paint seagull

Finished my wreaths! (3 of em) I need to take pictures! The light in this apartment is not good for it at night though. So, later. They came out great.

Here are the things I want to do for my Christmas tree this year.

Walnut charms - everything ready to go except for little bells I was going to put inside the shells I managed to open up and remove the nuts from.. which I thought I bought the other night but apparently did not! um darn

Twine-wrapped wire stars - and who knows what else, snowflake shapes? spirals maybe

Felt farm animals! - ALL my friends are there! even a sly fox!

+ candy canes

On Sunday I started to learn how to use Mom's sewing machine (whose reverse button doesn't work), my first project is a stocking made out of Newfoundland Tartan.

I really need to get my christmas card design going but tonight I got distracted my Muppets

( images of above ornaments )

Wow am I ever terrible at updating.

I'll lightly fill in the past.. 3 or 4 months and then get 'er going again.

-I finished my studies in Montreal and then moved home to St. John's.
-Now I live with Chris, we have a sweet little place in a great location. I should post pictures of it here.
-I am really interested in taking and posting more pictures. I hope to eventually get a DSLR, but for now I'm using an old film SLR (Minolta XG1). My digital cam is busted as is the other film SLR at my disposal (an Olympus). I took a roll of film on the Minolta recently, forgot to get it developed when we did our grocery trip on Sunday though. I hope it doesn't break! Chris' digital cam is a small pocket point-and-shoot which frankly I don't like. The colours don't come out the way I like.
-I am super interested in food, especially special diets (vegan, vegetarian, gluten-free..), "whole foods", and baking. I read a few food blogs, my favourite right now is Joy the Baker. I do a pretty respectable amount of cooking, I think. I have perfected my pizza dough recipe.
-I still want to save the world but it's kind of on the back burner, not sure how I'm going to get where I'm going and our current federal government is really bumming me out.. but I won't get into that.
-I am kinda interested in fashion, but I still haven't figured it out. I bought skinny jeans and ankle boots that I love the other day, I'm psyched to wear them.

Okay enough of that.

So, tonight I prepared broke some walnut shells in half and scooped out their insides in preparation for making these tomorrow with Kayla, I'm also gonna try my hand at making some christmas wreaths. I have a couple other Christmas projects in mind, but I'll keep them to myself for now. The other Christmas project is CARDS of course, and I'll be asking for addresses soon, yay! I think I have more friends who live outside St. John's than who live inside it right now. The really great thing about having friends who are far away is when you go to the post office and fire off a ton of cards to all over the place. It makes up a little for not getting to see said friends.

And yeah I'm still drawing, it's been slow but I have a few things to scan.

Here's a few things I did lately!:

( drawings (4) )

I will try not to neglect you as much anymore (at least for a little while), livejournal. ♥

http://24hourartmarathon.wordpress.com/

I'm so doing this this year, and I'm very happy that I'm able to.
My plan is: get home, go to Spread Eagle to enjoy friends + ocean + not-city, gather some inspiration, get settled and then start into a body of artwork and try to get some kind of direction and momentum going. Hopefully this'll culminate with the 24 hour marathon (!!!). Then I should have enough momentum and inspiration to continue with artwork when my job starts up (I'm 90% sure I have one in September).

So,
the artist forms are due July 24th.
And they ask for an artist statement.
So I won't have time to find any direction before then except in what I've already finished, sketched, and thought about.
But I do love artist statements, oh so so much.

So I think I'm going to start going through sketches and finished stuff that I really enjoy and see if I can't come up with something from that.
And then I'll post it here!
Psyched!

Well I should finish my thesis too.. Ok I'm easily distracted

♥

Look I am workin really hard!
This icon is the best!
If you want one: http://atomicfiction.livejournal.com/642782.html Highly highly recommend

But yeah actually I am reading about a lot of meteorology and turns out I really love it a lot. I knew that before but now I re-know it.

Almost done!

And as for some art, here is something that I made for Chris to put on his door at the camp he's working at.



(This is an LJ cropped version, no time to open photoshop)

Ahhh so I decided to do an actual painting with a background and stuff and spend more than 1 hour on it and this is what came out. It's just practice really but I think it worked out! Click the little one to see a big one..



Made with Artrage 2 and my wonderful tablet that has lasted me forever.

