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.

Dr Seuss Christmas day 3: Today I started on the toy store. It's actually going much quicker than the last one. instead of the garland, i decided to do strings of oversize colored lights. This is it at the end of the day today. I should finish tomorrow, and will start on the music store.

Dr Seuss Christmas

I'm once again working for Event Central, doing a job for TD bank.

It's Dr. Seuss themed. There are three "stores;" a bakery, music store, and toy store. On the one side, they are facades.

I'm in charge of the back sides, which are supposed to be the interiors of the stores.

Here's the first one - the bakery.

The picture is a little wonky, because I took two photos from a ladder, and fused them together. I'm pretty pleased for it only taking two days. My favorite part are the mechanical arms doing all the work

Here's a slideshow of the rest of the details.

Page 6 - Rough sketch

This is the rough sketch for the next page of my children's book. I can't find my transfer paper, so I probably won't get to it until tomorrow. I'll scan the finished product when I'm done.

"At school she was never called on,

Even when her hand was the only one raised."

Finished Drawing Board

Here it is, done except for a sealer coat. I'm pretty pleased.

Grant really likes the way the skin is segmented.

It goes to figure that I cannot go a week without painting. While cleaning up the second bedroom/ studio, I was disheartened when I realized how sadly undecorated the walls were. And I was also thinking about a place to store my drawing boards. Then I started thinking.

I could hang my drawing boards on the wall, BUT they are so boring and brown....but they don't have to be.

Which leads to the painting realization and to this:

It's not totally done - more shadows and highlights necessary, but fun and exciting for hanging on the wall.

PS. In case you didn't know, Glidden paints at Home Depot has sample paints premixed - so means that you don't have to talk to the paint attendant person. Which on second thought, I might be the only one who might not get paint because of the specific reason - it's worse than the deli counter....

I am an evil person

smoking lady is moving

for shizz





...I might have taken pictures....

Pumpkin Carving

This Thursday, McCarter had its annual Pumpkin Carving Party. It was the first year that I went, and it was pretty fun.

I had searched online for some inspiration and I saw some pretty ones that had been drilled out, so I grabbed Grant's drill and went at it! Matt Pilsner, who takes prettier pictures than me, was snapping pictures left and right, and caught one of me with the drill:

I ended up working on mine longer than anyone at my table, but it turned out very pretty, and was quite a hit.

I carved it all the way around too.

Grant had a hard time deciding what to do, since he wanted to do something geeky, so after some brainstorming, he made a pumpkin Pantone swatch, which everyone thought was funny.

Carrie and Shannon's pumpkin turned out very well too.

All of the pumpkins turned out pretty nice.

Deb's Marathon

Deb & Rachel's Marathon went really well. So well, that Deb was bored:

It was a long, very rewarding day, but I got sick, and am still sick, so no long posts. Here is the link to the album.

And here is a slideshow:

Lesson 4: Lines. Using a dark brown or black paint, a fine brush or a paint marker - my preference - and a straight edge, lay in the lines that define the individual boards. This step can be done any time after the graining has been done. It is unnecessary to wait until a glaze is applied, unless you want the lines to have a flat appearance, which is more realistic, but i also find it distracting from an audience stand point.

Lesson 3: First glaze. Take a clear water based sealer-whatever sheen you'd like, tint it with until it is a green or yellow, depending on the color wood you are aiming for. Apply with a large, nice brush. I've chosen a low lustre or satin, and a raw umber-ish green. Tomorrow's lessons: Brown glaze and lines!

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Lesson 2: using a purple paint, thinned with water, and assorted graining tools, lay down the paint one 'board' at a time, and pull up the paint with the graining tools.

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How to paint a hardwood floor. Lesson 1: paint the floor a base color. A blend of some form of yellow and red is best, but just one will suffice. I've chosen a yellow. Next, measure the width of your boards and draw or use a chalkline to snap the boards. Next lesson: graining.

Today -and maybe tomorrow, Sue will be taking you on a magical journey, through the world of scenic painting. She is painting a hardwood floor. Learn how!

