Duchesse De Breanna

(Sorry for the image quality I got too excited and gave this gift before I could get a better picture) My lovely-lady friend’s, Breanna, favorite beer is Duchesse De Bourgogne (a Belgian Flanders Red ale).  So, I decided to paint her as the Duchesse that appears on the beer’s label. Enjoy!

Duchesse De Breanna

Little Tokyo

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My Mom has a box full of fast food Happy Meal toys and Kid’s Meal toys that she’s hung on to since the late 80s convinced that as collector’s items she’ll be able to retire off them one day…or if not then she’ll pawn them onto her future grandchildren.  Meow Ma (one of our nicknames for her. Our  Dad is “Bear Pa”) suggested I have a look and so I took a trip down memory lane and scrounged around the box. I found an Ursula doll from the Little Mermaid.  Meow Ma was kind enough to let me have my old toy back.

 

When I got home I looked around for a good place to put her. In our shower we have a built in shelf that’s at about eye level and that is where I left her. I was quickly distracted by other things and didn’t mention it at all to Seth.  The next day when I went to take a shower I found her like this….

“Nobody puts Baby in the corner!”

 

I had forgotten all about it when Seth sent me a text saying he was very startled when he went to take a shower.  I laughed very hard of course and said I had wondered why she was turned around. To which he replied, “She was judging me!”

Mikkeller Bar!

Seth’s younger brother is getting married in September and looks like that means a trip to San Fransisco! I haven’t been since I was TINY and hardly remember a thing and as a result I already have a small list (that’s growing exponentially by the minute) of fun things to experience.  The newest thing that has been added to the list includes a new Mikkeller Bar that’s opening up in August.

http://mikkeller.dk/mikkeller-bar-san-fransisco-is-opening/

beeeeeeeeeeer!!!

 

Too bad we’ll be missing out on that “Beer Brunch” but i’m still excited.  They have a lot of fantastically interesting beers. Already I’m impatient to post pictures and stories from this upcoming trip!

“I Hardcore You” -The first Mikkeller beer label I ever laid eyes on (on my first date with my fiance. D’aww!)

“Bird-Jam” or “The Day I Learned What a Virgin Is”

I’ll start getting more current dealios and projects of mine up but in the meantime here’s an older comic I did that’s based on a true story.   I still have this problem with a lot of songs…

Ooooooh

Face-Hole Sriracha Bottle…

I was just reminiscing about a very dumb thing I did with a Sriracha bottle not too long ago.  In the shuffle of a recent move our Sriracha bottle wound up in the fridge.  With the help of Science we now know that’s not necessarily the best place for it.

I did this. Don’t do this.

That got me reminiscing even more. Last October, I had the super honor and privilege of being asked to create a bit of “artwork” for Los Angeles’ very first Sriracha Festival and THEN, as if that weren’t enough for my starry eyes, my very good and very crafty friend asked me to do a guest post for her blog, http://www.houseattheharbor.com

Maybe it’s just because i’m hungry and craving Sriracha but I figured i’d go ahead and share my guest post that details how I made my bit o’ “artwork”. Here it is! Enjoy! …

 

“A friend of mine had just released his second Sriracha cookbook (The Veggie Lover’s Cook Book by Randy Clemens) and as a Congratulations/Bday gift I drew the following picture ( the Sriracha rooster with his face on it).

Randy, cock-sauce connoisseur!

It was from this picture that he got the idea of having a ………well, a ….that large piece of wood with a funny scene painted on it with holes cut out for people to place their faces and have their pictures taken. I did a decent amount of online research for the best way to build one of these things and was stumped at first and amazed to find they have NO official name. None whatsoever. I managed to type in enough random words to find what I was looking for. (Until someone can enlighten me I’m just calling it the “face-hole Sriracha bottle”.) So, he got the idea of having a Face-Hole Sriracha bottle for LA’s very first Sriracha festival that he and Josh Lurie of FoodGPS were organizing. (They did an amazing job)

 

This is the biggest piece i’ve worked on to date. As a result there was a little bit of trial and error. I went with my fiance to Lowe’s for some supplies and right off the bat my first tip is to be aware of your local store’s hours of operation. We thought we had about a full hour to shop before closing but forgot they closed an hour early on Sundays. So, in reality we had 5 minutes. We like a good challenge and as we dashed into the store I looked back at my fiance, Seth’s, car and asked, “Are you sure we’ll be able to fit everything in the car?” He said, “Yes.” :I

 

The main part of the piece is 4’x8’ and I got three 2’x4’s for the frame along with a small box of screws, a couple large (CHEAP) paint brushes, and a small can of primer. Not bad for 5 minutes without any dirty looks.

