Setbacks

Man...this week SUCKED BALLS.

I really can't think of another way more eloquent way of describing this week other than "sucking" and "balls".

But on the positive notes:

My computer was fixed for free. Apparently last generation MAC Book Pros have a faulty graphics card. I found that out the hard way this past week. But the new card cost nothing.

Except for missing one day of running and one day of gym I stuck to my good eating and am seeing results.

I don't want to keep revisiting it, but I am going to post happy things on my next post!

There is arting going on as well, I am working on my friend's comic which a preview of that will come in the next post and I did a fun trip around the area and that needs to be talked about as well.

I'm having trouble with my creative grab bag series right now. I picked another difficult card (make an animated movie!) and I don't know what to do. I wanted it done by the end of the month, but I'm not sure if I can do it. We'll see

Tarot

So a few weeks ago I went to a White Elephant party with my Geek Girls. Near the end of the night my friend Shauna got her tarot cards out and was giving little readings. We were to think of a question, shuffle the cards, then cut the cards into three piles, the past, present, and future.

My question was about my job. Major budget cuts to the education system are happening and I don't think I have ever really been so unsure of my employment for the next year.

Ah, the life of an art teacher.

Anyway as I was shuffling a card popped out, as I was about to put it back in Shauna grabbed it and told me, "It wants to be seen."

I continued to shuffle and cut the cards into the piles.

The first card (past) was the Two of Pentacles. The card for change. It makes sense, moving across the country, starting my career, meeting Evan, marriage, a house. My recent past has been all about change.

The second card is my present and it was the Ten of Wands, Oppression. Which with my job, this makes sense. I'm unsure of my employment so I don't want to get too attached, I am subbing a day a week which disrupts my life and teaching, but I do it for the love of the rest of my job. I am tired but I know I need to still work hard.

The third card is my future. While the card did not give me a definitive answer about my employment it did tell me that I would be okay. The card was the Six of Wands. Victory.

The fourth card, the card that popped out when I was shuffling, was the Three of Pentacles, titled "Works." The card featured an artist. :D

So, as long as I work hard and keep doing what I'm doing, I think I am going to be okay.

Massive Art Update

So there has been art going on.

Truly. So I posted a bunch of stuff over at the deviant art site and wanted to share it here!


Synthetic Business Cards by ~SyntheticPlatypus on deviantART


Emerson by ~SyntheticPlatypus on deviantART


Kiriban Kabuki by ~SyntheticPlatypus on deviantART


Mirror World by ~SyntheticPlatypus on deviantART

ENJOY!

This is a Test

This is only a test...

I'm alive, I promise. Everything kind of just hit at once and I've been slowly swimming my way back to shore.

Everything is great and awesome though. Some quick highlights.

My job has started back up again. It's going great. The only thing about this is that I'm spending tons of time on new power points and project examples since I'm starting at the beginning with the little ones and have nothing.

I'm also becoming a middle school cheerleading coach. *shrugs* I have no idea, don't ask.

The house is being cleaned out. Like a major overhaul. I feel like I'm drowning in stuff and that Evan and I are falling into that owning a house trap of filling it up. Just in the living room we are down a bookshelf and entry way table. Just started going through clothes last night again. I'm so sick of stuff.

Clothes are easy to go through right now. I'm back on the horse of losing weight. I have 20 more days of my restrictive diet plan and then can slowly add back some normal things. But I'm feeling so healthy and great some things may be having a permanent grave for me. I will also tell you about the horror show that happened to me because of that on another day.

Also had to clean out the fridge because apparently "natural flavors" n thing sis code for milk and soy. Which my husband is allergic to. He kept getting ill and we had to figure it out. I gave half my fridge away. That sucked.

The art portion of my life besides making examples for school has been nill. Monday I have a Geek Girl Goal Setting meeting and it's the perfect time to restart my goal of an artwork a month. The first being a prize for a dear friend who got my 1,000th page view on the deviantart site. Then I'll be back to my creative grab bagging.