Happy Valentine's Day :)

Today I bought a tonnn of food and made myself Trout Amadine (Trout with almonds on it) oh yum yum yum. I sure love food.. I haven't had any chocolate so far today though somehow!

Anyway I have some love-themed art to post!


( 2 carebears + puffins )

For valentine's day Chris sent me a mix-tape (well it was mp3s).. and in the middle was a song he wrote and recorded. I love him so much!

This evening I have just been sketching.. some more care bears.. I want to draw things for people though! Or maybe make a reference for Ashta.

I hope you are all having a good day! Chocolate and stuff!

I've been doing some sketches. After I post this I'm going to do some painting practice. Maybe I'll get something finished!
So here are two bigger sketch pages after I did smaller sketches in my little sketchbook.
They are more ideas from the "cloud society" which is such a ridiculous idea I have but it's fun to have an imaginary world to work on. I did some work on the Otters and the Penguins:
( sketches, 2 pages )

Alsoooo I REALLY want to re-name my livejournal. Stupid weak canadian dollar makes it cost $18.50 garbage.
I need to like.. be able to take a commission or something.
Anyone have any ideas on that? Need to learn to make myself marketable.

step 1: stop posting crappy quality scans

Wowww I am a slack ass

Last entry I said I'd post Quebec City photos - I haven't. That's the next entry after this one.

I guess I don't really have so much to say. Christmas came and went and I went home and had a great time and now I'm back in Montreal missing everything and everyone in St. John's but still having a pretty good time. I'm going skating tomorrow and I'm heading back to Quebec City for the Carnival in February. I go out on the weekends and relax in the evenings and try to make progress on my thesis during the day. Since I have so much time to do so I'm going to continue to try to really increase how much art I'm making.

Sooo I just want to include a few notable things in this journal.

( Christmas Card design for 2008 )

( My amazing birthday cake )

( A handful of photos )

The end, hope everyone's having a nice 2009!

So I just took the train from Montreal to Quebec, my first train, and it's been snowing since this morning.. now I am on the 12th floor of the Hilton looking out of a huge window onto Old MontrealQuebec except I can't really see it because it's dark, snowy and foggy.
And we could get 20-30 cm more of snow in the next 24 hours.

And I give a presentation of my work at this conference on Thursday.

Wowwwwwwwwww memorable life experiences

Je suis en amour avecamoureuse de la province de Quebec.

Photos later.. they will be amazing if you like castles and snow and trains and other such things.

EC says it's -29 (Celcius) with windchill out right now.
Eyad says EC's windchill is exaggerated
Still. It's -18!!!!!
St. John's coldest temperature on record is -23.8
Winterrrr
I love weather

I get to give a talk about my weather-oriented work this Thursday at a conference.

OK St. John's time to cool down I have some high (low?) expectations.
-29

I'm almost done my christmas card design. I hope by the time I'm done I'm happy with it!

I've been figuring out how to draw snowflakes properly, so I was looking for the photographs made by Wilson Bentley. I found the University of Wisconsin's online collection which has 1181 high resolution photos.
Oh

my

god


http://library.ssec.wisc.edu/bentley/

In Search,
P1e, Ordinary dendritic crystals
P1f, Fernlike crystals
P2g, Plate with dendritic extensions
are the prettiest onese

I love looking at these because it's beautiful and it's photography and also it's cloud physics..

Doing meteorology was SUCH a good idea

Sketches !!!!

( caribou, shrike, marten )


I never talk about my life!
Actually though, today I FINALLY got where I was going with my weeks worth of scripting, now I can see what's going on with my events and it's AWESOME. Results!!!
+shopping.

that's aaall~

Sketching in Clarefontaine sketchbook which is not that great for sketching actually ..

I can't give Ashta up so I will just re-design her. Now she is just a Dhole and not a furry
Except when I put a sweater on her
damn it

( dhole dhole dhole, 4 sketch pages )

Oh yeah how about my snowman costume!!

( snowman costume )

I'll try to keep the momentum going with the art.

The whole ~be fashionable because you are in Montreal~ thing is starting to get old. I like fashion but it requires a lot of time and money and effort. Sometimes I don't have all of those things!

