Moodboard #2 Black Forest Antique

Another moodboard I made today. Again, most of the images I used can be found on my tumblr.

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.

Secret Room:

The hole to the room:


A close-up of the wallpaper (at least it isn't yellow!). Roses!




I still can't believe that this was discovered in my home after my recurring dreams on the subject! Maybe it's one of those things that magically appears just when you've learned to let go of the need to seek it!
I can't figure out what the room must have been for. It's too short to stand in, but the wallpaper seems to fit its dimensions which leads me to believe that it was built/used at it's current size.
Perhaps it was a separate attic space that the house's first occupants furnished as a playroom for their children. Who knows, it obviously hasn't been open in many many decades.

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!

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.