Night Sky Color Study - 2011

New Color Study!!

Head over to my Etsy shop for details and purchasing options.

Actually it's my first, and only, original 5x5 inch original painting since September 2010. I don't have any more planned right now, although I am finishing up two really amazing sets of four 5x5s which will be available next week. No more individual ones for awhile, however.

I started all these many moons ago, and had a bit of time here and there in the last month to finish them up. I've been working like crazy lately. Basically I have 8 different paintings (not including those 2 sets I mentioned) in various stages of progress going right now.

I've been taking advantage of the cement floors we've been living with for a month and a half and attempting to get 4 months work done in half the time. I guess the massive irritation of having a hot water pipe burst downstairs and flood everything has been a blessing in disguise. Sort of. That's what I'm telling myself anyway.

As I'm busy with commissions for the foreseeable future, I won't have too much available in the way of Originals for a bit. Hopefully I'll be starting a new collection in a few months. In the meantime, I also have 23 prints available in my shop in two different sizes.

More Japan soon. :) There was also a mini-weekend trip to Temecula wine-country thrown in there. Hooray travel and photography. :)

Japan Adventures: 100% Parade

[Previously on: Japan Adventures]

We were walking down the street one Sunday afternoon when the police stopped traffic to let a huge group of people pass and... WTF?

Someone from the group handed us a flyer that said, "100% Parade."

Oh. Well, that explains it.

To be continued...

Japan Adventures: Free Hugs!

[Previously on: Japan Adventures]

More from Harajuku:

Sweeeet. I'd heard about the Free Hug people, but never before have I run into them. Oh, Japan. I'd hug you any day of the week!

Colin took his free hug very, very seriously.

Also, this:

Yay!

To be continued...

Japan Adventures: Harajuku

[Previously on: Japan Adventures]

The famed Harajuku, where the cool kids hang out and shop. We felt so hip. Everything was colorful and crowded and crazy. No, really:

You basically have to make a decision and then jump straight in. Once you're in the middle of that crowd, there's no turning back. Keep on moving till it spits you out the other side.

Along the way we saw things like this:

And this:

And THIS:

GAHHH!!

Whew. Made it.

Because of the huge crowd and the fact that the shops were incredibly tiny, we only ventured into a few. There were women screaming about sales. People were wearing awesomely ridiculous outfits. I lost a mitten. Colin found the mitten. It was a whirlwind of an hour.

Loved it.

To be continued...

Japan Adventures: THE CUTEST TOY EVER

[previously on: Japan Adventures]

NEED THIS. VERY BADLY.



So while walking through Ueno, we stopped in an arcade and saw this. It didn't make a huge impact on me at the time, but later those adorable pandas crawled inside my brain and it became clear that I desperately needed one. Unfortunately, we never saw them again. I assume this is because they're some sort of theme-panda for Ueno proper. They're even solar powered!

Later in the trip, Laurence, noticing my extreme desperation, even launched a 7 story department store-wide search to locate the little guy. No luck.

IF ANYONE IN TOKYO WOULD LIKE TO SPEND THOUSANDS OF YEN TO ACQUIRE THIS PANDA OUT OF A CLAW MACHINE IN UENO FOR ME, I WOULD LOVE YOU FOREVER.

Thanks,
Shayla

UPDATE: Thanks to the help of one of my awesome and eagle-eyed collectors, I just bought the panda! Yay! 

To be continued...

Japan Adventures: Juxtaposition

[previously on: Japan Adventures]

First we stopped through Ueno Park to enjoy the budding blossoms with the locals. Serene.

 

Kitties! In a tree. With fancy collars. We had no explanation for this, but everyone was taking their picture, so obviously they were kind of a big deal.

Actually, cats cause frenzied photo-taking all over Japan. Everyone was lined up snapping shots on their cell phones. No idea why. But we didn't feel too silly by joining in.

Walk a few blocks down the street and you'll find the bustling shopping district of Ueno. It's an odd feeling to leave a beautiful park and find yourself in a maze of people, restaurants, and discount t-shirt stores. But, thus is Tokyo.

Had I known beforehand that Ueno is where the cheap shopping was, maybe I would have spent more time considering. Not that I was specifically looking to do cheap shopping, but in retrospect, I might have found a thing or two. They had a bunch of silk-stitched Japanese souvenir jackets there, with images on them of dragons and tigers and pandas, but in an extreme, ridiculous sort of way. There were jackets with sushi on them, and war gods. There was one that said "Alaska: The Last Frontier." There was also a Casper and Wendy jacket with Hawaii written on it. Whaaaa...?? We joked that we should each get a travel-buddy team jacket. By the end of our trip I had decided that I needed a cheapo-ironic dragon or panda jacket to wear back home. However, when I started looking at them outside of Ueno I discovered that these jackets were neither cheap nor ironic. Souvenir jackets are apparently serious business, and cost over $300. Oh well. Next time.

To be continued...