Last week’s Illustration Friday that I never got posted. Oops.
Click on the picture for the full size.
My friend L. has had more bad luck in the past few months than anyone I know. Probably every black cat, broken mirror, and full moon has come her way, making some emotional and mental damage nigh irreparable. And oh, she’s so sweet and soft and lovable that it nearly breaks my heart. The sorts of things that have happened could be best sellers. They really could.
So when I sat down to do this week’s Illustration Friday with the topic “enough,” I thought of her. In a few weeks she’s jetting off to grad school in a new state, a new world, a new adventure and she can (and I really do hope this) leave behind the people and things that cause the most trouble in her life. So this is dedicated to her.
It is a large piece, please click on it to see it better. It is acrylic on watercolor paper.
“I’ve had enough,” she said. “We’re flying away from all this.”
The dining room walls are all done and boy do they look beautiful. I’ve just about fixed all the trim in the room/hallway/foyer. That will be done this week, likely this night.
I did a piece for last week’s Illustration Friday under the topic of “Foggy” but never got it posted up. I was on vacation. I have an excuse. I do have this week’s finished, just nowin fact, under the topic “Enough.” It is dedicated to my friend Lydia because it’s been that sort of month for her. I’ll say more when I post it. It’s done in acrylics, which is the first time I’ve done that for IF, I think. I did it in my watercolor notebook, of all things, and it’s just black and white. You’ll see. I like it. It has one of my new fancy cartoonish characters in it. And an origami bird.
I have several new art pieces done at home that I desperately need to get photographed and posted. I am so very, very proud of them. I’m getting ready to hang them up, in fact, in the dining room. They are going to look supa-dupa-fine.
My husband’s sister is coming to live with us for a couple of months starting at the beginning of August, just days before my 29th birthday. I’m very much excited because I like her a lot and I hope we can become friends. It is going to be fun, and a little strange. We’re used to having someone stay the night every once and a while, but to have someone there all the time will be odd.
We got to go to a sneak peek of “The Dark Knight” last week. It was incredible. Loved the movie so much. Go see it. Go see it now.
I hate painting rooms, soul sucking, physically exhausting, messy, smelly endeavour. Hate it. Hate it.
Which creates a certain sense of irony in my house when you consider how often I repaint rooms. I can’t stop myself. All I need is one good HTML click to benjaminmoore.com or sherwinwilliams.com and I’m done for. I think I have low color self-esteem: everyone else’s room colors are so much nicer than my own. Gotta have it. Now. This makes my husband insane because he likes consistency, sameness, everydayness that changing a room constantly does not lend itself to.
Yesterday, my best friend and I repainted my dining room/entry way/hallway/basement stairs from dark olive green to a color called Abingdon Putty by Benjamin Moore. The colors watch makes it look like a greenish putty color, like ecru, but the reality is not really like that at all. It’s much lighter and brighter than the color swatch, and a little more true on the online swatch, which I find hysterical. The actual color on the walls reminds me of Vanilla Ice cream, which I think should be the name of the color. It’s like swimming in a big bowl of the stuff. Absolutely delicious. Or vanilla creme. It’s so rich. There is depth to the color. “Vanilla ice cream?” my coworker said, “Isn’t that, well, white?” No no no not at all. There’s nothing “White” about this color. It’s got depth and dimension. I swear, its one of the most beautiful wall colors I’ve ever seen and set up next to the chocolate brown trim? My dining room is the color of dessert, I swear to it.
Still, these are the online color swatches, and they don’t match either color very well at all.
When it got dark out and the artificial light started hitting it, we discovered the slight green undertone come out more. It’s sort of a springy green color, a surprise. Always moving, always changing, always growing. it is actually inspiring me to bring the great outdoors inside and really play up the natural, growing world within design. Listen to me! I sound like an HGTV host.
Here’s a funny thing. When I was at Ace Hardware store buying my Benjamin Moore paint, the guy working told me to get Ace Hardware paint and have them match the Benjamin Moore color. Cheaper, and good quality paint. So I said sure. And you know what? Ace Hardware brand paint is absolutely amazing. I love it. One coat of this stuff was almost perfect. It’s thick and creamy with excellent coverage and about $10 cheaper than the name brand Benjamin Moore paint. I highly recommend this stuff. Paint match, you’ll be thankful you did. I never found anything great about the Benjamin Moore paint and I think it is ridiculously expensive. But I never found anything wrong with it either. I like Sherwin Williams paint the best, but my new favorite is the Ace Hardware brand. Also? No smell. Not at all. You couldn’t even tell we’d just painted most of the house.