Umm Some drama with mine and Evan's wedding rings too. We are both getting new ones, which is depressing but better than having to deal with the drama of them both. He's allergic to his and mine just keeps breaking. The jewelery place is working with us though. Which is nice.

I will be blogging more and more, I promise! It's part of the goals!

Comic Sans

Stolen from here: Timothy McSweeney's Internet Tendency

I'm Comic Sans, Asshole.
BY MIKE LACHER

- - - -

Listen up. I know the shit you've been saying behind my back. You think I'm stupid. You think I'm immature. You think I'm a malformed, pathetic excuse for a font. Well think again, nerdhole, because I'm Comic Sans, and I'm the best thing to happen to typography since Johannes fucking Gutenberg.

You don't like that your coworker used me on that note about stealing her yogurt from the break room fridge? You don't like that I'm all over your sister-in-law's blog? You don't like that I'm on the sign for that new Thai place? You think I'm pedestrian and tacky? Guess the fuck what, Picasso. We don't all have seventy-three weights of stick-up-my-ass Helvetica sitting on our seventeen-inch MacBook Pros. Sorry the entire world can't all be done in stark Eurotrash Swiss type. Sorry some people like to have fun. Sorry I'm standing in the way of your minimalist Bauhaus-esque fascist snoozefest. Maybe sometime you should take off your black turtleneck, stop compulsively adjusting your Tumblr theme, and lighten the fuck up for once.

People love me. Why? Because I'm fun. I'm the life of the party. I bring levity to any situation. Need to soften the blow of a harsh message about restroom etiquette? SLAM. There I am. Need to spice up the directions to your graduation party? WHAM. There again. Need to convey your fun-loving, approachable nature on your business' website? SMACK. Like daffodils in motherfucking spring.

When people need to kick back, have fun, and party, I will be there, unlike your pathetic fonts. While Gotham is at the science fair, I'm banging the prom queen behind the woodshop. While Avenir is practicing the clarinet, I'm shredding "Reign In Blood" on my double-necked Stratocaster. While Univers is refilling his allergy prescriptions, I'm racing my tricked-out, nitrous-laden Honda Civic against Tokyo gangsters who'll kill me if I don't cross the finish line first. I am a sans serif Superman and my only kryptonite is pretentious buzzkills like you.

It doesn't even matter what you think. You know why, jagoff? Cause I'm famous. I am on every major operating system since Microsoft fucking Bob. I'm in your signs. I'm in your browsers. I'm in your instant messengers. I'm not just a font. I am a force of motherfucking nature and I will not rest until every uptight armchair typographer cock-hat like you is surrounded by my lovable, comic-book inspired, sans-serif badassery.

Enough of this bullshit. I'm gonna go get hammered with Papyrus.

Chuck Jones: An Animated Life

So a few weeks back my brother and I went to Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport to sadly take my Mom there so she could go home to Michigan after her ten day visit. After we said our tearful farewells I asked my brother if we could find the little mini art gallery they have in that terminal (Terminal Four!) he said sure since we were going to have to pay for the full hour of parking anyhow.

So we found the gallery and what do you know...a Chuck Jones exhibit! Now for those of you who don't know who Chuck Jones is, he is one of the lead animators/creator of characters from Looney Tunes. It was quite the retrospective of his work. I didn't get pictures of everything but I got the best things in my opinion.

Again these are taken on my camera phone as it was the only thing I had. Yay Droid!

Biography


Sketches








Looney Tunes Paintings




















How the Grinch Stole X-mas Painting


Phoenix Art!

Bigger Than You

So in Tempe Towne Marketplace there is a store front called "The Night Gallery" It is a facility that is used to showcase student works from ASU. A lot of the time they will have "established" Phoenix artists share the gallery space with the student work in order to get more people to come in and see the shows and to hopefully get more revenue. The shows are free but there is a donation jar in the front.

