Note: Some of these have naked stuff. As if you couldn’t guess…

George Washington Cat by AnimaHouseArt

Awesome. I would place this in the entryway, hopefully next to a set of custom commissions of my entire family tree as cats, with golden placards.

The Caress by Fernand Khnopff

I have always loved this piece. First of all I love the composition, but then it has the added benefit of being about Oedipus and the Sphinx, AND the sphinx is a freaking cheetah lady. Yesss. She has on a nice smug expression too.

Mama by Aya Kakeda

Sleep Walking by Aya Kakeda

Other than the obvious appeal of six teats, I love Aya Kakeda’s style, inks, and limited color.

The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife by Hokusai

A lovely piece to hang in the bathroom. But seriously, one of these prints just sold for ~$2.2k and I am so envious of its new owner. :( It’s freaking weird.

Mainzer Cat Postcard

So, Matt and I were at the Humane Society when we discovered this gem hanging, BIG, on the wall. It was instant love. The terrifying expressions and awkward anthropomorphization, and above all the fact that the owner saw this terror and thought it fit to welcome potential animal adopters into their establishment was just amazing. That anyone could look at this and say with seriousness “Aw, so whimsical,” buy it, frame it, and hang it is just inspiring. This is why I must have it at least 4 feet wide above the couch in the living room.

It took me a couple days to track down what the heck that print was of, and I discovered it’s actually a postcard and part of a series of hundreds. I’m planning on buying one and scanning it at 6000 DPI, for future use as an enormous, ornately framed print.

Cheetah by Ryan Berkley

Been coveting this for years, but don’t want to wrinkle it up before I have a place to properly hang it!

Romero Britto

Britto is a very famous pop artist here in Miami. Along with enjoying his work (BEFORE I even realized he is obsessed with cats!!!!) I also admire his proliferation in licensing and creating new art. He creates constantly, and has a very recognizable set of icons and style.

Lilian Playing with an Abstract Thought by Matte Stephens

I’m really fond of the abstract thought, and the fact that Lilian is completely vacant.

Long Yak by Mark Ryden

Perfect.

That’s all for now!

He could not guess our true intentions…

(Obviously on drugs)

After chatting him up a while, we learned that he was originally from Six Flags, but had lost his job of hanging from a string in the carnival section and was now homeless. I listened to him talk, but all I could think about was his juicy, white innards. He was so big and cuddly– how could I resist making use of his Polyfil? So I signaled to my trusty sidekick Matt, and he attacked.

Oh, the sweet innards..

It was a bloodfest. He tore out all that was useful, and left his poor abused body on the floor to expire.

The poor guy didn’t say a word during it all; It was like he was resigned to his fate. So, after a few proddings to make sure there were no good tidbits left, we disposed of the body and escaped with the spoils. Now what to do with a giant bag of Polyfil?

Life is rough in the ghetto

I’ve always found sleep and dreaming fascinating, and (maybe because of my interest) I often have interesting experiences during sleep. I had one such “interesting” experience this morning (though it was more annoying and frightening at the time) and am wondering if anyone else experiences this!

Occasionally, while I am dreaming, I will suddenly become fully conscious– different than a normal lucid dream in that I feel like I am “awake” rather than just conscious, even though dream stuff is still going on. It will always begin by suddenly being unable to open my eyes in the dream, no matter how hard I try. From there I start to panic in the dream, and it turns to me wanting to wake up very badly but being unable to move any part of my body both in the “dream” and in real life.

After struggling I will occasionally be able to burst my eyes open slightly, and I will even view things in my real room such as posters on the wall and the ceiling fan. An extreme drowsiness will pull me right back into sleep, where the process will start over 4 or 5 times before I finally thrash around the covers and become un-paralyzed and awake for good.

I am aware of “sleep paralysis,” and am guessing that what I experience is some odd form of it, but it feels more like trying hard to wake up with paralyzed eyes, than being fully awake with paralyzed limbs. I have noticed that it almost always happens when I sleep on my back, because I am inevitably staring at the ceiling when I finally can open my eyes.

I have heard various myths about demons and incubi that are more prone to attack whilst one sleeps on their back, and I can imagine how such myths begin if that position of sleep does cause sleep paralysis!

Have any of you guys experienced sleep paralysis or some other strange sleep phenomena? Maybe it’s time to create an illustration about it… though who could do it better than Fuseli’s “Nightmare”?

In the dream…

I was coughing up a storm, obviously very sick, and this girl kept telling me to stop it because it was so annoying. But I kept coughing, and eventually little specks of blood spewed out with the spit. Then, a giant (like baseball sized) gob of bloody stuff shot out and stuck to the wall. (How it got out of my throat, I’ll never know.) So I scraped the bloody ball off the wall to show a doctor and started running around in a frantic search to locate a hospital.

The thing is, as I was running around, the blood started falling off the squishy gob. I looked down, and underneath the blood was….. a snowman head. Yeah, carrot and all.

Whaaaat???

