Art Plunge

"Use What You Got"  acrylic/krylon on canvas 24" x 24" This is the latest finished piece I did for the upcoming shows. I wanted to discuss the beetle and it's symbology. Beetles are often thought of a symbols of protection, because of their hard little shell or armor. Here are some observations on beetles from the symbolic-meanings.com site:  symbolic meaning of beetles (at-a-glance): Progress Simplicity Persistence Stability Methodical Contemplative Practical Grounded Potential Security Introverted Protection Solidarity Beetles speak to us of groundedness. They move with bellies always close to the earth, and so  their wisdom is sacred and deep .  They are connected to the core of earth, and so they are rooted in their knowledge about the way of life and nature. Beetles also talk to us about steady, gradual progress.  Observing them, they do nothing without pragmatic, methodical movement. Beetles impart messages such as: “Get t...

Wake up you sleepy head Put on some clothes, shake up your bed Put another log on the fire for me Ive made some breakfast and coffee This has pretty much been my weekend. Starting early in the studio (7:30 am!) and working on THIS, THIS up above for hours without stopping to eat, drink water or even pee. TRUE! If you read my post from yesterday you might have an idea of the hard fought battle this became. Since yesterdays post more mistakes popped up and had to be fixed, such as accidentally scratching the pretty pink painted smoke and having to fix it with another layer of light pink. I let the mistakes dictate the direction of the piece. I decided whatever FATE intended this to look like in the end would be the way I would roll. So...what was just going to be a straight up backlit David Bowie became him standing poised in front of pink smoke and stars. Suddenly it was taking shape and I owe it all to mistakes and errors. You have to see things this way so you don't start h...

when it rains it pours....true dat Morton salt girl, true dat! Apparently your kitchen is full of little wisdoms like that! This morning I'm looking at a heck of a week! I'm going to have time manage myself unbelievably to accomplish everything but I can do it....the trick is to remember to have fun while I'm doing it. "SMILE, BREATHE, GO SLOWLY" is going to be my mantra...but my SLOWLY just needs to be focused and not derailed. It was something we laughed about in the freelance world, when you knew your project was about to be up and you were putting your feelers out for new work...anywhere... and not getting any bites. Because the flipside to that was when you were securely working in the thick of a project you'd have ten people tugging on your shirt wanting you to do some work for them. That is how it is and that's where my week is....which is AWESOME. It means rent money, bills, food and keeping my air conditioner on! Lots of graphic design work...

Shoot for the Stars! Latest painted record featuring Han Solo AVAILABLE ($50) Theres a beautiful rain falling this Friday morning, it's a quiet steady and soft rain. The complete opposite of how it started....loud thunder cracking, waking me up from sleepyland and making my computers blink. Now it's just a little drip drip and quietude. Rain makes primering a no go since I primer outside. I am looking for the perfect large box to spray in, this will ease a lot of trouble with tree detritus landing on a barely sprayed record and wreaking havoc. My house was busy yesterday with order drop off and order pickup and then a graphic design job I was waiting to hear about popped up so I'm officially BUSY for the next two weeks at  least. Wrapping up record orders and the graphic work and I'm happy to be busy and working from home. This record featured above is up for grabs until someone grabs it. I won't have time for new vinyl for awhile so get it while it's t...

my very second instagrammy photo thingamajig Yesterday I spent the day finishing up a vinyl record order, unfortunately it's a secret and  a gift so until the guy gets it I'm not allowed to blast it to the public. However a select few in my illuminati were exposed to it yesterday and it garnered another order. Ding! I feel like I'm immediately back in my groove,my freelancing groove. Primered more records for todays work, a Hans Solo record which should be fun. Also organized my paint (see above)...well, that's a real half ass way to organize paint but it's better than it was ALL tossed together in a deep basket so I had to dig and didn't know what colors I had. I found many dead paint tube carcasses up in that thing. DRIED, EMPTY TUBES!!! An unorganized paint box leads to stupid things like buying 4 tubes of Burnt Sienna. If anyone has a better solution than using the lids to baking pans to organize my colors please pass it on. I need visibility and for ...

picture of me at Cedars West Arts Festival manning the paint station for Magic Garden Program photo by Gabriela Elguea and Heather Shoulders Sometimes it's good to just pause from the busy life and TO DO LISTS and the stuff rolling around in your brain and take inventory of all that is good in our life. I am doing that right now. It dawned on me today as I turned in my blog for  I Am Bilingue   that the last cover I gave them was for a Fathers Day edition and the very first assignment they gave me was for...a Fathers Day edition. I remember very clearly meeting with Fabian Campos, my contact at the paper/website, and how it just seemed a perfect laidback fit and I hoped against hope they would like my work enough to keep me on. my first cover for Mercado Bilingue, I've been teaching myself Photoshop and Illustrator  Here I am a year later and I have 13 covers under my belt and countless blogs. A lot of the features have been memoirs of my life with my D...

