tree

Lately I've been playing around with researching my genealogy.  It's pretty fascinating.  I've traced my maiden name all the way back to the 12th Century in Scotland when the Colquhoun clan first took over the lands of Luss.  I have the names my mom's great grandparents that came over from Ireland in 1849, but unfortunately,  back in their hometown, they have the same name as...EVERYONE, so I haven't gotten much further than that.

Mark's line is fun to search for as well.  I found the common ancestor he shares with Edward Steichen, famous photographer, for one.  And I found a passenger list of a ship that came through Ellis Island with his grandfather (7 yrs. old) and great-grandparents on it.  They were originally from Lebanon (well, Syria, then), but this ship wasn't coming from there.  It was coming from Brazil.  We think they went to visit family that settled there, and were coming back home to Illinois.

It's super fun, and addictive to find little pieces of history which I just know will eventually lead me to find that Mark and I are somehow related (Oh well, I am from Arkansas...).  Anyway, this latest addiction might explain why in all my free time I've yet to
A - go buy new paintbrushes (not to mention paint)
B - go buy new sketchbooks
C - draw anything
D - charge the battery on my camera so that I can take pictures of all the stuff I haven't created the last few days with something other than my phone

Oh well.  At least I found an ancestor that was married to at least 4 women in his lifetime.  2 of them were sisters.  No, not a polygamist...each of the wives died before he remarried.  So far it doesn't look like any of the womens' deaths were TOO suspicious....

calvinball.

Have you ever played the game 1000 blank white cards?  The game is one in which you don't really have rules.  Or, you make them up as you go.  And then you break them!  And you draw!  And write stuff!  And get points!  Or lose points...   

The way it works is this:  everyone gets dealt a hand from a pile of blank white notecards at the beginning of the game.  They are armed with only a pen and their creative (or vicious) minds to make their own cards.  The cards can give or take points, suggest an action, make up a rule for the game, or are just to make people laugh.  I find that most of the cards fall into this last category.  Once everyone has a few cards with which to start, you simply go around the circle and play your cards, draw from the middle pile, make new cards as you go, and see what transpires.  

Here are a few cards I drew the last time we played.  I apologize for the grossness of the first one.  Groooosss.

When I played, one card made everyone eat bites of hot hot salsa or lose a turn.  One friend got peckish and made a "go get me a snack" card, and one card gave the player points if they could get our dog to bark.

not so spindly.

Spindly

Ran out of sketchbook.  Green squares of cardstock work...

Why is handstand girl wearing a bikini and a feather in her cap?  No idea.  No idea at all.

Simultaneously holding up a wall and pulling on a rope.  Tough job.

remnants

This isn't abstract painting.  

It's remnants, actually.

Paint left to dry on on a board that had been used as a palette. 

Unplanned, unintentional.  Yet in someways beautiful. 

A remainder, a reminder, of something else that was created.

I did get that board to paint on, though.  They'll eventually end up as a beginning to another creation.  One of their very own.  

...I kindof feel like singing "The Circle of Life" from the Lion King right now.  

must. have.

Holy.  Moly.  I need one of these tattooed dolls.  I heart them so much.

Mimi Kirchner Snake Charmer Doll

Mad Science.

Yeah, pretty much I used up all my Valentine related doodling and craftiness already.  So ON Valentine's day (or Valentine's Eve right now), I give you....Mad Science.

Decided I needed more windows.  And shadows.  Looks more mad.  Madder.

I'm sure it relates, though.  Isn't love what all mad scientists are after in the movies? (Well...that and world domination).  The crazed goggle-sporting doctor, or kindof dorky high school kid (Weird Science anyone?) is always creating love interests out of robots, computer programs, or reanimated corpse parts and lightning.  That is, when they aren't mixing up toxic sludge and fairy dust into the perfect love potion or handsome juice in order to woo said love interest.

Um...anyway, I hope you enjoy a day to celebrate love.  Or CHEMISTRY with your loved one.  Ha!  See?  It totally relates.

Don't go mad.

laughable.

Beer me...I mean, I love you.

your love makes me fly

the dill is, I love you.

relieved.

lines.

I like lines.  Not standing in them...drawing them.  I like sortof - but not quite - parallel, repeated lines used to create shadow.  I like drawing people.  Kindof serious people drawn in a slightly weird-looking or naive way.  I like a little bizarreness.  Can you tell?

And I think these 2 people might be part of the reason why:  Edward Gorey, illustrator/writer.  Mateusz Skutnik, of Pastel Games.  Their artwork makes me happy when I look at it.  Very very happy.

Early Valentines

After being snowed in for a week my artistic inspiration has been taking shape in drawings such as a bottle with a human inside that has their face pressed uncomfortably against the glass.  I didn't really want to subject you all to that bizarreness.  This is my online sketchbook, afterall, not a therapy session.

I did, however, get bored enough to find an exacto knife to make myself a stencil (damask, of course) out of scotch tape covered paper.  Here are a few products resulting from cabin fever, my love for vintage wallpaper, a perfect husband, a gold paper plate (on which the paint for the stencil was), and a black sharpie.

Early Valentines for Mark.  He is, by the way, the greatest possible husband that can exist.  He - in his boredom - (while I was stenciling paper), managed to wash and fold everything in our house.  I mean everything.  Our clothes, towels, the dogs, the couch, everything.  He's the greatest.  As Holly Hunter said in Raising Arizona: "I looove him sooo much!"

Er...babe, if you're reading this...."I loooove you soooo much!"

bicycles

I want to ride my bicycle, I want to ride my bike.

Just so you know, that's an elephant trunk sneaking up on him. I was feeling a little circus-y again, but Ellie and her rider didn't make the cut.

And with doodles on top.

Spunky.

Nothing like a blizzard to cause you to change your pace.  After an eventful day of playing in the snow, napping on the couch, eating, playing in the snow, eating, making hot chocolate, inducing vomiting in Mona because she drank said hot chocolate (she's fine.), more playing in the snow, talking to my sister while eating, trying to compete with Mark in "excitebike" on Nintendo, and playing "hide and seek" with the dogs (Mark and I alternate between hiding and a sicking the dogs on one another), I finally decided I should actually draw something.  

Had to pull out a new sketchbook, so I grabbed a new medium while in there.  Hello graphite.  I played with some sketches to help me capture the likeness and spunk of a friend's little girl for a painting I'll be doing soon.   Hope I'm up for the challenge.

Blizzard.

Here is my masterpiece slideshow created in iphoto.  I turned off the Ken Burns effect.  You're welcome.

Sweet music, I know.

If that doesn't work for you, click here.  

You don't get the sweet music, though.

*Update...another batch of pictures from the most recent romp.