*it's a major award!

i whipped up this painting a little while ago as sort of a fun pop art project. it's the first time i've done an actual painting using acrylic in a few years, and i found that i had sort of forgotten how acrylic works. i'm so accustomed to working with oil now. in any case, it was fun and didn't take very long.

*matthew's portrait

i did this portrait of matt on wednesday. friends who look at this blog probably all know him.



i've been trying to make better use of my entire palette when working with flesh tones. this isn't so much of an issue when i paint from a live model, but it occurs when i work from photographs. (you can sort of see this in the painting of devin.)



so i made a deliberate effort to employ more colors in the skin, and i tried to work on making the application more interesting and less blended. i could probably work on this piece a little bit more.

*vagina pinch pot

okay. this isn't the most recent project, but since it's not on the blog, and since it's v-day season, what better time than now?



i was making a pinch pot awhile back, and it started to take on a really vulva-like appearance. so i decided to go with it. i left it sort of abstract, but realistic enough that there would be no question regarding the vaginal connotations.



it now stores bobby pins in my bathroom.



and speaking of vaginas and v-day, everyone needs to come out for this:







it's going to be amazing! all proceeds go to charity, including local women's shelters and madre, an organization that helps women in darfur.

*starburst bowl

so. i was making this bowl on the wheel recently, and if started to get too thin and floppy. my first instinct was to get frustrated, slam my fist into the clay, and start over. but i decided to try and save it by making it into an unusual form. this bowl is the product of a lesson learned, really.



so, just a lil word of advice, if you ever botch a vessel (or any project, really), you don't have to scrap it. you can work with it and make it into something different.

*titannica t-shirt

ahh, yes, another david cross themed gift for justin...this time, it's a titannica t, just like the one titannica gave to adam jimmy when they visited him after his first attempt.







apparently, they sell replicas of the shirt online, so i just took the design, which is exactly like the one on the show, and made a stencil.







"he looks like a wet cigar."



brilliant, just brilliant.

*devin, autonomy star

here's a recent painting i did, starring and dedicated to devin. for more information about devin, who she was, and what she meant to countless people, please go

here.

*sculpey beads

more sculpey jewelry, oh what fun!



of all the countless uses for sculpey, making customized beads with it is probably my favorite. grab yourself some scupley, and form it into bead shapes- the possibilities here are just about endless. take a needle or a pin and stick a hole through the beads. then, arrange the beads on a cookie sheet covered in aluminum foil. bake those suckers for about 15 minutes at 275 f.



after that, let them cool. then, paint 'em however you like using acrylic. i made a stash of red beads, and some little cylindrical ones with cherries. cute.



i like to spray them with krylon gloss and roll them around on a piece of cardboard. your hands can get kind of sticky, but it gives the beads a cool marbleized effect.

*tobias action figure

i madeover another ken doll for justin recently, this time it's dr. tobias fünke (portrayed by the super-ultra-fantastic david cross) from arrested development:







he's wearing his standard never-nude denim shorts, and comes complete with a framed photo of carl weathers. yay!



obviously, this action figure required less clothing reconstruction than the raoul duke/hunter s. thompson doll, but it was pretty difficult to remove his hair in a horseshoe balding pattern...there's a line across his forehead that i could absolutely not get rid of, so we're just saying it's a reference to the hair plugs episode.



by the way, if you're unfamiliar with the work of david cross, go buy the 'shut up, you fucking baby' album today. you won't regret it, i swear.







may god rest your sweet, sweet soul, arrested development.