Last night I had nightmares that a serial killer was stalking me for a reason I didn't know, and he/she was sending me the body parts of friends of mine that he'd killed or maimed.
The landscape of the dream was entirely white; in a white house, with white walls and white furniture, and every time blood appeared it was a horribly vivid splash. I woke up several times to find myself alone in bed, but I was too frightened, disoriented, and tired to find out where Poet was.
Everytime I went to sleep my dreams changed slightly, but everyone of them was about a monster or a man trying to hunt me down to torture and kill me. In one dream, there were monsters made of shadows, in another a man who was angry with my father was electrocuting me and strangling me, but no one really knew what he was angry over.

Finally, some time after the sun had risen, I woke up to see that Poet had returned to bed. After that I had one last dream. It was a little better than the previous dreams. I was in Hawaii with some family members. We are heading towards to the beach in a group, and I'm trying to snap pictures of everything in sight, but I'm having a little trouble with my camera and am getting mixed results*, and it frustrates me. As we get nearer to the beach, I realize we are in a tourist van, and an announcer is directing us to look toward the ocean so that we could see the whales. I look at the water and I see that the waves have frozen like a wall, and there are gigantic whales hovering right over crowds of people on the beach.













I start trying to take pictures, but my camera won't work and I can't get a thing. I'm getting increasingly frustrated, and I notice that we're getting awfully close to the water and that the whales are making a lot of noise, and all of a sudden the sea begins to suck us in.

I'm afraid we'll drown but the van fills with water and is tossed on to the crowd.
We scream for people to run as we fall, I see one woman who can't get out of the way in time. Some how I catch her with just the tip of my finger and am able to pull her up and into the van with us just in time.

After the crash, no one is hurt. But I am upset by the even and run off, away from the beach. I meet up up with a friend of mine, and he tells me I'm in danger, that there are dark forces out to get the "other part" of me. I ask him what that means, and he explains to me that we all have three parts: our bodies of which we are aware, and also our souls and minds that walk around outside us everywhere we go.
He explains that a friend of his warned him that demons were out and hunting down my soul, to take it away from me.We decide to find a local voodoo witch to see if she can help us. We drawn a mandala, and she receives us warmly.








She has warm brown skin and lives in a bamboo hutch where she renders her services to the needy.
We also give her a gift of tarot cards, but the dream ends before we are offered a solution by her.















After all that, I wake up feeling pretty shaken. But then Poet tells me that he stayed up all night because he wants to go to bed early tonight to be able to get up tomorrow morning for Thanksgiving with my family, and to be sure to wake him up again so he give me a ride to work.
And then I come into the living room and he's left me a note saying he bought me fancy bagels and brie for breakfast. And he's picking up furniture all by himself today, and he's meeting the repair man to fix the cable today.
If you had asked me how I could feel better, I probably wouldn't have been able to come up with a whole lot, and some how he does just the right thing to make me feel better, and safe, and cared for. For a huge part of my dreams last night I was just running around trying to find someone to help me, it's nice to wake up and know that while you were sleeping some one was up caring about you and coming up with things to make you happy when you wake up.

I'm not happy with this scan at all, it's so grainy and the picture looks so much better in real life, but here it is:Brown color pencil on bristol paper.

A take off on this photo:

The unhappiness with technology aside, I'm very happy
with this piece and I feel like I finished it in good time.

When I usually draw women or girls, I tend to make them quite thin and lithe, probably because of the context of our current mainstream/alternative aesthetics, or perhaps as an act of self-insertion or a symbol of frailty, but probably for all of the above reasons.
When you look at these visions of beauty from the turn of the last century, they tend to be a good deal heavier that most pin-ups and models of our time. When I draw a girl from that era, I try to make her softer and fuller, to do otherwise feels disingenuous. Nonetheless I try to split the difference, use it as a bridge between this time and the past, one aesthetic bleeding in between inspiration and perspective.






This is a lovely movie:


I think I like Charlie Chaplin better behind the camera than in front of it.
What can I say, I'm a lover of Buster Keaton, that's the kind of lovable hard-luck case I fall for.
I still haven't seen the end of this movie, it's hard to make myself, I know it will be so sad!

