avett love

I recently fell in love with the brothers avett. For years I had never realized their full splendor, although I frequently heard their name while perusing langhorne slim online. They're so great!!!! Oh, the love surges... but wait...

A lot of the sweet album cover art and poster art is done by their very own Scott Avett. He does some amazing linoleum block printing, which I found incredibly inspiring.

sculpey lovee

merry christmas everyone :) i'm still puttering away at my (now) new years card and self-promotional piece. after many many times of reconstructive surgery, my lady is put together and pretty fun and goofy! i feel like her noodle-like gestural quality is very much inspired by the running scenes in The Fantastic Mr. Fox (see it if you haven't!!!) some glasses for the lady, some sculptured animal friends, and we'll be at final!

holidays a'brewin

It's been a great week! Two pieces sold from the show, and I started my holiday card today, a little late... but better late than never.... it will be DIMENSIONALLLLLLLLL! I gave up for the night when my little model lost her head, but this is a nice detail of the hair. I hope to have her done tomorrow night, so I can paint her up well, photograph, and make it into a beautiful holiday postcard that I can send out before new years!

So you were wondering what I realllllllllly want for Christmas? Well, I'm craving a new road bike, and there's a place in Brooklyn where you can build your own bamboo bike. Pricey for me? You bet they are. But how sweet would it be to ride around town on a bamboo bike that YOU BUILT? Endlessly sweet. According to this week's City newspaper, Rochester is an emerging world-class cycling spot, but I could have told you that :)

resting time

(photo by Gerry Szymanski)

These past few weeks have been NUTS! I'm very happy to be finally done with all of the holiday catering, show openings, etc etc. Being able to sit down and decompress is certainly a treat. Pictures from my solo opening will be up soon, but the one above is from the ROCO Members show opening, which will be up until January 17! My show will continue to be up at Orange Glory until January 22, so please, come and visit!!!

Strange Days Indeed!

December 8, 1981, John Lennon shot outside his New York apartment. For years I wore black every December 8. Tonight, I raise a glass to you, sir.

T-minus 4 days until the opening!!!

Thank god for NPR! When I feel bored with my music... I go on there and check out some of their favorites, and they never steer me wrong. I've been listening to the Black Keys for quite some time, so I was really excited to see that the lead singer, Dan Auerbach, has a solo album (Keep It Hid) that was featured in their top ten albums of 2009. Not only that, he is one creepy looking dude. I started drawing him and this is what happened.

the countdown!

As illustration students, photo reference was drilled and drilled into our heads. The embarrassment at critiques when someone would ask if you got reference for what you were drawing... well NPR has a great great great story that features the great Norman Rockwell's photo ref and paintings, side by side. It's really interesting to see where he took liberties, and the real people that became ingrained in the American culture as characters that would live on forever.

ladies and gentlemen, it is officially less than TWO WEEKS until my opening! i laid out my pictures a little while ago, decided that i'd do one more christmas appeasement, and one more dark piece to balance them all out. This is the Christmas appeasement piece. I truly need to get a good camera to photograph these slightly dimensional pieces, as the scanner doesn't do them justice.

I procrastinate, it's true. John Kelly's adorable animation about procrastination that was recently featured on drawn really sums it up. I make a lot of tea.

my man V

Here's an older piece from my sketchbook of my mom when she was little. I learned that gesso over prismacolor markers just kind of blends together. however, with microns, the gesso does not mix. i love my microns!
I was recently reminded (check it out) of exactly why I love Kurt Vonnegut so much. I admire his ability as a survivor, during all the tragedies that befell him throughout his life. When you look at someone as amazing as that, it makes your problems seem so small and trivial. Rest in peace, Mr. Vonnegut.

procrastinatron

Try as I may to start a new piece for my show... I couldn't help but get distracted by the CUTEST DAN DEACON VIDEO EVER.

Dan Deacon - Paddling Ghost from Natalie van den Dungen on Vimeo.

I'm going to see him this weekend in Ithaca! Yessssssssssssssssss! Okay now back to work!

it wouldn't be a carla show without....

Langhorne Slim!!! This is the best photo refff that I've ever found... Langhorne with a bike! Be still my heart!

This is the sketch for the show... and then I was looking through old sketches and found one that I did a year ago from the same photo.
It's pretty funny to see how different they look when they're done from the same photo ref. My favorite part is the eyes.

bike sweat

My goal this October was 200 miles biked on the Erie Canal trail... and on Thursday I rode my final 27! It feels really great :) During my last ride, I took a few pictures to document some of my favorite parts. They're in no particular order... above is my 10 mile mark, Long Pond Road in Greece.