This has nothin’ to do with nothin’, but I just wanted to let you kittens know that Rhino Veggie Fruit Bears are the most amazing vitaminy things you could ever hope to stuff in your mouth. Matt’s mom sent him some of these, and while I am always reluctant to try stuff created and eaten by crazed health-food addicts, I tried one anyway. Normally, trying to keep my body from forcefully rejecting the cardboard they call health food takes a serious effort, but these are amazing! Instead, each morning is a struggle as I attempt to eat only my allotted two bears rather than the entire bottle. If they sold these in the candy aisle and had absolutely no vitamins or antioxidants, I would still eat them. The heavenly combination of sweet and sour; the spark of delight as the crisp grains of sugary stuff tempt my palette…

…well that’s getting a bit weird. But they ARE delicious.

….and no, I am not being paid to say that :P

I spent the holidays in Florida and, having grown up in Michigan, stepping outside to 75 degrees and topless Europeans on the beach was a rather startling Christmas atmosphere. I had a great time though, and got to spend some quality time with my four siblings (Including the new one!)

Even on vacation I couldn’t stop thinking about neat stuff to make for my upcoming Etsy shop, so I took the opportunity to have a little craft-time with my siblings. I found some really neat tutorials on making glass magnets on the web, so I printed out a bunch of little bits of my artwork and we all made some sets of magnets out of them. Unfortunately they had to sit out for 24 hours to dry, and I forgot to take final shots! Ah well.

I was also lucky enough to receive an absolutely awesome Christmas/Graduation present…

TADA!!

Suh-weet. My old Inspiron 9300 was about to kick the bucket, not to mention that fact that it weighed a bazillion pounds and could barely run anything over Photoshop 7. My new Macbook Pro is beautiful, sleek and fast, and I’m trying my best to keep it that way. (I give myself a week before it gets cereal crumbs embedded in the keyboard…) I picked the 15″ version with 2 gigs of ram, but ordered 4 gigs online which I’m going to swap out and hopefully not ruin anything.

Anyway, there’s my life in a nutshell. Now that I’m back in Savannah I’m going to try to get back on track with promotion and opening an Etsy shop! Wish me luck!

I don’t think it has fully “hit” me yet, but as of Thursday my time as a student at SCAD is officially OVER! Crazy. I have an apartment here in Savannah until August so I’m not leaving the city yet… but my time spent now will be toward self-promotion and hopefully real jobs rather than classwork. It is kind of terrifying I guess, but no moreso than a pack of wild locusts.

In other news…. wait! I don’t have any :(

So here is my absurdly long list of what I would like to accomplish (professionally… yes I want to learn to pee standing up but that’s another post altogether):

1. Learn the intimate specifics of CSS and PHP – I know enough CSS to apply styles to my site, but I don’t much about positioning. And as for PHP… hahaha!
   
2. Put my newfound knowledge to work and redo my web site in validated CSS – I feel like a dinosaur as my web design is still in tables, with code from the stone age. Bleh! (Wow, nerd.)
   
3. Learn how to code in WordPress and move my blog over (Will Google send someone after me for this statement?) – Something about WordPress just makes me feel all fuzzy inside.
4. Get people to actually look at my web site – You’re not reading this. Nobody is reading this. So it’s time for a Super Promotion Attack Plus!
5. Publish a Children’s Book – This is probably my number one goal that I would wet myself if accomplished.
6. Learn to Animate - Flash… 3D, I don’t know. I just really want to learn to animate.
7. Get a couch – Okay, this isn’t a professional goal, but we have had this apartment for 2 months now and I REALLY WANT A COUCH. (We got a couch! SUCCESS!)
   
8. Expand portfolio to new markets – I would like to have a body of work for every market, so I could send a portfolio to get work in: Stationery, Toy Design, Concept/Character work, T-Shirts, Greeting Cards, Web Design, Poster, Editorial. I’ve got a ton of children’s work, but only a few samples of other markets.
   
9. Get in an annual – Yes, please.
10. Take Part in Illustration Friday – Good way to get the juices pumpin’!
    

Well, that’s all I can think of for now but you bet your sweet bippy I will edit this post if I think of anything else!

…what is a bippy?

Classes just started, and it seems like they will actually be useful this quarter! I’m very excited. In portfolio, we had our work torn apart and had to write up a list of our weaknesses, and our interests in markets and topics. Then we create six projects that utilize this information in repairing holes in our portfolios.

Here are the things I want to work on in the months to come:

1. More variety in people — especially more males. Also old people, and multicultural people. Children’s Book publishers want to see this wide variety.
2. More variety in subject — I get stuck on themes, (boobs, cats, sea creatures, babes,) and I generally avoid drawing the things I hate… like cars and architecture and oatmeal.
3. More black and white work — A lot of children’s magazines and older kids’ books have black and white interiors.
   
4. Work on colors/lighting — I’d like to find a way to keep my colors very bright and, er, colorful, without the image seeming disjointed and losing all the tiny details. Also I was told I need stronger changes in value, and I agree. I was also told my compositions need work and while I don’t exactly agree, I’ll keep it in mind.