This Sunday!

Join me this Sunday at Barnes & Noble in The Commons at Calabasas from 2-4pm for book signing and free ATC Workshop!

The Calabasas Fine Art Festival is also happening right next door. This is a FANTASTIC, high quality show that I've blogged about before, and is definetely worth the trip in and of itself.

Barnes & Noble This Sunday!

Come work on some ATCs, let's sit and shmooze, I'll even sign your book!!

Book Signing Event

Sunday, May 2, 2010, 2-4pm
Barnes & Noble - The Commons in Calabasas, CA

Not only will I be there, but right next door will be the Calabasas Fine Art Festival! It is one of the best art shows around! Come and look at art, buy some art, appreciate some art, and

MAKE SOME ART!

I'll be at the same Barnes & Noble next Sunday too - more to come!

Artfest Synopsis by Lisa

I just read Lisa Myers-Bulmash's synopsis of her Artfest experience. Please check it out here! So many great pics and class descriptions.

More Artfest Art

As promised! More Artfest art continues...

My third day of classes was with Alex Shur in "Cast of Characters". Check out her website at wingedheels.com . This was really a fantastic class. The concept of this class was to create backgrounds using watercolor or guache (I used guache). Once the backgrounds were dry, we then sorta cloud gazed into the patterns of the paint to find characters "from our subconcious". I thought this was a really cool concept, very esoteric. I love cloud gazing, and now, I can also gaze into my own paint. Hmmm, starting to sounds a little weird, but not really.

Although I made a TON of backgrounds, I'll just share a few of my favorites. Below is an example of a background where I just started outlining in sharpie my "character". Big surprise here - a tree. What I loved was the funky, big nosed character that showed up in the trunk of my tree. You can see his green face on the left side of the tree trunk. There's also a great profile of a windblown face at the top right of the piece. I can't wait to continue working on this one. This piece is 15"x22.5".


My next favorite piece is "Ms. Thang" below. This piece is 5x7. I had a large background piece that I just struggled with and didn't see anything, so I ripped it into four 5x7 pieces. That's when all the characters came out!

I first saw the eye on the right, and then the mouth. I free drew the nose and then, just started doodling, just like in Ellsworth's class. Whatever struck my fancy. I actually did most of this work on the plane ride home with a few sharpies.

The next piece to come out of the torn up background is this one: The entire piece is painted with guache, a little music paper behind the words, which are written in sharpie: "My looking ripens things" which is an excerpt from a Rilke poem that I love. Aren't those four words just so erotic, powerful and delicious all at the same time? Say it to yourself again: My looking ripens things. Mmmmmm..... Another quadrant came out as below:

This started as a complete mistake/disaster. I was pumping my paint pen on the plane, and it just gushed out everywhere because of the pressure difference on the plane. I used the back of another paper to blot the paint that had puddled all over the page, and when I lifted the paper, I saw these great jellyfish! I simply outlined them and their little bubbles with black sharpie.

I already can't wait for Artfest next year!

Artfest Art & Unique LA!

Firstly, I would like to invite any local LA peeps to come and see me at Unique LA this weekend at the Calfornia Market Center. I will be there Sunday, April 25 from 1-5pm.

I'll be there right in the main, center of the exhibition area "Make and Take" center, selling and signing books, selling my greeting cards and doing a !FREE! make and take of paper dolls from the book!

The California Market Center is in downtown LA, click on the link for full info!

Now, on to ART!

Yes, it's taken me forever to come and dowload pics from Artfest. I met so many cool peeps, that there is just no time to load all those photos too. But, I am talkin' about you! You know who you are, making fun of me down by the bonfire, feeding me chocolate eggs in the castle dorm, listening to my crazy stories. You're awesome!!!

So, here's two days worth of what I made at Artfest, more to come tomorrow - I promise!

First class was with Theo Ellsworth - Mystery Doodling. When was the last time you allowed yourself to really doodle and explore just doodling for 6 hours? I mean, we had a lunch breach in there somewhere, but I've decided that I need to do this more often. Famous last words, I know, but one can try, right? Maybe not 6 hours, but how about just one? Here's what I came up with - it's certainly electric!
What you see is actually a paper doll of sorts, which is separate from the rectangular background. We doodled on pieces of the paper doll which were pre-cut up, and we didn't know they would end up in the shape of a person. Pretty cool!

Next day was Traci Bautista - excellent teacher! This is my fav piece I made from her class, entitled, "Inventio IX" since I used music paper from Bach's music with the same title. It is a mixed-media collage piece using acrylic paint, paper, copies of my own photography, sharpie, and oil pastel. You know how I'm partial to trees

This next piece is entitled "Fire Lotus". It's a mixed-media piece usining acrylic paint, faric paint (for the flower petals), white out pen (for the white detail work) and black sharpie. This seemed to be lots of people's favorite.

My other favorite that I made in Traci's class (yes, this was a one day class, I work FAST so that my subconcious can flow easier). I call it "Peacock Fish". It's a mixed media piece too (gee, big surprise...) using acrylic paint, paper, white out pen, sharpie in red and black, and color pencil.

This last piece below is just an unfinished background. I wanted to post this so you could see the background on its own, which I thought would be fun to see. This is all acrylic paint. I have plans for this background involving some gold leaf and more, so will post when it's done!

All these pieces are sized 15" x 22.5"

Alex Shur's watercolor class tomorrow!

Book Signings!

Here I am standing in front of the Barnes and Noble at the Everett Mall in Washington! Our second book signing event in WA, where I decided to bring my nice, sunny So Cal weather with me. As you can see in the window display, they were heavily advertising our event!
Left to right: Julie Molina (co-author), me, and Lisa Myers-Bulmash, significant book contributor, and friend extraordinaire! The table behind us had samples of some of the rooms from our book, which will be traveling around with me to different events.

Here I am at Zinnia signing books just this past Saturday- WE TOTALLY SOLD OUT!

But, back to Washington - After a lovely weekend in Seattle, exploring the city with DH, signing books galore, and eating WAY too much junk, Lisa and I settled in on our trek to

ARTFEST BABY!!

Why do I feel like breaking out in song - "I'm on a BOAT" like in the SNL short. See it here - but beware, lots of four letter words, and you might just fall off your chair laughing.

On our way we had to stop for lunch and became sucked into a girlie girl vortex.

pinkies up! Some little town in the Puget Sound with REALLY good tea and lots of chocolate choices. Let's just say, everything on the menu came with a scone bigger than my head.

And, yes, we got to pick our own hats.

I had classes with Theo Ellsworth, Traci Bautista, and Alex Shur. What great classes!

Here I am getting attacked by the Ellsworth monster...

when was the last time you allowed yourself to doodle for 6 hours? How about doodling blindfolded?

Here I am in my watercolor glory with Alex Shur. cloudgazing into our watercolor to bring out the characters in our subconcious.

The art I made to follow in the next post! The new and old friends in the next post too! Sorry, I'm just tired of resizing photos today.