3.28.2014

petals + patience


top (l) to (r): vintage aster and chrysanthemum illustrations/next week's tutorial/dead garden roses to study
bottom (l) to (r): vintage wallpaper/drying a fat gerber daisy to study/a page from a wonderful vintage seed catalogue

Today is the last day before both kids are on spring break. They are prepared for the most boring-est spring break ever. This will be the staycation to end all staycations. I have mentally prepared them that I will have my nose to the grindstone for the next nine days trying to make the best of the time. I'm sure it's going to go great. (Not.)

Every room in our place is like a garden right now. There are half-finished blossoms everywhere, and images of flowers all over the place. Paper shreds everywhere. It's kookoo! 

But everyone is on board. David and the kids are tolerating SO MUCH inconvenience, and in return I have promised an awesome May and and awesome summer. I hope I can deliver on that.

Have a great weekend, and if you are one of the many, many people who have asked me to share my giant "closed" peony tutorial, guess what? I'm doing it as Carte Fini's featured artist for April, and if all goes well it will be up on Monday, so please check back!

xoxo





3.24.2014

outstanding in the field



Some of the incredible photos Sarah Deragon shot of me and my favorite dahlia in Golden Gate Park early last Friday morning. I can't say enough about how talented and kind Sarah is. Sarah captured the exact images I had in my head and I can't get over them. I just had to share.





3.20.2014

looking for a sign



I've spent almost a week upgrading the auction signage I did last year for Stella's school auction, which is coming up again this Sunday. Tired, tired, tired, but I've been having some fun drawing up the new offerings. I'm into it. BOOM. 


As I've been drawing these up, I've been doing a sort of meditating on how much work I have done in the last few years for no pay. I've been able to work on so many things and put them here to share, but for the most part haven't made a dime. It's crazy, actually. It has made me think I might want to branch out and find a way to do the things I do here while getting paid to do them. Like, keep working on developing papel SF and the work I want to do with that, but I don't know, maybe work for an ad agency or something? Somewhere where I can do my thing and bounce from one project to the next and just let it flow? When you have a blog (and are taking good care of it) you are always thinking way ahead, as new ideas tend to beget more new ideas, and I've got that flow going now. Wouldn't it be nice to turn it into a little coin?!

Deep thoughts. There's always architorture architecture to fall back on.

These babies have set me back several days on the work I'm doing for my show, so back to work for me. Tomorrow I'm headed out early in the morning with a giant dahlia to meet up with the crazy talented and inspired Sarah Deragon, who is going to take some promotional shots for the show and my papel SF identity for the forseeable future. I'm excited to get out of this house and to work with Sarah, and I'll share those here (of course I will) as soon as I get them.

Have a wonderful weekend! 

xoxo





3.14.2014

pi day



Hi there. Do you miss me? I sincerely miss having little dialogues here with you, and I totally miss having things besides paper to write about, but c'est la vie for now. 

Luckily today is Pi Day (March 14th, a.k.a. 3.14), so I have a great reason to dredge up some donuts pies. Little cherry pies, for that matter, made in a donut pan to fit perfectly in your hand.


You could use any seasonal pie filling and these would be wonderful. I just happened to make them in June a few years ago right before a glorious East Coast vacation, so cherries were the thing. We actually took them to eat as breakfast at the airport, and they were delicious.

Here is the full tutorial:

Happy Pi Day, friends! Have a great weekend!

xoxo







3.06.2014

creative block


Maybe she exaggerates just a tad. :)

Last night I actually left the house for fun, to go to the book signing party for my friend Danielle, a.k.a. The Jealous Curator. I had followed Danielle's blog and been a big fan for several months before attending her San Francisco Girl Crush workshop in early 2012. Hearing both Danielle's and Lisa Congdon's stories of how they work and how they had arrived where they were at that time in their careers was a huge inspiration. I hadn't put "pen to paper" in quite a while before that workshop, and was sincerely frustrated. Now I'm much more frustrated by lack of time to execute ideas than trying to come up with them, but that workshop really was a turning around point for me, as far as trying to reinvent and refocus my creative tendencies.

Danielle's book, Creative Block, is a collection of advice and ideas from 50 artists. SO MUCH GREAT INFORMATION is in this book. Each artist provides an unblocking exercise, somewhat reminiscent of the exercises I did when I did The Artist's Way years ago, but not. The unblocking ideas in this book are beyond unique and fun. I'm not feeling blocked at all right now, but I still want to try a bunch of them.

What I like best about the book after just quickly scanning it over coffee this morning is that the interviews of the 50 artists provide great role modeling. I've learned over the last year or so that role models can be so very helpful when you are starting to put yourself out there with your artistic work, providing both practical road maps AND sheer inspiration, too. I'm excited to devour Creative Block, but I have a little interview of my own coming up in a few weeks (WOOT!) and I want to be sure I'm not regurgitating answers other people have given in the book, so I'll have to wait. 

Congratulations to Danielle, she is totally on fire, and like I said to her at ALT Summit last year when we both spoke there (she, as a panelist and me with my roundtable), I attribute so much of what I've been able to get done in the last two years to having met her. So, thanks again, Danielle! And if you are looking for a fantastic read about contemporary artists practicing in a variety of media and at varying levels of success, go grab a copy of her book!

Goofing around last year in SLC (with Danny and Danielle).










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