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.

Being an Artist

A whole day of working hard as an artist without making any art.

Well that's not entirely true, I did draw for about an hour while Ned was at the gym, The rest of the day though, from about 4:00PM to 1:30AM was spend in working at being an artist without making any art. I feel like I just run a marathon, and at the end of it, got hit by a truck.

This is what was achieved:

1) Sending an e-mail to an Etsy customer requesting money, then getting the money though paypal, packing the order, writing a note adding a small bonus drawing, going to the post office to send it.

2) Writing a letter to one of the women we meat in Ned's portfolio powerhouse review. We just couldn't get through to her by e-mail, so, as a last resort, I wrote her a letter, and send it to her office, hopefully, it'll find her, though she works in a very big company, and probably have people going over her letters and only bring in what's important.

3) writing a thank you letter to a wonderful woman in the Vespine gallery where I had my show, I feel so bad about not attending to this before, but finally it was done.

4) receiving a newsletter from the Lower East Side PrintShop about applications for their residence program, and deciding that unless I do it right away I'll loose my nerves, so, dumping everything else, I started choosing art work, shooting and scanning what I couldn't find elsewhere, filling forms, modifing my resume and artist statement (it needed to be not more then 1000 letters, it was 1071), changing files names, burning CD and trying to figure out who I can use as 2 references, which is hard since I didn't go to art school in the USA and so teachers are out of the question, so eventually, I wrote and asked the Vespine Gallery woman and another person who I appriciate and worked with. I put their names in the submission before I heard from them, I hope it's going to be OK, I hate having to ask for favores and I feel really bad about this somehow.

5) following a link on their site to some artist and from there to some gallery and from there ot some artist portfolio sites, I decided ot apply for that one as well, so again, resume, statement, images bla bla bla....

6) get the images form the Vespine show from Ned's computer to my computer. Tomorrow I will start color correcting them and prepering them for a Blurb book, I want ot take it with me when we go to LA and possible show it to some galleries.

My brain feels fried and I'm so tired, and all I want is ot make some drawings to remind myself why am I trying to get all this done instead of getting a certificate to do people's nail for a living...

Enough - Illustration Friday

A series of 4 drawings I made today for illustration Friday. The word of the week was "enough" it reminded me of a line from a dead Kennedys song that goes like this:

Is my cock big enough
Is my brain small enough
For you to make me a star
Give me a toot,
I'll sell you my soul
Pull my strings and I'll go far

It made me think of how I feel so not good enough so often, how between the beautiful women in the street, a more successful friend and the media, I too often feel not rich enough, not pretty enough, not thin enough, not friendly or nice enough.

The reference for those images are from vintage playboy magazine ads, portraying those images of "just buy this product and you'll get those beautiful successful life you always felt you should have".