Matt and I are about to head up to an Easter dinner with his family in Milwaukee, but before we depart I just wanted to wish everyone a happy holiday weekend and share a couple quick inspirational links.
I took a quick picture of some forsythia walking home from work this week and using this cool tool I doctored it up a bit.
Check out this little series of posts about zines from last fall, on mint design blog. I remember when I first read about zines in sassy magazine back in probably 91. I was taking graphic arts as a freshman in high school and it got me even more excited about design and here I am a graphic designer for around 12 years. It was always a dream of that little freshman to design her own zine of her own. Then I remember buying my own first zines from Crackers and Honey. Before that I always had imagined zines as article themed, photography, and design oriented, but Karissa’s were artsy an craftsy, as well as design based.
I want to make a zine. Just throw it onto my pile of project addiction.
Today I finished this new Circle Series piece that I’ve been working on for a couple days, doing a tiny bit at a time to get it just so.
It’s funny how it came about. This whole series came to me in those moments after my head hits the pillow, but before I fall deep in sleep. I jolted out of bed and ran to my fridge where I had a dry erase board, and sketched out the concept. That was January of last year.
This particular piece also came to me in those moments before sleep, but earlier this week. I had been lying in bed, very still, as it takes me a loooong time to fall asleep. Matt was in bed on his laptop watching some hulu and he probably assumed I had been asleep for a long time. Instead this is the time when my mind comes up with my best ideas. I sprang out of bed, to his surprise, and ran to my studio, grabbed some supplies and then came back to bed. I turned the light on and just started working away. Matt was just a bit surprised and asked me if I was okay. I was more than okay, I was in the zone.
The ideas came to me, and instead of just trying to remember them, or sketching them down real quick in my sketchbook on my bedside table, I decided to just dive in. I only did a tiny bit that night but it got me excited and I’ve been wanting to finish it ever since. Today I finally found that chance and I love the results. A lot.
This honestly took me forever to create.
I exhaustively went through EVERY.SINGLE.CONTRIBUTING.ART-O-MAT ARTIST! listed on Artomat.org, clicked on their links, visited their websites, searched for their etsy shops. I actually compiled this over a month ago and have been keeping it in my poster sketch tool on my laptop waiting till one of the treasuries finally opened up and I was prepared.
Tonight was that night.
I’m sure everyone here already knows how much I love Art-o-mat, but please hop over and visit my treasury, click on the artists and check out there work, leave comments on the treasury and I’ll luv ya 4 evah!
I like my pencils very sharp. Notice how the dull one might still be considered sharp to most people’s standards. I sketched this little beauty on scratch paper at work.
I love very small pencils. The only problem is, I erase A LOT. By the time the pencil gets down to being this small there is no eraser left and that’s sad.
After seeing this sketch Rosa reminded me of etsy seller, Jen Maestre, who makes the most wonderful sculpture and wearable art pieces. Pictured above, they are all made from colored pencils and can be found on her website www.jennifermaestre.com and at her etsy shop.
As I mentioned previously, I HAD TO MAKE A DOLL…like now.
After seeing La Senorita Pil‘s amazing dolls, and falling madly in love with her style, I ran to the library to take out some books on doll making. I picked up Dollmaking with Papier Mache and Paper Clay by Doris Rockwell Gottilly. Following her instructions and trying to not copy but go with my own instincts and style I made this scary, complete blech! doll. I hate this doll and I wish I were La Senorita Pil. Isn’t it how life goes? I like myself, I like my style. Then, I hate myself I wish I were someone else. One step forward, two steps back. But not really, ya know? Instead maybe doll making is just not my forte. It is very much my thing to want to at least take a stab at every kind of making out there and now I’ve worked that out of my system, for a while at least. I realize that if I continued on working with it, it might come back around. I’d refine my styling enough that it could evolve into something nice, and something that I actually like the look of, but I don’t think I really care enough about doll making to persue it. Instead I’ll just continue to look at La Senorita Pil’s work and daydream.
I’ve posted the links before, but I really want you to check out La Senorita Pil’s work (dolls/drawings/paintings, etc.) on flickr and her etsy shop. I love her stuff so much.
I recently decided to start adding my handspun yarns back to my shop. I used to have some listed a long time ago, but when their time came up I just let them expire and then gave them away to friends. I used to really struggle with the idea of what my shop should be. I would always hear how the most successful shops only sell one type of item, and if you have too many different kinds of items it confuses customers. But since my art show last fall I’ve had a greater acceptance of what my work is and who I am as an artist, and that includes all aspects of my work, not just my photography, not just my fine art pieces or my quilting, etc. I have more confidence in representing all my areas of interest and I think it shows across the board in all my work. My pieces say “this looks like something Robyn made” whether it be some of my handspun yarn, or a piece of jewelry. So, today was the day I finally had time and enough sunlight to photograph then list some handspun. Keep your eyes open for more. I love them all and I think you will too.
Surfing around the internet today I found several very cool new etsy sellers and artists. La Señorita Pil makes the most amazing dolls. I was so inspired I had to go to the library straight after work and check out some doll making books. This will work well towards my latest obsession for still life dioramas/ shadowboxes/.and stop motion animation. The other artist is monpetitfantome who makes pretty amazing silhouettes and papercut pieces. After favoriting his etsy shop I got a big surprise to find out that I was his 1000th shop favorite and he would like to send me any item from his shop as a gift. I picked a framed silhouette of a rabbit, to honor Theo. After we had to put Theo to sleep last fall, Matt had suggested we get something to honor her memory and although we’ve kept our eye open, we hadn’t found anything yet. Thank you monpetitfantome!
And I don’t know why but this popped into my head today. Remember Log? Yeah, everyone wants a log!
Today I was able to snag a treasury and filled it with items from my friends. I’m sorry I missed a few, but some had empty stores or stores on vacation. Please check it out.
