In the words of Neil Gaiman:

...I hope you will have a wonderful year, that you'll dream dangerously and outrageously, that you'll make something that didn't exist before you made it, that you will be loved and that you will be liked, and that you will have people to love and to like in return. And, most importantly (because I think there should be more kindness and more wisdom in the world right now), that you will, when you need to be, be wise, and that you will always be kind.

May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you're wonderful, and don't forget to make some art -- write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself.

Happy New Year.

Christmas

Christmas with my new flash turned out great! I got 61 great shots and another hundred of people blinking or making silly faces.

Here are a few of the best!

And here is the album of all the good ones!

Cute new haircut. Maybe you'll see it on Christmas. I'm going to have to figure out if i want to keep my purple layer though. Let me know your opinion. Of the cut and the purple!

Dr Seuss Event Photos

As promised - here are some photos of the Dr. Seuss event.

I wasn't able to go (that was the weekend Quinn lost her memory), so these photos were all taken by Event Central. The client was apparently thrilled.

Here's the Music Shop.

Here's the Toy Shop:

My favorite part is the lights.

And the Bakery:

I was pretty pleased with the way everything turned out, considering the short amount of time I had to paint it.

How many screens does your workstation have?

Cuz right now, mine has three - and one is way big.

You can see my little TV, my dear Quinn, and Laurence - the new big monitor. You can also see that I'm going to need to hang something mad colorful on that wall or I'm gonna go nuts!

Stoops & DB video

I was looking back at my posts and realized I never posted photos of the set from She Stoops to Conquer.

Here are the production photos, taken by T. Charles Erickson.

The first one has more ambiance...

But you can actually see the actual scenic painting in the second.

Yep - I touched almost every part of that set with a brush, including crawling around on the floor with a teeny tiny brush, painting in the cracks!

I've also completed the rough sketches for three more pages of the book. Hopefully, I'll be able to get to the actual watercolors this week.

Here's a short video of the first six pages, just for funsies:

Can you make a candy cane do this?

Note the lack of point on the ends - it's completely uniform. Boo-yeah!

Melvin the Vagabond Watercolor

Since I've started experimenting with watercolors more heavily in the recent past, I've taken to carrying around a watercolor notebook and watercolor pencil in my bag. It's much more constructive than my usual habit of making hamster piles out of shredded napkins or playing with whatever cutlery is on the table until Grant takes it away.

Watercolor pencils are great for on the go, because palettes are unnecessary and almost anywhere will give you water.

I did this one in an Uno's in Pittsburgh while hanging with Grant and his parents (poor Elyse was at work).

Saturday night Grant and I were at Starbucks with Katie and Jason, and I painted this creepy guy. His name is Melvin. I think I'm just majorly excited about the Tim Burton exhibit at MoMA. Which I will hopefully be seeing with Doug and Grant on Dec 21. You can come if you want, but it's a Monday.

Here's the next page of Dustbin Children. I posted the sketch a few weeks ago. Here's the watercolor. I'm not sure if I'm completely pleased with it yet, but I think it's best to press on. I can always add details or redo it later!

"At school she was never called on,

Even when her hand was the only one raised."

Poor Quinn

As you may or may not have heard, my dear dear Quinn's hard drive suddenly expired yesterday. This was very upsetting, and if I acted weird yesterday, I apologize.

Grant, being the wonderful, wonderful, wonderful person that he is, was very quick to fix my problem. This very morning he went out and bought me a shiny, new, naked hard drive, that I've named Newbie. He set up the operating system, and I had a working laptop in less than 24 hours from the initial problem.

Because I was a Very Bad Girl, and hadn't backed up practically anything for A Very Long Time, we are going to send it away and have the files recovered for Quite A Lot of Money. Happy Birthday and Merry Christmas Susan, because this is all you are getting.

Learn from my mistakes people. Back up your files. That way when your hard drive dies, you can say, "oh well, that sucks a bit," lose a few files, and spend one or two hundred dollars for a new one. Then you will not have to pay Quite A Lot of Money like Naughty Sue had to.

Anyways, in mourning of the passing of the Old Quinn, and to celebrate the newness of a Shiny New Quinn, I have peeled off the vinyl on her back and will be designing a new vinyl.

And I need to do it quick, because she is very naked and it's freaking me out:

Hint: if you have a plastic macbook, Goo Gone works very well on getting nasty adhesive off.

As part of the fun that is this faux Dr Seuss land, I had to make a Wow-Ville (not Whoville) subway map. There is a train station piece in it, and they needed some maps... Some popular locations are the Town Center, the Wow Hospital, the Grande Wow Hotel, and the Betsy Wow House. You wish you were there. The event starts load in tomorrow, and is only up for 3 hours. Yep - 3. I'm thinking of going, at least so i can get some pictures. I forgot to take some of the toy shop. Plus, everything will look better all put together and in its natural environment. So hopefully there are much more sexy pictures to come.