Roundup the Clown Duck

Here's my latest art piece. I've always been fascinated with mixed media and wanted to try it, but was always too intimidated. Recently I received a box from my mother and sister containing things they found in my grandmother's house while they were cleaning it out. I think every time they found something weird, they'd say, "This looks like something Kim would like!" I got old broken cameras, tattered children's books from the early 1900s, and a broken tea set my mother played with when she was a child in the 1940s. I was just fascinated with this stuff and thought I do my first mixed media piece using it.

New ACEO cards!

Two posts in one day -- is it the end of the world? Or is it just a boring gray day out where I felt like spending my time cutting and pasting instead of cleaning or paying bills. The woman in the bath I had designed as a card and sent it to my son, Jordan, for his birthday. So I just redid it smaller and on illustration board. The other "troubled" one I did after browsing old books for phrases I liked and then found the perfect illustration to accompany it. ACEO stands for "Art Cards, Editions and Originals." A lot of people collect them because it's an affordable way to have original art. Plus most people I know don't have the wall space to buy huge paintings anyway.

Zine Fest in San Francisco

Okay, maybe this image isn't from the zine fest, but from Chinatown the following day. How can you go to San Francisco without going to Chinatown?

My fiance and I got back Monday from a long weekend, where we were participating in the San Francisco Zine Fest. I didn't take anything, as I hadn't had time to do any t-shirts except the two I made for myself as practice ones. But I was excited because I talked to John Isaacson, who wrote the book "Do-It-Yourself Screenprinting" and he liked my shirt. I also bought the book and highly recommend it because it's written in graphic novel form, and being a visual person, it's easier and quicker to understand.

The show wasn't very big, but we sold pretty well. It was a good place for a first show since we didn't know how to run the credit card imprinter and got to practice with that, plus to just see what would sell. Our next craft show is Thanksgiving weekend and I hope to have some stuff done to sell there. Right now I have around six projects started, so my goal today is to finish one of them. I'm going to try to post at least every other day as well so I can be motivated to do more art.

Ernie finds a new home

Ernie is the piece I had donated to the California State University Long Beach auction titled Wide Angle II. The piece sold, which is good since I've started new paintings and already used the wall space where it was hanging. Matt and I are heading to San Francisco to a zine fest to show his artwork this weekend, but I hope to get back into painting next week.

Bird-crazy cartoon

Here's a sneak preview of one of Mincing Mockingbirds Volume 3 bird extras. He let me design a cartoon and it's pure nonsense so it fits in with the rest of the book, which will be debuting at the San Francisco Zine Fest next weekend, October 5th & 6th. The wording comes directly from a romance novel and the images are illustrated birds from the 19th century. Click on it to see it larger.

New paintings!

It's been a while since I posted, but I have been working on more cards and I've been trying to figure out t-shirt screen printing. I recently relocated my studio to another room, and finally reorganized it this weekend. So today I spent most of the day painting. This first painting I blocked in came from an old photo my sister sent me while she was cleaning out my grandmother's house. It's a school photo from 1959-60 and while the glasses and hairstyle indicate a middle-aged woman, when looking closely at the photo, she's probably actually in high school. The back of the photo says "Love, Pat Paguse".



This next painting is one I started last spring and just never really got around to finishing. Can't really remember where I got the photo, probably a flea market. The painting was all blocked in, but today I went over the face and background. No name on the back, but he looks like a Tad.
Still have to decide what's going in the background of both of them....

New Fish Cards!

I designed some new fish cards with nineteenth-century illustrations that I got from a clip art book we bought today from Necromance. It's kind of a creepy (but cool!) store that smells like incense and dead things, and Matt wanted to look for a bird skull for a birdhouse he's working on. The clip art book has great illustrations of animals and insects, and I'm designing a bunch of cards and selling them on etsy.

I've also finished two t-shirt designs and hope to try one out tomorrow, after we check out the Rosebowl Flea Market. Matt and I are checking into getting a book in the arts & crafts section in Octoboer, and I'm also going to look for new painting photos.