happy thursday!

Spring is in the air!! Good things are happening all around us. The Dalai Lama is coming to town next week, and I hope our paths cross.

This was a special request for my mister. We have been singing a lot of Fresh Prince songs lately. Here's the video that started this little obsession. Could this get any more AWESOME?

A little beluga explores.

Lightning speed.

HEllo hello! Happy Wednesday!

Dears, I must run fast right now, but really want to show you what I've been doing in the evenings.

more later, i promise!

Psychedelic waters.

Dears. Winter is a very serious time of year, with all of its grey, dark, buttoned-up days that seem like permanent twilight. I must say that being chilly makes me a bit more restrained in my work as well. It's high time things got a little crazy around here. A little fun. A little coo-coo if you will. Here's my first contribution to the wild & crazy spring fund.

Peace.

New pieces for the shoppe.

Dears, I am just busy as a little bee right now between painting, sewing, working and yoga-ing. The shoppe received some much-needed attention yesterday, thank goodness! We have some new pieces up, including Ms. July (this is going to be ridiculously hard for me to part with), Happiness Makes you Cry (I know, my love of the Flaming Lips is getting to be a little much, right? If you don't know what I'm talking about, click here.), and a really fun print-original hybrid on Rain at the Beach. Here they are in all of their glory.




Ms. July

Happiness Makes You Cry.

Rain at the Beach.

Final touches.

Dear-hearts, I am nearly finished with the portfolio preparation. Whew! I started to work on a whole new series last night and think I will add one of these two ink drawings on newsprint to the mix. I can't decide which of these is a better portfolio piece, though. Any thoughts?

illustration friday: tales & legends.

Mr. Unicorn, the subject of many tales & legends, sits for his portrait. Pen & ink on layers of acrylic paint upon cardboard.

I like the idea of stately animal portraiture.

Have I mentioned how much I love illustration friday? Well, it's true!

illustration friday: plain.

I am still trying to get back into the swing of things since returning from our weekend away, and in the process, I missed my chance to submit my contribution to Illustration Friday. Nonetheless, I am sharing it with you, my dears. Last week's prompt was "plain." This is a pen & ink drawing on newsprint.

The path of least resistance. Svadhisthana.

Dear-hearts,

I finally have something fun to share with you. If you have been reading for awhile, you might remember that I have been working on chakra art for the last nine months or so. And I have occasionally written about the chakras and subtle energy body. Although I have had sporadic bright spots in my work on the chakras (pieces I liked on their own), I struggled to find my voice or angle on presenting the spectrum of major chakras of which there are seven. So, I would ocassionally create a chakra piece that I liked, but I never felt like the idea could carry through to seven separate, yet unified pieces.

A few weeks ago, while working on my illustration friday assignment, I scribbled out the first trappings of what I really wanted to convey in taking on this subject (one that has been studied by so many before me). What I sought to achieve with this series was the movement associated with the chakras. Instead of memorializing them in a heavy and static nature (which I DO find quite enchanting), I wanted to capture the dynamic fluidity of our subtle body of energy. Ultimately, the piece will consist of all of the major chakras, which I have yet to finish. I wanted to share this bit with you as it happened, though.

I'll be back soon. I have a hilarious story from my class last night involving one of my favorite topics: typography.

Illustration Friday: Stitch

Stitch. I imagine this little bird is helping Cinderella sew some wonderful dress for her fancy night out with prince charming.

Illustration Friday rocks.

Going on fabulous.

Dear-hearts,
This is the piece I was talking about yesterday. The title refers to that lovely musical "The Sound of Music." Remember, where Liesel and Rolf are in the gazebo dancing around in the rainstorm? This piece just makes me want to sing "you are wonderful, going on fabulous..." to anyone who happens to look at or read this blog. (hi mom & dad!) Goodness, am I always like this? All sunshine and roses? No no, but why not is the real question!

More about the piece: It is ink and watercolor on gesso-primed paper. The colors are crazy-vibrant: like a neon eye-patch. It will be in the shop just as soon as I get her scanned.

Necklaces.

LOTS of reds! The ropes of orange-y necklaces my grandma-ma wore constantly and later gave me inspired this little bit of red delight!

Pop-py poppy.

