This little bugger here has been occupying quite a lot of hours for me lately.  I’m not even sure if it’s anywhere near being finished, but it’s more done than it was 9 hours of drawing earlier!

Of course, it’s water color and pen stipling like ALL of my drawings are.  Feedback please!

- Leonardo Da Vinci

At long last the hummingbird is finished and in the hands of it’s rightful owners.  My new sister-in-law requested a hummingbird illustration in blue and green. 

Pat and Jen were in Ohiopyle this weekend with some friends, so Mom, Dad and Tom and I drove down to spend Sunday with them.  The newlyweds surprised us a few weeks ago with the news that they are expecting!!  I’m going to be an aunt!  I’m so thrilled for them.  All of their friends were going rafting, but because of Jen’s… uh.. condition, they decided to stay back and hang out with us.  We hiked along the river for a while and then drove up to Kentuck Knob. 

Kentuck Knob is another of Frank Lloyd Wright’s masterpieces tucked into the hills of Pennsylvania.  The home was built for the Hagen ice cream family.  Needless to say, the house is beautiful.  It’s much more of a liveable space than Falling Water is.  I took a ton of pictures that I will post later.  Here is one of all of us on an overlook beside the falls at Ohiopyle.  It had to be the most beautiful day ever.  The only thing missing is Lindi and Ryen.  Boo. 

So says Tom Stoppard.  I think it’s only partially true.  I think that at times people have skill and choose to lay it at rest in order to have a more emotional reflection of themselves in their art.  Skill, to me, is like a stencil, a guideline at times.  There are alot of times when I’m glad I decided not to go to art school because my style wasn’t molded by those teaching me.  However, there are skills I wish I had learned from someone and that I am now looking for ways of learning it on my own. 

Anyway…. here’s an illustration I’m working on currently for myself.  Yep, that’s right.  FOR ME.  I’ll have prints made, but the original is staying put in my living room.  I really love drawing things just for no reason at all.  It’s very inspiring because I know I can make it whatever I want without worrying what someone else will think of it.  I feel those are the pieces that are the greatest… the ones without inhibition, the ones where desire crashes with imagination and creates something so uniquely defined by a person’s own perception.  This piece is the beginning of that for me.  Make of it what you wish…

So I’ve had zero time lately to do anything except work.  Work at work, work at home… just work work work.  I haven’t had any chance to get on Google Reader and read all the gazillion blogs that I’m addicted to.  I decided to pop in just now to check out one or two… well… the total number of blog entries I have unread on my reader…  342!!  I need to take a day off work just to read all the blogs I’m subscribed to.  I’m seriously so overwhelmed by it right now that I just had to close it.  It’s killing me because I want to read every single one of them at this very second!  Maybe tonight…  Anyway, expect some comments from me this week because I’m definiteliy going to catch up on my blog-reading. 

In the meantime… check out My Charlie Girl.  I’m in love with Bec’s drawings.  Not only is she a great artist, she’s such a nice person, too.  It’s too bad she lives in Australia.  Why can’t cool people like her live in Pittsburgh?

Right now, I’m absolutely obsessed with the illustrations of Yellena James.  I’m about to purchase at least one, but I can’t decide for the life of me which one I want!  They are all so beautiful.  The color composition entrances me.

I love the organic feel that her illustrations have and how each line on the page seems to be alive.  I am entirely to anxious to have one of these hanging on my wall.

The Doctor (Doctor Who)

Something I haven’t mentioned very much here is my pure obsession with science fiction.  It’s quite unhealthy, I think.  My DVR is full of Doctor Whos, Stargates, Sarah Janes…  Some might even call me a nerd.  I’m alright with that, though.  If science fiction shows don’t exercise my imagination, what the heck will? 

Anyway, I’m sitting here this evening, drinking red wine, catching up on all my DVR’d shows and working on my hummingbird wip that is long overdue.  I was afraid to move on with this illustration because I didn’t want to mess it up.  I do that, alot.  I start something, love the preliminary sketch so much, then I never touch it again because I don’t want to mess it up.  It’s terribly sad and I’m trying to overcome that horrible habit.  The result has been many destroyed drawings that I once adored.    However, for every great success, there must be sacrifice, right?

I’m very pleased with my hummingbird, though.  It’s turning out better than I planned.  Maybe my best work is done when I have a delicious bottle of pinot noir to help?  Or maybe it’s the sci-fi.  Who knows.  Whatever it is, I hope I can figure it out and channel it more often. 

This illustration is still unfinished…

The quote above is from Notes From The Underground by Dostoevsky.  The sketch is an illustration I’m working on.  I’m not really sure what my intent is with it, but lately I’m somewhat obsessed with the relation of humans and nature.  It’s undeniable that one affects the other and vice versa. 

