10/28/10

Farm Logo Drawing Practice






No kidding! I am practicing drawing a commission I agreed to do. My client is very patient... she has been waiting for two years!


I have been struggling to do it. But I got a break today. My friend told me to imagine the children as the people I love, holding the basket of vegetables.
Ooooooh! I needed that!


I came home after a grueling day at the office and actually sat down to draw.
But first I had to listen to music.


I am coughing my lungs out and my eyeballs are bugging out but I am drinking coffee from a white Fiesta mug,


and in half an hour I have a date with a very handsome man with a beautiful chest.
He is taking me to a Don Williams concert.
I just hope I get to hear the music because I am drugging myself with cough suppressant,


I will be so groggy,
I wonder if he will take advantage of me...


Okay, the farm logo will not be of a gigolo and a rhino,
I promise.


10/15/10

The BBB Club - Beautiful Bald Babies!!!

In celebration of the Breast Cancer Awareness Month,
To the memory of our beloved Renee,
To Karin who is bravely waging battle,
To all our friends and family members who have been through cancer,
survived it
and to some we have lost,
To those who dedicate their lives to search for the cure,
Forever we shall celebrate, remember and help:

Bella Sinclair and I collaborated in designing The Beautiful Bald Babies (BBB) Club logo. Further down below, is the original logo in pen and ink. Bella and I also started the idea of the BBB Club when we found out that we were both baldies when we were babies. I first celebrated our bald heritage with the painting of The Ivory Babies.


Two years before bisextile day, bedecked, bedizened, beautiful, bald babies and some bouncy brainiacs, badinage in the leaf mobile while a distant bagatelle play Rock-A-Bye-Baby. Sometimes they are guilty of being boisterous but never being bellicose. There are 31 BBBs in this image (so far) and our beloved Renee as the maple leaf-carrying dove . The Beautiful Bald Babies Club (BBB) is a group of artists, writers, musicians, gardeners, photographers... Pigment ink on 9"x12" smooth Bristol board.


My dearest friends,

This was an overwhelming task. For me, to draw this portrait of pediatric impressions of the BBB was a roller coaster ride of emotions and ideas. I thought what might have been had we all been coetaneous childhood friends. Imagine that! That's a lot of baldies and some of their hirsute friends. We would have had similar experiences and we would be able to assume an easy understanding and have a common bond.

On the other hand, consider the loss of our personal experiences in different times, ages and eras had it been so. Our differences and the understanding thereof, are what makes us special, after all. From Arija's photographic memoirs to Mita's introspective musings; Karin's trials and Tessa's punctuated equilibrium, Amalia's artistic evolution and Deborah's joy. In the midst of all that is happening, we live our individual lives in parallel time line, sometimes intersecting, overlapping, entangling even momentarily yet we are forever changed by the virtue that we gain from our tender, gentle even lighthearted experiences.

This is not social networking, not amassing of fans and superficial friends by the numbers. I think I counted an overwhelming number of thirty babies occupying the leafmobile. Yet, I know I have disappointed some who came late and I have already inked the spaces. Please forgive me. To exclude you is not my intention. You are welcome to join us. I just had to finish my drawing lest it fall victim to disinterest. and I need you to express interest. I can only assume for very few, Arija for one, who has no clue that I had converted her during her leave this week, into a bald toddler sharing space with Shirley in the scout pod. So many babies, surely it will sink or tear the leaf pod, but it won't. Our energy, enthusiasm and a genuine desire to establish an honest virtuous friendship and support one another through our blogs will keep us all afloat and soar.

Without further ado, please read about the origin of the BBB Club here. If you are reading this and was late in heeding the call, take heart. the ring of friendship is expandable. Come and play. Let these artists' blogs speak for themselves (links in progress):




Our beloved Renee is a maple-leaf carrying dove in this recent club picture and also on the first ever BBB Club picture. Above, L to R - bottom row: Uber-talented Vanessa Brantley-Newton (navigator); lovely mental ninja Bella Sinclair with sympathy- right eye patch (president), my favorite everything - friend, artist, brainiac; Ces with left eye patch; beautiful and gentle Deborah the midlife poet, and dancer with security blanket; Linda Cardina, the beautiful painter; Manon Doyle, ever so gorgeous and gifted and Amalia K. the beautiful gentle artist on right lower corner. On the Scout pod: Arija, beloved wise and gifted photographer painter friend and Shirley Ng-Benetiz, master watercolorist!



Clockwise from bottom left: beautiful Silke Powers with scarf, my elegant and sublime friend Janice Heppenstall with camera, fully coiffed handsome gifted Francisco Martins; Andrew Finnie the master story teller-painter-digital art wizard surfing on leaf; Steveroni, Gemini Peep, the symphony fiddle man - looking so naughty!