This is my bike! For a few weeks, there was another Raleigh Sportif parked here with road bike handlebars and a road bike saddle. I always stop to stretch at about 23 miles, in Pittsford, where I can watch the ducks.
This was taken while riding, the colors were spectacular this autumn. Still are, in fact!
In the background you can see one of the bridges that I cross. This is right near the launch site for college crew teams, I've happened upon a few crew meets this month.
Finally, biking gear! The argyle socks are necessary, and I change it up based on weather. Twice this month there were 32 degree mornings, and I had to layer it up quite a bit, but they were some of the most beautiful ones, with steam rising off of the canal as the sun rose, foxes running along the trail with me, and the gorgeous sunshine on the canal as it rises :)

the bees knees

I love this bike! My month long goal for October is to get 200 miles in on the good old Erie Canal, and as of today, I have 52 miles left! Woot woot!



I also finished the portrait of my friend Gayle for the show.

for the masses

This piece, for my show, is for all of those people who found the other ones "too weird". Bite me.

Silhouette Inspiration

Tom Fun Orchestra-Bottom of the River from trunk animation on Vimeo.

One of the first assignments in Illustration 1 was a silhouette illustration of a fear. This animation brought me back to that class, I fell in love with the song and the singing bags :)

Animation done by Trunk Animation, song by Tom Fun Orchestra (who have a super cute site!)

sail us to the moon

first and foremost, i have been getting a lot of slack lately for my pieces for my new show not being "normal" enough. so here's a sketch of carla selling out, doing a tiny tim piece for the christmas season.
i'm also putting some classical style portraits in the show, this is a rough sketch of my friend gayle, who you may remember from an earlier post.
In the sociopath piece, i drew inspiration from one of my scrap sheets, seen above. I had gotten gesso all over it while painting the spider web for the black widow piece, and i absolutely love playing with watercolor over gesso. i played with the media further, and had a lot of fun! i love how it resists.

oh hey, 30 Rock's new season starts thursday! who has two thumbs, doesn't speak limited french, and is super pumped? THIS MOI! some old sketches of my girl crush tina fey and the ever sexy alec baldwin.

fetus

sociopath (noun)- a person, as a psychopathic personality, whose behavior is anti-social and who LACKS A SENSE OF MORAL RESPONSIBILITY OR SOCIAL CONSCIENCE.

rant done. thanks. new piece for show!

animalia

Reason number 79 why I absolutely MUST get into RISD for their grad program this year: they have a NATURE LAB! Still waiting on the newly designed grad application to come out...

art crush

For those of you who have talked to me in the past few months, I've become enraptured with the work and life of Robert Ernst Marx. Over a year has gone by of me serving him and his lovely wife and chatting with them in my cafe, yet I had not seen his work at all until I had the honor of attending his recent show here in Rochester. His work continues to blow me away, I flip through his website at least a few times a week. Not only was I drawn in by his dark imagery, I was blown away to find out (by reading his full resume) that his work is featured in pretty much every major art museum in the US and beyond. If you're in the Seattle area, check out his next opening in November. Robert Marx, I tip my hat to you!

Many things to share!

visiting with some family over the weekend, i stumbled upon this adorable picture of my mom when she was little :)
i've also been inspired to post some of my sketches based on inktober, since i mainly sketch in ink anyways. when i started sketching in ink, i had my trepidations, but it's become second nature to me over the years, and i love the freedom of it.
based on this sketch, the next few pictures that i do for my show will have text incorporated. i love the simplicity of this sketch, but i also want to look at my personal text/image master, sterling hundley, for more inspiration.
a new piece for my show.... no explanation really needed.
and finally, to recap the trip down memory lane to the catskills, the view from my aunt and uncle's house. throughout my childhood, we traveled up here every month to visit my grandmother and other family in the area. over time, the trips became less frequent, my grandmother eventually moved to a condo in woodstock before passing away. coming back up here reminds me of my roots, my love of the mountain and the area, the importance of family, and my desire to come back and reconnect more often.

working on my new show :)

I'm working on my new show at orange glory!!! I had a lot of fun with this scuba helmet, and i think i'll use the first scan for my mailer :)
here's the finished product with bees included, the scan truly doesn't do it justice, but framed up it looks mighty pretty!

muppetvision, or, what i've been up to!

What have I been up to, you ask? Work has paused on my card for the moment, giving me time to go out with friends, bowl, and baldwin. Alec Baldwin as a muppet on 30 rock? My life was complete at that point, and then they added a Tracy Morgan AND a Tina Fey muppet. I nearly died!!!!
BTW, my weekday job, Orange glory, now has a website!!!! Come visit me and enjoy the glory :)

business card final sketch :)

final sketches for the front/back of chris' card!!!!!! then... LINO! ANTLERS! WHAT?!

go to art school kids!

lololol, this is the first thing i saw on drawn today!

moar antlers plz

My sculpey Carla finally got some real hair! This was my first venture into cloth/wire hair, before I had always just made it from sculpey. All she needs now is some decent clothes, good lighting, and a bottle of wine :)


Above are a few of my type samples/logo samples I made up for my friend Chris' business card. I really want to do a linoleum block print of the antlers!!!!