The following is from a show that is still up (it's been up for awhile now in the back) and it is by Nathanial Lewis and called "Bigger Than You" According to his blog this was his Thesis show for ASU.

here a couple links to him and his work: Blogspot Blog and Art Site

A side note: My photos don't really do his work justice. I only usually have my phone on me, so all of these pics are taken on my Droid.

Now on to the show!


"Blossom"


"Icarus"


"Scribble"




"Feast"


"Maya"


"Melt"


"Real Gone 1"


"Ghost"


"Anticipation"


"Hunger"


"Loom"


"Me & You"


"Extrude"


"Romper"


"Satisfaction"


"Make Believe"

Phoenix Art by a Phoenix Artist

CD Cover Design

Fantabulastic's Victoria by ~SyntheticPlatypus on deviantART

The next Card in The Creative Grab Bag Series! Design a CD cover for a fake band. Luckily, I already have one of those.

Fanatbulastic starring the lovely Kabukikatze on Guitar and SyntheticPlatypus on Vocals.

Awhile back Miss Kabuki and I did an art trade where we had created a band and did posters advertising for them : Fantabulastic Poster
Miss Kabuki removed hers cleaning house :) But I assure you it it was an epic poster advertising the Russian leg of our tour.

So a little about the design of this cover. I had the band already so the hard part of figuring out a name was already taken care of. I knew I wanted to revisit fantabulastic, but how?

When I was in Victoria, Canada I fell in absolute love with the Native Art there. Evan bought a painting and I bought some magnets for the fridge. If I could have bought more I would have.

So I decided to use that as my inspiration! The CD is called Victoria for Canada and I used the design elements in their native art that makes it so unique and fantastic. The colors are simplistic and everything is made of shapes and alot of those shapes have animals in them.

I'm on the left I have glasses! Miss Kabuki is on the right. See the red hair? :)

In this picture somewhere: A beaver, a rhino, a frog, an eagle, a cardinal, and a parrot.

I had a ton of fun doing this, once I figured out how to draw with the shapes it actually came out rather quickly. Colored it in photoshop and sized it correctly.

Phoenix art by a Phoenix Artist!

Make Art Like A Child

miscellaneous by ~SyntheticPlatypus on deviantART

Another somewhat easy card drawn, once I figured out what I was actually going to do.

Card Drawn: Make Art Like a Child

So the first thing I did was dig out a bunch of old old artwork and look through it. I was looking for inspiration, at one point I was going to update a picture I had done in 1998 but then I found some stuff I did while I was in school and realized the answer was this:

DOODLE

I teach kids now and this is all they actually ever want to do. So I took a sketchbook page and I doodled the crap out of it. No pencil, no erasing. Just pen to paper and have at it.

I enjoyed filling up this space quite a bit and enjoyed trying to come up with all sorts of different things.

It did take me a few hours to do it (I watched some moves while doodling) but on the whole I'm pleased how it came out!

Photograph Strangers: Tempe Fireworks

Tempe Fireworks by ~SyntheticPlatypus on deviantART

Grapheme Magazine

Grapheme Magazine by ~SyntheticPlatypus on deviantART

Design a Magazine.

Though this one did not take as long as the others, the majority of this one was spent cussing and fitting about because I knew what I wanted to do, but goodness was my computer and programs against me.

I would say that about 80% of the time was spent on things that did not work. Grah. But now I know how to make pictures from text, so I learned! Which I guess is the point of all this.

So, Welcome to the first issue of Grapheme Magazine a magazine dedicated to all things typologically related.

I wanted this cover to be a bit tongue in cheek about typography. So for those of you who do not know the vocab:

Grapheme:is a fundamental unit in a written language.
Ligature: where two or more graphemes are joined as a single glyph
Kerning: refers to adjusting the space between two letters
Bleed:a printing term that refers to printing that goes beyond the edge of the sheet after trimming.
Serif:semi-structural details on the ends of some of the strokes that make up letters and symbols.
Sans-Serif: the opposite of above!
Helvetica: A font. The best font ever, really.