I am trying to understand the UGG Boot trend. I see these boots everywhere, and every time I see someone wearing a pair I want them more. But they are expensive!
What is with all of these people in Montreal who can afford expensive things? I guess they are "only" $160 or something for the short boots. I guess in terms of fashion that's not expensive. But in terms of normal people it is!
http://www.uggaustralia.com/ProductDetails.aspx?gID=w&productID=5825
It doesn't help that there is an UGG store like 5 minutes from my house. Stupid fricking boots are like hauting me.

Thankfully I have a nice pair of boots already! But I want the little boots.. They are so cute and cozy. AAHH

Today when I was out wandering snobby westmount stores I got a Clairefontaine sketchbook
http://www.clairefontaine.com/ They had it priced wrong so I got it for cheaper. yay.
so much silly branding..

Some cliche crap I guess
I don't know, I was trying to paint something but I am too emotional about the coming election.
I'm not sure what to do. I want everyone to listen. Everyone needs to listen.
The economy is not the number one issue. Stephane Dion knows what he is talking about.
It's not an election ploy, dear lord how can anybody think that.

Everybody, please wake up and listen. Your pocket book is not the bottom line. Doing the same thing forever is not realistic. There are so many people on this planet. This planet spent a long long time cultivating life in order to produce the overwhelmingly complex and beautiful blend of stuff that covers its huge rocky exterior which otherwise would float alone in an undescribable immense almost-vaccuum. We all need to live here. Just take a minute to listen to one minute of your favourite music and look outside, or think about how your DVD player works while watching Planet Earth, or look at the anatomy of your favourite animal. Just think about it.

Stop ruining my beautiful world just because you are too ignorant, habit-driven or greedy. All it takes is ten seconds of thinking to realise that absolutely nothing is more important than the planet that supports the air you breath and that gave you the brain that allows you to understand that you require air to breath.

Climate Crisis Election

I am very poor at trying to express my thoughts without getting emotional and calling people ignorant. I have to work on it. Enough blabbing for now.

P.S I hate you Stephen Harper, eat a bomb.

( 1 photoshop painting )

Frig I miss the ocean and home like crazy lately.
Montreal is great and everything but home is so wonderful and so many people leave it. It's sad. More people need to stay there and help it prosper and grow and not dismiss it or give up on it like a lot of other Canadians.. even I've agreed when talking about the problems Newfoundland faces, and why it's not sufficient for some of us who were born there.. but actually that's a load of crap. I am so lucky to be a Newfoundlander.

I guess we'll see what happens. Every day I turn into more of an environmentalist. Danny is the only oil-and-gas proponent who I don't hate. You rock Danny.

In some pro-Montreal related news, I have Neil Young/Wilco tickets!
Way to start December off in the most amazing way possible. Especially if Heather is here!

So Chris is gone back home now..
I guess what I was going to say is that this fall I am going to have something creative to show at least once a week. I have a new, much bigger place with a big desk and lots of time to paint and draw. I can feel the effect of not doing enough (any) art on my mood and state of mind and it's not a good effect. So I've said it about a billion times but this time it's true.

I'm also going to post photos and stuff. Keep this thing updated. I really am. I have been meaning to for a long time. Later today I'm going to post photos of my new place.

I have a few photos that I've taken in the past little while that I want to turn into paintings.

This was supposed to be a more upbeat and motivated journal but I am still feeling sick from cappucino and cake for breakfast (sounds like a good idea, it's not) and I'm still sad from saying goodbye to Chris.

Okay, see you again soon, journal.

Finally finished watching Avatar
I was at Book 3 Chapter 9 a few days ago
ooooooooooohhhhhhhhh man
buy rewatch as soon as it all comes out on dvd on not-laptop screen

I think I would give it 95% a perfect cartoon
-4% for lame computer animation parts which did get slightly better in 3rd season I think

( spoiler stuff about avatar )

I can't wait to buy this and watch it again. This time on my own TV! I am going to get a TV!

I wanted to make some artwork for Chris that was decorative but not silly and girly, and something that wasn't a painting because I didn't really have any ideas for a painting, and I've recently given him a painting. So I decided to try sewing. I made a simple pillow with an embroidered front. I went with snails..
..._@"

( here it is! )

I really enjoyed embroidering and I think I'll do some more.
It's time consuming though, I watched all of Firefly while doing this one and the scrap practice one. For the scrap one I hand sewed it closed but for the one I gave Chris I was at Mom's and Dad's so Mom helped me machine sew it. Not as personal buut nicer quality!