I really like Kidrobot. They are, I know, a complete waste of money in reality, and do nothing but add to the clutter on my top shelf. But I love them. I love that they send me free keychains with my order and I love the anticipation of a blind box purchase.
So here are some of the do-it-yourself models they offer. The one on the left is a Rooz model, and is some kind of mystical forest spirit. The one on the right is a Trikky model, and is an intergalactic graffiti artist. They go very nicely together, and I like to think they have many adventures. I determined their personae by the accessories they came with--a stick (Rooz, seen here), and a spray paint can mounted on a stick (Trikky, not shown because it gets in the way of its face).
Everything done with markers, Munnyworld, Prismacolor, and Sakura Microns. Figures are vinyl.
This is my new Slenderman T-shirt, which I made using Tulip brand fabric paints (in white and brown, Slendy's skin was made by mixing the two) and a T-shirt I altered to fit me.
Why? Because Slenderman is my new best friend.
I started watching the Slenderman ARGs on YouTube (Marble Hornets, EverymanHYBRID and TribeTwelve), and though in all three, Slendy is a menacing figure, I think he's adorable. I mean, look at that face. Er...
Anyway, the series are all really fun and spooky and I recommend them to anyone who likes a good creepy mystery. They've also inspired me to work with video, which I'm not very good at, but I'm liking the mysterious and cryptic shorts that plague the main characters in each series. I've been shooting some footage and maybe I'll piece one together at some point. (And no, no wild Slendies yet.)
And, of course, since Slendy is my new best friend, I decided to make a T-shirt of him. He lives on the left side (the wearer's left side) of the shirt, and that means he gets to hang out on my boob. Lucky Slendy. I painted him with sort of mitten hands, because I like to think that he's not so much wearing a suit as he is a suit.
Please excuse the paint blotches. This is an in-progress picture and so is not completely cleaned up. The colorful bit near the collar is not part of the shirt; it's a magazine separating the layers to prevent bleed-through.
These make me squee a little every time I see them. Which is quite frequent, as they currently live on the dining room table, waiting for a protective coat of polyurethane.
I purchased a set of plain wood matryoshka dolls through Amazon. They were, on the whole, more expensive than I thought and so my collection of these will have to grow slowly. These here cost about $16 plus the shipping. I primed them with white latex paint and painted them with acrylics. The black paint, however, is Rustoleum, and the white is latex house paint. They were somewhat difficult to work with, being round, and the little one, which stands less than an inch high, was particularly irritating. But in all I can't complain. I especially like the way their little skeleton hands came out.
And yes, the one second from the left, in the purple kerchief, has a Hidan face. I kind of couldn't resist.
So here they are in all their squee-inducing glory, and I'd like to do some more of these in the future.
If you're looking for some pre-painted matryoshkas, Matryoshka Madness on Amazon has quite a collection.
So the art supply store near me closed, but before they did they had a mega-super-half-off everything sale, so I took advantage of the opportunity and bought a whole bunch of stuff, including some Sculpey.
Sculpey is god.
I proceeded to have a Sculpey party and made a small batallion of owls. The one in the front center is called Techno Owl. She likes to drive hover cars fast while listening to hot techno beats. I guess the others have personalities, too, but I haven't figured them out yet.
Paintings soon, yes.
I would like to start off this post by saying that I hate painting on circles. Seriously. Circles are just awful. Someone bought me a circular canvas about, oh, six or seven years ago now, and except for the layers of erased charcoal smudges, it's still blank.
Circles are stupid.
They just are. I have no issue with ovals, and none with squares or rectangles. I can create a composition on any of those shapes just fine, but not circles. Everything magically looks cheesy on a circle. If it's a regular composition, like a portrait or a scene, you think, okay, but why is it on a circle? Why not on some rectangular shape? How is the circle relevant to the image? Or, worse, people try to get clever with circles and paint things like planets or celestial vistas or something and they always turn out just embarrassingly trite. I've seen some abstract work turn out successfully on circles, but I'm not an abstract painter. And meanwhile, I have this 18-inch circular canvas kicking around and I kind of just want it to go away.
I think the only time a circular composition is justifiable is when the circle on which one is painting is an object, rather than merely a canvas. This, for example, is the sawn-off base of an old Yule tree that I found in the yard. It's small size (about 3 inches in diameter--yes, I have little hands) and its nature as being a slice of tree trunk saves it from Circle Doom. If this was on a larger canvas, it would be kind of a fail. I was thinking of doing more of these, since we have some ancient firewood in the basement that I could cut up. But that means using the beastly circular saw (irony!) and I never really feel like doing that. Yet another reason why having a band saw would make my life easier.
So this is the Bird Girl. I was thinking of screwing a hook into the top (it's about half and inch thick) and making her into some kind of ornament, but for right now she lives on the kitchen table.
Happy Autumn! I never made much jewelry because you have to buy all those little bits. Or, you have to have a bunch of potentially fire-starting tools and chemicals at your disposal and I don't. Usually, it takes a formal environment to kickstart the process of doing something you don't normally do, which is why I don't do all the things I always say I want to learn how to do, like knit or do yoga or some kind of martial art or fly on the trapeze or ride horses or scuba dive or...you get the idea.
So here is some jewelry I've made and even occasionally wear, when I have time to remember things like jewelry and am not in a mad dash to catch a train or something. All are fairly large (for jewelry). I took a class on non-metal jewelry which taught me the basics of handling all those little bits.
The top piece is a pendant based on the paisley design. It's stained wood, hand-carved with a flex-shaft (WANT) and set with glass beads (and by "set" I mean, "they're glued in"). Note jump ring fail at the top--I added that after my access to proper jewelry making equipment had ended. But I actually really like this one, and out of the three, I wear it the most often.
Next is a large brooch, about 2" X 2" square. It's an antique photograph, ca. 1850s-60s. A miniature scanned version of this (two of them, actually), can be seen in The Homestead, along with figures from some of the other photos that came with this one. This is the original. I think she looks kind of like Kirsten Dunst. I constructed the brooch myself, using bookboard for the back and painted balsa wood strips for the frame. The photograph and dried flowers are protected by a piece of plastic from a picture frame. (I'd rather glass, and I even have a glass cutter, but I don't have any glass around.) The findings themselves are store-bought, and everything is held together with bookbinding glue.
Lastly is another piece I made in the jewelry class. It's a brooch, and is my one great attempt at metalwork. The back is, I mean. It's pretty clumsy, but I'm personally happy with it. The making of an actual pin is a complicated process that I won't get into right now, but let's just say it functions correctly. The back is dyed leather with burnt-in paisley detail (I had a theme going) mounted on wood. The figures are scrimshawed rawhide (scrimshaw is traditionally done on bone or ivory, but can be done on just about anything, including rawhide, though the ink blurs a little), the frame is carved wood, and the pearls are real. Interestingly, the two girls here are reminiscent of the character sketches I mentioned in the last post. The piece was meant to evoke an old family photograph, something to do with memories of childhood.
So sometimes when I get bored or when I'm watching TV or when I'm bored watching TV I make jewelry. Admittedly, I'm not very good at it, but I rather do enjoy manipulating minutiae, and my style appears to be somewhat Victorian, which I never really realized until now. I also seem to go about jewelry making like a painter--note all those framed images. I don't think I'll be posting anymore jewelry, though. This was something of an experiment, I guess. On to more paintings!
