A story and a giveaway

I had so much stuff to do today! between a website I'm designing, a huge project Ned volunteered us to do and needs to be finished in a week, another website for a friend's band, packing some Etsy packages, making stuff for the shop, and a Special order for Ned's Mom and wanting to draw at least a couple of drawings today - the day seemed too short from when it was starting.

I decided to start with Ned's mom order, it the most fun project out of the bunch, and I could do it at a coffee shop and just tuned out from all the stress for a bit, before I dive in. A friend of her's just became a grandmother, and Ned's mom wanted a painting made specially for the new granddaughter.

The granddaughter have 5 different names, one of them is Rose, and one of them is Yael, which in Hebrew means a Capra, an animal sort of like a dear, so I decided to draw a Capra and some roses and write all the names on the drawings. Ned went home to do some phone calls, and I went to Blackbird Paurlor to work on the new painting.

It took about an hour and a half, then I put it aside on the chair next to mine, and started working on a second drawing for the day, feeling really great, that at least on of my tasks for the day is already done.

2 minutes later, a woman who got up from the table close to where I was sitting knocked a whole full bottle of water on the painting! the watercolor and pen all swirled together making a puddle of gray water that was dripping on the floor. The woman apologized a million times, and asked if I was going to sell the painting, offering to pay for it, but I felt like I just wanted her to get out of there. I blotched the painting with some paper and left it to dry till Ned got there. Still hoping to fix it, but after it was dry it was obvious that it just won't do.

The part that got destroyed the most was the names, they got totally smeared and became half not legible.

I tried to paint over it later at home, while working on a second painting for the granddaughter.


And so, I decided to give the blotch version, that i rather like now as a free givaway and a reminder to all of us that sometimes, we mess up and that's just how life goes.

For a chance to win this painting, leave a comment to this post and tell me about the last time you messed up, so I don't feel like I'm the only klutz in town...

I will raffle the winner on November 1st.

Mother day's freebe prints

I don't celebrate mother day myself. about 2and a half years ago, when I moved to NY my mom stopped talking to me. Mother's day was never a big holiday in Israel, but here, I keep hearing about people's plans for it and all the cool brunches they are taking their mom to, and I feel really strange not doing anything about it. I guess it's my version of being single on Valentine's.

So for a while I didn't want to make anything special for my Etsy store to celebrate mother's day, but when I run out of those bunny prints really fast and wanted to do that again, I decided to make something that will represent what I want mother day, and my relationship with my mom to be about, which is all about feeling happy and safe.

So I made not one, but two special mother day prints! one with a mommy and a baby penguin one with a mommy and baby goat. You can all have one (until I run out) either by spending some money or by spending some luck and time.

There will be one free print per order for anyone who buys anything from my shop.

Or - you can win a print for absolutely free if you check out the hand painted dishes section of my shop and suggest the next animal I should put on a tapas plate that haven't been used before.
I'm going to raffle one print of each, so there will be 2 winners, one gets a goat and one a penguin.

Please leave your e-mail when you comment so I can contact you if you won!

Raffle will be held on Mother day, May 10.

Impossibility

So strange to blog 3 times in one evening after not doing it for so long, but I guess I'm trying to clear out my desk from all made but unpublished yet artwork. So, maybe 3 is a charm! which I think it is since while I was scanning those I had an etsy sale from someone who bought a tarot deck and a cup!

This is a 3 drawing series I made a couple of days ago, they are meant for illustration Friday, the word of the week was "impossibility". It's interesting to try and illustrate an impossible thing. I was thinking of what would be the most impossible thing to do, and I thought of my memories and my past and how hard (and actually impossible) it is to see reality as it is and life as they are, rather then through the filters of memory and emotions and old thinking patterns.

New Drawings

Those were done today as a sketch to a submission I want to make for a group show in a gallery I really like in Williamsburg, though the images I had in mind are totally different then those, it's still nice to see that the composition I had in mind works and so now, I can start working on a 4 times larger version of this (scary, but what can you do).

Those sketches were supposed to be a quicky drawing, in fact, I originally prepared 4 surfaces and not just 2, pretty positive I can finish all of them tonight, however, it turned out to be far more time consuming and detailed work then I expected it to be and so, only 2 done so far.

The past month of my life felt very dark with my father in law in the hospital going through massive cancer treatments and a stem cell transplant. Yesterday we heard the good news that he'll probably be going home after the weekend! I think that a part of what this drawing is all about is having this great ray of hope cutting though the darkness.

Special Delivery

Check out this cool project etsy is involved in:
They are collecting Valentine's cards from different Etsy users and sending them out with meals from citymeals-on-wheels for people in need across the city. They are trying to collect 18,000 cards! how amazing is that!

So, if this meant having a chance to do something good and motivate myself to make some art, I'm always happy to be involved. I made a series of 20 cards on old book page with 2 funny looking birds on them. I send 10 out to Adam who's in charge of the project, and kept 10 to send to my etsy shop buyers when they buy from my store. I hope that I'll get rid of all of them before Valentine's get here.

Poof! Illustration Friday

This is such a strange word - poof?! It's not even a word really... It made me think of poofy hair and poofy dresses, and so on the person that represent poofiness more then any other, Marie Antoinette! that whole period in history was probably poofier then any other!

For sell in the store.

Sour

Illustration Friday word of the week was sour, it's really hard to do a drawing of a flavor...
Eventually I remembered a friend I used to go out drinking with in Israel and who always had Whiskey sours. I miss that bar...

Baby

Last weeks illustration Friday came so easy and this week it was really really hard! to me "baby" is not a fun thing to draw, their faces are all pudgy and lacking of any lines to draw also, they all look the same and at best I'll be able to get a drawing of a cute baby out of it...

I thought about it for a couple of days thinking of tricking my way out of it with a baby animal or with something else that somehow associate with babies, but eventually I dug out a book I have called "Encyclopedia Anatomica" which is a photographed documentation of the Museo La Specola in Florance, which is an old science museum that has a spectacular vintage wax figures of the anatomy of men and women (think an older and cooler version of the Bodies exhibit).

I wanted to see if I can find an image of a fetus to draw, but eventually found a stranger and probably nicer looking thing which was a was figure of a baby with his guts open and showing. It's pretty horrid, but something about the face looking really peaceful and how the object was made so lovingly and with great detail made it look much more nice then creepy. So I made a drawing of that.

Worry

Worry was the word of the week on Illustration Friday. Sometime it's really hard to find what I want to do for it, and some time it's super easy. This was one of the super easy ones, cause earlier this week I took a picture that I titled "Worry".

The photo was a self portrait I took after Ned got an e-mail that he got in to Grafuck book this year, we both send 3 images, he got one in and I didn't get any request for high resolution files which means I got rejected. I was so happy and proud for Ned but so sad and feeling like a failure for myself. Also him getting in meant that I couldn't write this off as one of those "those editors don't even know anything about art or anything" because they did show very good judgment by picking Ned's piece. So basically, however I could twisted it in my mind, the only conclusion was that I'm just not good enough.



The other day, while being in the train, I thought about a painting i made that day. I listed it on Etsy for 45$, and another one from the same day for 20$. I thought about a friend of mine that
had an art show in a gallery a few months back and now have one of her pieces in some auction site for 1,200$. And how it sort of suck and I feel about 30 times less of an artist then her. Then I thought that if I have to choose between selling 30 paintings to make 1,200$ or only one, I rather sell 30, cause it gives me the chance to make 30 paintings and though this is a pretty small comfort, it's still a comfort.

I'm really worried, not so much about the value of my art but about my own courage and abillity to step out of my comfort zone and becoming the artist I want to be.