Alright, This One Has A Descriptive Title So I'll Just Lead With It Here "As They Walked The Lantern

alright, this one has a descriptive title so I'll just lead with it here "As They Walked The Lantern Lit The Roses"  which has the double meaning of implying that carrying light next to these roses causes them to glow, which explains why they stand out so nicely. also, I don't usually intend to imply that her antlers glow, but a lot of the time I need them to stand out from whatever is going on in the background, such is the case here.

so this was the one where I was like, oh right, the wolves aren't evil, they're just wolves, they have a different viewpoint and it's a wolf one.

this one was also made to address the technical problems of This One, as you can see I upped the detail everywhere and took time to light the trees with texture, futz around with all the dang roses, and put stars in the sky. some of my strengths are in my use of obsessive texture and this is a good example of allowing myself to indulge that urge.

what else can I say about this piece? oh yeah, the wolves are usually not male. (not that it matters, but this has been an issue when people want to see psycho-sexual themes in my work, which I do address, but not all the dang time in every one) it's a bit of a play on the idea of "Bad Bitches" or "Mad Bitches" or "Bitches Be Cray-Cray"  whenever I am using them. and this one in some ways is about being at home with my sister, who supports my creative work, but she is very critical of all of my deer-girl series.

the gesture of placing a hand on the shoulder of a large dog is a very natural one to me in my life and the fingers that dig into the fur is one of my favorite details. they are on an adventure together and that contact plus the eyecontact is a show of trust.

Just wanted to say, I think your prints are beautiful!

Thank You!

Screen Prints!

alright these are the three screen prints I did for Ben Moreau's summer screen printing class that he liked so much he said it was better than a visit to the dentist for a root canal.

and what else could possibly be better than dentistry?

alright, these are a bit of a departure from my other stuff. I was just not feeling it during the summer after I made it into the BFA program when it comes to sticking to my "theme" and making art that would be useful for my BFA portfolio in the coming year. it was my first summer in Bellingham, I was mostly crippled all the hell, and sick of being pretentious and sad. So, I made OZ Fanart.

the first one is a reductive screen print of myself as Glinda the Good Witch of the South in her costume as she appears in the first OZ movie. it glitters. it is hard to convey just how much these things glitter in the sunlight like fairy-taffy made of pink and shimmer but they do. I would have to convert it into one of those glitter .gifs to give you an approximation of how nice they look.

this print was made with reductive screenprinting, which I have a pretty hard time controlling because I am like, comprised of 90% sloppy mess. I still love it.

the second one is of Christine as Ozma the rightful Queen of OZ. I was mostly trying out all different kids of techniques with this one, the swirls of the sky, the layers, the bajillion million layers and colors and the fact that it could still use a pattern on her dress. the gold bits also glitter.

this print was made through transparency processes, both using clear plastic and ink/paint/cutouts to expose the screens, and gobs and gobs of transparent base to give the inks character and clarity. (note her head flowers over the building)

third one: A Tribute For The Wizard.

photographic processes and fucking up repeatedly by not saving my progress lead to the end result you see here, this is Ben as the Great and Powerful Wizard of Oz being displeased by our offering of One Good Print.

as he said in crit "YOU MUST HAVE AT LEAST FIVE PERFECT PRINTS!!"

everybody in class except for the Asian kid we never really saw posed for this.

first silhouette is Jake, then Brendan, then me holding aloft the golden print, then Allison and Stacey.

this class was good times.

Talking With Her Was Deeply Refreshing.

linoblock print, 18 by 24, black and white, same as the rest of them.

so, this was one of my fall quarter prints, it's kind of an apology for the other mermaid prints I had made by then. I wanted to make something sweet and pretty and I wanted to put some serious care into the little foreground details and I think I succeeded at that, the background runs into trouble mostly because I needed more practice at clouds and mountains and oceans.

this print is also an effort to make sure my series unambiguously passed the Bechdel Test, but they're probably talking about boys.

the madrona tree above them and the blooming waxy-leaved strawberries underneath are both plants that exist around here shown in their appropriate environment of an ocean cliffside and that's part of what I'm trying to do with my mythological things. I want to take the typically euro-centric mythos of my upbringing and make it local, make it personal. I could incorporate, and I have considered incorporating, more of the native PNW imagery but I don't want to be disrespectful so mostly I hold off on it.

now I say mostly, because these are carvings, they are monochromatic and I do take some inspiration from the traditional formline styles of native bent-wood boxes. I am however, just using that as a way to think about composing and balancing my monochromatic compositions, not as a way to think about making shapes nor yet as a stylistic decision. I can't say I'm not apeing the content of native art though, because I am talking about a personal/shamanic mythos, and I am mostly depicting animals and part-animals. but both of those things are common world wide, so I don't worry about it.

DeerGirl herself recalls both the Grecian images of diana as lady of the hunt, and a feminized image of the horned Sorcerer in the cave of Les Trois Feres. other than that I bet you could find more than a dozen different interpretations of a girl wearing antlers on Tumblr alone. and things go in and out of popularity but images of my mermaids are always popular.

go figure, ideas are weird like that.

That is my tool box.

on the sides it has two little slips of paper one says "you are a good person" the other says "you are a fucking tool" the bottom has one of my prints that says "FUCK" printed on brown paper.

inside is: a strop, my speedball carving tool, a couple of X-acto knives, what's left of the fancy carving set  I bought when I realized I was going to be doing this for my BFA (note to the world: never loan out your tools, even if you think not loaning out your tools makes you look like an asshole, nobody notices your name carved in the handles and they will not give them back) other things: my engraving twist which is unsurprisingly nice for working up scratch board, my scratch board tool, a lump of eraser, some utility knife blades, some mechanical pencils, some mechanical pencil lead, an eraser and an Altoids Small's tin where I keep my tool-bits. (I like to think of it as the Altoid's sharps tin) the box interior is also decorated with a couple of these silly librarian-themed temporary tattoos.

I felt like showing some progress pictures today of something simple. I'm trying to get back into the swing of making things and what better opportunity for that than a three day weekend?

I am making several more of these simple herbaceous prints to be ready for my show at Dandelion Botanicals in April. it always pays to have a range of prices available, somebody who won't drop $200 on a piece might still want something for $20.

ok so, here's a piece that isn't up anywhere else on the internet with the possible exception of my facebook it's called "And The Geese Had Never Noticed Him"

consider it as a waaaaaaay out view of everything, I wanted something a little ominous, and I wanted a dragon, so he's there breathing out clouds on a mountain top, you'll note the title makes you as the viewer go "who's this personal pronoun? is there a thing aside from geese and mountains in this picture that I might not notice right away?" and then the waldo hunt begins.

it needs that title because otherwise the dragon is often completely overlooked. and I feel like I should have put in a mountaineer or two for scale because he's actually gigantic. oh well, gives me an excuse to draw more dragons maybe later if I feel like it.

that dragon really should be named Waldo, if I was a type who liked handing out names.