Quotes for Days

Hiiiiiii Snorlax

I really want to experiment more with watercolor. The only problem is that the cheap water color I have is a miniature set but I do not want to use my Irodori paints just to practice with. In the past, my lack of patience was the reason I hated watercolors....but now that Im like 10 years older, I have what it takes to tackle them again. Well....I have what it takes except an actual cheap water color set to practice with. Meh. Small detail, right?

One way I have been practicing is by combining it with words. In a previous post, I showed a painting where I painted flowers around a Dr. Suess quote I enjoyed. I decided to do that again but with another quote. I love to travel and try new things so I started browsing travel quotes looking for something to catch my fancy. Found it. "Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has courage to lose sight of the shore" -Andre Gide 

I think I got a little excited over the water part...so I had to redo a couple letters. Water and ink do not mix very well..obviously. Otherwise this piece is literally just black pen, watercolor and that banana paper tile. again. Ive got a lot of those... 
I really like how this turned out overall. Of course, having a background in graphic design, I could tweak and adjust the kerning, letter spacing and baseline all day. But you know what, you can only do so well when doing this all by hand and by sight.

This took me maybe an hour and half to complete. Or about 4.5 episodes of Community. I enjoy listening to music or watching a comedy when I work. Preferable something I have already seen before, like Big Bang Theory, Community, Adventure Time, etc. I guess it allows me to remove any logical, left brained overthinking by allowing my brain to think about something else. Let's be honest...a lot of art is just feeling how something should go and doing just that. 

Buuuuut right brain vs left brain in art is a whole different topic. So Ill stop there.

cool cool cool

Missing the Sea

I am sure that I am not the only person to have a really good idea for something but then get to busy or caught up in other things that it takes a long while to actually complete the idea.....right?

I had been sitting on this idea for a piece for about one and half years before I finally finished it. This was an idea that came to me when I was working as an airbrush tattoo artist but right after that job, I went back to school where things got crazy. (senior year and all)

Normally I do not name the pieces I create. I guess I find naming things slightly annoying. This piece however was screaming to be named and that's why its called "Missing the Sea", Quite fitting. It is a skull, pirate skull to be exact, that obviously has been dead for a long while. It is crying tears shaped like anchors because a pirates life is the sea.

As for the style of the piece, I wanted it to be reminiscent of a tattoo style drawing/painting. That is why I chose to include the flowers on the side of the skull to give it that feel. I also used a technical pen to create the outlines and a little bit of water color to give it a pop.

I painted this piece on a square tile that apparently is made of banana paper. Or at least that's what the label says. Honestly, I picked up a couple packs of these tiles at my school for free (its amazing what you can get for free at a university...) and figured I would do something with them eventually. I actually quite like this natural paper look and feel......should have picked up more. Oh well.

I'm happy with how it turned out overall. This however I think will turn out to be one of those ideas that I just keep improving and tweaking over time. I mean....after all for quite some time all I did was create sketches and doodles where I played with different versions of this idea. Maybe it will turn into a mini series with those different versions but for now, I am happy with the tattoo style embodiment of this piece.

Michelle in Wonderland

I recently came back from an adventure in Japan! You heard me. Japan. That was the place I have always wanted to visit since I was a kid. Throughout the next month or so you will get to see some of the pictures I took and some of the places I went. I experienced my first typhoon weather which was quite......the experience (meaning=I almost blew away from the force of the winds).

One of the things I have always wanted to do when I finally got the chance to visit Japan was go to one of the several Alice in Wonderland themed restaurants. I love AiW and after seeing pictures of these different restaurants, I was sold! Unfortunately we were not able to make the one in Tokyo but we had the chance to visit the one in Osaka.

First of all, apparently you need to make reservations for any of the restaurants! You can make them online at their website but it does require your name in Japanese and a multi-digit phone number. If you can do that then good for you. I had no idea what I was doing but thankfully we had the best hostel owner ever and she helped us make the reservation. ^^ (you're the best Ina!)

Alice in Fantasyland was a short walk for the Osaka Station and relatively easy to find in the DD Dining building. Once I walked inside I almost died from how adorable and awesome the place was. They had a little sitting room in the front and to enter the restaurant part you pushed a life size version of a story book to enter the dining room. eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

We were seated fairly quickly and I was surprised how small the place was. Not that it matters...maybe we all just got smaller as we entered "Fantasyland". Their menu looked like a little storybook most of the food items had cute names like The Mad Hatter, Alice's Tears, Cheshire Cat etc.

We went to the restaurant in October so the place was lightly decorated for Halloween. This threw me off for naught but a minute or two (because...there is no Halloween in Wonderland) but I think the overall excitement made me forget about the inconsistency.

While we waited for our food to arrive, the hostess brought us these cute little bottles along with a card that said "Drink Me". So like any good stranger visiting Wonderland.....we did. Every time something cool happened, the waitress/hostess would tell what sounded like a really interesting story but sadly it was all in Japanese (duh) but I appreciated it anyways.

The food was super cute. Too cute to eat in fact. I enjoyed myself and obviously took pictures of everything. I loved how it was not just a restaurant but a dining experience. There was a story or reason for practically everything.