We found the 4’x8’ plywood was just an inch shy of fitting into the car. If I had not been so scatter-brained and been more mindful of the closing time we could have easily wheeled the board back in and had them cut off that inch and then re-attached it later. Seeing as they locked the doors behind us that was not an option. We played Tetris with the plywood and the car for awhile….i’m pretty sure I gave Seth a small concussion from shoving a tad too hard. The important thing is we got it all home and I do not condone the means in which we got it there. Plan ahead and drive safely, folks.

The first bit of business was making the face hole. I had planned to make the face hole 10 inches high but after thinking of all the freakishly large heads out there I decided on 12 inches. I drew it out in pencil and then we drilled four holes along the circle and then proceeded to cut out the hole with a reciprocated saw.

Originally, I was going to get fancy and buy some fabric to make a cushion of sorts so nobody would get any splinters AND be comfy. Then I realized that was overkill and to my surprise a decent sanding job with some sandpaper was more than enough on the interior of the face-hole. In the back of my head I was also wondering if I would have to sand the whole front of the plywood to get it smooth enough to paint on. It had a slightly rough bumpy texture to it. I had always planned on painting the bottle in a cartoonish kind of way and after 2 layers of primer I decided NOT to sand it. It still had a bit of a rough texture to it but I liked the idea of it having a rustic look to it to keep it from being too cartoony.

I used a pencil and lightly drew the outline of the Sriracha bottle. Lightly is important because I had to redraw the cap and the pencil wasn’t the easiest to erase. I kept the primer as the white background and used red (Carmine) and green (Permanent Green Light) for the Sriracha bottle.

(Funny side story: While looking for the right shade of paint at my local art store they just randomly happened to have a bottle of Sriracha. The worker handed it to me and said, “Here! Why don’t you color compare with this?”)

I then mixed some black paint with the red paint to create some subtle shading on the bottle and as well with the green cap. I then repeated the process with some white paint for some subtle highlighting. Since the text was going to be different than on the actual bottle I went ahead and just free-handed the writing in a similar style.

The last bit of painting was the rooster.

For the base I decided to construct a wooden triangle shape on either side of the board, which is where the three 2×4’s came into play. I used a hand saw to cut the wood into the desired lengths and then used the reciprocating saw to cut angles on the ends. Since our friend was coming to pick the face-hole board up the morning of the festival (in a much bigger car) we all thought it would be best and easiest to transport if we only partly put the bases together and finished it at the event.

Now I might have remembered the exact angles that were used and much more specific details for the base but after some last minute scrambling the morning of…..they wound up not using the base at all! When we got to the event it turns out there was a conveniently placed set of stairs and they just leaned it against that. It turned out to be a sturdy arrangement (and I also had two, “Please don’t be pushy!” disclaimers on the back). Oh, yes! I also threw in some shameless self advertising on the back. I wrote a link to my website in sharpy and hot glue gunned an empty plastic paperclip package to the back to hold my business cards.

After that there was nothing left to do but eat, drink, and burn our mouths off with deliciousness…and enjoy strangers making goofy faces in my Face-Hole Sriracha bottle.

❤

THE END!
Since this guest post i’ve learned a new (to me) name for the Face-Hole Board. …”Face Cutout Standee.” It has more class than my name, sure, but I kinda like my name better. Funny enough I came across this name not online but from playing way too many hours of Animal Crossing on my 3DS.

Hmm,…

I had something fun I was writing up but I think I was too distracted by all the fun and so it’s not quite ready yet. So, here’s this instead. Just give it to me, i’ll teach all the Science.

Caro Theory

 

“Fancy Lady” Portraits

I was considering doing my own kind of “throwback thursdays” and to use that time to post some of my older artwork. Then I realized i’m not even really a fan of the “throwback thursday” thing (all those hashtags on facebook hurt my eyeballs) and I also realized Thursday is not the boss of me so I’m just going to randomly post these now. Enjoy!

Marilyn Monroe

Clara Bow

Louise Brooks

Jean Harlow

Mary Pickford

Edie Sedgwick

Lana Turner

Elizabeth Taylor

These bowls…

These bowls. I love Mitsuwa Marketplace. ❤

I eat off their cute faces

wicked cuuuuute

 

What Dessert Am I?

 

This past weekend there was some word-play being tossed around and I yelled out, “Baklava!” Seth then gave me the idea to do this drawing. BACHLAVA!!! Bwahahahaha! Lame dad jokes! Ohhhh man.