P r e t t y S k e t c h y

So apparently I have a blog...

that I've been neglecting horribly. Sarry. I've spent all of my time over the last few months in the studio frantically trying to finish up pieces for my show. With the help of my trusty pal Bethany I collected a bajillion vintage frames over the summer and fall which I spray painted white.

A little shot of my studio pre-framing, post-spray painting.

A few of the framed pieces, they all look so amazing framed, it takes the drawings to a whole new level.

This lovely (poorly photographed) little number was one of the first ones to sell when the show opened on Sunday. It's made entirely out of thread and weaved paper and I looove how it turned out, it took me forever to do though. About 8 hours of tweezer and exacto knife work, ha. You can't read the text but it says "people think they like variety more than they actually do".

This piece on the right is possibly my favorite piece in the whole show. I love how it turned out and the frame is gorgeous.

A few more scans of some of the final pieces...

Columns of course, all you cute architects eat your hearts out (and then call me for a date).

Lavender, one of my favorite things, you can't tell from the scan but the grey colour is actually a muted metallic silver.

This one looks super cute in it's ornate little frame.

A few of the little ones I finished up with... they're about 3 x 4".

And the final piece which you've already seen, I re-scanned it after I added the text. It's the largest of all the architectural pieces in the show and I like to think it's pretty darn beautiful.

So after a stupidly busy week of finishing up pieces, nannying and teaching, I got into my car on Friday after class and drove 15 hours to Edmonton; a ridiculous journey that involved a lot of diet coke, vitamin water and grumpiness. Bethany and I spent Saturday running a million errands and finished the day up with me working on a final piece for the show and typewritering out pricing cards and Beth and Joel being amazingly helpful by framing up some prints.

We laid all the pieces out for pricing (the colour is super weird in this photo) and then we slept for four hours and got up at 6:00 am to go hang the show up.

Being the dummy that I am I managed to frame and hang the entire show without taking one picture, luckily I have friends who are smarter than I am. I stole the ones above and one below from her blog.

Framing in action, I think it all turned out pretty well. I'm back there again in three weeks and I'll try to take some proper photos. The brick/white frame combo was a good one.

And last but not least, here's my show poster...

cute right? You'd better go check out the show if you know what's good for you and eat a cinnamon bun for me while you're at it.

Stay tuned, there's been a lot more going on in these parts and I haven't told you about any of it.

Around the house...

So I have been pretty busy since I last wrote. I finished up two commissions (neither of which I can show you since my photographer is in Africa), taught quite a bit and started in on some long awaited home improvement projects. This week has been pretty slow on the subbing front, I've been home all week, painting, making tea, hanging things and reading. Since so much of my time has been spent in my house I thought I'd give you all a tour of some of the little things that are making me happy around here. I've been collecting these picture for a while...

  Garden roses in an Anthropologie creamer,

Our cork-board kitchen wall complete with giant clock and opposing print

said print. I love it, I like to think of it as a portrait of me as an animal. I fell in love with it the first time I saw it and only just bought it for myself this fall as a congratulations when my art show opened.   

This branch of blossoms that Jill brought home from Eden Lily. 

The potential for beauty in my room. There is a lot I need to do. When I moved in I focused all my efforts on the studio and now that it's done I need to get going on my room. I'll keep you posted. I have some serious sanding, painting and letter collecting to do.

This old scale and it's weights on the kitchen counter.

A few ranunculus that are living in the kitchen.

  My newly thrifted, painted and hung ink shelf for the studio.

A new section to the studio (the most exciting aspects being the repurposed chalkboard tray that I nabbed from a school and am now using to hold some pictures and the ugly grey plastic table now upholstered with a huge sheet of watercolor paper).

  
Newly acquired corsage pins from Michael's that have taken over all of our bulletin boards. This weekend when I remembered that they existed I had to go out and get some; I decided that I needed even more pearls in my life.

A pearl pin in action on an inspiration board, the image is from an old Anthro catalogue. 

That's me for now. I feel like I'm a bit boring at the moment but that's all I have to offer so you'll have to deal with it, ha. Happy Thursday.

Dead & Dying: a week-long post.

Yes peeps, you are right. This is a picture of little Joey being towed away. Apparently my clutch decided to stop working this week along with a few other things vital for driving... luckily Jill had AMA. I talked to the mechanic today and apparently I am in need of repairs to the tune of $1500. Not cool. Agh, that means there are some tough decisions ahead for me. Oh why did I not become an engineer or a dentist? 

*Please take note of the homeless men in the background that stopped while we were waiting outside to ask Jill which one of them were better looking. The one that asked had a mustache that was about three inches long, he looked like a walrus. It was pretty amazing.

My week ended with me biking to work this morning and possibly developing an ear infection as a result. It is waaaay too cold to bike. Now lets go back a bit...

My lovely roommate Jill was sick Monday & Tuesday of this week so I did my roommately duty of fetching us Sugarbowl cinnamon buns and butter chicken and spending two days on the couch watching movies with her. It was glorious. I also had 'rescued' this window a while back so I spent Monday night backing it with pretty paper, it will eventually be hung in my room I think...