One thing that caught my attention was when the staff came out to a table with a cake. Surprise! Its somebody's birthday! She got a cake, they said...some stuff and then they took a photo of her holding the goodies. Later I saw the hostess give him the picture (a Polaroid) in a nice little holder as a keepsake. d'awwwwwww I'm going to go back there one day for my birthday. Its settled.

As we left the restaurant, the hostess gave us some tea to counteract the powers of the earlier drink that "shrunk" us. Strawberry tea makes us bigger. Ill keep that in mind.

Overall I had a great experience. I would love to visit some of the bigger, more elaborate ones but for now, this one satisfies my craving for wonderful experiences. I completely recommend trying one out or any of the interesting themed dining experiences throughout Japan.

This place certainly has inspired me to create my own Alice in Wonderland themed restaurant someday. It would be the ultimate creative outlet as I would get to design the interior, the food, the graphics and the overall appearance and feel. One day.....one day....

Retail Tryouts?!

I don't know about you but when I hear the word "try outs" I never expected to hear it in a retail environment. Seriously. When I hear that word I think sports and dang its been a long time since I tried out for sports (mostly because I grew to old for the youth league in town....anyways moving on) 

Try outs and retail...hm....at first I have to admit that I imagined employee candidates running around the store in some kind of frenzy, picking out products that best represented the company, how they handled themselves under pressure etc etc. There definitely was no running around the store in a frenzy but the other candidates and I were definitely being analyzed about our composer and how we interacted with other people on a team. Tryouts.

Apparently JCPenney involves something they like to call tryouts in their new hiring process. I tried doing some research on the topic before my tryouts but there was a surprisingly lack on information. on the internet. Whoa. That doesn't happen very often. By the end of the process, I was grinning from ear to ear because I had so much fun (maybe too much fun) with the tryouts and I loved the idea behind it.

At first it looks like a group interview. They sit us around a table with some not-so-mysterious wooden blocks in the center. there were six of us being "tried out" but for different positions in the store not all the same position. Surprise number 1. After some quick introductions, the managers explained our first activity which was building a structure from a reference photo as a team. The catch? Only one person could look at the photo at a time and direct the others what to do. Surprise number 2. This instantly reminded me of my DECA days in high school. Loved it. It also reminded me a bit of Jenga...wobbly wooden structures..about to fall over, that sort of thing. Of course, my creative, hands-on essense loved this assignment. Our group finished the structure in the time limit and was apparently the first of many groups to do so..... TAKE THAT. The second activity they handed each of us a sheet of paper, each for a different department of the store, with two ideas on it. We then had to individually create a pitch for one idea to the team and then as a team choose one pitch we liked the most. Surprise number 3. Fun fun fun! Seriously...I'm that freak who apparently enjoys this.

That is what retail tryouts are my friend. I personally think its rather brilliant and gives us a little bit of sight into the company as a whole. JCPenney obviously cares about who it hires. They want to make sure that the people they hire can function on a team, directs others efficiently, follows directions to the best of their abilities as well as thinks critically in a marketing/business environment. Companies who want to hire "higher quality" employees should start using similar tactics or even a smaller scale idea during the one-on-one interview.

I'm not sure whether or not I got the job yet (apparently people don't work on weekends...whaaaat?) but after going through this try out process, I have so much more respect for JCPenney as a company. Bravo.

The Stick

In case you haven’t gathered this by now, I have a tendency to hold onto random objects that I deem useful for long periods of time before the perfect idea hits me. Same with this stick. I had been holding on to this stick for a little while but I knew I wanted to do a concept where something was hanging down from the stick as a wall hanging type piece. It wasn't until I found these little heart decos (already with the screws in them. Sweet.) in the boxes of junk in my garage that I knew this stick would finally be put to use.

For this piece, I wanted a more indie/boho vibe so I chose to paint geometric patterns and lines on the stick. Lines, squiggly lines and dots ought to do it. With the hearts, I painted them a solid color first. Then I took some white gesso and did a splotted, almost frosty look. With a few of the colors I also did a little bit of splatter painting because let's face it....splatter painting is fun! Around the sides of each heart is a word, relating to the Fruits of the Spirit. I originally wanted to just write them on with a pen but the pen didn't work. Great. So I hand painted the words on with a fine point brush. This tested not only my patience but also my ability to hold a brush steady.

After the painting comes the assembling! Huzzah! This means the project is almost finished and I personally like to go get a snack at this point in time (everybody works differently...mine usually involves food breaks).  So, I dug through my embroidery flosses to find the right color to match the overall feel I was going for. In this case, I wanted to emulate twine (but waaaaaay less hassle than twine) so I used a tan color. Luckily for me the hearts already had eye hooks in them so stringing them onto the wood was a cinch. I set out everything on the floor so that I could gauge how long I wanted the strings to be. Setting everything on the floor makes much more sense to me than trying to do everything on the wall or while holding it up.

I probably should mention that before I strung all the little hearts onto the wood, I found the most natural balance for the stick. Meaning, how the wood naturally wanted to go. This made hanging up the piece incredibly easy because then I was able to hammer two ordinary nails into the wall and the stick would balance perfectly on those two nails.

I want to do a project like this again because I really like how it turned out. Nice and snazzy. Maybe next time I will do it with paper airplanes…..yea. paper airplanes sounds cool.