We Need To Pray Just To Make It Today

More fun with our new camera!





Oh fine, now he's all shy. When he was smaller and lived on my arugula plant, he was all rebellious and angry and charging me. No, really, he would run up the tallest stem at me, flashing gang signs, makin' all kinds of threats. Jerk. I made Colin take him somewhere far, far away.

But now he's back, and he brought a friend, and the friend lives in our cypress tree, and this guy lives in our plumeria tree and now he runs in the opposite direction because clearly he's a little camera shy in his adult years. Who's chasin' who now, buddy?? Yeah. That's right.

So we have a truce. He doesn't charge me, and in return, I let him stay there and eat bugs. (Which works out nicely, because the truth is, he really scares the crap out of me.)

We got a fancy new camera.

So... I've been taking pictures of things. Mostly things on our patio.




But how's this for texture?



:o)

The Interim

Just swinging by to post something anything while I'm wrapping up some actual work to show you.

Get this: I've painted 3,970 dots in the last 2 weeks. Yes, that's accurate, and yes, I counted. More later.

A glimpse of something else:


Oh, also, check out this awesome feature Connie at Dirty Footprints Studio did of me! :oD

Ethereal

New ACEOs

I was struck with an idea on how to make ACEOs more like my original paintings (without taking a ridiculous amount of time) and it worked!! :o) I'm happy.

So... these now have beach sand, which is cool. Also, I used heavier phosphorescent pigments, so they will glow brighter than you can believe. Glass too, so they sparkle!

I have 4 more that I'm still working on.

I also have 5 tealish aqua turquoise paintings that are in process. Yes, 5. I'm not quite sure how that happened, I don't normally spread out a color obsession over so many separate pieces at one time. I think it's because I'm almost done with an Orange custom painting that's 4 feet tall and 5 feet wide, and I needed to color an equal amount of "space" with an opposing paint color.

I think I'm about to start a big, bright, purple painting. Wouldn't that be rad?

O Firefly, O Firefly

My whole life I've wanted to see fireflies. I resent all you people out there that live in firefly country. California does not have them. :o( Junebugs yes, but no fireflies. It must be magical. Of course it is. Just look at these pictures:

(click on each image to see it larger and to view the flickr page of the lucky lucky photographer who was there to capture the moment.)

Sooooo jealous. They make me so happy. I used to have this dream of "decorating" with fireflies at my wedding, maybe carrying them around in lanterns, or releasing bazillions of them at a romantic moment. Then I realized I don't live near fireflies, and then I got married in a place without them too. [Okay, well, being on a beach in Hawaii definitely makes up for the lack of fireflies.]

So... one of you out there should seriously consider doing that.

And, hopefully, eventually, one day Colin and I will start traveling to All-Over-The-World and I can finally see them for myself.

Pretty little magic bugs. I love you.

In process

Just a few quick pictures taken with my best friend iPhone of some of the pieces I'm working on and finishing up right now.

I really only like showing "parts" of each painting until it's officially done. I think it's more fun that way. It's like clues, or previews. (Aside from those of you that come over and see them unfinished and naked and timidly question whether or not I'm going to "keep working on this one.")

:oP

Top 3 Reasons I Resent Having To Leave My House

1.
2.
3.
Occasionally we find ourselves lolling about on a Sunday afternoon not really wanting to do anything other than enjoy ourselves and laze about on the carpet.

And why wouldn't we? I love my patio. So much do I love my patio.

Sidenote: Everything that yawns is cute. Everything. Look how cute he is:

Solstice already?!

Sheesh. I'm so not ready for the sun to start disappearing faster everyday. I resent the darkness of winter. (Okay okay, we would all be dressed like that in December anyway. It's not like I live in Canada.)

June is usually a very creative month for me, and not that this one isn't, but I think I'm noticing a slightly more defined "pattern" in my Junes than I have before. In the constant mental battle of cool colors vs. warm colors, I seem to bleed aqua and teal and turquoise this month every year. I hadn't thought of it before, but this is easily the 4th June in a row in which my biggest artsy obsession has been making a painting as Teal as I can make it. I'm not sure what it is about this time of year that causes it. Maybe it's just a regular cycle of color exploration that happens to fall in June, rather than the environment of June causing it.

