May Fairs art show + new studio

Super fun show is opening this week! May Fairs over at Project One Gallery. Including myself and 3 other lovely lovely ladies. 

My new foxy & antlered girls will be there, with all their multiple-eyed weirdness.

here's a lil preview of the other two pieces (full images coming soon):

Also, I've been busy moving in to my new art studio. I'm so so so in love with the space. It's super sunny and kind of huge. Ha. I'll post more pictures once everything is all organized, etc.

But here is one wall.

aaaand me basking in the sunlight. lalalala


ALSO I'M NOW OFFICIALLY AN AUNTIE! eeeeeeeeeeeeee!
Just got the news right now. omgsoexcited. Can't wait to meet lil Johann! Looks like I'll be driving down to SoCal this weekend :) :)
ok that's about it. yaaaay erratic blogging!

xxxx
see you wednesday I hope :)
C

tattoos, vegas & works in progress

Wow. okay, so, it's been a minute.

I've been working on a couple of new pieces that are halfway doneish, if you follow me on instagram/facebook/twitter you've probably seen little snippets of them.

a self portrait of sorts. Waiting on the tattoos and other little embelleshments. 

Here are a few progress pictures of it..

I've been all about painting on the floor lately. (I wonder if its bad for my knees to be sitting cross-legged all day?)

I decided to add freckles, which I think adds a lot more depth. Something I'll be doing from now on. I'm also really freckly.

Also been challenging myself with incorporating backgrounds in to the mix. It changes the piece for sure. still deciding if I like this route or not.

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Then there are these girls

Still soooo much to go. But this girl, Fernanda, has the most fantastic eyebrows I've ever seen. Stoked she was able to model for me recently. I'll probably be doing another piece or two of her down the line.

Besides painting a ton, I went to vegas for a few days for my good friend Laura's birthday. What a strange place. I was totally burnt out after like, a day. Played too much roulette, drank too many gin and tonics, won some money, lost some money, got tattooed and ate at Coco's too many times (twice). If I was a better planner/think-ahead-er I wouldve gone to see the Bodies exhibit at the Luxor WHICH I STILL HAVE NOT SEEN. I've also been dying to see Zumanity. Next time. 

Added a little ditty under my anchor. It says "amour" in runes. Runes are pretty much how Lizzy and I survived high school. We'd write full-page notes to eachother in runes, teachers were always baffled when they intercepted them (which wasn't often. we were good at being sneaky. or so we like to think.)

I love how tattoos make me feel. Currently planning out my quarter sleevie. Beyond excited.

Also, we've been having a few freakishly warm days.

Definitely been patio-dwelling a lot. And playing with leaves.


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I'm going home to Encinitas this weekend for my sister-in-law's baby shower. EEEEE YOU GUYS I'M GOING TO BE AN AUNT! Looking forward to some family time.

Hopefully I wont wait a whole month before posting again, but who knows with me. 

loveyouguys. thanks for putting up with me and my erratic "blogging" ♥

C

Delphine

Delphine // La Femme Naufrage // Lady Shipwreck

30" x 40" (inches) oil & gold leaf on wood panel. 

So. While creating these wild-eyed nautical girls, I've been weaving this sort of vague backstory for them; how they're lives are interwoven, how they're connected, how they abhor and adore each-other. I originally was setting Delphine up to be a motherly figure to Ophelia and Aveline, but while the piece grew and developed, that path started to feel forced. I have several other images brewing in my mind, all tied in with their story line, and I started playing with the idea of all of them being sisters. I'm intrigued by the Greek myth of the constellation Pleiades, or the Seven Sisters, and decided to do a series loosely based around it.
So here we have Delphine, number three in my series The Seven Sisters.

 
The model for Delphine is my best friend Morgan of Whiteflowers. She wrote a beautiful song in collaboration, which I would love to share with you while you're visiting.

   Nautica [Delphine] by Whiteflowers

Here are some bits about my process for this piece.


As some of you know, a large portion of my creative process is the conceptualizing stage. This stage is really where the piece is really created, where I take a mental image and start drawing & combining elements together in Photoshop until I "find" it. Here is my "sketch" for Delphine. Naturally things change along the way, but I generally have the piece 90% planned out before I start painting. Of course I count on mistakes and bumps along the way to further shape the work.
I've become so comfortable working this way that I think it would be difficult to make up a painting on the spot. I know I would produce a completely different body of work if I was more spontaneous about it, which I'd like to explore more in the future. However, I do take my paintings very seriously, as they are a commitment, both time-wise & emotionally, so I suppose I save the spontaneity for my drawings and conceptualizing (for now).

 

So. I haven't played around with gold leaf much, so this was a fun experiment. I just sort of made up the process as I went along. I've recently fallen in love with Klimt and love the way he uses gold in his paintings, so I decided to try my hand at it.
After sketching out the figure, I stained the triangle portion black before applying the gold leaf, so bits of black would show through the cracks.

 I definitely busted out the hairdryer at one point. I'm not really a fan of the "waiting for the paint to dry" game. (I consider myself a patient girl, but sometimes you just want to keep going with a project, especially when feeling inspired and gung-ho. Paint drying times can seriously disrupt my flow!!) Okay. So. Hairdryer. Yes. Then comes the leafing. Which is oddly relaxing. I didn't want the gold to be perfect, which is really hard to achieve anyway.

But seriously guys, gold leaf is so pretty in person!! Photos just don't do it justice. There are these really delicate and lovely cracks in the leaf which look beautiful with the black behind it, which you can't really see in the main picture. Also, she looks super weird at this stage. Before I start painting, I like to erase all the extra pencil marks from sketching the figure, otherwise the graphite can muddy up the paint. So all that's left when I start painting are the outlines of the face, etc.


The rest is just clockwork and takes time - applying layers upon layers of paint, until I'm happy with it.

Early stages of the tattoos.



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Well that's enough for now. Got a Jackie Kennedy painting I've gotta finish for a fun upcoming Warhol-themed show! Pics soon!
Also thanks to those who came out for my show the other night, it was fun times!

And Thank you for all the birthday love. You're the best.
xxx