Robot Back to School, + First Attempt at Painting in FOREVER

I got inspired by my long-ago drawing "Giant Evil Space Alien Robot" (pictured as this blog's header) but decided to re-imagine him as an innocent three-year-old going to his first day of school. This is for the cover of The Caring Center's September newsletter. I tried a tri-color palette. I'm inspired by the color palettes I've been viewing on the website of JooHee Yoon (particularly the adorable frogfolio calendar page, which I ordered a print of today!). I think this monthly newsletter, which I've been doing since March, is a good place for me to experiment with new techniques.

I was also in an exhibition this past Friday entitled Shorelines. My painting was used as the show's promotional image!

Sorry for the terribleness of the sketch pictures. They were taken with my phone. Fun activity: between the final postcard and the in-process photo, see if you can spot the sex-change!

Currently I'm working on a self-portrait for another show in Oxford. Images to come of that one!

Self-Portraits and Dead Things

 

Here's an image I made to go on the postcard mailer for a self-portrait exhibition at a gallery in Oxford, PA this September. It's an obvious reference to Norman Rockwell's Triple Self-Portrait. I'm not a fan of Rockwell--in fact, I hate him (although this opinion was minorly challenged during a fantastic lecture in college about how he may have been the most subversive artist of his era!) but I've always thought this self-portrait is cool.

 

I am thinking about doing a piece or two for a Shoreline exhibition in Oxford as well. I have had a continuing interest in dead things and have always had a creeped-out fascination with dead things that wash up on the shore. To get a little inspiration, I googled "dead" / "weird washed up at shoreline" and got some interesting results. So many crazytown websites out there! One of my favorite quotes was from a blog, about a mysterious creature that washed up a few years ago in CT--

Bobbette Clapsadle was walking along the beach with her family when she made the gross discovery. Her daughter snapped pictures.

 Mainly I just love the name Bobbette Clapsadle (and that gross = immediately photographing). What are the odds that name is made up? A quick search uncovers that she may indeed be the only Bobbette Clapsadle in the US (nay, the world?), and that she's an emergency dispatcher in Groton, CT. Thanks for having an awesome name, Bobbette! And thanks for finding that cool unidentifiable creature on the shoreline that I can use for inspiration.