A Valentine Special

The Narwhal and White Sperm Whale prints have been loaded into the shop, at last at last! And, for a limited time, you can buy both prints via this listing for only $20 plus shipping (vs. the regular $24 plus shipping) until February 14th. Hoozah!I really like these two and think I may keep a couple for myself to put in some simple white frames and hang on the wall. My mom is getting a framed Narwhal for Valentine's Day this year and perhaps a tiny sculpted animal of some sort, but I'm still trying to work out her little pressie.

Which also led me to think about Valentine's Day while growing up.

Throughout my childhood, and even now in adulthood, it has always been more-or-less celebrated in my family as a "family-oriented" holiday and not just a "significant other" holiday, where we'll give our parents a nice card (always made by hand, of course) or some small trinket to let them know that yes, we *do* love you and care deeply about you. And they (well, always my mom in this case) would give us both cards and usually a small trinket or some candy to let my brother and I know the same thing. I still get a card and candy from my mom every year (how sweet is that?) and I love to do the same thing back.

So, I usually find it silly when the big commercial companies throw all the ridiculous over-the-top typical Valentine's Day stuff at you. I'm so much more of a subtle V-Day girl, myself. It's a rather small holiday--so do we really need strands of conversation heart lights and huge pink teddy bears and pink heart "I love you" tablecloths and Valentine's Day-themed dishes and....

Anyway, a little bit off-track there... I'll be spending the rest of my day painting and readying the next line-up of projects. Another shop update will be happening next month, hopefully around the second week of February. I already have some grand schemes up my sleeve and, as usual, a theme for the update I think you will all rather enjoy. Lips are zipped at the moment though, so I'm afraid you'll have to wait until I blurt it all out.

Take care, my friends, and enjoy the rest of your week!

Houston, We Have Printage

Hot off the printer bed and still smelling of fresh ink:

Prints of Hunt In The Mid Pacific are now live in the shop! This painting turned out marvelous in print form. Super-saturated colors, clear-as-day paint strokes, and the newspaper clippings in the background are plenty legible.I have a couple more prints up my sleeve to list tomorrow, including a last minute Valentine's Day special.

Happy Tuesday!

Progress

I dropped off the face of the planet for a week and a half to lock myself away and start/finish a rather hefty painting for part of the Fresno Takao Flower Nursery catalog for 2008. There was one day last week where I was quite literally painting for 10 1/2 hours straight with no break (food and bathrooms are so overrated anyway...). I went to bed at 4:30am the next morning to try and get a little sleep, but honestly, the only thing that stopped me from painting even longer was the fact that my right hand was permanently curled in a rather painful paintbrush-holding-position. It wasn't until the next day that my fingers were relaxed enough to be able to hold a pen. Egads.
Anyway, the painting was finished last night and I'm so proud (there's a somewhat bad cyan overcast in the photo above--I was just too excited to show it to you!). A red/white lionfish lost amongst a handful of surfinias (well, a rather typical Michelle-interpretation of them at least). My biggest acrylic painting to date at around 12ishx16". The only problem I now face is trying to get a super high-quality digital file of it made for prints and such. Too big and awkward for me to scan (and so far, none of the local printshops can scan that large either) and photos of it, even super-large RAW photos, can't quite capture all the details with paint strokes and minimal color gradients (I admit, I'm extremely picky in this department). Curses! This is why I never paint this large. I'm going to do a bit more hunting on the scanning part, see if I can't come across someone with a big scanner, or maybe I'll take it to a professional photographer who's experienced enough in taking art photos.

Nevertheless, prints *will* be made, dangnabbit, and the original just might wind up for sale on Etsy at a later date after the catalogue is published. And I promise, prints of the recently sold paintings are a'coming (I feel rather guilty it's taking me this long to get them made and listed for sale). Especially now that this beast of a painting is finished. I can't thank you guys enough for your patience!

I'm off to do a bit of tidying up of the painting table and organizing supplies. It honestly looks like a whirlwind, or perhaps a giant wave, has swept through my living/studio space. Is everyone doing something nice for the weekend? Movie watching? General lounging? A trip to the aquarium, perhaps?

Paintings and Movies

Okay gang. Long time, no see. I hope you are fabulous and well! I have a new print available in the studio as I type: I'm quite charmed by it. A small experiment in my wee sketchbook, the original involves a paint swatch along with layers of vellum, paint glazes, and aging. So there's a good deal of visual texture. I may be doing more of these because the experiment went precisely how I hoped it would. Anyways, you can find the print of "Brilliance" right over yonder.

There are more prints a'coming, I promise. There's quite a bit going on the work table at the moment, including a rather neat pro-bono piece for a totally snazzy Fresno flower nursery catalog (I am so thrilled to be a part of this project!). I'm frantically working on that at the moment (will post pics of it when it nears completion).

Also saw some rather fine films lately, including Atonement (what an awesome, albeit depressing, piece) and Sweeney Todd. Sweeney was wonderful, though not in my top 5 Burton flicks, and most likely will not be owning on dvd, but very happy I saw it (the costumes! The dark visuals! Quite lovely and Burton did a rather fine job on it). And Alan Rickman...Good God. As if my adoration of that man couldn't get any higher. There can never be enough Rickman in a film, I say.

Back to the painting table I must go. But before I do...A rather silly shot of me, but you can see a couple very fond purchases from Etsy as of late. The neck warmer (I utterly *adore* it! I wear this a lot) came from Mixtape aka hollylynne a little while ago while the darling-oh-so-me peppermint striped hairpin was from Foundling. She sells the striped flowers as brooches, but was ever-so wonderful in making mine into a hairpin for my rather crazy hair.

Take care, kids!

New Stuff

The shopfront has been fully stocked with handfuls of new originals, in all sorts of price ranges. I'm stoked about quite a few of these. Here's a sampling of what's new:Quite a few ship minis (both ghost ships and the regular sort), ACEO-sized mini prints of 3 deep sea pieces (yay! finally!), and the tour de force--a tall octopus-laden and ephemera-layered framed piece *now sold! Thank you!*. And lots, lots more fresh faces for a fresh, new year.

I'm spending the rest of my day tweaking new prints of some of these new babes before uploading them into the shop as well. I hope you all have a splendid weekend! There's a good assortment of nice movies out at the moment (I can name at least 3 that I'm dying to see), so maybe we should all hop to the theater for a late night show.

Take care!