I also spent a good deal of Tuesday cleaning up the post-show mess in my studio to get it ready for Sketchy Jesus (a small group Nay-Nay and I started at City Centre Church). If any of you Edmonton-arty-Jesus-loving peeps are interested in a weekly sketch-booking/sharing group hit me up. A few pics of some studio improvements/additions...

 

 

 These photos were taken in my not-so-well-lit basement at night, sorry about the quality. You get the idea though.

Wednesday was spent with my little peep Kristen, Nay-Nay, Meg & Jill. We breakfasted at The Sugarbowl, watched Glee, ate a lot of halloween candy and sketch-booked. I also began work on some Christmas cards for the Royal Bison. An unfinished sneak peek for you...

Another dark studio photo.

And here's another Royal Bison sneak peek. Jill and I have been loving these since I made them early this week. She's already claimed a plier necklace for her own & I've been wearing a pipe wrench necklace all week. I made them just for the Royal Bison hipster crowd.

Thursday I taught at the school for the deaf which was pretty okay. My roommate works there so I rode with her and we ate leftover butter chicken for lunch together. I can't sign at all so the TA pretty much saves the day anytime I end up working there. The kids are pretty great though and I spent a lot of the day drawing pictures for a few of the girls who discovered the last time I was there that I can draw.

Then Beth, Jill and I watched The Family Stone together last night and ate the most amazing dinner ever that Jill just decided to whip up because she's a frigging dream, seriously peeps. Roast beef, yorkshire pudding, salad and mashed potatoes with gravy (all after she spent the day working). She also made these amazing oatmeal date cookies that I have eaten about 37 of tonight. I love that Jill is the sort of girl who will make a roast beef dinner and then be okay with eating it in my studio on the couch while watching a movie. I am not much of a kitchen table eater, I prefer coffee tables or drawing tables or a bed, ha. Here's Jill putting the filling in the cookies in my studio...

She's almost too perfect, almost. Also, still single... (call me, I screen all applicants before they are allowed to contact her).

And today, as mentioned already, began with a very chilly bike ride and ended with a Friday night spent computering and watching movies in bed. There was some monster drawing and grade three disciplining in the middle of all that as well.

I've been feeling a bit down lately, it's my 26th birthday next week and that combined with car troubles, boys that are assholes, and the early onset of my seasonal affective depression thing is making me into a somewhat unpleasant girl to be around. Seriously peeps I need to buck up, I'm tired of myself. Okay, I'm done now, happy weekend. I'm going to watch Mean Girls in bed now.

Natasha Lawyer needs to stop making Swine Flu jokes.

Hey friends, I still haven't chosen a winner for the giveaway yet so get your comments in. I'll give it until the end of the weekend when the show is up and I can actually breathe and think clearly. I'm in the studio full time this week finishing up pieces and making a huge mess. I hang it all up at The Sugarbowl at 6am on Sunday morning, time is ticking... agh. In the meantime here are a few of the many pieces I've finished this week and a shot of another one in progress in the studio.

 

Did I tell you guys what I'm calling my show yet? I don't think I did... I'm calling it 'How To Start A Conversation'. The above pieces are a part of that series, as always click to see them bigger.

 

Okay kids, it's 11pm and I'm actually going to bed before 2am for the first time this week. I need to make sure I don't end up with swine flu due to lack of sleep and exposure to germy kids. Happy week.

Coming clean and everything else...

I know, I know, I'm the worst blogger ever. I suppose it's time to come clean with you peeps. There has been a bit of boy drama in my life over the last few months. It was both wonderful and a little too full of drama and now it is over and I am a little brokenhearted but definitely in recovery. He was/is a very wonderful man so boy-bashing comments, however well intended, are un-welcome. You have to excuse me for my lack of writing now though, right? A broken heart is the ultimate excuse.

I think this post will be of the epically long nature so here we go... some things:

Thing 1: I spent my morning at the gym listening to 'Lonelily' by Damien Rice and it is soothing my soul. Oh, also I joined a gym! I kind of love it, I am super hooked on running even if it does make my knees mad at me. The gym I joined is super close to my place and it's kind of ghetto, ha, I love it. It reminds me of 'Average Joe's' gym from the movie Dodgeball. You know what I'm talking about right? It's all old peeps who wear sweatbands and say hi to me in the locker room when they're completely nude, awkward...

Thing 2: I've adopted a few little junior high gals to hang out with that are super lovely. I'd been really missing the whole youth leader thing and since my new church doesn't have a youth group I just scooped a few girls whose parents I am tight with and decided to chill out with them on a regular basis. We are going thrifting in search of typewriters today. Some pics from our Starbucks river valley walk last week.

Pretty adorable right?

Thing 3: On Monday I finally cooked my first real meal since living at my house for a month: curried yam soup and garlic bread. That means it's officially fall and it launches the season where I exclusively eat soup. Well, soup and eggs on toast, eggs on toast is my current favorite food.

Thing 4: My current favorite top three on-repeat songs are:

1. Sparks by Coldplay. Man peeps this one sure has staying power. It started this summer and we're still going strong, it's play count in my i-tunes is 262 times compared to the rest of them that average around 8-25. I am currently learning it on guitar.

