Oh hey! I made a Puppet! Its a kisune, or a nine-tailed magic fox courtesy of strange Japanese folklore. I'm thinking of making a small series of paper puppets of Japanese folk monsters. Wish me Luck!
Before I get real art stuff started, I will show you THE GREATEST USE OF THE FRENCH LANGUAGE EVER...this:
Ok. Now for real things.
Remember when I said that I'd post all of the puppets I made last semester for my series based on chracters from the Tain? Well, here they are! Better late than never, right?
and here is a picture of the lovely lady who's floor I've been sleeping on for a month.
Oh....what else? Doug and I applied for a grant a few weeks back to do a puppet show in for the Seattle Center's 50th anniversary of the Seattle World's fair thing, which I'm really excited about. Wish us lots of luck! Working on the script for that one now.
The thrift stores here in L.A are incredible. Here are just a few of the amazing vintage book cover designs I've encountered since being out here:
Alsoooo, Lauren (lovely lady pictured at the beginning of this post) and I made tostones the other day, mmmmmmmmm...As far as making delicious tostones goes, I like slice up the plantains and soak them in sea salt water with a little lime juice for about 30 to 45 minutes before I fry them. After they come out of the salt-lime bath, I toss them in some paprika, cayenne pepper, black pepper, cumin, and (if you want to give them a little more crunch) some cornmeal. Then you cover the bottom of a skillet in oil (I prefer peanut oil, but veggie oil is good too...about enough to go halfway up the sides of the plantain slices) and fry 'em up! delicious.
I'm brainstorming a cake that I want to make when I'm up in Maine with Doug and his family. I think its going to be a Lavender Almond cake with honey lavender mascarpone frosting, fresh fig filling and a fresh fig, golden raspberry salad on top. I'll post the recipe when I write it up. For now...it lives in my head.
So. It's almost 4am on a Wednesday night and I haven't finished my Degas master copy that's due tomorrow. Why is that, you ask? Well, there is a good news reason. and a bad news reason.
The good news reason is that I was at callbacks for a fabulous play directed by the fabulous Ria DiLullo until 9ish. I was cast as Sheherazade in her/PW's production of Jason Grote's 1001. It is a clever, gory, funny, raunchy, post-modernist take on the Tales of the Arabian nights (an oft-adapted story, I know, but this one is pretty sweet). The text itself is not world-changing as he is kind of a young playwright, but it's absolutely something I read and immediately knew I wanted to be in a production of it. Exciting things happen with story-telling and character development. Visually cool things are already in the script and it's going to give our director a lot of really exciting problems to solve narratively and visually. It is a sexy, sparkly, heartbreaking cornucopia of a play. It also includes this:
so yeah. awesome.
This news makes me feel very excited and very very flattered for several reasons. 1) so many incredible actors were called back along with me tonight 2) There are only two women's parts, so I didn't have super high hopes 3) This will be my first non-shakespeare play at brown so far (nerd.) 4) Ria has assembled a team of supremely talented tech and various backstage people that I am super excited to work with, and she has put together an exciting cast that I am itching to get into rehearsal with. Read-through to look forward to on Monday!
Upon hearing the news, my boyfriend sent me this email titled:
DRAMATURGY FOR YOU FROM WIKIPEDIA
Sooo, I clearly have two directions to go with this character:
OR
(Above Image courtesy of Mattel's racially ambiguous plastic figurine division)
Soo the 2nd, bad news reason that I am jittery and awake and a lil pissed and not working on my master copy is that a) there were 2 articles without illustrators this week and I had to scramble to get an illustration together and b) one of my illustrators at the Post decided to submit completely unusable illustrations, leaving my to do a completely new cover in about a half hour. People are busy and illustration is not there lifeblood and I need to recruit more illustrators/revamp the illustrator assignment process before next semester...but THAT is another blog post entirely (douchiest phrase I've ever written or will ever write?).
Oh management/art directing, how much more I have to learn about you. I want to not be an art director and just kidnap Maira Kalman and steal her life y'all. Speaking of Maira Kalman, EVERYONE should check out her New Yorker cover for the April 25th issue, its freaking awesome. (My boyfriend subscribes, not I. He goes to Brown, I think a lifetime subscription to the New Yorker comes with their acceptance letters.)
Jesus. Matisse-inspired editorial illustration that
includes a frilly pink dress, flowers, a rabbit and a snappy hat.
It's like Maira Kalman can SEE INTO MY DREAMS.
professional illustrators can do that you know.
Anyways, here are the two illustrations I stayed up all night doing (as well as some writing for my final for my Brown class in between, I'm not that slow gosh.) Worth it? NOT REALLY, but imma post 'em anyway.
Music article about multi-media resources for music info during your post magazine-less summer weeks. Composition? AWFUL (that blogger symbol is driving me freaking nuts), but I like his face. a lot.
Cover illustration for feature article about Teach for America's new role in the context of the various crises in the American education system. NOT AWESOME. Done in like less than a half hour at around 3am. I'm sorry, oh gods of illustration :(
One thing I do like about scrambling around doing little things for the Post is that it has forced me to develop the basic skeleton of what I think might end up being a pretty cool b&w/pen and ink/possible comic style, but who knows.
I wanted to post some of the angry Mountain Goats songs I had on repeat whilst doing that last illustration:
Ahh the comforting buzz of a crappy tape recorder, John Darnielle's nasally voice, his staccato acoustic guitar strumming, and his often purposely obtuse and/or angry and/or achingly poignant lyrics. I have a signed, really sick, silkscreened poster for his 'Life of the World to Come' tour that I won about a year ago, I'll post a picture of it at some point. It's of a crystal healer. I brought that album up in a previous blog post because I plan to redesign the cover for my illustration class. That should be done my monday, although I suspect that Easter/life festivities will get in the way of that plan. we'll see.
Come on in, we haven't slept for weeks, drink some of this, it'll put color in your cheeks.
Goodnight all, going to sleep a couple hours and then git up and go paint. Also, I'll post some of the semi-ok stuff that's been going into my sketchbook lately but now I need tooooiiiiin slee;eoil.p[ko[aw ijge mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmpppphhpppphhpphphhhhhh
