10 miles apart

Suburbia

And

Urban decay :)

I love cities - so many details, interesting things - big and little, people, smells, sounds, art, dirt, all of it, I love.

Look at the bundles of electric cables, oy.

And under the overpass - very beautiful.

Fantasy painting!

Alga and Saxe lampshades - 7th floor.

Cafe Lift - great brunch and beautiful light, what can be better.

Huevos Rancheros. 

Back to suburbia.

Tiny wooden tags 2013

Every year for the past 3 years I make small wooden tags for the under $100 show in Sweet Mabel. This year I did not have much time for this project as we are moving. So what you see is the result of a couple of sleepless nights.I was spraying them with polyurethane at 5 a.m. on the day I had to submit them, I woke up almost everyone in the house with chemical smell and noise. 

 Always some Little Red Riding Hood - like character finds her way into my artwork. And cats, I like cats, they seem very smart and aloof. 

 Couple of mature folks in jaunty hats (expression borrowed from Maira Kalman).

 A guy with a cool white beard and squirrel on his head. Because, why not? When I was little we went to the town of Druskininkai in Lithuania and there, in some park I fed squirrels nuts while a local photographer took my picture. I guess it was a type of a business that photographers ran there, I wonder who trained the squirrels. All the squirrels were named Tanya, at least they responded to that name. 

 Owl, this time in a black shawl

 Small child in a hat and sailor shirt. Cat looking at some flowers made from triangles.

 I like clever things, foxes are clever and they possibly drink cappuccinos when we are not looking.

 View from above - little girl, cat, dog in a scarf.

 Cat and some creature with antlers, I like how those antlers frame cat's face. 

 Fox again, now he is drinking coffee.

 Woman in a beautiful robe and her feet on the tiled floor (view from above)

 girl in a cool red hat

Cat+fish+flowers

all the cool little wood tags are from viking woodcrafts

Making the calendar

A little bit about the process of making my calendar this year. Every year I come up with some sort of theme for the calendar and after some thought this year I wanted to incorporate quotes about seasons and months of the year into it. I dug though various websites that have collections of quotes about seasons and small poems. My favorites are quotes from googlereads , also nature themed quotes from egreenway.com , and finally the best results for poetry I got from poetry.about.com . After I chose my quotes the idea of a group of friends doing various things throughout the year came to me. Of course all the characters are my favorite child-like creatures. For this adventure they are - a girl, orange cat, grey mysterious creature and two foxes.

Next, I drew the pictures on white think paper (actually it's paper designed for work with acrylic paints)

Then I felt that I wanted to have some additional layers to the pictures, not just colored illustration. So I cut the picture out with x-acto knife, leaving some white around the contours and layered the illustration onto craft-like paper. 

Then I colored the illustration with art markers (my beloved Faber-Castell)

and added details with colored pencils, and lastly added the quotes.

Here is another example:

Here I drew some "photographs" in sepia and added them to the illustration. 

More:

A couple of illustrations, including the cover I layered over black paper for more drama :)

2014 Calendar

This is my 3rd year of making calendar with my artwork.  First one had artwork I did during the year, the next year I did Russia! calendar- all about strereotypes of russia and russian people that I have encountered during my years in the US. This year I wanted my calendar to incorporate poetry, so I came up with a little group of fiends and their life through the year. Each month has an illustration with some or all of the characters and a quote from a famous person :) Some of the quotes are from poems and some are just things various things they wrote.

Each month has an illustration about that month and a quote about that month or a season. Here is december with a quote by Robert Frost.

And in February I have a picture of an orange cat and magical grey creature with a backpack and a quote by Camus.

May has a quote from Mark Twain about the spring fever. That is how I feel every May.

Summer - hot and lazy (ideally)

Autumn

My favorite season

The last month of the year - December. June is right around the corner :)

You can buy a copy on www.lulu.com for $20, just press on the button below

Julia Pastrana

I read an article about Julia Pastrana here
It's a great read and the author talks about the role of beauty, being fat and famous and all sorts of other interesting things.
Julia was a fascinating-looking woman.
Here is one of my lesser known realities featuring Julia.

first, her portrait, based on photograph (colored pencils on paper)

next - this is Julia in a beret and glasses

 Julia as Che Guavara's comrade (still wearing glasses)

Julia in a hat with pink flower

Julia with flowers in her hair (inspired by F.Kahlo)

the same - with glasses

And finally, wearing kokoshnik, traditional russian head ornament

All over town

Come see some of my new artwork in Sweet Mabel in Narberth.  The opening is tomorrow, friday may 3rd, 6-9.  It is also Narberth Art festival - lots of fun events all weekend long.

 

PLUCK THIS (book)

My friend Melissa Markoff and I are working on a book. It is called "PLUCK THIS" the ultimate A to Z guide about eyebrows.  It is a collection of illustrated zany poems about ... what else? eyebrows! here is a small selection for you:

F is for Frida

Frida looked in the mirror and said "F*%#  it!"

Her tweezerman then she did chuck it

"My unibrow isn't bad

In fact it's totally rad

So if you don't like it go suck it!"

R is for Rebel without a Cause

Rebel-without-a cause-brows grow in every which direction

Their wild and wooly appearance is no cause for vituperation

They're only looking for a father figure, lover or best friend to say:

"Don't sweat the existential angst, it will all turn out OK!"

The book should be available for purchase in the fall.