2. Rain by Patty Griffin. So where I'm at right now, so beautifully depressing. I listened to it for about three hours yesterday.

3. Lonelily by Damien Rice. Such a lovely song, I have it on repeat right now.

Thing 5: I finally got my guitar back from my sister. Honestly I haven't played guitar for about 6 months and it feels so good to play again (well actually it feels painful because my guitar calluses are woefully inadequate for John Mayer songs).

Thing 6: I took a weekend break from the studio and went to camp to volunteer & visit some of my peeps. I don't think I actually took any camp pictures cause my camera stayed in my purse in Kerry's house most of the weekend but I did take some road trip pictures.

On Friday when Meg and I rolled into camp we met Sid and Jen. Jen was about to leave to drop the kids off in Rosetown, Saskatchewan and drive right back. Sid asked me to go with her and I was down so we drove 6 hours, slept for 5 and then drove the 6 back. Ridiculous. What is even more ridiculous is that there is not one Starbucks from Sundre to Rosetown, agh. After 5 hours of sleep no Starbucks?! We had to settle with Tim Hortons and were majorly disgusted with the results. Why? I'll tell you:

a) The cups; not only are they ugly, but they don't have sleeves and you can't hold them without burning your hands. Our attempts...

b) The lids. yes they are engineered to pull open (really fun to do when you're trying to drive) and snap into the lid but at least 50% of the time it doesn't work. Note Jen's lid. Garbage.

c) The non-black-coffee drinks are all sooo sickeningly-sweet, and gross, I hate Tim Hortons, hate.

Incredulous at the crappyness. As a side-note, I also hate Saskatchewan so it was a good mix.

Seriously a year living in SK is the longest I ever want to spend there. Jen stopped at the border on the way back and told me she wouldn't drive again until I said something nice about Saskatchewan. It took me a really long time to think of something and even then it wasn't too convincing. We laughed a lot.

Thing 7: I have been in the studio over the last while working quite a bit. My current project...

This is a huge canvas, like $1200 huge, hours and hours and hours of work huge. I need more time in my life.

And a few from last week...

I really need to scan these before they go but at the moment I was too lazy to take them out of the frames. You get the idea. There are actually four of them but the fourth photo was too bad to post, considering these that really says something. Photographing through glass is bad news.

And a little piece of a completed canvas, the full sized shot was bad news. I showed you the start of this one back here.

Thing 8: The last painting is the result of this corner of my studio where the Starbucks cups seem to be multiplying. I'm just not sure how that is happening...

Thing 9: My roommate Jill is OUT-OF-CONTROL amazing. I can't even handle it. I found this on my camera when I was uploading pictures today.

Thing 10: I think I am going to do a giveaway post soon. It's been a while so stay tuned.

This is a very ADD disjointed post but it's where I'm at so you get to deal with it and like it, ha. Things are on the up and up and I will slowly come back from my funk to the blog world. Also, you should comment, I like comments.

Drawing Party: The Reunion Edition...

last night was the first of many more drawing parties to come since I've moved back from Seattle. Lots of peeps showed up and it was such a good time. I am so glad I am back here and have a pimping new studio to host these parties in. Remember the old one? Concrete walls and floor no more!

I took a billion photos...

Sarah the jam-tastic made an appearance... she also managed to blog about the drawing party before I did, agh. The student becomes the teacher, ha.

and I am proud to finally be introducing to all my bloggy little readers... Jill Bartel! She is my new roommate who is quickly becoming one of my favorite people on this planet. She is lovely in every way plus she is an amazing cook so she catered the event. [As an aside, if there are any quality hot Christian men reading this, she is somehow still single and pretty much the most amazing girl on the planet. Call me, we'll talk]. One of my favorite things to tell Jill is that if I was a boy I would marry her right away. Seriously guys, it's true; I don't know what is wrong with the men in this world.

Nay-Nay, Beth, Leanne, & Erica...

More peeps, more drawing, more lovely studio shots, sigh...

Super Sid showing off his stellar art skills (who knew?)...

and even more peeps, we had a really good turn out, there were a few people whose names I didn't even know, ha.

Sneaking up on Sarah while she was drawing Jill, check out her blog to see her drawing in completion.

My sketchbook that for most of the night lay open, untouched. The funny thing about me and drawing parties is that because I spend so much time alone in the studio, I get overstimulated when there are suddenly 20 people in there with me. I usually just end up wandering around chatting. I pretty much never actually draw at drawing parties, ha. I am the only exception to the rule. I did spend some time with Joel working on re-vamping a few areas of my website before the show though so it wasn't a completely work-free night. Check it out here. The new other stuff page is the result of many late Seattle nights spent figuring out photoshop.

And more... I just felt so frigging blessed last night by all the lovely friends that came out to draw. I am a very lucky girl.

I'll leave you with a sneak peek at a painting/collage Nathan was helping me work on...

Ha. I've already named the yet to be finished piece 'An ode to Leanne or, it's a tuber'. It's going to be a good one.