Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Hang On, Little Tomato
This was a concept sketch I did for an Illustration Friday prompt a few weeks ago. I never got around to finishing it, but I was rather fond of Little Miss 100% Love so I thought I'd share. Maybe she'll become a painting.
Quite honestly lately, I've felt like going underground for awhile. Hiding underwater from the stormy weather stirring outside and waiting to drown me. Lots of nights spent in hot baths, reading The Seas (which is almost perfect stormy weather reading), and sketch-sketch-sketching away in my sketchbook.
I'm gathering myself and working towards my main goal this year: applying to art school in the fall. "Goals that you keep to yourself are just castles on the beach. If you're determined to achieve something, tell people about it and ask them to help you stick with it." You guys'll help me stick to it, right?
Another way to stay underwater for me is loving food. Not in a gluttonous, American way. In a two-hours-spent-browsing-through-Whole-Foods and caramel-custard-from-scratch kind of way. This article in the L.A. Times about oysters is pretty much my idea of porn. Someday, I'll become an accidental foodie.Labels: foodie call, mean reds, sketchbook
Friday, January 25, 2008
We are two years old today.
This is the first day of my life
I'm glad I didn't die before I met you
But now I don't care I could go anywhere with you
And I'd probably be happyLabels: love
Give a Little Love.
One of the school applications I'm looking at poses the ever-threatening essay question "Who are your three major artistic influences in your discipline, how have they contributed to the world globally, why they are important to you, and how are you going to change the world?"
This question is so challenging on so many levels -- first, I don't know that I have three major artistic influences in any one discipline. I find inspiration across the board of art, writing, crafts, music, & even sometimes Art. My inspiration is born in films and folklore and old faded photographs. How can you be expected to pick one (or three) artists' body of work in one discipline to represent your influences?
I'll be thinking on this for awhile, since I have a good chunk of time before the application is due -- and of course I won't take the argumentative route since I was born with the albatross of Asian Guilt around my neck. However I did want to share this adorable artist I found via the Craftzine blog. Mizna Wada has a playful illustration style influenced by Japanese horror comics. I have no idea what that means, but I am totally digging her Dios de Los Muertos-inspired cute.Labels: inspiration, sketchbook
Thursday, January 24, 2008
It starts in my toes & I crinkle my nose...
Do you ever have those cycles where it feels like you just have tons of inspiration waiting for your attention? Piling up for your attention, literally? I've got to find a better way to keep track of the articles I love in magazines, other than dog-earring the corner and moving on. February is a very lovely month for magazines, btw. I'm especially engrossed in Martha Stewart Living, with its fantastic "How To Do Anything" section.
On the plane over the weekend, I read cover-to-cover Bust and Real Simple. Gina & I ate our way through Baltimore, including a trip to The Great Sage and a wonderful tapas restaurant. We also visited the National Aquarium in Baltimore, which includes an indoor rain forest and Australia (and far too many sticky, screaming kids running around on the holiday weekend). The cold was almost suffocating, despite the sunny blue skies. I suppose I'm just a thin-blooded, southern California born and bred brat, however the recent storms would suggest otherwise.
I'm sort of bummed that it's going to be raining all weekend, since R & I are taking a mini-break up the coast & staying at a beachside inn for our two year anniversary. But that will make it more of an adventure, stomping in puddles in Solvang and San Luis Obispo along the way. Two years. My goodness.
There's so much more to say about what's happening, friends, but I'm going to go do things instead of talking about doing them. So I'll be back when spec scripts, sketchbooks, paintings, secret projects, & portfolios are in motion. xo
P.S. Can Project Runway stop being a goddamn ad every episode? I'm not too bummed Victorya went home, & actually kind of thrilled that Ricky finally won. Those tears were not for naught!
P.P.S. Happy Birthday to my little brother Michael, who turns a legal 18 today! You better watch out because now you'll actually be held accountable for all the trouble you get into!Labels: daily
Monday, January 21, 2008
Baltimore
A lovely breath of fresh, cold air. (More photos on Flickr).Labels: photolog
Friday, January 18, 2008
To the Right Coast & Being a Duck
There's always a sense of thrill in the air before a trip. For me, it's the anticipation for the journey. I know, totally cliche, but walk with me here. When else do you get a pod of time where you're allowed to just be passive, but still be going somewhere?
I'm so looking forward to the five hour flights to and back from Baltimore this weekend. Sure, I could wax on about how I can't wait to see one of my best friends and her new(ish) row house in the city, or to spend the days gossiping and eating decadently and absorbing each other's awesomeness, but plans for that are better off spontaneous. For the long flights, I plan on reading The Seas by Samantha Hunt, knitting, and perhaps even handwriting my short story for the week.
I started The Seas over the weekend while I was sick, after I had finished The Brief History of the Dead by Kevin Brockmeier. The latter novel had a brilliant spiritual realist concept, which was best detailed in the first chapter that had stood alone as a short story published in The New Yorker. Chapters then alternated between the "after-life-but-before-the-white-light" world and the story of the main character Laura's journey in our real world. I thought the novel was better left as a short story (proven by its many accolades); it dragged on as Laura painstakingly crosses the Antarctica tundra in the dead dark of winter. I get it: it's cold, it's painful, she remembers. For. Twelve. Chapters. Unfortunately these memories are neither too revealing of character nor plot development, but rather postmarks of her passing life. Brockmeier's pithy and refreshing use of language saves a novel that is overall rather underwhelming in character and plot.
