Art Journal Part IV: Ice World

Some day, I'd really like to visit Antarctica (preferably to do research). I realized a month or two ago that my "list of places I most want to see" is dominated by cold-climate locales. Antarctica, Iceland, Northern Canada, Ireland, the Netherlands... Then again, my closet is also dominated by sweaters and coats (I don't even own a pair of shorts). Guess that says a lot.

I hope to have a finished painting or two to share with you soon--just need to do the final layers. Happy weekend, gang!

Halloween Mail

New in the shop! I'm really excited to be offering these. Halloween faux postage stamp sticker packs!

I actually drew and designed these last year when I was frustrated with the serious lack of spooky themed postage (really USPS, what gives? The Poe stamps were amazing and are still among my faves...but why don't you come up with a new slightly-Halloweenish stamp design every year?) and used them on my outgoing Halloween mail (with real stamps too, of course). They were quite the hit. I tweaked them just a smidge this year with a thinner paper to replicate the look and feel of "real" stamps and used a pair of stamp edge perforating scissors for the finishing touch. So happy with the outcome!

Each pack contains 8 of these 1x1.25" stamp stickers (2 of each design). They're entirely handmade by me in the studio (drawn, designed, printed, cut, and stickerized with a Xyron machine). Right now I only have 3 packs available, as I'm testing the waters to see how these do before spending an all-out day in production mode.

I love mail and stamps and Halloween and mail art. When all combine together, it's like hot caramel sauce and ice cream: complete and utter happiness.

Art Journal Part III: Polychaetes

While working in the lab with WA Dept. of Ecology's marine sediment monitoring team, I spend hours sorting through sediment samples under a microscope to sort/identify the invertebrates. We do a "broad sort" first into 4 phyla (Mollusca, Arthropoda, Echinodermata, and Polychaeta) and then these get further broken down into family and/or species level. There's a crazy amount of variety with the polychaetes ("tube dwelling" marine worms), and a good chunk of my time is spent disentangling them from one another for identification. I've become pretty good at immediately recognizing some polychaete species!

My favorites are always the little arthropods, however. In the marine world, these are the crabs, shrimps, ostracods, etc. The little hairy legs! The teeny black eyes! I die every time.

Art Journal Part II: Raven Song

A spread from the art journal on 2012 "firsts". There's a mated pair of ravens that live in a tree near my apartment and I hear/see them every morning, so naturally, the first bird I heard on New Year's was a raven. They are amazing birds and I've been honored to actually help rehabilitate a young one at the wildlife shelter a year ago.

Have a fabulous weekend, folks!

Art Journal Part I: Bird List

A spread from my art journal that was done back in January. I was so excited to have seen a golden eagle in the wild that I immediately came home and jotted it down in my book. Wish I had been able to snap a picture of him.

There are quite a few pages in my art journal and sketchbook that I'll be posting to the blog in the coming days, so stay tuned for more!