I wanted this to read like a Vogue or Seventeen magazine, where there is bits of innuendo and relationship advice. It was fun coming up with the headlines.

Besides the bits I had trouble with (namely the person) this was fun to stretch a bit back into the graphic design territory and using the computer again. I'm glad I could, the undo button came in handy for this one.

Also normally, I wouldn't have left such a big space to the left of the word Helvetica, but I left that there for shipping stickers if someone was to get a subscription for this magazine.

Black Condor Vs. Black Condor Inking Commission

Inking Commission by ~SyntheticPlatypus on deviantART

Pencils: Larry Guidry

Inks: Me!

So I won't lie, it was a bit intimidating inking a piece of art drawn by an already established artist. What happens if I messed it up? Luckily, the whole process went as smooth as butter.

I worked in small increments daily, because inking while fun can be a tedious and tiring procedure. Coupled with my fear of screwing up, little bits seemed the way to go.

I worked where I was comfortable first, namely the people. I used several sizes of Sakura Micron Pens in order to keep the detail and vary the thickness of the lines. I used a large black marker for the big areas of black.

The transparency in the human looking Black Condor was difficult, I didn't want everything to look the same in DC, it had to look like something was in front of it, even though the cape was see-through. Uber thin lines and cross hatching the ink pen for shading became my new friend.

The Helmeted Black Condor was a different kind of challenge. In the practice sketch of the cover that Larry Guidry he very much drew the feathered cape that this Black Condor has. I think he forgot to finish it in the final draft cause I had to. Another terror of messing up, drawing and inking my own stuff on someone else's work. Eeek.

I saved Washington DC for last. Which also took the longest. I don't really ever draw landscapes and what a landscape this was! I filled in the darkest areas at first and then worked with my thin pens to fill in the rest of the detail.

Walah!

Design a Building

House by ~SyntheticPlatypus on deviantART

Design a Building.

Dear god do I hate 2-pt perspective. I never really realized it until I had to do this card for my "Creative Grab Bag" series. But oh. my. goodness. I will never be an architect.

It all started innocent enough. I had a hard time coming up with an idea at first. But then I came up with this:

What happens if I took a traditional (and old) Arizonan house updated it to modern times and stuck it in the mid-west using materials commonly found there instead of AZ?

So yay, I had my idea. Then I say, "now why don't I do this traditionally? No computer for me! I don't want to do everything computer or traditional, I want to experiment with both!"

I am not a smart person sometimes.

So, I get the big bristol board paper out, the 11" x 17" and my ruler. I pencil it all in and ink it. Took days. Then I decide to watercolor it. That is when I messed up.

That's right folks, messed it up BEYOND REPAIR. Traditional work. No ctrl-z or apple-z to undo.

In my white hot rage I recall ripping it in half. After the dearest hubby calms me down a bit I settle and begin again. Same way, changing up the design a bit, and correcting mistakes I noticed on the first one.

Penciled it. Inked it. Decided to do graphic markers in all grey-scale.

This has turned out much better.

Evan had suggested I just call this one a failed creative experience and get a new card. But I said no, because I am determined to have a whole series of artworks from this. I got back on my horse after my hissy fit and began again.

I have a feeling this may happen again.

Variety

Well I have several things to blog about so I thought I would just hit them all at once.

Went outside today to the backyard and went to check on my plants. My peppers are doing awesome, I have about 4 growing and on of them turned red! My tomato plant is iffy. Some of its leaves were crisp (I watered it) but there was a good size tomato (still green) growing. We'll see. The lemon tree is good. I believe the little nubbins I am seeing are actually tiny itty bitty lemons. Yay! The kumquat tree is all green with nothing else but it seems okay. The orange tree...WAS doing good. My dearest puppy Gala thought that the lower four branches were apparently a SNACK. Hopefully it will recover.

