Some of you may have noticed that my blog was down for a few days. I shall make a long story very short: due to a series of mistakes queried by trial and error, I had deleted all my blog entries, their backups, and my blog ceased to exist. There was also no way of getting any of it back. Mind you, this happened days before a conference where all over my business cards and postcards I invite people to visit my art blog. To say I was very sad is an understatement.

Why is it running now, you ask? How has this phoenix risen from its ashes? If the blog posts were killed out of existence, why are there more posts growing?

Because there breathes a man named Joe, who is  friend and a programmer, who also reads my blog. He took it upon himself to help me by doing things I cannot even begin to explain. I CAN tell you it is not done by a push of a button. He is searching google caches, and taking what content Google will allow him to rebuild my blog. Bless his heart.

I now know how to properly backup a wordpress blog.

Without further ado, a blog entry.

I present a photo of my studio wall showing off my art exchanges with Exchange #1 Simon Hardman (on right) and Exchange#2 Pablo Ramos .

Greetings my wonderful readers. Due to a series of terrible events I have inflicted on myself, my wonderful art blog is down. Please wait until further notice of this travesty.

Thousands of sketchbooks will be exhibited at galleries and museums as they make their way on tour across the country.
After the tour, all sketchbooks will enter into the permanent collection of The Brooklyn Art Library, where they will be barcoded and available for the public to view.
Anyone – from anywhere in the world – can be a part of the project. Click here to join!

Its $25 to join and get the specific sketchbook to fill with your art sent to you. I’m really excited to get mine. Look into it if you have interest!

Sign up by: Oct. 31st, 2010
Postmark book by: January 15th, 2011
Tour starts: March, 2011

Finally, after months, I finished this piece I titled “Ascension”.

This is for an art exchange with Pablo Ramos, a fantastic artist. I have one of his original pieces in exchange for one of mine! However, he had to wait a lot longer for his (Sorry Pablo!)

I’ve decide to use this piece for my marketing postcards when I go to the SCBWI conference in a few weeks. I am so excited about possibly meeting some publishers or agents!

So I sat down today to draw another idea for a mermaid…but whenever I thought about the ocean I fell into a very sad state. I’d bring myself out and start again, only to tumble into dark places in my head. For those of you not plugged in, I’m talking about the BP Oil Spill.

So, instead of fighting sad thoughts I went with them – I felt MUCH better after this sketch, and I already have an idea to draw a cyborg dolphin with a machine gun. Strange how scribblings will ease out feelings from my head and put them on paper.

A friend of mine sent me a link, to Hyperbole And A Half, a blog of happenstance, art, and humor (thank you Sammy!)

But…I am sharing this link with you because this site made me laugh SO HARD, that tears were streaming down my face, snot was running down my nose, and instead of drawing my daily sketch on my lunch break I kept clicking onto more and more entries. I almost forgot that when withholding laughter, I snort. Yes, like a pig. For those of you who look at this and say “Oh…my GOODNESS – she didn’t KNOW about this yet?!?!” My answer is…no. I did not. And shame on you for not sharing earlier!

Enjoy!

As I sweat and enjoyed the foggy horizon on a beautiful hike with my Beloved, I got a vision of a character. As I described the cascade of images and adventure it inspired, brainstorming with Beloved lead me to rush home and do a quick sketch. I now have another story – the details will come sometime in a future further than I wish, I’m sure. Here is your first glimpse at my chicken scratches for an impish and wonderful character whose adventures I hope to write down soon!

I hope everyone had a lovely fourth of July!

I started my “Mer-Kingdom Coloring Book” sketches – initially I wanted the mermaids to have large heads so their eyes could be huge too – but the more I drew the more I’ve decide that I’m going to give the heads a bit more realistic proportion only because the weight of the character with a big beautiful tail feels more streamlined without a huge head. Here follow the first 2:

In my last few days of sickly stupor I managed to start some sketches for my mermaids coloring book. The only thing left now is a sore throat, but that is completely manageable. This mermaid coloring book, I have decided to call “Mer-Kingdom” – mainly because I want mermaids, mermen, sea witches, all the sort of magical underwater delight found in a kingdom of Mer and not just pretty ladies with fish tails. Anyhoo, I will be nowhere near a place I can post my scans until the weekend, but I didn’t want to leave you on a Friday just high and dry without some visual feed.

So, I would like to link you to a beautiful piece made by Asiulus by clicking here. Happy Friday, and make the most of this upcoming fabulous July the Fourth!

Sorry guys…I seem to have caught the flu. I thought it would be a great opportunity to sketch some things since I’m at home, but I’m pretty useless. Daily sketches are delayed a bit more. This actually makes me thinks…I should create some custom images for this blog for “sick day” or “traveling”..until then, here’s an image from kbroglio that looks about right

Well happy Friday, Readers and Internet – I wanted to address my recent absence on the blog-osphere. I am sorry I have not been productive on the daily sketch front – trust me, I wish I was much more productive. And even tho another Friday has gone by without a sketch greeting you, I wanted to wish you all a wonderful weekend.