Here's a little poppy for a rainy Wednesday afternoon.

The un-precious.

I am definitely not Type A, at least not when I'm living authentically. Back when I was a prosecutor (motivated by a sense of Karmic duty to domestic violence and child abuse victims as well as the dubious quest for trial experience), I had to live a Type A lifestyle in order to keep it together-- working 90 hours a week, still trying to keep my yoga practice intact, making art only when there was *time*-- it required a lot of planning and scheduling, but not a lot of time to think or relax. This was not my path.


My path involves volunteering, teaching yoga to the elderly and at-risk youth, using the old law license on a low-key basis in an office at home, painting everyday, keeping the home fires burning and the such. Part of inching my way back to the path of living a truly authentic life has involved giving myself time to play. Play at yoga. Play at art. Playing is hard when you limit yourself to tools that are *too precious* to mess up. I've mentioned this before, but I do some of my best work (or my favorite work, at least) on cheap, throwaway materials. They allow me the freedom to just do what comes naturally, rather than plan out everything to the point where I've stiffled any of the ideas that have swirled into my brain at 5 a.m. But now that I have begun the process of offering my work for sale, I am torn about my re-use, re-tool, re-cycle tendencies. I want to give someone the best quality materials possible. Hmmmmm. Sounds like I might need to get over my *fear* of good materials. I think the new Fabriano paper might be just the starting point.



But before I do, I have some pack-rat scribbles to share with you, dear readers. The backstory: my husband studied geology as an undergraduate. He has all of these fabulous books from those days. I love digging through them to find new words or images. As I was looking through a petrology book, I found a cache of old tests and study guides. These are such a lovely bit of archeology, in my opinion, his twenty-year old boy handwriting, atrocious spelling, the professor's notes, it's so fascinating. The next day, though, I found the pile of tests in the recycling bin. What? I asked him if he really wanted to get rid of them. He gave me one of those "not everyone keeps their retainer from junior high" looks, so I knew he had let it go. Nonetheless, I thought it proper to ask him if I could scribble on them. These images are the result. Un-precious fun.

Happy Creative Thursday!

Happy Creative Thursday everyone! As I have mentioned in the past, I love Marisa Haedike's blog and podcast: Creative Thursday. Well, Marisa has invited readers to participate in an *official* Creative Thursday and here is what I created for the occasion.



I am so happy with this little sketches that keep flowing from my brush and ink-y pen. I could see all three of these in this series on the bedroom wall of a lucky lover of fashion.

Visit this piece in my flickr photostream by clicking here.

Soft shoe.

I know. The scanner is still tormenting me. Here is a new drawing-painting of a jazz shoe I'm lusting after.

Oh Etsy!

Darling Readers,

I thought it was high time for me to give you all an update on the Etsy shop. Originally, I had hoped to open the shop on October 1. Well, I am still researching printers, since I would like to offer originals and prints in the shop. My criteria are as follows: reasonable prices, sensitive to the environment, and high quality. I'll keep you posted. Until then, I'm slaving away!

kc

In other news.

Here is another little peek at what has been happening in the studio. I know, it is completely different from the other pieces that have been pouring out lately, but I have just been flooded with ideas and I don't want to discriminate right now. The ideas have been keeping me up at night. Normally, when I have lawyer-related thoughts keeping me up at night, I have a little yogic ritual to calm my mind. But I am really relishing in the art-inspiration thoughts, so I just let myself have them and watch the thoughts fly by.

Champagne.

sketching my brains out. oh i just love this. the FLAMING LIPS show just threw me over the edge with inspiration: the music, the spectacle of it all, the colors, the walk back. even the opening band, Black Moth Rainbow, just filled me with even more ideas.

Punked out.

Another taste of the week of crazy inspiration. I am still marvelling at all the wonderful gems that appeared on the paper, canvas, table last week when I gave myself the time to just play in my studio.

All hyped out.

I have been dying to share some new work with you, my dear dear readers. My scanner situation is really testing my ability to cultivate patience and gratitude for the scanning capabilities I do have, so I just keep practicing every day!

Like I mentioned last week, I had some crazy sparks of inspiration and created some new pieces (and beginnings to new pieces) that make me so so happy. Here is part of one. Let me know what you think.