Speaking of the pup, she has had some MAJOR shedding issues. So the brushing and the washing have not been working. She isn't allowed on the couch anymore it's so bad. So, I've been keeping an eye on Girlpirate's LiveJournal because her kitty has had some bad shedding too. People suggested to her the FURminator and she went and used it and posted pics of the outcome. That was good enough for me. I went out and bought one and gave her a bath and began brushing her. 0_o I had enough extra fur for a whole other Gala. I've been brushing her off and on throughout the evening as well and got another baseball sized tuft off her. This thing is my new best friend.

So, I ended up canceling all of my plans today. I woke up with a massive headache and sneezing fits so I wanted to relax today.

Yeah right.

So Evan said that this would probably be the last halfway decent weekend to do anything in our attic for the insulation. Let me tell you all, we got SCREWED on the inspection of our home. 100% so if any of you are buying a home get a friend who knows what they are doing for another inspection. The guy said we had 8 inches of insulation in our attic and we had about 3 inches in some places and none in others. Oy. So we went to Home Depot and got 20 bags of insulation (recycled! it's actually awesome) and rented the blower machine. Once we figured out how to work the damn thing we went through the bags quite quickly and Evan was up in the attic and put it all over the place. We are going to get about 17 more bags tomorrow morning and finish up before 1:30 to return the machine. We figure we'll do this once a year until we gt the recommended R-60 with all of this we are probably going to be at about R-19. Which is way better than the NOTHING we had.

All this week as preparation for our talent show at school. Last week we had the auditions and then this past Thursday was the dress rehearsal and Friday was the show. We were running around all ragged trying to get everything done last minute (next time, 2 weeks in between tryouts and show!) The show went great. We had one kid choke on his song (but we had sheet music so he had words to look at, at least!) and all the kids showed up. At the end of the show a parent came up to me and said that this was the most talented show she had seen and the most organized. I laughed when she said that and replied "I'm glad it SEEMED organized." Because wowza, we were literally getting stuff ready at the last minute. It went great though and I'm proud of the kids.

Started the picture for my next Creative Grab Bag project, it's almost done with the drawing bit, but then I'm going to ink it. I showed it to Evan and he said I should paint it to color it in. Uuuugh. I hate to admit it, but a water color wash would look fantastic. I'll probably finish all the drawing bits tomorrow. I need to check out to make sure I have water proof pens, I may need to hit the store.

I think this is it for tonight. Just lots of little things today!

Goal Setting

So I belong to a group of Geek Girls here in AZ. They are a wonderful bunch of intelligent (and hot!) women who like to get together, have fun, and not bitch and back stab at each other. Which really, has been my whole problem with finding long lasting girlfriends with the exception of a few.

So last night I went to a Goal Setting Meeting about Time Management. This meet-up is run by Shauna who is trying to create a whole program about setting goals and getting people to pay for it. Lucky for me, it's free to the Geek Girls.

So, last month we talked about goal setting and this month it was keeping our goals during such hectic times. Shauna gave us a lot of good ideas on how to stop making excuses and asking why we procrastinate or are so busy.

So, I'm gonna use a few of her ideas and apply them to my "rocks" which was from "7 habits of Highly Effective People" and you have to take the big ricks (the stuff that s uber important to you) and put them in your bucket and then fill in the gravel (the day to day drudgery that fills our lives).

My rocks (in no order in particular):

Sleep
Eat
Evan/Family
Friends
Exercise
Art
Work

So I want to focus on these in my life and tie my goals in with them.

A few things I'm going to read: iwantmorebalance.com and "The 4 Hour Workweek" Also as homework for the group was reading "The Alchemist" which everyone assures me is life changing.

Now my goals for the month!

Finishing 2 art pieces for the month plus an art sketch from life once a week
Socializing with the Geek Girls 5-8 times.
Blogging twice a week!
Weighing four pounds less!
Exercise 3 days of cardio a week and 3 days of weight lifting a week. No time constraints. Plus Wii fit Plus in the mornings.
House stuff: paint our bedroom and office. Evan won't let me clean out the gutters.
Eating habits are being vegetarian every other week.

