new ink + work in prog

 (seems like all I'm posting these days are works in progress and new tattoos)

I mentioned before that Morgan and I were going in for some tattoos, and here they are!
 
This was taken right after we finished, so they're still real dark and mine is pretty red (morgan on left, me on right). It was well after 4am by the time we finished. Ha. Thanks Derick Montez for the beautiful beautiful design & tattooing! (And thanks for putting up with my moment by moment pain evaluation.) He busted out a sketch for us in like 30 minutes while we went and got Jack in the Box curly fries (a weird tradition of ours). It was perrrrrfect. Took about 2+ hours each. Troopers!
all healed up now.


Morgan and I have been collecting skeleton keys for years, and I'm almost always wearing at least two around my neck. One year for my birthday Morgan gave me a bunch of hers, our 10th birthday maybe? I thought I had lost them in the move to San Francisco, but I found 'em hiding in an old jewlery box in my closet. I think I cried a little bit (oh I'm such a sap sometimes). Well, I don't want to lose them again, so I made one permanent.

Okay. Enough about that.
I've been putting the finishing details on this piece, it's nearly done.

I have another day or two left on the tattoos before it goes off to the New Brow group show over at The Alternative Cafe. Gonna be a fun show!

Also I'm super excited cause I'm getting a new studio space next month. It's super spacious and sunny and perrrrrfeccttt and I can't wait! yay.

okbye
xx

Eternal Summer

Behold! The tan-lined, tattooed, sleepy-eyed dame.

click to see it larger

And now it's time for round two of long and detailed process explanations.

But first, I must say how extremely excited I am for this show at Gallery Hijinks! It's right around the corner, the 21st of August. (As well as right around the corner from my house. Win.) Anyway, if you are in town and in the neighborhood, my tattooed ladies would love to see you.

Alright. So this time around I tried out some things differently. A lot of people have been asking me if I use a primer on the wood or some sort of gesso. I haven't in the past, but this time I did. The problem you run in to when choosing a primer is that it's generally white and very opaque. I like to leave the wood exposed around the figure, so a white gesso just wouldn't do. And it's terribly limiting to only apply it where you think paint is going to be. I'd feel very trapped if that were the case. Then this lovely lady reccomended a product to me, something to add a barrier between the woodgrain and the paint. Ladies and gentleman, I give you GAC 100! It's white in the bottle but dries perfectly clear! Now, I must say, it definitely did the trick in making the wood more vibrant and not so sponge-like. It also did make it much more forgiving if a drop of paint landed where it shouldn't have. (A little bit of mineral spirits picked it right up.)  Since it's like adding a thin coating of plasticy substance to the wood, the paint handles very differently. I found it a little more difficult to work the skin how I normally do, but it made doing the hair really easy as well as the halo. I personally prefer to paint directly on to the wood when rendering skin, but the hair was so easy to do on top of the primer, as it stopped the india ink from bleeding through the grain. So, for the next piece I'm doing, I applied the primer to everywhere but the skin portion. (More details on that later, but I definitely prefer doing it this way)
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Here she is at the start. I start filling in the pencil sketch with the basic pattern of light and shadows. From there I keep layering and layering until I'm satisfied.
 


Here I am drawing little houses. I know, weird, who paints in little dresses? I seriously do. Somehow I manage to get paint on everything but my clothes.. some strange skill I have acquired somewhere. I usually end up with bits of red or black paint on my face instead.
I also introduced a few new colors in to my palette which was fun, Rose Portrait and Mars Red (which is basically a Burnt Umber with some red hues).

--

A sleeve of Victorian houses, my homage to San Francisco.

As stated in my previous post, the words say "thy eternal summer shall not fade", a snippet of Shakespeare's sonnet XVIII. This particular sonnet is so very special to me. In the 6th grade my grammar teacher taught this sonnet to us, we all had to memorize it and later recite it in front of the the class. I remember repeating it over and over for my mom, nervously trying to remember all the strange words. She would always tell me slow down, to speak it as if someone was writing it. I still have it memorized, as do my two best friends Lizzy and Morgan. It's this funny little connection we all have to eachother. I've always loved Mrs. Motgomery for making us memorize it, even if I didn't really understand it at the time. Now I find it to be so beautiful..

Here it is in full length:

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.
--

For the halo, I mixed gold paint and bleached linseed oil, it made it nice and glossy.

--

As for the tattoo above, it's an outline of a world map, and a famous French quote that I adore.
"Il n'est rien de réel que le rêve et l'amour."

//

 "Nothing is real but dreams and love"

(which pretty much sums me up entirely)

Alright, I'm starting to get all sentimental and shit. So it's time to wrap this up.
 Once the piece is done and dry, I start the scan. My scanner bed is only 8.5" x 11", so it definitely takes a lot of scans to capture the whole image. Someday I'll invest in a larger scanner, but for now, this works. Here you can see the ridiculous amount of layers already, and that's only half the image. It's very tedious but definitely worth getting a high DPI image of it.

Also, the sound of my scanner drives my kitten nuts, it's a hilarious sight.

Think that's about it. Thanks for reading! As usual, I'm happy to answer any questions you may have. I am always experimenting and learning as I go, but I'm happy to share my discoveries with you.

xoxoxo
C

Sailboat + upcoming show

watercolor with an ink pen
This was a little birthday present for Lizzy, she loves all things sailboats. And hopefully she doesn't get sick of me giving her art all the time.

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And here is the flyer for one of the upcoming group shows I'll be participating in. What an amazing line up! I'm seriously so honored and excited to be showing alongside all of these talented people.

Here's the link to the event.

And on another note, my kitten is currently snoozing on my lap. I'm a happy camper.
xo

dino

detail

Little ferocious dino. A commission for a wedding gift.

Acrylic paint, india ink & micron pens.

Now I'm off to the post office to mail it!

It's raining today in San Francisco, as it usually does in winter. Joe's foot is doing a lot better! He still can't walk, but it seems to be healing well.

Are you excited for winter? I am :)