New Item!: Cool - Tsumetai

What I would give for having a nice Olympic sized pool by my house. So hot I'm melting. Actually all this week it's been so cold in the San Francisco Bay Area I had to break out my winter tights already. Thankfully the weather is warming up for the weekend.

I just posted a new ACEO if you wish to purchase a bit of original art. Check it out!

Cool - Tsumetai - Original Tranding Card (ACEO) Sized Art

This also reminds me: It's shopping seasod! Back to school sales are also when clothing stores bring out their fall/winter inventory. Blow outs on lighter, cotton clothes for those last hot days of summer. There are some bargains to be had!

New Item: Heat/Atsui/熱い Art Trading Card ACEO

My house is getting quite a few renovations to say the least. In order to renovate one area all of the stuff inside is, of course, being thrown into my room. This might be why I'm going art cards (ACEO) this month. Small, stately pieces of art that I can make in some very small spaces.

I actually thought of this one in a bar, watching a mixed martial arts event with my boyfriend. There were training clips of one of the fighters sweating it out in the gym of his Las Vegas training grounds. That's where the idea really started. When I leave my day job early enough I can catch the local high school football team in summer training. Just looking at these guys doing windsprints gets me tired. But you wouldn't be doing any of this in hot, humid August unless you had a passion for your sport.

This piece is available for purchase at my Etsy shop.

Weekly Calligraphy: More like calligraphies (calligraphii?)

I've been a busy bee making ACEOs for The Little Black Boxes. Hoo boy is my arm hurting from all the calligraphy.

What have I learned so far? For one thing my silver ink has no desire to be photographed. Another thing I learned is making texture with my heavy body acrylic paint. In Asian art the mediums tend to be flat, the most texture coming from charcoal. With European art things like oils and acrylics ad a brand new dimension to the (tiny) canvas.

Here's a close up of one of the ACEOs. It's 結ぶ (むすぶ pronounced 'moo-sue-boo'), a verb that translates 'to tie' or 'to link.'

Christmas Presents: Something small and sweet

Erin and I were roomies during our college days. She's moved on to graduate (before I did!) and is now doing awesome things in concept art and video games. I decided to send a little Christmas Present with the Christmas card I mailed her.

Erin has a huge thing for bats, and I have this terrible, unbroken habit of drawing cute characters. Sure enough there was a blank ACEO-sized card that was screaming at me to doodle on. The little doll this bat-girl is carrying is my interpretation of Erin's boyfriend.