Long Overdue Art Post I

It's been a while since I've put up any art, so there's a bit of a back log...




These are all my original works.

Golden Gate Park

Golden Gate Park:



Some pictures from the Redwood Forest trail in the Botanical Gardens....

It reminds me of the Olympic National Forest, except on a much smaller scale! I miss that place, it is so vibrant, life and moisture and sap and green seeping in from the very air!















Next was the California Native Plants Trail, and then a lovely mother duck with her eggs!



























I think that one egg was broken, sadly, and she must be sitting on the rest. Poet took this picture, it's lovely.

He also took these ones of me, he sure is talented! How dramatic!























I took this picture of Poet, he's not the only one who can take classy pictures! (Although his are obviously much more professional, but I think I still make him look pretty!)














This one he took of me at home, in front of our classy mantle on top of our classy fainting couch. He insisted we needed "classy" pictures. Whatever you say, Abeulo.




So, speaking of neat vintage and San Francisco related things, I recently had occasion to visit Loved to Death on Haight Street.
Oh my, such amazingness! I couldn't believe how good their prices were, if you are into antiquarian, steam punk, taxidermy, or dead things in general, you have to make this visit. I got, among other things, a fox skull for $35. Very fair, more than fair! I will post pictures of all the cool stuff I got there soon.

Golden Advice

Firstly, the situation at hand:
"Time to confront your demons.

Hell is our own creation. We cannot move forward in our lives without facing that which torments us. The more we understand and face our fears, the less power they have over us. Fear of failure may be preventing you from reaching your full potential. Look back at all that you have weathered in the past to see that you have the strength to survive if things go wrong. This may help you to realise[sic] that it is worth taking risks in order to do what you think is right. This is a card of temptation and perhaps addiction. Depending upon where it appears in a spread, it could indicate a need for the subject to question their own motives. Are they following a path deliberately that could be destructive?"

The Devil:

The path to resolution:
"Horses will only follow the reigns if they want to.

Leadership of a team. Pragmatism, collaboration and compromise. A victory obtained by working with others, not against them. It is time to analyse[sic] the causes of problems you encounter, and change what you can about yourself in order to overcome them. Changing one's own behaviour[sic] is more likely to succeed than trying to change the behaviour[sic] of others."

I think this so appropriate, and helpful. When applied to the situation I'm in(or more like coming out of), it rather reminds me of The Metamorphoses, considering how it was preceded by this:
The catalyzing action:
"Do what is right.

Fairness, justice and equal opportunity. Fate may aim to give all what they deserve, but sometimes she needs a helping hand, and the strong should help the weak."

Justice:

The Golden Tarot by Kat Black

Thank you, thank you for all the messages, the encouragement, the little indicators. Thank you for every sign that now is a time to improve my life and my action. By putting an image of the most indecent human nature in front of me, you made me understand that when it comes to living a moral life, what goes around comes around. And not just because we hope people get just desserts, "karma" is less about getting what's coming to you and almost entirely about maintaining, pruning, and upkeeping your moral heart.
I was already aware of this concept, yes. From Mengzi I had learned that we all have the seeds of virtue and vice within us, and that is those seeds that we nurture that determine our nature.
However, this recent experience made the dangers of failing to constantly check moral vigilance frighteningly clear. Life will always find a way to scare the pants off you by showing you a person, object, or situation that gives you a mirror to what lies in store if you follow your own worst inclinations.
While what I saw was immeasurably far off from where I could even imagine finding myself, it taught me an important lesson about always acting in a manner in which you can endure past the worst possible interpretations of your own behavior. We must not allow ourselves to lower our standards in the company we keep, for in order to tolerate them we learn to tolerate their values, and if we don't see eye to eye on issues so basic as kindness, honesty, and esteem, we can only hurt ourselves by back sliding. The more we let them shroud our instinct, the more our introspective mirror becomes shrouded, the more we gaze in the bitter glass, the more we are tempted by the whispers of subtle guile.
The more we nurture the seeds of deception and of denial, the more they grow to obscure the best of what we are. Please, to all those still putting up with the double talk, the entanglement, cut back the brambles before it becomes impossible. But it is never impossible.
Never have anything in your life that you don't want to know the truth about. It may sound preachy or redundant, but wait until you have the fear of a remorseless heart before you, ready to harm and tear asunder all that you take for granted, then the message is terribly cold and imminent.
The best way to avoid the situation The Devil card presents is to follow the message of The Justice card, with the confidence and initiative of the The Chariot card.

This-way-and-that...

Life has been good lately! This "status cloud" which was generated out of my Facebook status updates seem to confirm it.
I feel as if I've made a lot of progress toward living that feeling I wrote about in my last entry. I had a wonderful day off the other day; huevos rancheros for brunch, time spent with friends, including a beautiful walk through the Mountainview Cemetery. It was a very nice day out, even though Spring still has another month to show up!These three pictures are all from the Cemetery's website. I brought my camera with me, but lately I am trying to spend more time experiencing instead of documenting. Perhaps next time I will take more pictures, maybe when more trees are flowering.






































This is a picture Poet took of me at the Marin Headlands, the only photo I have finished from that set. He's a procrastinator, it may be a while before we see the rest ^__^


Next:
New art....