disclaimer: these are NOT I repeat NOT my sexy legs so hold your marriage proposals Well! Where to start, it's been a busy weekend and I've decided to totally OBLITERATE all of last week from my brain since it was nothing but pain and stress and worry. So onward we go, the weekend! I spent Friday doing some work getting ready for the CEDARS WEST ARTS FESTIVAL. I was hired to do some CHALK SIGNAGE and then Saturday I showed up to create kids chalk stations on the street. The asphalt was kinda hard to draw on but I created some fun stuff and here's where all the trouble started. I worked for about two hours, drawing a big giant sun, an octopus (moustachiopus), flowers, recycling symbols, some bunnies, smiley clouds, anime kids, etc, etc....each drawing required me to squat down and stand up and squat down and stand  up... and do you see where this is going? It wasn't until that evening after I had kicked off my shoes and laid down for about 20 minutes that I realiz...

Things are about to get bright, hot and chalky around here! As a freelance artist I am duty bound (in order to pay rent, eat and pay off my dental bill) to take some odd and end kind of jobs. You really never know where you're going to go, what you're going to do or who you are going to meet. This Friday I will be meeting a big hot concrete wall for instance. Well, I did meet this wall yesterday actually. I looked him up and down and decided he and I could work together on this little project.  This wall is located where the Cedars West Arts Festival is going to be taking place and I'll be creating a nice bit o' signage in colored chalk. I'll also be creating little colored chalk "fun stations" at various sidewalk points along the festival path so kids can come and color in, draw and get chalky too. There are challenges to taking on this job, namely the HEAT and also that little hindrance of not having a car. It's going to be an adventure fo...

Comp Pass to AKON! It's that time again! Silly fun at the convention dedicated to Anime, Japanese live action, Monsters, etc, etc....GEEKERY! Last year I had a blast shooting photos of all the wild costumes, stuff I couldn't afford and "interesting" personalities. My friends from Monster Attack Team will be doing another panel this year- TODAY in fact! Yamahama- I thought it was gonna be tomorrow! So my day now includes getting dressed super early to catch part of the panel before I head over to Rising Gallery for the art opening. Of course everything fun happens all at the same time and I haven't learned to clone myself yet. At least I'll get to see part of the panel AND my pass is good all weekend long....Saturday I'll be back at it shooting photos to blog about for I Am Bilingue. Will I find the Godzilla shirt of my dreams today? I just might! Tonight I'll be at Rising Gallery showing off the labors of my love. This is the equivalent of me...

Thunderstorms have come to Texas again. There is something nice and romantic about these storms. I am fully enjoying being able to appreciate them from inside the coziness of my home as opposed to the days when I had to bus around in them to go to work. Don't get me wrong, I love a good soaking from the sky ceiling ...it's the rude cars splashing muddy water on me I do not miss. I have/had plans to go downtown to my gym today but will now need to see what the weather is going to do. The rain is reminding me of something important though....I need a nice dry environment to spray and primer records and some of my canvases. I'm also reminded I left my yoga mat outside and it's getting nice and clean by Mother Nature again. So I feel a little thwarted in the art productivity department, but I do have some graphic design work I need to get done anyway. Must remember- rain will halt production, utilize sunny days for priming in bulk!  My inbox had something funny and unu...

The iconic Peter Max After dropping off art at Rising Gallery yesterday I remembered hearing about Peter Max having a show in town somewhere nearby. It seemed like a good day to hunt it down....after lunch. I had my first Twisted Root experience. It was good and the way they call you a celebrity name at the counter was funny. Although I was not thrilled with my name. Everyone else when called to the counter had a funny little joke, quote or lyric with theirs. Mine was simply called out straight and really what else can you say with a name like PINK . PINK?!?!?!  Ha!  At the drink machine I saw the word root beer and filled her up. I took a drink, this was supposed to be amazing root beer. What filled my mouth was not the taste of root beer at all. I was dizzy for a second as pure sugar rushed through my blood. What was this taste....so familiar...almost like cream soda, kinda like root beer but...no...it was...BUBBLE GUM! Then I spied a little piece of paper taped ab...

