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I posted this on my sketch blog a few days ago, but since I'm getting caught up I thought I'd post it here, too. I know the image is a little on the large side, but the details get lost otherwise.  I painted this portrait of my family's yellow Labrador, Marley, as a Christmas gift for my parents. A few years back I had done an oil painting of our former black Lab, Tobey, as a Christmas gift for them and I felt it was time they had a painting of our current dog. Marley just turned six years old in December. People always ask us if she's named after the book Marley & Me, but she is not. We got her a few months before that book was published, but she was so crazy as a puppy that everyone assumed we named her after the book. Pure coincidence. At one point I think we had about six copies of the book because people kept giving it to us, exclaiming, "It's totally your dog!" Marley has since (thankfully) mellowed out a lot and she's now a very cool dog. If you click on the "marley" tag at the bottom of this entry, you can find more stories about her. This painting was done with watercolor and acrylics on watercolor paper, measuring 10" x 12". Completed in December of 2009. Prints of this painting are available here!Tags: art, christmas, family, holiday, marley, prints
Current Mood:  good
Current Music: Innocent Bones - Iron & Wine
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I hope the New Year has been treating you all well! I wanted to say thank you for the lovely holiday cards that I received in the mail - it's always fun getting cards from all over. I apologize for being late with getting mine out in the mail, but I wound up working a lot of extra hours during the holiday season. That was good for my bank account, but not so great for card making plans. I'm still going to be sending them out, they're just going to be later than I had wanted. The past couple of days have been kicking my butt with a nasty cold. I've been taking cold and sinus medication which seems to be helping and I'm finally feeling better today. I can breathe through my nose! My plugged sinuses aren't making me dizzy anymore! I called in sick to work yesterday because I was so foggy and dizzy that I couldn't even think straight. After I called work, I wound up collapsing into bed for almost three hours. I had a can of chicken soup when I woke up, and vegged out with comfy blankets and episodes of Fringe for a few more hours before going back to bed, and I'm finally feeling more like myself. Still stuffy, but I think I'm over the worst of this. Speaking of Fringe, does anyone else think that Joshua Jackson now looks kind of like a hybrid of George Clooney and Ewan McGregor? I never really watched Dawson's Creek, so unless you count Mighty Ducks, Fringe is the first thing I've watched that heavily involves Joshua Jackson as a cast member. He looks very Ewan-eqsue here, and his eyebrows definitely look like Clooney's. Anyhow, random observation. I just finished episode 4 of season 2 of Fringe last night, so I'm almost all caught up. Also, in exciting apartment news, we bought a couch last week! It gets delivered tomorrow. Yay!  Tags: apartment, cards, decorating, fringe, holiday, sick, tv, work
Current Mood:  okay
Current Music: Love Vigilantes - Iron & Wine
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I'm running slightly behind with things on my end, but I'm going to try and get holiday cards out again this year. I'm aiming for Christmas, with getting things out by New Year's as my cushion. So anyhow, addresses! If you'd like to receive a card from me this December, just include your mailing address (not your e-mail address!) by commenting here. All of the comments on this post are being screened so no one but me will see your address, and I'll be deleting the comment after I receive it. So no worries, total security! Even if you think I already have your address, it's best to give it to me again. And if you're outside of the United States, make sure you're very clear when leaving your address about what it should say for international mail (ie. what country!). I'll be accepting addresses up until December 21st, and I'll be sure to post reminders here about it from time to time. Also, if you'd like to send me a card in return, just include your e-mail address when you comment with your mailing address and I'll send my mailing address to you. I had a lot of fun getting cards from all of you last year! ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) iolausian, I got your card yesterday - thanks so much! :) Tags: cards, christmas, holiday, winter
Current Mood: cheerful
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 Right now there are a variety of sales going on in my print shop, just in time for the holidays! From now until December 10th, all ceramic mugs are 15% off! Photo paper prints, the kind most commonly purchased from my shop, are 20% off from now until December 13th at 11:59 PM Pacific Time. If you've been waiting to purchase something, this sale would be a great thing to take advantage of! DeviantArt print services said some more things might go on sale between now and Christmas, so I'll post here if anything good is marked on sale. Much thanks to anyone who has purchased a print from me before or plans to do so in the future! I really appreciate the support, and I always love knowing that my art is going to be in someone else's home. Tags: art, deviantart, holiday, prints
Current Mood:  awake
Current Music: Creepin' In - Norah Jones & M. Ward
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I'm re-posting this from my sketch blog, because I thought that people who don't read that might still enjoy this. Earlier this week I made a Christmas wreath for the apartment's front door.  There was a pile of plastic grocery store bags in my kitchen that I kept forgetting to recycle at the store. I was gathering them all together when I got the idea to make something out of them. I've seen Christmas wreaths made out of rags before, so I thought why not try that with the plastic bags?  I started with a green wire wreath frame from Michael's. However, I thought that with that frame alone, the finished wreath would look too skinny.  I solved that issue by adding an inner ring to the frame with some aluminum wire that I had, twisting it double for strength. I used thinner wire to hold it to the frame.  After that I just started tying plastic strips cut from the bags onto the wire frame. I didn't cut the strips in any uniform manner because I wanted the plastic to look somewhat leafy when I was done. I also cut off any letters or logos because I didn't want those to show. The bags I used were all either white plastic bags (from Target) or transparent grocery bags (from Wegmans).  When I bought the wreath frame, I also bought some plastic silver leaves and small branches to include in the wreath. I used the thinner wire to secure the branches onto the wire frame, and then I tied the plastic strips over the stem to hide it. The supplies for this project were cheap, with the branches costing anywhere from $0.29 to $0.49. All told, I spent maybe $10 at the most on supplies.  I didn't keep an exact count of how many bags I used, but it had to be at least 30 plastic bags or more. Tying all of the plastic strips on took a while, but it was an easy project to work on while watching some DVDs. The finished wreath is about 20" wide and very lightweight, so it's easy to hang with a plastic hook and sticky tape. I definitely plan on saving this wreath to use next year. Tags: art, christmas, holiday, winter
Current Mood:  accomplished
Current Music: Lenin - The Arcade Fire
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I posted this on my sketch blog a while ago, but I'm just starting to get back into the swing of things on LJ after moving earlier this month. And so!  This digital illustration was originally started as part of a demonstration for a digital painting class at Syracuse University that I was a guest instructor for. The students were required to create a musician themed illustration in the manner of something that you would see accompanying an article in Rolling Stone magazine. For this piece, I picked Florence and the Machine as my musician subject matter. I became totally hooked on Florence's album Lungs back in September, so it was an easy choice when it came time to pick my subject matter for the college demo. I'd been thinking about doing an illustration about Florence anyway, so this was the perfect opportunity. I went with kind of an art nouveau/steampunk motif to represent the "Machine" part of the band. Florence and the Machine is essentially Florence Welch and whoever else happens to be performing with her at the time as her band. This illustration was started on watercolor paper with brown colored pencil and ink washes. All color was added digitally painted in Photoshop. The final illustration measures 10" x 17" and was completed in November of 2009. I saved a whole bunch of progress images which I will eventually post here. In the meantime, the previous post with progress images can be seen here. Prints of this illustration are now available!Tags: art, music, prints
Current Mood: accomplished
Current Music: Gossip In The Grain - Ray LaMontagne
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Retreat!
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/syndicated.gif){kind=small}
thoughtful