New and Old Art

This is a quick pen sketch I did a couple weeks ago, however I do not have the means to complete it as I usually would before posting it online. While I wait for a new computer I don't have photoshop to add textures and correct color, I don't even have a scanner to use.
Believe it or not often half the work of using photoshop is to make an image resemble itself on a computer screen as it does in the real world.
In any case, here it is:



































And I'd also like to share an older one that I meant to upload previously but somehow missed:
This one was inspired by an image I found in a book of vintage erotica. I loved the concept of the image but it was done so simplistically for a magazine cover, and I wanted to try and spend a bit of time and detail on it, and do it justice.


I'm really proud of the line work and shading I did on this one. I titled it "Cannelle et Clous de Girofle"
which means "cinnamon and cloves."
I sort of love the somewhat naive concepts about eroticism and exotica that came from that era. Not that eroticism on it's own was a naive concept back then, we have a tendency in these times too look back on earlier times as being closeted and ignorant of sex, eroticism, and perversion. Trust me, they could be quite scandalous, they were human back then too, after all!
But I do love the idea of what at the time was considered "exotic" being automatically erotic, there are so many neat photos of such "naughty" fan girls haha....
Maybe I'll make some more art of that theme.






Here is the original:










































Mata Hari:

Other lovelies. Would we think these women were beautiful if they were walking around today? Probably not, we've learned such a critical eye! We should learn to relax and enjoy beauty out of context the way we do when we're looking at someone from another era.

Around the House

A few photos from my home.
It's still a work in progress, but here's a spot that's photo-worthy.
I'd like to put up more on the sides of the mirror as well.




Most of our walls are waiting for appropriate frames, at which point we have many lovely posters and pictures waiting to go up! When will that be? On Saturday! Our friend works at Michael's and is going to help us to pick some affordable frames. Frames can make a room, it's nice to know we don't have to wait indefinitely to find a reasonable deal that suits our budget.
This is all pretty exciting to me, this is the third place I've lived since I've moved away from home, but it's the first place I've really felt a connection to and that I've considered staying indefinitely. Therefore, decorating and home maintenance has become a constant preoccupation with me.
Also, I bought new "work" shoes yesterday:































Are the days of wearing combat boots everyday at an end? Perhaps. I work someplace quiet fashionable, I like to look at least somewhat professional at work, especially as a supervisor. I hope they are comfortable enough to wear all day! If not, at least I can wear them on the office days. I'm usually a stickler for comfortable shoes, but again...the budget!

A Backlog of Art Part IV

My most recent works!


Again....all sepia, rose tones, and gold, haha! I drew on inspiration from classic illustration, fairytales and mythology, and the antiquarian aesthetic.
At this point, you might begin to notice a repeating theme of dual symbols.
A snake and a peacock, here.

Here, two octopi.

Here, two birds.



Although at the time, the deep significance of such things were only just beginning to become apparent to me, in hindsight it's a clear reflection of a split occurring in my life.































I was moving from one experience to another, one life to another, settling into the realization that there was somewhere else I needed to be, and I found myself caught between two influences.




Now, I feel as though I'm in the right place, with the right person. Life still has so many kinks to work out, but there's nothing that beats that feeling of being on the right path, of making progress toward where you want to be.
I eventually found my way.















This is my most recent piece:
Pencil and gold acrylic paint on vellum tracing paper, layered over burnt butcher paper for texture, with pressed flowers and leaves.






















I'm very happy with how it turned out, although I couldn't show it digitally in a way that does it justice. For instance, I don't have a photo-editing program at my disposal at the moment. But at least you can see the gold!

A Backlog of Art Part III

2008-Present: Getting back to naturalism, texture, mixed media, sepia and GOLD!

This was a commission for an acquaintance, whose girlfriend does tribal fusion dance:


watercolor, pencil, pen, marker, and a little bit of gold leaf paint. You can't see the gold on this at all, this was before I figured out how to make it show up on digital copies of my art, but there's a faint halo and her jewelry is embellished with it.

Sepia pen and marker, also my first successful photoshop-created textured background.

Getting into the archaic, the mysterious, and the vintage. Using motifs inspired by art nouveau and illustrators from the Golden Age of Fairytale illustration such as Arthur Rackham and Edmund Dulac.











Almost caught up!
So much to share....

A Backlog of Art Part II

Late 2007 to 2008:
I had a definite aquarium phase (can't say I'm out of it, even now!), and a love of negative space.

One of the most valuable things I think I've learned about making my art thus far is the idea that less can be more.