If I haven't said so before, I blame my mother for this. When I was little, I used to regard her love of teal as "quirky" at best, and mostly an unfortunate influence of too many butterflies and too much 1980s.

NOW LOOK AT ME.

Crazy crazy shadowy crazy

That picture was actually taken indoors, but the sun was hitting it in such a way that it made these awesome shadows across the whole painting. This was only made possible by the sun FINALLYYYYY emerging after weeks of June gloom that was starting to exhaust me and break my soul. Phew.

Someday is one more in my series of Rainbow explorations. :o)

Old, but new.

I made these paintings for a small business location last year, but said business is no longer in, um, business, so now I'm listing them in my Etsy shop! :o)




(Those images were all taken in the evening, with a blacklight on.)

To be fair*

The paintings currently in progress on my workbench are, in fact, moon colored.




("Moon" being relative to whatever color I'm choosing it to be at any given time, of course.)

Well, when you put it that way...

I guess I do paint in warm colors.


The two on the right are spoken for, and will one day live in Virginia and Illinois, respectively. But in the meantime, I'm glad they helped illustrate a point. (To me.)

Staycation Weekend

We had an amazing anniversary weekend. :o) Very refreshing. We read a lot, drank Sangrias, went to Roy's, and had fun together.

Colin even took me on a romantic journey through all the local sights that played a role in our early relationship. :o) Like this neat spot overlooking Dana Point Harbor. If you stand in the middle of of the compass star, it makes your voice sound really weird. :o) Yay acoustics.




(if you look closely, you can see my reflection in one of Colin's eyes, and his hand and camera in the other!)

We had just come from Rancho Santa Margarita, maybe 15 miles inland, where I swear it was 100 degrees, but Dana Point was cool and breezy. This is why the ocean is always better than the desert. Always.


Hamming it up at Fashion Island after an incredible Hawaiian Fusion dinner at Roy's:


heh :o)

Special Day :o)

Today is our Anniversary. :o) It marks 4 years of marriage, and 8 years of being happily together. As Colin has been mentioning all week, this officially means we've been married more than we were not married! Yay! :oD

People kept telling us that our crazy "in love" feeling would go away after a couple years of knowing each other. We're still waiting for that to happen, and at this point, I have serious doubts that it will. Serious, serious doubts.

Take a memory trip with us:





If we haven't mentioned lately, extra special thanks to Best Man Joe for introducing us 8 years ago. We really appreciate it. ;o)

A couple more pictures here!

Sometimes I Forget What I Look Like

...and other times I wish I didn't remember.

[I once contemplated having dread-locks, but I was afraid my stylist would disown me. So instead, I dyed my hair punk-rock burgundy. My stylist almost disowned me. Well, he canceled all his appointments the day I finally grew tired of it.]

My personality tests always come up "extrovert," but you wouldn't know it from how often I go through cycles of wanting to hole up and hide. Lately I've both been wishing I was less involved in certain things, and more involved in others. The problem is figuring out what those things are.

[I was in a movie on the big screen once that went to all the festivals.]

The last 5 years have been so full of art and paint that I've lost myself within it. Not that there's anything wrong with that, in fact it's really helped me find myself. I just occasionally forget if there's anything else to me. I worry that because all I do is paint, all I am is a painter. But that can't be true, can it?

[♫ For a minute there, I lost myself, I lost myself...♫♫]


[This is my Johnny Depp face. I'm not going to explain that further.]

There's a really beautiful light that pours into our home during the daytime because of this white, gossamer-like curtain that hangs in the window...

This is totally related to the fact that I turn 30 in January. Totally. I think the 29th year is supposed to be filled with self-reflection. I'm not at all depressed about reaching another decade, I'm just introspective about it.

[I can recognize physicist Dr. Michio Kaku's voice while flipping channels on the radio.]


So here's to more learning about who I am.

There will definitely be more art soon. Oh yes. I may not have been blogging about it much lately, but I've definitely been working on some stuff. I have ideas for new work that I think is so much more complex than I've done before that I'm scared to start working on it. It might eat my mind.

[if LOST doesn't first.]