped by the art show. At one end of the room, they had a "Print Shop," where you could buy prints of various pieces of art in the show (and some that weren't. I'm not sure if I just never noticed this at other cons, or if RustyCon does it a little differently. But I had some cash, and a couple of pieces had caught my eye!

I picked up two prints by Cori Dietsch--one of a digital work inspired by The Last Unicorn, and one of a watercolor of a raven. The raven one wasn't something we had seen in the art show, but I stumbled across it in the print shop and HAD to buy it. I may have a small obsession with ravens. :)

The other print was from an artist that I was familiar with through her Etsy shop, but was a piece that I had not seen previously. This was Jasmine Becket-Griffith of Strangeling, who paints the cutest creepy big-eyed girls. And here, it was an Alice in Wonderland and Dali-inspired piece (pictured to the right of this blog post). Again, small obsession. :)

I am now in desperate need of a whole lot of frames. I'll probably end up seeing what I can find at Goodwiil, because some of these prints really demand some funky frames, not the sleek, modern looking ones at most stores.

Ack!

I just realized that I never did blog about my collaging workspace, which I finally got cleaned up enough to show off in public. The pictures have been on my Flickr all week, but I forgot to mention it here.



So yeah, this is my tiny little dining room table. We don't really have a dining room, of course--this is in a little section of the living room that's near to the kitchen. In fact, if you look at the top left of the picture, that's the back of our microwave.

The brown and pink cardboard box (used to hold ramen noodles) is where I keep my stamps, inkpads, and sticky stuff--glue, tape, etc. Beneath that is a plastic container with drawers for SOME of my paper. The green and white box to the right of that is the rest of my paper (well, almost all of the rest). The tiny purple box is actually my hand-sewing stuff... it's been on the table lately because I was sewing charms onto ACEOs a week or more ago. The two jars at the right used to hold pickles and parmesan cheese; now they hold pens, pencils, and paint brushes. In front of those are my larger hole punches, and a stack of cards that are awaiting envelopes before I can list them.

Beneath the table, I store some empty cardboard boxes, along with whatever bubble wrap and packing peanuts I've received that are in good enough shape to reuse. There are chairs on the two sides of the table not flanked by the wall. One of them has random stuff tossed on it and more stuff beneath it. The other is where I sit.

Of course, these photos were taken on Sunday. Since then, Jerome has overtaken my table with the mango project. The mango project is probably going to drive me insane by Monday (when it's due), but perhaps then I'll have some fun stuff to show everyone. And a 3-week-overripe mango to do something with...

Hmmm...

Well, I thought I had good End of the Work Week Wisdom to share, but a quick glance back through the archives shows me that I used that one about 15 months ago. *sigh*...

My little art project that I mentioned yesterday is looking super spiffy at the moment, though I didn't save the pictures to the internet yet, and thus can't post them. But basically, Jerome had some paper scraps from a stencil he was making. I was playing around with the largest of the scraps, and realized that it sort of looked like a head of hair, and was even the right shape to imagine a face in the middle. Oddly enough, the next scrap he handed me was in the shape of an eye, and just the right scale. And that was followed by an eyebrow.

I should point out that his stencil was for a mango. No, I'm not kidding. I'll post pictures of the products of the stencil too, eventually.

So anyway, I pasted all of the scraps to paper last night (though I did have to make a 2nd eye for my person), scanned it, and cleaned it up in PhotoShop (another big accomplishment for me, since I'm still learning that program). It looks amazingly good now, and I'm deciding if I want to turn it into a silk screen or a lino-cut block. I'm really curious about the latter, since I've never done it, and it looks like it would be both easy and neat. So yeah. I guess I'm getting into printmaking, one way or the other! :)

Stuff and things

Well, I finally got to watch Spider-Man 3 last night. Rather than geek out on you all again, I'll just say that if you want to read my (negative) review of it, click here. Otherwise, carry on. :)

The good news was that having it on made me sit down and crochet for a few hours, so I got some new stuff done for my shop. Since Jerome isn't a big Spider-Man fan (and saw the movie when it came out, and hated it also), he worked on some homework while I crocheted. Interestingly, the scraps from one of his projects are turning into something really neat that I'm working on. I'm not quite sure exactly what the end result will be, but I've got a number of possibilities... so maybe it will end up being all of them! :)

I think that's one of the things I love most about having another artist around. Sure, we may be temperamental and silly, but it's fun when one of us can pick up the scraps from the other one's project, and turn it into something else. Jerome and I both wear bracelets made from scraps of my yarn that he picked up and started tying to each other and around our wrists. Silly, yes, but I like silly. :)

Gah, it's my lunch break, and I'm still getting calls and other craziness!