Can you see it?

And if for some reason you can't see the (anti)Valentine below, I'm going to investigate when I get home why it shows up as a little box with a question mark from this different computer that I am using right now. Hmmm...

Valentine's Day Blows Every Year.

Fortunately, it never fails to disappoint. It never fails to deliver. Yes, I'd like one NON all-inclusive holiday, please... um, let's see... with a side of, uh, loneliness, and... just a dash of self-doubt. On whole wheat. Hold the cheese, thanks. I'm vegan.

I have to drudge up some of the Valentine's Day Blows creations from years past and post them here too. Please keep in mind that these are not my images. I'm just photoshopping stock photography. If I were to market and sell these, I'd have to take my own pictures. As for this year, I don't have a party favor, a cupcake with a candle, or a depressed businessman in a suit and tie hanging around my apartment. I simply make do with what I have.

I'm not actually bitter. This theme just cracks me up. I may start a simultaneous "Valentine's Day Sucks" card one of these years...

Inspired by other blogs

I'll get there. To that place where inspiration and action wed happily and have 2.5 beautiful little children in their white-picket- fenced yard with garden gnomes and wooden cut-outs of old ladies in polka-dot bloomers bending over to weed. They may even have an L-shaped sofa or a magazine rack next to the toilet in their bathroom. It's a long stretch--and I'm sure you've even forgotten what I'm talking about because so have I--but I'll get there.

As far as simplicity goes, this character was not too forced. Nice and easy. Something that would only get better with repetition to iron out kinks and confusion, I'd imagine.

Not new, per se...

I would love a different human subject than my own face, but, well, this way I don't have to ask anyone to pose for me for three hours.

I painted this a while ago. It might have been this fall, but I can't be entirely sure. At any rate, it looks a lot better and darker when I'm holding it in my hand than when it's scanned in and staring at me blankly from the screen. For one thing, it is impossible to see the thickness of the paint, the sweeping brush-stroke marks, the imperfections of the surface. That kinda makes the piece when it admittedly doesn't look as much like me as the drawing does (see two posts prior). Paint is a little less controllable for me proportion wise.

This was more about achieving drastic lighting than anything else. Well, that, and using purple shadows and funky colors.

Lo frustrante

I wonder if I'll ever develop a special knack for drawing scenes with people in them. I am right now without a cartoon character style that comforts me. When I try to draw people non- realistically, I can but it feels like pretending... and it's not particularly efficient. Like walking with high-heels. I have been a rubber-soled sneaker-wearing chica for so long, that I totter around like a five year-old playing dress-up when I finally try to sport something with a little height.

While there is nothing wrong with drawing realistically, it limits me some and really keeps me from expressing a lot of ideas visually, for fear that I won't get it exactly right. That pattern needs to stop. I become paralyzed to the point of not even being able to let myself produce anything, afraid of my own imperfection. This blog might help wrench it out of me.

For now, I won't make a big deal out of it. I'll just draw what comes naturally and then ease my way into the cartooning pool, toe by stylized toe.

Meeting my muse

Art therapy anyone? This is the first anything that I've sketched in awhile. I forget how addictive and calming it can be to curl up with a good set of pencils and just draw. And then I find myself tweaking and adjusting and erasing three hours after I begin, wonderfully oblivious to the clock. And suddenly realizing how tired I will be the next day at work.

I furrowed my brow only in the last twenty minutes of drawing, since, well, you all know what moms tell you about your eyes staying permanently crossed? I don't like to push my luck with these types of things.

First Official Blog Entry: Last Official TJ's Chalkboard?

This may be the farewell point for my days as a Trader Joe's sign artist. I don't know what the future holds for my penmanship, but it may be that the next chalkboard on which I write is in a classroom. The chalkboards (while more of a rarity) are the fun part of my job. Mostly, I write with Sharpie, photocopy, laminate, and cut with scissors--not very much unlike Kindergarten craft time. See below.