I was so technical, starting out. I had such a Western perspective.



Think of it in terms of what you might see in a Western comic book vs. an Eastern manga: In many Western comics, especially good ones, there's a tendency to have many lines drawn in that show facial expression, muscle tone, etc., while in manga there's a lot of implied fullness and 3-dimensionality without actually filling in planes with excessive lines.








After playing around with both styles I tired to reach a happy medium between the two artistic perspectives.
I also gained an appreciation for pop surrealism and artists like Camille Rose-Garcia.

A Backlog of Art Part I

I'd like to update with some of my art, to give an idea of the sort of thing I like to create!
Let's begin with 2006-2007:
These are the years I really came out of my shell and began to grasp my own style.


This was one of the first I was really happy with, it's never been terribly popular but it holds a lot of personal significance.




Where most of my friends at the time lacked technical skill but had fantastic style and creativity, I had grasp of detail and rendering but I didn't know how to just let an image flow from my hands. I was painfully slow at producing pieces and had a tendency to come up with very contrived themes.



So I'm starting at a point when these limitations really began to right themselves and I truly began to feel happy with what I was producing.

This one in the left was my first really successful piece with any watchers. I still love it dearly, and it's my most consistently used concept to date.





Trying out new styles, textures,
and color combinations....
This is the time when I picked
up my favorite technique: mixed
media. My most often used combinations:
-pen and marker
-water color and pencil
-all of the above!
I usually use bristol or heavy water color paper.
All of the pieces featured here were also produced after a difficult break up, the first hard one of my adult life. I was engaged and my fiance left me.




Ever feel overwhelmed?
This one is the last one of that era of my life. Expressing your experiences through art is sometimes the one thing that can excise the negativity you're going through, and let you move on.
The hardest pain is the kind you can't express the words to explain, and when there's nothing else, there's always art.
Getting better at art allowed me the eloquence I needed to take the next step in life.

The Albany Bulb!
We went there the other day with our friend Ramsey, and it was really nice! The weather was nice and mild that day, and the tide was out so we were able to see still, flat, open water and mud flats stretching out all around us, it was beautiful. I don't have many pictures, I asked Poet to take pictures of all the neat things there were but instead he took a bunch of pictures of me, because he's apparently too cool to take pictures of nature and found objects, and only wants to take pictures of his girlfriend. I feel so novel! What can you do, photographers get so tired of weddings and nature shots, and things like that.
Ramsey took a lot of pictures too (and on film!), and I can't wait to see how those turn out!


some of the cool objects lying around there:


searching for sea shells:




The camera is now in my hands, and I do no better!

we found a little crab! He was scuttly, but we got him to hold still for his close-up.



Other than that, today myself and my roommates set up our garden! We built a compost box, planted two kinds of daffodils, as well as tulips and carrots. We spent most of our time digging up plants and roots and clearing away all the dead plants, but at least now we have a place to put it! I love compost boxes, they're so useful, almost nothing goes to waste.
The only thing that is already sprouted in the garden is lavender (no flowers right now, though), basil, and onions. I'll take pictures when more is sprouting up from the ground, because right now it's pretty unremarkable, although we did make a cool path out of bricks and cinder blocks!
So all in all, a productive day. I love making a garden, I'm beginning to feel like doing every day things is so spiritual and cathartic. We live in a very spiritually active place (not just our house, the whole neighborhood), and those elements are going to be around us no matter what we do. So it's better in my opinion to engage in activities that seem to give back to our surroundings, and that connect us to our living space. My old neighborhood was pretty dry, there just weren't a lot of active spiritual vibes in it. Where we live now, most of the homes are of Victorian architecture and were built 80 to 100 years ago. The area is generally poor and urban, although there are plenty of trees and some wild and lovely gardens here and there.
Plus, I'm just not really finding much joy in spending my free time "going out" and by that I mean doing the whole night life thing. So I find that I am enjoying spending more time working around the house and having hobbies here. That, and what free time I have I'm using better, so I've had more time to actually go out and do things I want to during the day on my days off (like going for a walk at the Albany Bulb!) and even before work, instead of laying around or being lazy. Oh my! I'm getting so old, I wake up before 9am on my own most days. I also hang out with my parents more than I hang out with most of my friends, and that doesn't even bother me, my parents are cool!
I welcome this new phase of life with open arms, and here, a new place to document it.