Robot Invasion, new old stuff in the store, my awesome sister

YAAArRH! I added a bunch of stuff to the Etsy store recently.

Only the mini beeswax painting/collage is new, the rest of the stuff is photos from my BFA show that have been sitting in my closet forever, and my Happy Robot print.

Yep, today I brought out the old Happy Robot woodblock and played around with making prints again. I forgot how much fun relief printing is. I miss using a big press though, for the small edition I made tonight I just used a brayer. I'm totally excited about it though, and want to get some new wood or lino-blocks to make some new imagery.

Here is the work table tonight, invaded by robots:

Here is a bot, with some an art card I've yet to finish, and another small beeswax painting/collage I've yet to upload.

I can't decide if these things are "paintings" or "collages"...I mean, they're on canvas, and the wax is painted and dripped on, but I guess I didn't like, "paint" anything else. Whatever. The definition of painting is pretty easily stretched these days anyway, so I might just go with that.

That reminds me of a time in high school when our art teacher gave us an assignment to make a collage. So I made this thing with paint splattered on cardboard and chickenwire...and maybe there was tape too, I can't remember. Well, I was thinking of collage as disparate elements brought together to make a new whole. When I got my "collage" back it had gotten a "B" instead of an "A" because she wanted everyone to make like a magazine cutouts type of collage. Pffft. Oh well, I guess it was one of many instances where I was just trying to be AVANT GARDE! hah!

This reminds me of another story involving a 10 year old me painting pink and blue horses, but that tale is for another time perhaps. I did tell the story to my little sister though, and she thought it was funny. By the way, SHE'S AWESOME, and here's a doodle and drawing she sent me today:


Yay for the little sister! Keep it up! Geez lou-eeeez I'm tired. Time to go pass out for another evening.

Rambly post with pictures!

For this week's IF: Communication. What could these girls be chatting about?

I've been doing little collages with beeswax this week. My work table is a mess of photo transfers, wax, gloss medium, and mail.

It's actually way messier than this right now :(

The last time I went to the art store, I bought a bunch of these tiny stretched canvases, and have finally decided to do something with them. I'll be uploading more of this kinda stuff to my Etsy shop tonight.

I'm eating an apple turnover right now. Here's a pic from when Michael burnt the turnovers last week.

He was much more upset about it than I was. Michael makes good burgers though, and good bulldogs.

Michael Dog, the best Valentine's gift EVER.

We had our booksigning last weekend, and Mother Goose read a few chapters to the kids at Fairyland. Yvonne described the whole thing as "surreal" and I agree.

I am Hagridden.

Ugh, I stayed up till about 5am last night painting, then I had to get up a few hours later for work, so when I came home today exhausted, I made myself a tv dinner, watched last night's episode of LOST, and fell asleep. It's now 11:45pm and I just woke up from a nightmare, ugh. I must be more stressed out than I realize and my subconscious was kicking my butt for it.

The Nightmare, Henry Fuseli, 1802

A hag, or "the Old Hag", was a nightmare spirit in British and Anglophone North American folklore. This variety of hag is essentially identical to the Anglo-Saxon mæra — a being with roots in ancient Germanic superstition, and closely related to the Scandinavian mara. According to folklore, the Old Hag sat on a sleeper's chest and sent nightmares to him or her. When the subject awoke, he or she would be unable to breathe or even move for a short period of time. Currently this state is called sleep paralysis, but in the old belief the subject had been hagridden. It is still frequently discussed as if it were a para-normal state.

I'm always happy with the last thing I did

And the last thing I did was this.

Mixed media painting on wood. Acrylic, beesewax, oil, photo transfer, and foil.

I actually started this the surface two years ago, sloshing on some paint and beeswax onto some wood. Then feeling inspired from a visit to Lewis Mahlmann's AMAZING house last night, as well as surfing Etsy.com all day today, I pulled the painting back out and added some transfers, more beeswax, more gold paint, and a butter wrapper from last night's dinner. I'm pretty happy with the results.

I was actually planning on putting this piece up for sale, but I think I might keep it around for a little while, till I make something else and become happy with the next new thing.

But yes, we had dinner and visited Lewis's house last night, and it's like a mind blowing experience, it's filled with his doll collection from all over the world, FILLED. And, he has an Arthur Rackham painting, AMAZING!!!! Just so much stuff, and all these little handmade cabinets to house them in...haha, I want to have that kind of a place when I'm 79.

Hell, I want to BE Lewis when I'm 79! He is just so awesome and talented. Ahhh.

Man, it's so late, I need to sleep now.

Sunday was our 5 year anniversary.

I've been falling behind on blog posts lately, but I've been pretty excited about lots of things these days. One of which, is being with Michael for so long- I made this for our anniversary a couple of days ago.

We call our collaborative efforts "TEAM LUV" which comes from playing Supermario Kart Double dash, when you complete a course and enter your initials into the high score thing, we put "LUV", haha. Besides being an awesome person, Michael is also a creative genius, though he will never ever admit that. We've made stuffed dolls together, paintings, and whenever we do puppet shows together we hi-five each other at the end and say "YEAH! TEAM LUV!"

Just the other day we started playing Call of Duty together, or more like, I wandered over to the couch to see what he was doing (killing Germans) and he put the controller in my hands and made me play. This happens a lot, when there's a level he gets stuck in I'll jump in and say "I WANNA TRY!" and usually I kick the level's ass. Then we take turns playing. Michael is of course, a kick ass fighter in games, and I'm more of the lame-0 that takes pleasure out of playing stupidly, like throwing unnecessary smoke grenades, crawling towards the enemy on my belly, "Leeroy Jenkins'ing it" and dying in two seconds.

If it weren't for Michael introducing me to Call of Duty, I might not have gotten into this video game focus group study next month. They just called me today and asked the standard, you know, do you play these games, and some other questions which I seemed to answer to their liking, and I got in!

Inner Sakura XD by ~ADF-Fuensalida on deviantART

I hope it works out and they don't pull me out of the group for some crazy reason. Getting paid to play video games, CHA! I LOVE THIS STUFF!

Uncle Wiggily and the Apple Dumplings Puppet Show

This is the last weekend we're performing Uncle Wiggily and the Apple Dumplings, and here is a clip from the show with my favorite song sung by Oswald Bear (Lewis Mahlmann). Oswald likes to steal the other animals' apple dumplings. Also, Lewis painted the oleo drop above, and it rules.

Knockin' Blocks

My cough/cold/throat grossness is finally coming to an end, and I've actually been able to get some interupted sleep these days. Today is a day for lazing about and re-watching old episodes of Naruto and...CLEANING. Good for the home and good for the soul. While I was cleaning up files on my computer today, I found this old video we made of our trip to the Lawrence Hall of Science on my birthday last year and added it to my YouTube, which is pretty empty at the moment. What's funny is, it's a low quality video made even lower quality from the old timey black and white iMovie video effects, made even LOWER quality with the YouTube flash conversion. So...enjoy, if you can!

In a desperate attempt to get some sleep tonight...

I took some generic sleeping pill about an hour ago. I'm still not sleepy, but I'm hoping this will happen:

No sleep.

Hey! You know what sucks? Being so sick you can't sleep. *sigh* yep. Gross. But, at least I had a super fun birthday yesterday. Now my body is paying for it.