We are going to finish the second coat tonight and begin to put the rooms back together. Once I’m done with that I’ll post pictures. Art on my walls? Can’t wait! Before the walls were just too dark green to hold my art very well. There was too much weird contrast. Now? Can’t wait.
We have lived in this house for a year and a half and it has always felt almost finished but never complete in any room. All the rooms remain somewhat disorganized with no style, and nothing felt finished. We made the worst mistake a home buyer can make in that we painted all the rooms before we moved in. I hated most of the colors after we moved in and Ryan hated some of them (but is mostly indifferent to these sorts of things). So for a year and a half the house never felt complete. The olive green is still one of my favorite colors, but it made the dining room, hallway, entry way feel closed in and the artificial light turned the green a yellowy pea color. I never hung up any art, I never finished the rooms. I hated it. Now? I love it and it finally feels like home. It feels like a space I live in and not one I avoid. I can hang up my art, I can move some pieces into the room to finish it off. After a year and a half…it feels like us. I’m so in love.
-Sommer out
Two new watercolor pieces, both are about pink blossoms! Click for actual size
I apologize this week’s Illustration Friday is coming in so very late.
The topic is “Sour”
Please meet Mildred Q. The question is, is she a “Sour Puss” or is it that letter she has just read that makes her look so dour? We may never know. As soon as she tore it into tiny little pieces, she swallowed them all up!
There are some brilliant, intense people in this world, but while we live in an era where everyone is special and no one is special and there is plenty of money all around to support talent that is both mediocre, out of this world, and really, really shitty, few people really stand up and out. With so many voices, it is all too easy to be drowned out by the clamoring masses. Sure, places like YouTube have made it easier for the little known creative director to really show off and do experimental things, they are one in a zillion amongst crapcrapcrap. Who else would like the era of Everyone is Special and Everyone Wins to be over? Man, do you remember when poets were household names and writers of philosophy were widely read?
Thankfully there is brilliance at the end of the tunnel, if only you can wait it out that long. Most of it can be found right here in your internet home, cherished and blogged about to your heart’s content. I’ll tell you my favorites, how about yours?
I about peed my pants when I discovered this artist. Her name is Jayme McGowan and she’s absolutely irresistible. There is something about the faces of her creations that does it for me, not to mention how very much I like circus themed art. I’ve purchased three of her prints, three from her circus group (two are shown below) and oh, how I want to own the fourth too. I can hardly wait till they show up. The originals, I have no doubt, are beyond beautiful. She creates in 3D paper, which is both very easy and very hard to pull off. The cutting out and gluing down of paper pieces is easy. The concept and execution is fundamentally difficult. That’s why I can’t say enough about artists like this. You can, literally, feel yourself climbing into them. How cool is that?
2. Abney Park
Steampunk. This is either a beloved subculture or one that is completely foreign in every sense of the word. Steampunk is a subculture that combines the romance of steam technology- think goggles, dirigibles, brass and oh, steam, with Victorian elegance and dreamy literary references. Military coats combined with long drawn Victorian dresses, tall hats adorned with cracked leather goggles. It is a world wholly its own in which many people trespass and carry on. There are many conventions, many fairs that tip its hat to this genre, and most Anime conventions and Comic Cons can be see filled with them. I love them something terrible. (Check out the book “Court of the Air” by Stephen Hunt for my current foray into the Steampunk genre)
Well it’s not just creative clothing and funny accents that gets us there. It is also music like Abney Park which is so very rich in texture, story and sound. And let’s not forget to mention how incredibly good looking their lead singer is. Particularly their newest CD, the songs are filled with the clicks and whistles of steam technology, rubbed with the velvety goodness of romantic, dark, foreboding vocals and delicious stringed instruments. I get a little warm just talking about them. They even have a track on the deliriously beautiful Mirrormaskmovie by Neil Gaiman.
3. Bitey Castle- Brackenwood Movies
Ooooh. I love this man. Adam Phillips is so brilliant I want take him home and devour him. I found Bitey Castle several years ago when he’d just started his film “Waterlollies” and honestly, I thought the man would never finish. But it’s done now and it’s fantastic. They are all fantastic. They are short flash movies and so worth the time.
Oh I am also deciding to return to my watercolor journal to do mini-paintings. I miss it. Expect to see me posting on Illustration Friday regularly starting this week.
This week’s word is Sour. I am a little stumped as to what to do. We’ll see.
