Dear Vox friends,
I know I've been gone for a while. I apologize for that. As noted in my last post, I recently got engaged and have been trying to plan a fun & funky wedding. If that wasn't enough to keep any gal occupied, the Boy and I decided to buy a house. Hurrah, I know. It's a fixer-upper and needs new everything (just about). It's a lovely house, though, and as a first time homeowner, I can't say how happy I am to rip out MY old carpet and knock holes in MY wall. My days look something like this: 9-5 is spent at work, 6-9 is spent at the house. Sleep and breakfast and dinner and dog walking fall between 9 and 8.
I know it's no excuses, but for those of you who sort of like my scribbles, please don't write me off just yet. I should be back with new art some time in May.
Paige
I can't believe that it's almost been a month since I’ve posted. My god, time flies when stress is in the air. Some of it’s been good stress (very good) but a lot of it has been sort of unfortunate. Here are both sides of the stress.
- The
new used car makes a bunch of random noises. But we’ve
been able to fix most of the noises in the car for only a little money.
- It is getting progressively harder to sit at my desk and work. On the other hand, I know the end-date of this job is getting closer, and I know I could do some things to make it even nearer, like putting some drawings up for sale in my empty etsy store.
- I hadn’t drawn for weeks, but this week, the boyfriend has been shooing me off almost every night to scribble
- I haven’t cooked a real meal in weeks. But my uncle and my dad are helping me make a recipe for a dobash cake, my favorite cake from childhood made (only?) by the family bakery that went out of business a few years ago.
- The Wheeze, my ferret of 4 years, was taken over by a fast moving cancer and passed away. There aren't many positives here. She did go peacefully, and I am grateful that my dog is alive and healthy.
Oh, other good news (the very good news). The boyfriend, whom I’ve known for about 7 years, proposed over Thanksgiving at Fiery Furnace in Arches National Park. (!!!) So, we are officially engaged and are working to plan some sort of funky wedding. That is definitely a happy bit of stress.
Here are some drawings. Some are better than others.
For those of you who are interested, my car was totaled in the hit & run. I keep trying to stay positive by thinking: "at least no one was in the car" and "at least I didn't have to pay my really high deductible" and "at least I got a bunch of streetglass." Besides the fact that no one was hurt, they're pretty small consolations for the week-long headache of getting a new car. Which I did on Monday - well, it's a new used car... Actually, it's sort of a beater, but it runs well, smells like soap, has decent gas mileage, and gets me where I need to go. And that extra money from the car is going into the house kitty.
Since the accident, I haven't scribbled (or exercised or cooked or cleaned the house or ... ), but I'm finally starting to feel sane enough to start up again, and I hope to have something new to post tomorrow. I spent the last several days as a giant ball of stress, and I know I was a pain to any/everyone who had deal with me in real life. Apologies to all of you. Anyway, to make up for my grumpiness and my last few whining posts, I thought I'd post two drawings from last week. Hope you enjoy.
The doorbell rang at 3:00 this morning. I assumed it was a ringer malfunction. We have an old house with an even older doorbell that likes to ring when no one is around. But a quick peep out the window revealed that there was someone outside - a rather surly looking man. There were lights flashing. Maybe someone was hurt or something and needed help. So I sent the boyfriend down while I hunkered down in bed.
Turned out that the surly man was a cop. There had been an accident. Our car was involved. We had to go outside to inspect things.
We have to park on the street here and I guess some drunk guy missed the 5 cars before us, plowed into ours, and pushed it all the way across the street, a half a house down, and up onto the other sidewalk. Then, of course, he ran off. Somehow. Our car is in bad shape so I can only imagine how his looks. I thought the rear-end crunch wouldn't take much time to repair, but of course it's much worse than we realized. The hatch is jammed shut, neither back door opens, the left light doesn't stay in it's socket, we're leaking some kind of fluid, the bumper has completely fallen off, and the floor of the back is all popped up and broken. I'd guess our car is 3 inches shorter. The metal from the frame is scraping the wheels so we can't even drive to a repair shop. What a morning.
To make everything just a little nicer, I have a super high deductile on my insurance. There's not a lot of money to be made in the non-profit world, and I wanted to save a few coins by making my deductible really, really high. It's a gamble, I guess, and it obviously didn't pay off. So goodbye to some of that house downpayment savings...
The small bit of good news: I have a full bag of accident (taillight) plastic that I plan to turn into some kind of art piece. That's a pretty small silver lining, though.
Sorry to be a grouch. I just thought my day was going to be a lot different.
I go through hot & cold spells with almost everything. With how little I've posted lately, I guess two back-to-back posts almost make this a hot streak for vox.
This is a hot & cold time of year for me. Maybe it's the weather. Maybe I'm realizing the year is slipping by and I haven't done as much as I hoped. I rarely have a New Year's resolution, but for some reason have decided to make a mid-year resolution. Here are most of the things on my list: 1) I am going to get fit enough to go backpacking next summer. To do that, 2) I will exercise three days a week and 3) take vitamins. 4) I will draw (at least) every day that I do not exercise, and 5) I will look into taking an art class at the museum. Whether or not the museum art class happens, 6) I will explore starting a series of paintings of playground things and 7) I will take a crocheting class so I can learn to make yarn-robots. 8) I will try to spend more time with real people, and when I do, 9) I will try not let social things bother me.
I have been busy cobbling together the company newsletter and now I'm in the middle of getting all 3,000 of them ready for mailing. These are the contents of my even less interesting life outside of vox. Newsletters. (sigh) At least it's sort of art related. This scribble is in celebration of all of the trouble I have creating newsletters since I have no "real" graphic design training and just make something that I think looks good. I have no end of trouble with the printers and in getting the thing coverted to spot colors and other such nonsense to print. This is called "CMYK."
I excitedly called handfuls of friends when Obama won my old home swing state of Ohio. By the time he won my new swing state of Nevada, there was no way for him not to win the election. Still, when he was officially elected, I cried. I also cried during his acceptance speech and at a simple picture of him with the words "Mr. President" below it. I was a strong Obama supporter from way back, but I didn't think I'd be this emotional about his election. I feel relieved. Excited. Hopeful.
The only rain on this amazing parade is that Proposition 8 passed in California, banning gay marriage. It's amazing to think that even with this historic election, we can get fearful of something as simple as love.
Enough politics - I need to let silence do the talking. I drew this scribble while waiting in line to vote. It has little, if anything, to do with the election or Obama, but it reminds me of how hard it is to stand and draw. Enjoy.
Show us something you've made recently.
Here are two.
And:
I don't really feel fine. My skin is tingly and I sway when I sit up, but I thought the universe was going to BLINK out of existence yesterday. It didn't, so I feel pretty decent today despite the sickness. I know that a bunch of scientists including Mr. Stephen Hawking said the giant atom smasher wouldn't create a black hole that would swallow the earth and reality as we know it, but my gut told me that it might. If I have to trust my gut or science-types, I'm almost always going to go with my gut. (not true; that's just the sickness talking). I celebration of things still existing, I thought I'd post two new drawings today. These have nothing to do with the world ending; they just happen to be my two newest scribbles.
And:
I think I promised everyone a painting a few weeks ago... I am embarrassed to say that I finished this one up mid-August and just never got around to posting it. I guess this qualifies as the first piece of "corporate" art I've done since the main - though not only - reason I made it was that I had a big blank wall over my desk at the generic non-profit where I work (no guessing!). It fills up most of the space, I think, and is appropriately themed. It also let me continue to explore the cartooning/painting/drawing thing I started with the self portrait I made a few months ago.
The detail shots turned out better. Please click & enjoy.