So here's to the next month!

Little by Little

So, I'm an elementary art teacher for those of you who don't know. I switched from middle school to elementary mid-year. It was not a good half of the year.

So now I am smack dab in the middle of teaching the little ones and I must say for the most part I love it. Sure, it can get challenging and aggravating but I do enjoy it.

Today stuck out to me though. On some days I have two classes of the same grade level. Today was my double third grade.

The first class came in (honestly not my favorite, good kids...they just don't get along with one another) and we had to move seats around then I wanted to show some slides of abstract art and talk about how you illustrate feelings with abstract art. I had already had them try to draw some feelings in a previous class and now I wanted to show them some real things and they could change their ideas.

They kept interrupting one another and me. They wouldn't stay on topic and I even had someone ask if they could start the art stuff because this was boring. (insert rage here) I spent the last five minutes of the class half-berating them and half-pleading for them to start acting like actual third graders and not kindergartners (although out of my 5 classes of kinders only one acts like that). So after a harried class my next third grade came in.

Talk about a bipolar age.

They were WONDERFUL. No seats had to be moved, we got right into our discussion, we actually discussed what they saw in abstract art, then what they felt from the colors and shapes. We talked about Picasso's Guernica and they were oh so close to figuring out it was about a bombing. We discussed Frank Stella's shapes and how one of his pieces was a beach. The discussion was going so well with people raising their hands and listening to one another that I even had to put time limits and calling on less kids. Then I passed their papers back and they re-did some of their sketches and colored in things. When I told them we were making watercolor paintings out of their sketches on real watercolor paper you could feel their excitement in the air. "Real paper, like a real artist"

I totally heart this class. They seriously have given me one of the most fulfilling teaching days I think I have ever experienced.

Also a positive note: My first graders did pinch clay animals and except for a couple broken pieces here and there they came out okay. I fired two classes worth of glazeware and have at least two potential art show pieces from that (it's in a few weeks!) and loaded up a kiln before I left with the last two classes. I'll probably have one or two from those classes too.

I live sculpture making so much more than vessel making. The other teacher that taught elementary only ever had the kids make different kinds of cups (small pinch, big pinch, small coil, big coil mug) BORING in my opinion. So I had my first graders make pinch animals. Any kind they wanted. Next year I'll do more things with the clay, like relief sculptures, greek vessels, mini-busts, and boxes. The kids can do it. You just need to expect more from them.

That's what I'm doing. The kids always tell me how hard my projects are but they love my class even though it is so hard and they complain. But their projects turn out great. Expect more and get more.

So things are good on the teaching front. Getting more and more comfortable every day. I'm already planning on what to do for next year if I have a job. I already know what I'll do if I don't.

Want to know?

I'll drink and cry myself into oblivion for the first week. Then update all my resumes and whatnot and go get a retail job until I find teaching employment.

I hope to avoid that.

Lets end on a happy note...I got married! Once I get some more photos and possible long videos (I have some short ones) I will do giant uber post.

The Annual Gunmetalblack Contest

So, for the past few years I have entered this : Linkage and have had a good run with it. I won a year, got fan prize another year. I got some really neat prizes for it too. Cause Sir Gunmetalblack is an epic artist.

Year I won Grand Prize

Year got Fan Prize

Now the reason I bring up this contest is because, honestly, you can see my work GROW as the years progress. The year that I won I did two entries, so it will be a bit lopsided. But take a gander at the years.

2009

2008 Fan Prize Winner

2007 Entry 1

2007 Entry 2 Grand Prize Winner

2006

Wow, 2006...really? So here come 2010. I am currently working on a sketch for this character, Sea Queen She is turning out exactly how I want her to right now and it's just in the pencils phase. I think I will turn back the clock on media though and try to do something a bit different than my usual computer work. I think I may do colored pencils with some mixed media.

We shall seeee.