A (golden) Barrel of Fun!

For the past couple days I have been spending hours at my desk painting and listening to too many podcasts. 

I am trying to come up with a few cool things for an upcoming art show and I went to the local Saguaro National Park and hiked around and took a mizillion (made that word up to convey the extreme quantity of photos I took) reference/inspirational photos! 

Saguaros (and cacti in general) are often portrayed cartoon-y (hey, I draw them that way too!) but I wanted to try to get all the weird gritty, awkward stages of cacti growth too! If you go back in my archives, you can see I made a saguaro pattern in December 2015 (cartoon-y as HECK) and way back in June 2014 but I wanted to make a fresh interpretation since I'm no longer the same person I was back when I made those! Run on sentence. 

Anyways, I had a lot of fun and filled at least 19 pages of my 2 sketchbooks up with watercolor and gouache paintings of cacti. Here are a couple untouched scans! 

My main focus this time was to represent the saguaros with a ton of arms (meaning they are older cacti) and also get them to look more proportional and tall! After I painted my heart out and accumulated enough "okay" cacti, I moved onto scanning them, which is a whole production in itself. 

After I scanned them in at super high resolutions, I brought all the pages into my trusty photoshop and started to edit the backgrounds (the sketchbook paper) out so the cactus stood alone. Above is the SUPER messy file of a million layers of cacti that I drug (is that a word?) into one single file. The reason I do this is so I can proportion the drawings and shrink them to be all the same relative size. Since I was using two sketchbooks (when one was still wet, I could still continue to paint in the other and via versa) the paintings were not all the same size. Saguaros are obviously bigger than golden barrel cacti so I had to make them that way! 

Above are some of what I painted presented in a more organized fashion. This helps me so when I am making the patterns, I could see which ones I wanted to use that fit the color scheme/space/etc.

Long post! Hope you stayed with me. I finished up the patterns yesterday and started to order a couple products I'll be selling and (hopefully!) showcasing soon! You'll get the first sneak peek here! 

Pretend I posted this on Earth Day

Earth Day was a week ago and I never posted what I was up 'cause I was too busy celebrating this planet!

How did you celebrate the Earth on its special day (and everyday?) I like to walk to the grocery store when I can, use reusable bags and bottles, shower irregularly, use both sides of my sketchbook pages, paint by candlelight (LOL, to save electricity though!)and take long naps that slow down my breathing so I emit less CO2 into the atmosphere.

In all seriousness, I do try my best to love the earth and be good to it! Hope you guys are too!

The 3 P's

Popcorn. Pacey. Pattern making.

Spending my night watching Dawson's Creek, eating too much popcorn (as per usual,) and painting lots of patterns in my sketchbook. Not making anything serious, but I had fun playing around and mixing watercolors with my new set of gouaches.

The pattern to the left is inspired by a craving for some chocolate chip cookies. *Super serious artist*

Sick As A Dogg

Guys, the past couple days have been THE WORST. I thought I had some food poisoning but it ended up being the full blown stomach flu and I got everyone I know sicker than sick! I feel terrible! I ended up sleeping for 3 days straight after a night spent napping on my bathroom floor (gross, I know) and I am just starting to feel human again. Sipping that 7-Up and snacking on saltines until get my appetite back. Ugh!

Stay well, homies. 

Mylar

    

Using Mylar balloons to spell out some silly things.

  

Bare Your Teeth

A Way With Words...

If you ever speak to me, ever, I will memorize every word you say and replay it in my mind and analyze the shit out of it, no matter why or who or when or where or any of the other "w's." Part of that is because I'm a sensitive girl with feelings and the other part is because I'm introverted and anxious as hell and think constantly even though I really really don't want to. 

Anyways, I usually write out a lot of the words people say to me in my sketchbook- just to get them out of my brain and onto some paper. I make them look pretty or ugly (depending on how they were directed at me, which may seem obvious but... ) and this sentence from last night, kept playing in my mind. Pretty funny thing to say to someone, but also a pretty okay compliment.

Of course, I had to decide to make each letter out of sunflower seed illustrations and that was fun and tedious and kind of a painful creative decision on my part.

Anyways, here's some word art for you to look at and laugh at and wonder about and make fun of. Try it out on all the ladies and gents out there! I heard it works best with birds and other critters that have a seed-based diet. 

♥ ♥ ♥