Sunday, December 1, 2013

Breaking the law

Philadelphia, first day of December 2013
Little blue man on the crosswalk






who are these people and why are they behind the metal fence?



Apparently, no pictures at the special exhibit at Franklin institute.
But by the time they told me that I took a lot of pictures already.
For example, this beautiful rooster drinking vessel.


This slightly creepy young man.


these cute puppies.


and this crossed eyed young man - son of Cleopatra and mark Anthony.


So?

Saturday, November 30, 2013

Digging through old stuff


Found some old sculptures made from Sculpey from 2002 or 2003. They were in pretty bad shape and I had to throw them out but took some pictures beforehand. I can see in them my undying love for bored-looking ladies and cats :)

Friday, November 29, 2013

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.

Thursday, November 28, 2013

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

Monday, November 4, 2013

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 :)