Left to right: Lakshmita Indira the Enigma, Julia Christie, the beautiful writer-artist being herself; Audrey my lovely quiet artist friend; Buckram and Bembo my beloved Gemini twin sister holding a plate of siopao with faces; behind her is my favorite super gifted French painter MartineAlison, Tessa Edwards, the Regal painter and writer holding a book, the multi-talented K.H. Whitaker and the acrobatic wicked multi-media artist Anne Huskey-Lockard.



On the Tea party pod: prolific artist Diana Evans the beautiful shooing the spider with a spoon; Katelen Tays, the lovely Poetic artist ducking the spider; Faerwillow the mysterious artist contemplating what to do with the spider; Caroline Soer the awesome-wicked master water colorist par excellence and Karin Bartimole, multi-media artist fighter and who inspired me to draw the first leaf mobile.

Top row: Marie Segal, the master clay artist and sisterfriend; Lisa Holtzman, painter and master-calligrapher; Jack Foster, the wonderful digital artist; Jan the fabric artist-nature lover-body builder, all around fun!

10/10/10

Come Fly With Us!!!



Dedicated to my Beloved Sisterfriend, Karin Bartimole.
Artist extraordinaire; Brave - Bold - Beautiful - Bald and Beloved; Most Worthy.
Please wish Karin the best as she fights cancer.
October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month





Drawing transports my mind into certain stratosphere with no holds barred. This is my entry for Illustration Friday's theme - Transportation. Pigment ink on 9"x12" Bristol Board. The Magic BBB Club Transporter currently holds (L to R) Ces, Sgt-at-Arms - because I write rules for a living, steering the stalk; Bella Sinclair, Mental Ninja and Brainiac Artist (president with squirt-star medal); Deborah, The Midlife Poet (Born with beautiful blond curls) who will teach us how to dance before we can walk; Amalia, The Constant Dreamer, who draws like a dream, trying to steady Anne Huskey Lockard, The Passionate Artist, who seems like she is mooning everyone but is adjusting the BBB Club Yearbook; Silke Powers, Beautiful Eyes, who wants peace and quiet; Lakhsmita Indira, The Enigmatic Beautiful designated coifed cheerleader; Karin Bartimole, The Brave, hoisting the turbo paint brush; Vanessa Brantley Newton who is Ooh La la baking illustrations and a cake but is using the spatula to squish the spider; Caroline Soer, Truly Beautiful Baby With Hair and water-colorist supreme; Arija The Gentle Wise and Learned who knows everything about oak and poison oak and prevent us from getting contact dermatitis and Manon Doyle, The Beautiful, practicing her mountain climbing skills. If I did not include you I may just be a little embarrassed sending you this inquiry email: "This is short and quick but were you bald when you were a baby?" Please join us!!! Boys welcome but don't bring frogs and lizards. Sisterfriends are automatically welcome but I did not want to assume that you would like being called "baldie".


Come Fly With Us
Join The BBB Club Today!!!


BBB as in Beautiful Bald Babies Club. All you have to be is nice. Of course you have to have been born bald and beautiful. However, we will give exceptions if you had certain curlicues or wads of kewpie strands as long as you understand what we, genuine baldies had to endure while growing up. We were given names like "General Ike", "Baldie", "Calvolite", "Melonhead" and the dreaded "Boy". Our parents did not seem to think much of it. They did not glue silly ribbons to our bald pate to tell everyone we were girls, as if boys are automatically born bald, which they are not. At any rate, I think growing bald or kewpie, instilled and fortified us with certain inner strengths and taught us when to let go or when to beat the living crap out of your bully. The painting on the left is the 30"x40" oil on gallery stretched canvas painting of The Ivory Babies, also known as The Mud Pie Babies.

About the pen and ink drawing: I had to think of something that moves and as I looked through my illustrations I saw several drawings that would have qualified such as Renee's Gypsy Wagon Madisyn's Birthday Flight and The Sisterfriend Day Celebration. Ah it seems I have a propensity for making oak leaves fly. They don't. Oak leaves float as they fall from the tree to the ground. However, The oak leaf transport system you see above is propelled by the magic energies and spirits of its passengers, in this case the beautiful bald babies and their not so bald friends. They don't have wings and therefore have to go to sleep in order to sustain their magic flying dust levels which is gauged by the liveliness of a butterfly designated for each baby. See why they don't squish the caterpillar? That's a future baldie baby energometer. So it is imperative that members of the BBB Club encourage and support each other to maintain healthy and happy lifestyles just in case it is their turn to steer the oak leaf stalk. This transportation system is biodegradable and does not use fossil fuel, just a lot of imagination.

So come and join the BBB Club. Simply leave a comment and indicate whether you were a baldie. If you were not a baldie and still want to join, you have to be nice and be creative or play a musical instrument or be a terrific dancer, scuba diver, photographer, etc... Baby Boys are welcome. Also we have an opening for the Bug Squashier/Squishier position, but you must show restrain and not arbitrarily squash/squish any bug, just the ones crawling towards us. We will create a Yearbook and maybe ask our president to illustrate a seal, not that seal, a club seal - logo!