I check on my vegetable garden nearly every day, and every day I come away a little sadder. The storm that rocked us so heavily last weekend left most of my plants in tatters. I mean that literally, the leaves of my cabbage looked like the clothing of a poor orphan in 18th century London. My tomato plants, while miraculously still standing, look battered and war torn. One plant is growing two tiny tomatoes, but otherwise not a single new growth as far as I can tell. I wonder if they will grow at all.
My pepper plants are doing alright, I suppose. Some of them are growing peppers, though some of them remain tragically barren. Some of my basil plants struggle just to remain up right, while some are still growing, plodding along with strength and guile. I haven’t harvested any of them yet, though I very much want to.
I admit, I was not fully prepared for the life of a gardener/farmer. It is taxing. I cried over my damaged garden more than I think some of my neighbors cried over their broken fences, damaged houses and uprooted trees. Perhaps I am too emotionally invested. I don’t mind eating their fruits, but I am sorely wounded when mother nature gets callous.
The Fourthof July came and went this year with little, excuse the pun, fanfair. I’m not big into fireworks, I find them noisy and annoying as most of the people in my city set them off for a week before the holiday and at least a week after, so you’re always entreated to banging and booming. The cats get fidgety, and there is always so much debris and waste littering the sides of the road. I don’t get it, I’d rather just grill food and celebrate that way, if at all.
I have purchased a few new books that I will aprise you of.
Two of them are by Jane Austen. “Sense & Sensibility” and “Pride & Prejudice” I have seen many a-movie that these books have been made into, but I haven’t read them, which I deeply regret and feel a sense of shame at having not even tried to read them. I love the time period and all the authors in it, and I love Jane Austen. So I have no idea what took me so long. I have read “Northanger Abby” which is a real treat to read. Parodies of the time period are funny and I enjoy them. I can’t help it.
The other is a surprising find. When I was at The Bookworm getting my new David Sedaris book signed, I looked over their sci-fi section while I was waiting. It was ridiculously small, smaller than any of my bookshelves at home and embarrassingly understocked, but they did have one new book that I was curious about. I liked the cover art, which I think does it for me when it comes to finding books I’ve never heard of. It is sort of the color and texture of tea stained parchment with a pencil and ink drawing of a hot air balloon with a boy clinging to a rope as it flies high into the air. I attempted to commit the name of the book to memory so I could look it up when I got home, but of course the moment we left the store the book’s author and title flew right out of my head.
That is, until I discovered it, again, inside the Boarders bookstore last night. Having a 25% off coupon helped with the decision, and I got it right away, lest I forget the name again. It’s called “The Court of the Air” by Stephen Hunt. It is absolutely delightful. “A fantastical tale of high adventuring, low-life rogues, and orphans on the run.”
Seriously, I don’t think our society uses the words “low-life rogues” nearly enough as it is.
Yesterday I came in to work around 8:54 and there was a post-it note on my desk in front of the keyboard. It was from one of the night shift women, the one who doesn’t talk to me even if I say “hello, how are you?” She is also the one that comes rushing in minutes after she’s supposed to be at work, late and blubbering about some excuse or another. Traffic is her favorite, sometimes she throws in an accident or a bad light. Every day she works she’s late. I know this because I can’t leave till she gets there.
I never bothered to complain about her, though, to the boss. She’s never very late, only a few minutes, 10 at most. It seemed like a petty thing and only really irritated me when I had things to go do, like pick Ryan up at the bus stop.
Anyway, enough back story. The Post-It Note.
Basically, it said that I’d left my chair in the middle of the room and that I need to make sure I push it under the desk before I leave.
I actually had to read it a couple of times. It was written with angry tone, accusing me basically of doing it on purpose. I’ve never, in my whole life, considered the state of my roll-y chair and of all the things I could do to this woman to make her life hard, leaving my chair in the middle of the room is not part of any master plan.
She also makes it sound like our room is very big. It’s not. It’s about the size of my dining room, if that gives you an idea. I didn’t push it 6 feet and leave it, “Muahahahaha-ing” as I walked to my car. Likely, I stood up and walked out, and it was not tucked under the desk. It should also be noted that usually the girl who takes my place moves over to my desk because I’ve got the double monitor thing going on. I’m guessing that she didn’t move over or didn’t move over fast enough, because my Mad Genius Plan of Villainy worked so well against her.
I think the irony is that I wasn’t going to complain to our boss about her coming in late because I thought it was petty. I’m alarmed that she didn’t stop herself and go “I wonder if this is really all that important in the grand scheme of things?” though likely, she believes I do it on purpose.
So if you ever wondered what the depths of my dastardly-ness really were….now you know.