On that note, I have somewhat of a dismal story to share.  This past Sunday Tom and I were in the basement moving some stuff around to make room for our newly acquired treadmill.  I picked up a few blankets off the floor to toss aside that our boxer, Bruiser, had been using as a bed when I noticed a hole in one of the old comforters.  I leaned down to look at it and saw that there were bugs inside of it.  Gross.  I jumped back and yelled for Tom to get the blanket out of the house before these little buggers ate their way through anything else.  Tom leaned over to inspect our little invaders.  He stood up a few seconds later with a calm look on his face and said, “You’ll be more upset when I tell you what it really is in there.”  I felt my eyes bulging and my gag reflex kicking in.  I couldn’t even imagine what it would be that was worse than bugs.

“What??”  I gasped not really wanting to know the answer.

“Baby mice.”  Tom grimaced.

“Oh no!  I killed their mother and they starved!”  I cried out.  I realized in an instant that I had been the bane of these sweet little creatures.  They never even had a chance.

We’ve had consistent issues with mice living in our house.  Since we are in the country and there is always an ample supply of dog food, the mice find it easy to habitate there.  We often find their little supplies of the stolen dog food in random places around the house.   For example, inside our snowboarding boots or our christmas decorations.  Once evidence of the mice made its way to our living space upstairs, our hand was forced.  The traps were set and the problem solved. 

I never even considered the possibilty of a little mouse family in our house.  I was reminded of my favorite cartoon as a child… The Littles.  Thinking of that made me even more upset.  It’s been 3 days now and I’m still feeling the guilt.  Unfortunately, there’s no way to avoid this kind of thing. 

The agreement is now that if something of this sort is discovered again, Tom is to lie to me.  He’s to tell me it’s something disgusting  that I would be happy to know is dead… such as spiders, stink bugs, or carpenter bees.  (Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for the preservation of Bumble Bees, but Carpenter Bees are something completely different and I don’t want them living inside my walls.)

That’s my horrifying tale. 

My team *time lately has consisted mostly of cleaning, organizing, rearranging… it’s refreshing, but exhausting. We’ve been doing a lot of redecorating lately, which has led to alot of excess accessories lying around the house. This, of course, is grounds for a yard sale. I love “sailing” as my mother and I call it. However, I abhor being the sailee. I hate the haggling. You could have a book priced at 50 cents and people will still try to talk you down. Sometimes it’s much more satisfying just to tell them no and then donate it to Goodwill. Yes, I’m a stubborn brat sometimes. I’m anxious to get the yard sale over with. We still haven’t set a date yet because I’m still sifting through all the junk in the basement that’s been stored up over the past year. Cleansing this hectic life of some of the junk is going to be wonderful!

In the meantime, I’ve found some time here and there to draw a little. That in itself is a relief. I find myself getting incredibly cranky when I can’t release my creative urges on a regular basis. Tom is a fabulous encouragement. He has to force me sometimes to stop working around the house and pick up my pens. I couldn’t ask for a better husband than him. Here’s a little sketch I did recently. It’s simple and delicate.

On a very bright note, I finally got all my thank you notes written from my wedding. Only 3 months late. I’m so terrible. At least I got them done, though!

I’ve dedicated this evening to drawing.  I swore to myself today that I wouldn’t let anything interrupt that.  However, I’ve neglected this little blog for the past week or more and I decided to update with something that I find very sweet.  My mother has always claimed to not have any talent for drawing.  I disagree.

When Mom was my age, she drew these little gals while working as a physical therapist.  She had shown them to me years ago and I just recently remembered them.  I made her dig through all of her crap in the attic and find them so that I could give them the honor that they deserve.  I sprayed them with sealant and framed each one to hang in my studio as inspiration. 

I love the retro outfits and the crazy hair. 

I hope you all enjoy these as much as I do!!  Now I’m off to do some drawing/painting and hopefully reach my goal of getting my Etsy shop up and running by July.  Fingers crossed!  I can only pray that I’m half as successful as the amazing people who’s blogs I read.  They’re all so inspiring.  I feel hardly creative in their shadow.  I’m going to do my best at making things my own, though, and hopefully, all the hard work will pay off.

Being precisely 3 weeks from my wedding I’m afraid that my presence here in the blogging community will have to be put on hold for the next month. Life has been nothing short of crazy since 2008 started, but I’m loving every second of it! I adore my new job. In fact, tomorrow is the opening reception of the staff/faculty art show. I think it’s amazing that they have something like that for the employees. I’m so excited to see what everyone else has submitted.

I’ve entered this into the show. It took me approximately 16 hours to complete. **ugh**

Perhaps the most exciting thing I’ve done in this wonderful month of January is learned to shoot a 22 pistol. Yay! Tom and I went to Mt. Pleasant for a wedding and the morning of, the groom had the urge to shoot a gun. (Red flag perhaps? I don’t know… seems like it to me.) Anyway, the morning rendered me with a new nickname - Annie Oakley. I guess I was pretty good. All I know is that it was fun and now I want one of my own.

Now I’m going to go back to eating Lindt truffles, watching Garden State and attempting to finish the never-ending peacock.