Latest works in my studio I snapped a shot of these two together before I wrap em up today. They are going to go travelling to Rising Gallery and my studio is going to look like a boring old dining room again. Little tip for the artists, a nice roll of painters drop plastic goes a long way towards protecting your art for travelling! Wired up the pieces yesterday so they'll hang nice and decided that the latest piece would look much sharper with the sides painted black. I decided that after messing around with a photo of it in Photoshop and seeing how striking it was against black. This one would actually look cool framed in black if someone bought it and felt like doing that. :-) I've entered two juried competitions in the past week, one was the Hecho in Dallas put on by the Latino Cultural Center and the other was the Craighead Green New Talent show. Both were free to enter and I have found it's best to promptly forget about these things as soon as you sub...

"The World of Traceable Ghosts" acrylic, krylon on canvas 30" x 40" C'est fini! It's done! I put a lot of hours into this and excited to show it in public this Friday at Rising Gallery. I'm curious to see it hanging next to the mice. Today I just finish off the sides and install hanging fixtures to my pieces, wrap them up for travel and they are ready for the ball. I took some detail shots with my  humble camera detail  detail A lot of symbolism snuck it's way into this one subconsciously. I've also added secrets than can only be seen in person.  One thing I want to say about my work, I almost never have a set idea in my head of how it's going to be. No road map. No sketch. I let the canvas tell me what to do. I feel like I learn so much more when there isn't a connect the dots to follow. The forms, colors, figures, they appear like magic apparitions. Each thing sparking the next thing, like dominoes falling. I ha...

Ever so often I reach my fill of social networking, communication responsibilities, promoting and self promoting and the general constant noisy jibber jabber of life and the people around me. My little inner hermit kicks in and starts getting angry. Hermit wants peace and quiet and.....solitude. This was solidified yesterday when I found myself getting annoyed and angry for not really any good reason. I know the world works a certain way, is interested in certain things....not things I am necessarily interested in or wish for humanity but nonetheless....it is that way. The second sign that hermit was tapping on my heart with his old cane was I found myself painting on autopilot and NOT FEELING IT. Meh! Blah! By all accounts I was where I love to be in the Universe, in my studio and I was angry... with the Blah Mehs. Thats not a good feeling for an artist. It then dawned on me as I sat in front of the canvas.....my work comes from a love of Nature and the Natural world and I was di...

THE FINISHED PIECE! "Sometimes You Feel Small part 2" 36" x 48" acrylic/krylon on gallery wrapped canvas ...will be on view at RISING GALLERY on June 1! I started this thing on April 15th and finished it respectively on May 14th. Thats about a months worth of work on this thing, snagging a few hours a day or whole days sometimes to work on it. This was my first piece I fully documented publicly through it's various stages and also the first piece I used a different approach to. That being for one....the krylon spray in the background and also the very careful layering from back to front...all the elements in my pieces are usually just placed on as my brain sees fit, whether in the foreground or background.  It's been an interesting process and a few people were watching diligently and offering supportive words- thanks friends! Let's have the whole story now from start to finish: This thing is 36" x 48...

No doubt when you are doing something you absolutely love it doesn't feel like work at all. Whatever that may be... gardening, cooking, reading, writing and in my case....painting. In fact when I start painting and I'm in my zone I kind of equate it to being on drugs. It's like an addiction and I find it really hard to stop for the day. It's a lot like being in love. You miss it while you are away. You think about it and anticipate returning to it. Or maybe I'm crazy. I can only say in my defense that I have not been able to paint something for myself for a VERY VERY long time. I am coming off a year of having to hustle everyone elses commissions and deadlines and benefit pieces and nothing was done for little ol' me. POOR ME! Just kidding, sorta...but this is why I am feeling pretty euphoric that I carved out a little time this weekend to work on my newest and biggest piece. For me. Mine. MINES!!!! And to prove just how smitten and retardo I am about pai...

Fourth Layer: Blue branch shapes Third Layer: Soft blue grey organic shapes and pale green color fields Second Layer: Spray painted blue and pale green forms First Layer: Double coated flat color primer That is just a brief visual rundown of where the painting is and has been so far. I'm at the stage where I'm adding in some bolder branch shapes that intersect, overlap and dodge behind other forms. In case anyone was wondering about my process...no, I don't sketch these out beforehand. In fact as I get to each form- thats when I reach for a pencil and draw out the form to be, right before it gets painted. I work intuitively on my composition, breaking up shapes and space. Sometimes mistakes make happy discoveries. For instance my paintbrush was fully loaded with paint and bumped into the canvas accidentally where I had not planned it and I felt like I had to make a plan B or escape route to fix my mistake. I ended up really liking what the form was doing....