FWD:

Picture Blogging from the cellphone! How cool am I! I got my new red chucks yesterday, and they make me happy. Grant got his very first pair too - black high tops - very classic. Make sure you complement him. And me.

Guest Post

Since I know you all want to know about Elyse's first month of college, here's a guest post from her - complete with photos of her class work. (I actually asked her to give me a run-down of the projects so I got it right, but she wrote it out so nice, that I just decided to post the email!)

ok, so here's a rundown of the projects

the three skulls: we were to do a planar analysis with three different views on a skull. So all straight lines and using shapes to create depth, along with varying thickness of lines. Not substantial shading. He repeatedly told me he wanted to "kiss the upper jaw" of the middle skull. He really liked the cheek bone on one of the other two. i got a 92.

The crazy squares with the wave thing: she wanted us to use certain elements of design (line, shape and value) to create principles of design (unity, variety, balance, repetition, rhythm, movement and emphasis) We were to use geometric and organic shapes to do so. No solid blacks, so even my darkest of darks aren't solid. I got a 92 because i mounted it at the last second and it was too small, i knew this but did not have time to spare. She lets us resubmit after critique, so i remounted it and turned it in again and got a 95.

the gelato: we were supposed to use the Gestalt theory to create a picture out os several small designs. the theory is that our eyes will complete the picture even if when viewed from close we can see that its not as it appears. We gridded off an original photograph, either our own or someone else's (I used my own) into half inch squares. We then created a grid of equal size on bristol board. each cube had to have a different design, no repeats. We were supposed to use varying sizes of designs and values to make it correspond with the square on the picture. I used a lot of different characters from different alphabets as well as mathematical symbols and some whole words to create my designs. towards the end, a lot of them turned into random squiggles. Haven't gotten a grade back yet, but she seemed very please with it during critique. There are a few spots i would change, such as the contrast of top left and bottom right corners in relation to the rest of the picture, but overall i'm happy. there were 300 squares total.

the skeletons: We were to do a contour and cross contour line drawing of two skeletons posed in class. We needed to include at least skulls, rib cages, and pelvises (?). The final is to be done in ink, but i as well as my professor loved mine in pencil so much that he suggested I transfer the basic lines to another pieces of paper so i would not lose the original pencil drawing. I think its freaking sexy. There were stupid robes holding the skeletons together and he kept trying to get me to draw them to help with angles and proportions, but i told him they were ugly. he laughed, i think he likes me. SO i'm working on the ink part now, its due tonight at the end of class.

in 2D design we're strating to make these crazy box things with patterns. I'll keep you updated on that.

SCAD hosted an Andy Warhol exhibit last night with some of his works from the myths collection. There is some lecture tonight and workshop tomorrow with a guy named patrick connors... Looked at his website, not inpressed at all with the layout and design of the webpage, but his stuff looks good.

I heard its snowing in part of PA today, its a sunny warm fall day here. Robert Redford is in town filming a movie and some of my friends saw Justin Long yesterday. I think thats about it.

What a rockstar!

Fall at the Cabin

So I was able to head up to the Cabin last weekend with my family and one of Lui's friends. It was probably the weekend after the peak of the color, but I didn't mind. I got some really great pictures.

Lui is taking archery in gym class, so he decided to buy himself a bow, so he can practice on his own. It's much more powerful than any bows I've shot before, and I have a nasty bruise on my left forearm, because I - stupidly - took OFF my leather coat so it wouldn't constrict my movement. Smart, Sue. Smart.

Aunt Sherrie was rocking some awesome style on one of our side trips. She hollered at me when I told her I had taken a picture.

We hit up a local apple farm for some fresh apples, which we then took back to the Cabin, where Aunt Sherrie and I rocked some apple pies. It took us a little longer than if probably could have, cuz we kept chatting, but that's part of the fun.

Part of going to the Cabin is driving around to see the beautiful countryside. Uncle Bri was the expert at knowing when to slow down or stop for me to take a picture. If I ever go on an African safari to take pictures of wild animals, he's the one driving my Jeep!

I caught this picture of myself in the side view mirror accidentally while scoping out shots in the car.

Check out my super awesome slideshow, or if you want to look more indepth, go here.