update

Hi!

What I've been up to lately..

started a tumblr (which i am hopelessly addicted to already)

 

painting a lot


 

pretending to be Stevie Nicks on the regs

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shooting guns in Ohio

which I'm kind of good at?

oh, and being ridiculous



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enjoying the country flowers

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walking by pretty things

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humbling fan tattoos

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wearing excessive amounts of jewelry

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being in love with my new pants

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girl days with my bestie

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geeking out to world of warcraft (at the airport)

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enjoying goodiess from proseIV

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entertaining myself on dull mondays (not today)
 


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and collecting rosaries 
  
Okay, have i overwhelmed you with too many photos again? Good.
I'm still in Ohio and will be back in a couple of days, then its back to paint paint paint paint aiptna pitnpi tnpssdflsd
Oh, and fireflies are amazing. !!!!!
xx

tattoos, babies & Lady Gaga posters

Soooo here's a lil update on the past few weeks.

Started on my half sleeve a bit ago. If you follow me on instagram/facebook you've probably seen way too many pictures of it already, but here are way too many more

the stencil before we got started:

My friend Derick Montez at Picture Machine designed it. It's totally me. Tentacles, boats, eyes, tiger lilies, jewels & pearls. All things I love tied together beautifully.

before the ol puff arm / swellbow set in..

The first session was around 5 hours, we have another few to go on the shading + little details.

Here's a lil better picture after it healed up.

Black & gray tattoos are my faaaaave.

Okay, enough about that. I also went home and met my baby nephew Johann, HE'S SO TINY OMG. So so cute.

lil peanut ♥

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In other exciting news, me and two other artists were picked by Lady Gaga to design a poster for her album release. They're being sold as a limited edition in Etsy's store, she signed a few copies of them. All proceeds go to VH1's Save the Music Foundation, which is pretty rad.

She liked my Headache painting, so I just went in and added the text on top of it + a few minor tweaks. They're for sale here. (Both signed & unsigned)

aaaand I've been working on a new painting, for my upcoming solo show at Shooting Gallery in January. Get ready for a ton ton ton of new work, mostly feathers & witchy girlz.

Ok enough for now. bye!

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

two art shows this week

I'm in two fun group shows that open this Thursday night, March 10th.

One is the Warhol Reimagined show put on by Warholian, over at Project One Gallery.

We were each given a panel and different works of Andy Warhol's to choose from to 'reimagine. And some artists recreated his famous soup cans. I went for good ol' Jackie O.

here they are side by side.

 

and here she is with an instagram filter, which always makes everything look better.

The panel was gesso-ed when I got it and had a trickier relationship with the paint than I'm used to, but I made it work. I like challenges. I also like that we all painted on panels of the same size, it's going to look so neat-o all together. (Yeah I just said neat-o)

 And of course I couldn't help myself. Had to give her an extra eye, tattoos and a haircut. Oh and a lil nose ring. Kind of a self portrait? I guess?

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The other opening is a collaborative photo exhibit with photographer Kelly Nicolaisen at 111 Minna. Me and a bunch of other artists did individual "light painting" collabs with Kelly, which was an entirely different medium than I'm used it. My shoot was kind of painful as it consisted of me being topless at the beach. At  night. In december. In san Francisco. I was only sliiiightly frozen. (Art is pain?) But I was really happy with how our picture came out. Shoots with her are always memorable. ha. I'm super excited to see the picture in person, as well as all the other artists' pieces.

I'll be gallery hopping, la la la! See you there :)

xx

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