Anyhow, back to The Seas, which is a bite-size novel, so it should be easy to finish in a few hours. So far I'm really enchanted by Hunt's stark yet richly gothic style. Also, I'm looking forward to reading her new novel The Invention of Everything Else, a fictional account of Nicolo Tesla's last days.
Aside from delving deep into a sea of lovely books, I've been actively thinking a lot about this upcoming year. Where I want to be at the end. Where I want to go. What do I need to do to get there. What do I need to let go of. How to get out. Loads of quarter-life crisis questions. The one good thing that came out of being incapacitated last week was that it forced me to slow down and take inventory of my life. The gritty day-to-day, not the curated, edited-for-television-audiences version. Remember to be happy on the healthy days, and to not get snagged in the small, ugly stuff (work, co-workers, bad customer service, surprise inspections). Let it roll off like water on a duck's back.
There are a million and one things I want to do this year, but I've decided to really focus on two and let all the other things fall into place: write a short story a week and take up photography more seriously to both document life and as an art form. Hopefully through making those habits in my life, all the other things like releasing a chapbook, figuring out whether to go to grad school or art school next, and traveling more will fall into place. Plans like that are better left spontaneous.
It feels good to write again, friends. Thank you for always reading and listening. Be a duck.Labels: books, twentysomething
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
I like Scarlett O'Hara's bedsheets.
Just a quick one tonight, friends. A Project Runway recap:
- Sweet Pea & Ricky are the Angela and Vincent of this season; they keep scurrying around the Auf'ing elephant feet.
- Totally bummed Kit was kicked off, though the front of her avant garde dress did look like crap. The back was amazing with all the satin bows!
- Chris + Christian, who knew that would be an awesome twosome?
- Could Jillian + Victorya be better matched in their complete lack of personality? V's smugness and Jillmonotonian KILL ME!Labels: fashion love
Monday, January 14, 2008
To Make, To Be, To Breathe.
Get up slowly. Stretch. Sit in bed. Inhale deep breaths. Expand your lungs. Relax before the day even begins. Scratch off one of your resolutions (or three). Feel better.
Beginning the year again.Labels: daily
Friday, January 11, 2008
Pardon the silence...
I've come down with a really gnarly case of food poisoning full-blown stomach flu (and possibly pneumonia and/or bronchitis), so I'll continue to be out of commission until it's over.
Best laid plans of mice & men, eh.Labels: things i hate
Tuesday, January 08, 2008
17 years + a Lifetime of Unlearning
Isn't it ironic that you spend most of your school career unlearning all your quirks and letting go of all your beautiful, weird selves so that you can be accepted? So that you can be more than accepted; popular and well-liked, just so you can be healthy and relatively normal? (See: unpopular girls gain more weight).
Then once that system spits you out into the real world, you realize you are pretty much measured and weighed for your uniqueness, your brilliance, your clever ideas that are unlike anyone else's over your ability to blend in. That is, if you want to be something that's worth anything. The unusual and confident are rewarded. No one ever tells you that.
So start now: be your beautiful, weird selves. Listen and publicly like really bad music, become an expert polka dancer, love cats more than you should.Labels: growing up
Monday, January 07, 2008
"I want to be as famous as Persil Automatic*." -- Victoria Beckham
Five Good Things
1. Crafter.org's Best of 2007
2. Sewing inspiration: this big-shirt-into-a-swanky-little-dress
3. It's Not How Good You Are, It's How Good You Want To Be. by Paul Arden
4. Planning my weekend trip to Baltimore to visit Gina
5. "In a world where celebrity equals talent, and where make-believe is called reality, it is most important to have real love, truth and stability in your life." -- Bernie Brillstein
I'm gearing up for a couple writing projects, some personal and some with deadlines. So I'm forcing myself to focus on that and reading during the weekdays. Then I'll spend weekends constructing a new sewing project. I'll factor in painting and drawing somehow, but deadlines have a way of making priorities shift. At the same time, deadlines may finally force me to get some goddamn writing done. It's a curse and a blessing to want to have your fingers in all the pies.
* one of the UK's leading detergent brandsLabels: good things, lists, writing craft
Sunday, January 06, 2008
Chicken Little
So I made the Foxy Boxers from Diana Rupp's Sew Everything Workshop tonight, while half-watching 1408 (my way of dealing with scary movies at home is half-listening while working on something else). They turned out pretty well if I do say so myself! Ryan picked out the chicken fabric & art directed the fact that it should have black stitching.
It was especially fun to make now that we have our (half) studio set up along one wall of the dining nook in our small apartment. This really means that we spent a lot of the day reorganizing bookshelves after Ryan put together a large flat table for a permanent sewing station (me) and permanent animation lightbox (him). I spent a large part of yesterday bitching and in a foul mood because I couldn't get around everything that was just left haphazardly around the apartment since the holidays. Now I'm happy as a bee!
