The other thing I’ve discovered about myself? Left to my own devices and without pressure, I can also stay committed forever. Here’s an example, I’ve lived in this one bedroom apartment for about 20 years. I never had to sign a lease or put down a damage deposit. Also, my rent has gone up once. I’ve often thought about moving but really, it’s not like I’m locked to it or anything and could leave whenever I want to. BUT I HAVEN’T.

Working in animation has been the same thing including one series I worked on for 11 years. If I had been asked within the first year to sign an 11 year contract doing the same show I would have had a neurotic fit. Not knowing before hand though? I did it. That’s the good thing about working in a creative field, generally the projects keep changing. Part of me dreads the uncertainty of my career (like right now) but I also think it’s what keeps me in a tricky sort of way.

My last animation job ended, I’m thinking about what will be next while teaching myself After Effects and at the same time debating an actual move (due to some unresolved leaking issues). When those thoughts become too much, and they are, I’ve now started recovering my kitchen chairs. It’s kinda meditative (and hand-numbing).

I’d like to hear if other people feel the same. What drives you crazier too much commitment or too much freedom?

I’m actually really scared of spiders but they always seem to show up in my pictures. The fact that I know this girl now as an adult only slightly softens the effect although she does still enjoy frightening people!

Happy Birthday Karen!

“SpiderGirl”
8 × 10″
Graphite on Hardboard
2013

What started off as a loose concept a couple years
ago has almost turned into a real thing now that
practically has a life of it’s own. I’m so impressed
and inspired having had the chance to watch this
become a reality and can’t wait to see how it all
comes together. It really is amazing! Luckily,
Karen Lam seems to have an endless amount
of energy and focus when it comes to creating
something she loves.

Here is a sneak peek of the end result and I have to say, I really enjoyed working on it as it crossed over so many of the things I’m interested in: illustration, photo manipulation, creepy creatures and even in a way, special fx makeup. The original photo was a straightforward head shot of the actress, Kat de Lieva, wearing black eye makeup, but instead of working with latex, I used my Mac.

I sure hope I get to do more things like this in the future. I also hope everyone likes it as much as I enjoyed doing it!

Normally, the small amount of graphite work I do is quite tight and though I still add the same amount of detail these have a slight ‘wash-like’ quality due to the water soluble pencils I used. It looks a little like ink truthfully but unlike ink, you can erase out areas for effects such as highlights.

I’m wanting to take this approach a bit further and add washes of colour but I haven’t quite gotten to that stage yet. Between my animation contract and a flood, I haven’t had much time to experiment. In fact, right as I sat down to do some tests over the weekend, the sprinkler system went off next door and my bedroom floor was flooded. Needless to say, it’s been a bit chaotic around here.

So back to Laluzapalooza! It’s going to be a great show with a lot of new mediums and I highly recommend checking it out. If you don’t happen to be in LA, you can always check out the work here and maybe even buy a piece or two… or three… The prices are very reasonable and the quality is tops!

**By the Way, yes, I have posted these images before. They were originally shown over a weekend for Horrible Imaginings Film and Art Fest.

After finishing it, I decided to look up the author, Leslie M. M. Blume and found she has an equally entertaining website.

In order to fix it, I needed to mix a small amount of traditional gesso to fill in the spots that were damaged (directly above her head and left corner). This is my preferred surface to work on and what the original ground was. Then I re-drew the missing graphite areas using a print-out of the original piece as a reference guide.

You can see a bit of difference in the white ground more so on this scan than you can in person but overall I’m quite happy that it worked out as well as it has. Unfortunately for her, it’s taken me WAY too long to get to it but finally I have and now I’m just spray coating it with a great product called “Crystal Clear” as a protectant although I guess it doesn’t help much for pieces that decide to take a nose-dive!

So in situations such as these I wander over to Seven Deadly Sinners for a bit of inspiration and low and behold, I have my post!

Kipling West has been collecting old, weird, and very funny Valentine’s cards, the type you would hand out to classmates as a child. They seemed innocent enough at the time….

Anyway, here it IS!! I’ll probably switch hosts at some point and work on how I might speed this up but for the time being I really need to catch up on allllll the other things that have been neglected. Cheers!