Life Drawing Catch-Up Part 1

I been remiss about posting my Life-Drawing progress (and regress) so here are my favourites from the last several weeks. Of course, I'm only postings the ones I have any sort of fondness for. The complete and total bombs are already lining the worm-bin.

1 minute gesture:

5 minutes:

5 minutes (I think, can't remember):

20 or 30 Minutes? I can't remember... but I do know it got a bit weird... but that's a good thing... I wish I could loosen up even more... I'm always torn between trying to make very classic, well-done, correct figure drawings (which is very hard for me) and going totally crazy (also hard). I usually end up in this mid-way, half-assed zone you see below.

This might have been a 40 minute one where I got bored and started drawing the plastic flowers nearby:

title: untitled

Kind of a gloomy day outside my window, luckily I can distract my gaze with this cool little trinket instead of focusing on the rain. It's just some old key chain from a Dutch bank but I like the horse and anchor logo.

I've been a little obsessive about Gord Downie lately. His solo albums and the latest Tragically Hip album (We Are the Same) were the soundtrack of my summer and I find him really inspiring as a hard-working-artist-type.

Anyway, I like going to shows but I'm not usually a groupie... but this changed when GD and The Country of Miracles played a small hall in my little hometown recently. I hung around to get a picture and a signature from the man himself - it just seemed appropriate to shake the hand of the man whose voice has been in my subconscious for over 2 decades IN the town where I did much of my growing up.

The group of four that I attended the concert with were all there because one guy happened to see a write-up for the poorly advertised gig in the local rag (which he says he normally never looks at). He took care of getting the tickets too because the rest of us don't live in that town anymore. Before heading to the venue the ticket-getter, who is a pilot, told us a story of seeing Gord many years ago at an airshow and the obscure thing Gord said... a plan began to hatch in my brain.

After the show, I waited to meet Gord Downie, not just because I wanted to meet him but to get an autograph for our pilot-friend.

And since pilot-friend doesn't have a lot of art on his walls, I decided to make a little collage-y, shadow-box thing to commemorate the magical evening.

There is a map of Ontario for the backdrop and you can see Kingston just below the moon (that's where both Gord and myself were born). The poems are from GD's book of poetry, both pertaining to flight. They're both typed out on old Airmail envelopes. There's a ticket and the autograph (appropriately flight-themed) written on the envelope that contained the tickets. In the lower-left is the picture of me and Gordo (with speech-bubble and the original, funny quote that inspired this whole adventure). Some stars, clouds, and a moon to go along with the motifs of the poems. And my favourite part, a little airplane hanging on strings so it can fly a little bit.

You can click on the picture to zoom in and read stuff if you like:

It's a little "scrap-booky" but I like it... I always liked making scrap-books... even though "scrapbooking" is a dirty word for most artsy-types...

It will be awhile before I use glitter again though. As a comedian once said (I can't remember who it was), "glitter is the Herpes of crafting"... that shit is EVERYWHERE now! Even my cats have caught this CTD (craft-transmitted-disease).

weekend acquisitions

A Jacob's Ladder toy covered in Gary Taxali characters and a cool old metal box.

I always loved and marveled at Jacob's Ladders when I was little. Nice to see them making a comeback, especially in such nice colours. That light teal colour is the same shade of my current nail polish (courtesy of Joe Fresh dontcha know).

The box has a plastic insert which I'll be throwing out. I think it was for holding slides judging by the size of the slots - though it seems like an ultra-heavy-duty way to carry slides around.

Close up:

Action shot:

I'm not exactly sure why Blogger won't let me change my font. I'll have to look at the code someday. argh.

orange i lucky?

Just a cool little dish that I found at a thrift store, too cute not to show off. I've never really seen a dish like it before. Is it for sugar? That must be why it's so sweet.

While we're on the subject of orangeness and sweetness. The large orange pot to the right of the dish is currently home to some fledgling avocado plants (if you read my farm-blog over the summer you will recall that I started an avocado once before but a dastardly chipmunk came by and ate it)! I'm pleased as punch to have these wee sprouts growing beside my work station - where I can keep a close eye on them and fend off any chipmunks attacks.

got framed

Whew! Got busy, got out of the habit of blogging - but here I am again!

Tonight's arty project was long overdue - about 7 years overdue in fact.

I've had this small print made by my friend and amazing artist Warren Heise (here's his website) since we were at Sheridan together. I needed to frame it finally because I still think it looks as cool as the day I got it.

Over the years it's lived in various large books, staying nice and flat, waiting for this day. Every now and then I would rediscover it and think, "I should really frame this..."

Well, no more! That little sucker lives on the wall now!

I got the frame from Value Village and the mat is an off-cut from the art store. So altogether this project only cost about $6 (not that the print doesn't deserve to be professionally framed - but I can't afford that extravagance yet! ... also, I have a mat-cutter so making semi-decent-home-framing is possible).

Before:

After:

In situ:

A close-up:

craft-catch-up

So, this is another "catch-up" post to show some little crafty-projects from the last few weeks.

Having a wedding to attend and wanting to spice up my plain black dress, I made a feathery headpiece. I got the supplies at a fly-fishing shop much to the amusement of my fishing-enthusiast-husband.

(Also, I'm showing off the classy way to drink Bourbon - from a teacup, the way Swearingen does in Deadwood. I love this teacup and saucer because it's got the Great Lakes, a cool ship, and the queen all thrown together.)

I scoured through my old button collection to find something for the above "fascinator". I have no explanation as too why there is a small bullet mingling amongst my buttons. Very strange.