I can't stress how much having space makes space in your life and time for doing the things you want to do. Even if having a clear, organized, shared table space in a corner is the closest you can get to a room of one's own.
Savor your Sunday nights, friends.Labels: arts+crafts, fashion love, sewing
Saturday, January 05, 2008
All the inspiration a girl could ask for...
I received a bunch of wonderful books for Christmas, that will keep my fingers busy, my writing evolving and my heart swelling. The sweetest present was when my mom pulled out a box filled old Baby-Sitter's Club books that she found at the library sale; you can see two of them peeking out in the corner of the first photograph. Oh childhood memories that have been evoked by sites like What Claudia Wore and BSC Headquarters. I had no idea that they were ghostwritten, but it makes so much sense now.
We took a trip to the fabric store today and stashed up with some really lovely yards of prints to make projects out of another book I got with a Christmas gift card to the bookstore: Sew Everything Workshop. I'm looking forward to trying out making boxers and the secretary skirt.
Hope you're all having a wonderful weekend and making good progress on your 2008 goals & resolutions! Can't wait to show you more of what's cooking over here.Labels: arts+crafts, books
Friday, January 04, 2008
There's always something to invent, to read, to bite.
Since the rain finally broke over LA, I'm settling in for the weekend. Tonight we had Thai take out and watched A Series of Unfortunate Events. I had forgotten how amazing the costume design and art direction on this film is -- how dreamy is Violet's dress & blue coat? Talk about inspiration for sewing.
 
These fabrics from ReproDepot are just calling to be made into a Tim Burton/Colleen Atwood-esque dress.
  
And these are just lovely to have on hand to make into skirts and bags and scarves and trim to fancy up plainer clothes. I'm just crazy for the hidden wildlife in the damask print. The weekend forecast is precipitation outside and crafty indoors, friends.Labels: fashion love, films
Thursday, January 03, 2008
Five Good Things
1. Hazelnut soy lattes.
2. Cozy in bed, reading, when it's raining.
3. Carbs: pasta, bagels, pizza.
4. Running. Not feeling sore the day after.
5. Trips to the fabric store, a grown-up girl's candy shop.
My mind is whirring. A trip to the fabric store & art store are in order. Mentally rearranging our one bedroom apartment to make studio space. A stormy weekend in the forecast for creative, productive days in.Labels: good things
Wednesday, January 02, 2008
Kiss someone who thinks you're wonderful.
Girls, 11"x14", acrylic on canvas
This is the painting I did for my mom for Christmas; I think she really liked it. My mom is very funny - every year she tells us not get her anything, that she wants to save up Christmas credit so that when my brother and I have "real jobs", we can get her something big. I gift her anyway.
It was a really lovely break. I spent a lot of time with family, a lot of time with Ryan, and a lot of time sleeping. I read a lot, baked a lot (i.e. Nigella's Dense Chocolate Loaf the day after Christmas), ate a lot, watched delectable films in the theater (Sweeney Todd, my goodness the costume design!), and indulged in some guilty pleasures (Girls Next Door marathons). I'm ready to swing back into business as usual, armed with optimism and a shiny new to-do list. Among them, blogging every day this month to get in the writing groove.
Today, I'll leave you with a wonderful quote about the new year from a wondrous writer (who, I'm positive, would never talk about his writing and how damn writerly he is even though he also has a blog):
"May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you're wonderful, and don't forget to make some art -- write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself."
Labels: artsy girl, quotes
Tuesday, January 01, 2008
Start Fresh.
Happy New Year, friends! I love the first few days of the new year, where you get goosebumps from the prospect of starting over and actually achieving all the things you've wanted to do in a measure of time -- even if nothing really has significantly changed except a page turn of the calendar. If only every midnight hour could invoke such fresh inspiration, motivation and cheer!
So I'm going to spend the last day of my vacation doing my favorite things: going to the movies, reading leisurely, cooking, playing with Lucy, and chilling like ice cream filling with Ryan. Though I can't say that I'm looking forward to work again tomorrow (in fact, I'm in utter denial until 9AM tomorrow), I'm very much excited about the chance to start fresh with a list of resolutions in 2008. You know how much I love lists.
Here are some of my resolutions, because The Secret says* to put what you want out into the universe and you'll get it, or something to that extent right?
1. Write a short story a week.
2. Run 3x a week and start a weekly yoga practice.
3. Read 23 books.
4. Draw every day (& finish my Illustration Certificate)
5. Make a dress & start refashioning my own clothes.
6. Study for & take the GREs
7. Release a chapbook.
8. Submit to at least 3 literary magazines.
9. Build & cultivate friendships & relationships with family.
10. Keep painting!
11. Write & complete a first draft of novel.
12. Spend wisely & learn about investing.
There are 17 in total, but I'm keeping some under wraps until I'm ready to reveal them. Always good to hold some readers in suspense, right?
Now I'm out to make Nigella's Sesame Peanut Noodles from Nigella Express, which was among many books generously given to me for Christmas.
*I haven't actually read The Secret, so don't quote me or even believe me on this.Labels: daily, lists, resolutions
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