I am extremely happy with this piece. It's colored pencil, acrylic gold paint, and liquid gold leaf on "Scarlet Letter" paper. It's St. Cecilia. St. Cecilia is my namesaint, Sheila being the anglicized version of Cecilia/Celia .
Saint Celicia was the patron saint of music, she converted her pagan husband to Christianity and revealed to him an angel who crowned them in garlands of roses and lilies. They were both martyred; first the Romans attempted to suffocate her in the baths, but it didn't kill her. Next, they attempted to decapitate her, but her head remained partially attached. It was said she lived for three days before perishing.
Next up, new things:
I love my new boots, I found them on sale, best of all! Just when the world is ready to get rid of all their winter items, I lie in wait, ready to snatch them up!


Another new item, this one constructed by Your's Truly:


I made it using supplies from Michael's, and one of Poet's wisdom teeth.
It took me a very long time to drill through the tooth because I was worried about cracking it, but in the end it worked beautifully!

New Year's Resolutions 2010

New Year’s Resolutions 2010:

Last year I didn’t write up any particular New Year’s Resolutions, but around that time I was in a lot of turmoil so I wrote up some goals for myself to change my situation.
This year, things have been tumultuous, but mostly I have followed through and changed a lot of things for the better. New house, new relationship, new job. There has definitely been plenty of drama, but it seems like most of the loose ends have finally begun to tie themselves up.
Time to clean house and start fresh, and at such a seasonally appropriate time!

I’ve learned a lot this year, especially about relationships, so maybe that’ll be where a lot of my resolutions come from. But without any further ado, here they are:

1. Slowly start thinking about what I want to do with my life next. Now that the dust is settling, I can get pretty comfortable doing what I’m doing, where I’m doing it. So the next thing to think about is: what’s next when I have some savings and can go back to school? I don't know yet!!
2. Decorate the hell out of the house! I never did this in my other places because they never completely felt like home, but this place does so I want to make the most of it and do all the things I dreamed of doing when I was younger and imagined having my own place!
3. Stop stressing so much; I’ve just come out of a stressful situation that I literally couldn't legally extricate myself with (see: Oakland tenant laws)and the best way to appreciate it being over is to learn to enjoy my freedom. I have to not slip into anxiety too easily, which can sometimes happen when you’ve been wringing your hands too long. When you’ve been neurotic for months and suddenly it’s over, it’s surprisingly hard to let your guard down and enjoy things without constantly looking over your shoulder and expecting it all to crap out on you again.
4. Pay off my credit cards! This should be easy, I hardly have any debt (relative to most people my age) and I just got a really decent raise at my work ftw! So my goal is to do it by the end of the year. I’ve already taken the first big step, which is to almost exclusively buy on debit so I know I’m only getting what I can afford with my own money. Next is to polish off what little is left.
5. Stop forming co-dependent relationships with people. Next time I am in an unequal relationship, I need to recognize it up front. This resolution could also be titled ‘stop making excuses for people,’ because if I hear myself making excuses for a person over and over it’s probably a sign that I am too entangled in a situation I shouldn’t be in. If I get bent out of shape continually over a friend who’s self-destructing or being fucked up to others, it probably is a good signal to me that I should back away and just be less intimate with them, so I don’t have to force myself to be uncomfortable with behavior I feel compelled to judge.

This is my most important resolution this year, because I have to take responsibility for the fact that every time I have a falling out with some one it always feels like déjà vu. There’s a clear pattern, and that’s not something I can keep scratching my head quizzically about; I have to start blaming it on myself, because it’s not rocket science that I need to raise my standards and start picking up on warning signs after I go through the same disappointing scenarios 80 times in a row.

6. In congruency with #5: Don’t be reluctant to insure against harmful situations just because it seems awkward at the time. It’s better to err on the side of caution than let people into positions where it can affect your home, your work, and your finances, whatever. Example: I used to think that real friends didn’t need to sign leases, but now I know that real friends won’t have a problem signing leases because real friends would never ask you to put yourself in a situation where you would have to take needless risks for them. If they can say they’ll do it, they shouldn’t have a problem backing it up on paper. Stuff like that.

This resolution is about being confident, taking initiative, and being straight-forward with my needs from the get-go, and not letting reluctance stop me from doing easy things to avoid trouble in the future. It’s also about having the balls to call people on their shit; anything worth saying is worth backing up if they really mean it.

7. Also in congruency with the above resolution: reconnect with friends with whom I had equal relationships in the past, and make new friends to this effect. I don’t mind just having fewer friends but I know it’s probably a better idea to not be lazy and isolated, and to take the time and effort to foster positive relationships in place of the negative ones I’m pruning. Plus, there are so many interesting, independent, and neat people out there...I must seek them! ::strokes beard::
8. Travel more! Not only am I making more money than I was before, but my work schedule is waaaaaaaaaaay more flexible than at my last job. So I could easily arrange to take weekend trips (up to four days) without even using any vacation time! Poet and I can go to places within driving distance pretty easily and keep it cheap, camping or staying at b&bs or motels. I can’t wait to go up and down the coast, or visit the redwoods!
9. Last one: blog like I mean it. Like most people, I spend a bit too much time on the internet. So I want to make my time on here an experience worth having. Photos, art, ideas, etc......I want to share and find it all, and in a fulfilling way, instead of endlessly refreshing updates. I've already got a good start on this, but I want to make it a project.

Here are some totally unrelated beauteous photos by Andy Julia:

































I supervise the Lingerie department at my work. I have to admit I find it all so lovely, and have yet to grow tired of it. I'm also lucky enough to work at a swanky store that is very fashion forward and also luckily, not on the trashy side of things.





















I love lace in all it's forms!

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.