This is the area of my house dedicated to bear posters and wall-hangings (you don't know you need an area like this until you have one) :

I'd been struggling to paint the plaque that the shiny bear was attached to, trying to do something ghetto-folksy-fabulous... but I couldn't make it strike the right chord. In the end I ripped the bear off his moorings and made a speech bubble instead.

Below is something I made relating to my dear ol' Dad. He became an amputee when he was 30 years old... on Valentine's Day.

The loss of my Dad's arm is kind of a deep-seeded theme in my family because so many of our stories stem from that (it's even the reason why I started getting all my tattoos on my left arm - it's my "story arm").

This picture is partly about accepting people for being the normal, flawed humans they are.

I have simultaneously revered and villainized my father throughout my life. I used to feel really neglected by him, but I know that a lot of the things I like about myself now are because of how I was raised (by wolves). Anyway, it was time to just let my Dad be on the same level as me and stop looking up to or down on him; time to stop blaming him for some things and start giving him credit for some other things.

Literally it was time to obliterate the "hero" and "zero" labels and accept that my dad is a normal, average human... but also to accept that he is "just" my father. Our lives are our own and we don't owe each other any explanations for the choices we make or the things we do. I'm still working on extracting that parental voicebox lodged somewhere in the back of my brain telling me what to do... or not do.

Anyway, back to Feb. 14th.

I was apparently meant to be born on Valentine's Day but came out a few days late. I'm happy to say that missing the mark on my due date did not plague me throughout life. I've been very blessed in the true-love department.

I don't even know if it's really true that I was supposed to be born on the 14th but I have childhood memories of hearing that and this fact, combined with the lore (and gore) of my Dad's accident, has always given me a heightened and distinctly non-Hallmark appreciation for V-day. I really get the idea of "love-hurts-but-it-hurts-good"... like being struck by cupid's arrow. That's gotta hurt right? I mean, Cupid is cute but we tend to forget he is piercing flesh with projectiles in order to infect us with love.

I have a vivid imagining of my mother receiving, instead of flowers that one Valentine's Day, the news that her husband had crashed. She thought he was dead at first when she saw the base commander and chaplain walking up to the door. I can imagine the physical pain of thinking that your Love is dead. And then I can imagine her on another Valentine's day a few years later, sitting in discomfort, waiting to get this huge, overdue, over-nine-pound baby out of herself but already loving the little thing that was literally about to rip and tear its way out of her.

Ahhhhh Valentine's Day.

Anyway, it's how's that for a Friday afternoon ramble?

(You can click on these to see them bigger y'know?)

This collage was done over top of an iconic "hero picture" of my Dad (before he lost his arm obviously). I've never desecrated it before.

(Geez, I sure do look a lot like him!!)

Moving on, my sister-in-law got married so I made this card. The fabrics and buttons all come from significant places.

And this is just some bread I made. I make bread all the time but I had to take a picture of these loaves because they came out so. fucking. perfectly!

around-the-house-round-up

I learned a good word the other day, "Wunderkammer". It literally means cabinet of curiosities (from the natural world). In the medieval times rich dudes would keep these cabinets (or rooms) full of, well, "cool stuff" basically. They were meant to show how worldly and knowledgeable the person was. There are also "Kunstkammers" and "Rustkammers" (kunst = art, rust = historical).

(by the way, there should be umlauts in some of these words but I'm far too lazy to bother with them...)

I think I've made my whole apartment into a Wunder/Kunst/Rustkammer... only not enough people come over so I'm showing it off on the internet instead. And now I know why I do it... to show off how wonderful and worldly I think I am. haha!

So I've started to think of myself as a curator around here. Though I tend towards "collectorism", I try hard to not to hoard things. I like things to be neat and tidy... and by "neat" I actually mean I want people to come in and look at stuff and say, "oh! that's really neat!" Some people would consider this place "cluttered" but I know it could be A LOT worse if I was undisciplined. Things have to either "beautiful" (to my eyes) or functional or both.

Anyway, I really like old stuff and I enjoy "scavenging" and thrifting. Other people's trash truly is my treasure. There's almost nothing "first-hand" in here anymore (some books, electronics, and undergarments excepted).

Here's a round-up of recent innovations and acquisitions around the house:

The visible man isn't new, just freshly out-of-storage. I wittled a classy new base for him out of wood to replace his old, plastic base. He's "all heart" because I took out all the uglier organs.

Finally found a place to hang "Slap at Park Fence". I'm experimenting with mixing very stiff/traditional-looking things (like this fancily-framed print) with more kitschy items. So here I added a vintage fox postcard and Gumby and Pokey. I think they work well with the comical nature of the print.

The print hangs in the front hallway across from the Queen and some other junk. I attached a milk crate to the wall for winter mittens and scarves.

My farmer-brother-in-law recently had to tear down a really old barn on his farm. It was sad to see it go but time marches on I guess. I went over and cut up one of the old hand-hewn

beams to make some cool cat-scratching-posts.

Scored this old locker-looking cabinet very cheap from Value Village. (Maybe old IKEA? Not sure. Could be old office-ware.) Blinged it out with diamond-esque knobs.

Put wheels (scavenged from something in a dumpster back in the Halifax days) on my old drafting-table stool. Wheeliness is awesome! So mobile!

Ok, this last one is a bit strange. These old plastic dogs came in a bag-o-stuff from a thrift store (there was one item I wanted in the bag, these dogs were leftovers hanging around the house) and before bringing them back to the thrift store I felt inspired to chop them up. I made them into Ukulele-accessory-holders; "Tuner-head" and "Pick-head".