I feel like I’m finally getting my sketching feet back under me. I have been focusing on finishing a painting, which I will either finish by this weekend or ALMOST finish. In the next few weeks I should be posting the final product as well as more daily sketches. These last two weeks have been wonderful, because I have slept more often than not. I feel refreshed. An now it is time to kick-my-butt again, and make things happen creatively no matter what the hour.

I tell you this now….I will miss sleep. It has been really nice. <sigh>

HAPPY FRIDAY!

Cardboard…why are you so awesome?
Click here if you don’t see the video below

Meeting of Important People – “Brittney Lane Don’t Care” (Official Video)
Directed by Thom Glunt

Happy Wednesday fellow readers! Some of you may have already heard of the reality TV show, “Work Of Art”. Its put on by Bravo, Sarah Jessica Parker and her production company, Pretty Matches, and its a show about real artists competing against each-other for $100,000 and a show at the Brooklyn Museum!! Andy Warhol is in that museum – the creator of “POP” art. Now POP culture, in this case as defined by reality TV shows will be coming to his work…AAAHH!! Its blowing my MIIIND!

Even if it fails, which it definitely will in the artistic community, the fact is art is now in mainstream TV – with commercials – art is getting massive exposure to America. The conversation of what constitutes “good art” and the arguments that always ensure from that will be in the common conversation. I myself am not a fan of reality shows – but it doesn’t matter. Art, whatever the quality, whatever it may be, is among us now. We shall wait and see if the people who watch TV will make this show popular. It the nature of this almost social experiment is what excites me.

How will the art be judged? How will the artists react to said judgment? How conceptual will the conversation be? How will it be edited to the idea that American’s like person to person drama and how important will the whining and arguing be made in regards to the art?
Ok, no more talk. Videos are below. Can’t see them? Here’s a link!

A happy end of Monday to you all! Remember the “Name It And Win It” contest 2 months back? Well, I finally finished the painting of the Puff-Tailed Whiffersnap thats going to be mailed to Eirewolf as soon as I can get a pro-quality scan made this week.
To see the process of how it got painted, click here.

But because I also like the 2 other names given so much, both Marie and Joe will be getting an original “pre-painting” study and sketch of this piece. I’ll be mailing it shortly guys!! Thanks for your patience. Next name it and win it contest to be announced at some undetermined time.

Some sketches of piglets with wings!

If you can’t see the video above, click here.

What an amazing girl…this is an excerpt from wikipedia:

Cullis-Suzuki was born and raised in Vancouver, Canada.  Her father is a second-generation Japanese Canadian. While attending Lord Tennyson Elementary School in French Immersion, at the age of nine, she founded the Environmental Children’s Organization (ECO), a group of children dedicated to learning and teaching other youngsters about environmental issues. In 1992, at the age of 12, Cullis-Suzuki raised money with members of ECO, to attend the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. Along with group members Michelle Quigg, Vanessa Suttie, and Morgan Geisler, Cullis-Suzuki presented environmental issues from a youth perspective at the summit, where she was applauded for a speech to the delegates. The video has since become a viral hit, popularly known as “The Girl Who Silenced the World for 5 Minutes”. In 1993, she was honored in the United Nations Environment Program’s Global 500 Roll of Honor. In 1993, Doubleday published her book Tell the World (ISBN 0-385-25422-9), a 32-page book of environmental steps for families.

To read the full wiki-article, click here.

For all my patient readers, I am sorry for my absence on the blog-o-sphere these past two weeks. I would like to inform you that I have a happy reason for this. I have FINISHED the inkings, scanning, cleaning up, and laying out of my coloring book. I am almost done with writing a little blurb about each fantasy beast and their baby and I will be sending out my dummy (a little printed example of “look it how it will look, all COOL and stuff”) to Dover Publishing in the next week. If Dover doesn’t like it, I have another publisher I’m going to approach, and if THEY don’t like it, I’m self publishing.

FREE STUFF!

Those who are on my mailing list will get three, large, final, un-watermarked images from my “Fantasy Beast Babies Coloring Book” I have chosen for downloading and printing.  If you would like to be involved in this free artistic give-away, sign-up on my mailing list by clicking here.

Have a lovely Tuesday, and I will be posting some sketches soon…starting my next coloring book due to popular demand: MERMAIDS!!

Love is the cure,
for your pain will keep giving birth to more pain
until your eyes constantly exhale love
as effortlessly as your body yields its scent.

-Rumi

A raindrop melody maker! Thank you, Ashley, for the link. Its soothing and fun, a combination that rarely exists within my excitable self.
I invite you all to try it out!

Click on the link below:
http://www.lullatone.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/raindrop.swf

The very rough drawings in this I find sort of charming – so I thought I’d post it and not clean it up. Something kind of raw about these quick scribblers I enjoyed today. I hope you do too. Good job surviving monday…i know I did.