A trip to the MIA artfair

Miami is an interesting place.
After 4 years here we've managed to carve out a comfortable niche in this fast-paced, sunburned city but there will always be days (usually when we are stuck in traffic) that we long for the great white north.

I suppose every major city has its ups and downs though.

One of our major 'ups' however, is the stream of art and art shows that dot the calendar. Art Basel in Decemeber, events in the design district, random gallery showings and art walks pop up in my email surprisingly often and we have been lucky enough to stumble into some pretty interesting gatherings.

Last night we made our way to the MIA artfair in downtown. This particular art fair was on a large yacht overlooking the Brickell/financial district area - making for a pretty spectacular view of the water and downtown.
We got there fairly early so the crowd was quite manageable. With 3 floors of art and one floor of a bar and tables, it was pretty easy to maneuver about the ship and spend time in each of the artist's (or art galleries) spaces.

It was a great time. A lot of really interesting work was shown and I wish I had thought to bring out my camera sooner. I wasn't sure if photography was allowed and I am generally hesitant to photograph art in a setting like this. (When we were in Europe, I had my camera poking out of my bag for pictures to be as covert as possible...even though I was fairly sure taking photos without the flash was just fine.) I did however, carry a notebook and wrote down names to look up later.

One of the names I was most interested in was Philadelphia artist Frank Hyder. His massive panels of mixed-media fish immediately caught my eye and I swiftly went to investigate. There were countless layers beneath a heavy coat of clear resin (I have such a soft spot for resin!) and I quickly found myself transfixed by the buildup on the surface. That same surface was also tooled into - creating ridges and waves in the (usually) metallic background that made for a really neat interaction with the solid paint of the fish. I wish I could stayed in that booth a little longer (or taken a photo at least!). Definitely some of my favorite work there.


The other name I scribbled down was that of Lian Jian. His faces were HUGE and incredibly haunting. The flesh tones were mesmerizing and I would have enjoyed seeing more of his works present.

Overall is a great art-filled evening spent aboard a very impressive vessel.
Miami definitely has it's perks :)

Day 8... twitching has commenced.

So we opened up the wacom today. Terrifying. And still no closer to a fix.

The lcd is definitely on (as seen by applying a flashlight to screen) but the backlight is apparently out. Or the inverter for the backlight it out. Without a reliable multimeter, its a bit hard to tell which is which.

The consensus was to send it back to wacom. Their customer service throughout this whole process has been awesome, although I don't think they approve of the opening of the Cintiq -- but we had an electrical engineer with us, it's cool. My fingers are crossed for a speedy and affordable fix!

In the meantime, I've been working on my entry for the Sketchbook Project as the due date is quickly approaching. I'm about halfway through the book, so I'm a tad nervous about meeting the deadline. But that's why coffee exists, right?

Still no wacom, but new website design?

Happy New Year's Eve!

Still no news on the wacom front. I have managed to keep myself occupied with other projects, but I can feel a slight twitch coming on.

I was hoping to redesign my website soon, so I threw myself into that this weekend and actually managed to finish it. I wanted something much simpler and easy to update - hopefully this will be both.

I hope everyone has a warm, safe and memorable New Year's Eve! Bring on 2012!

Cintiq needs a timeout...

Earlier this evening my Cintiq decided to take a time out. I was 2 glasses of wine into a new Skyrim-related piece when the monitor went kaput. (My Nord and her favorite companion Farkas are actively seeking out a dragon to slay)

I scrambled to adjust the settings, un-plug/replug every cord to ever grace my desk area and swap power supplies... but to no avail. It seems my trusty cintiq decided it was naptime.

I'll call Wacom in the morning and see what my options are, fingers crossed that it is something simple. It's just incredible to see how fast I've come to rely on this piece of technology and how utterly weird it feels to see it turned off.

It's not like I don't have a heaping list of other non-computer works to attend to, so I'll just switch gears for a little bit. In the spirit of staying creative, I printed out this list of 33 ways to stay creative to help in my non-cintiq guided pursuits. It's a pretty great list to keep in a sketchbook in times of need :)

Update! Finished!!

Finish your present wrapping with free gift tags!

Merry Christmas!!

I hope everyone has a restful holiday filled with many delicious cookies, much eggnog and the warmth of loved ones!

I am preparing to head to Michigan for a few days, but still have a long list of things to accomplish before I leave. One of these things is the dreaded wrapping of presents.
I still sadly possess the wrapping skills of an 8 year old and I tend to leave the wrapping of presents until the day (or a few hours) before I give them out. This combination generally results in some fairly laughable packages. This year, I decided to snazzify my wrapped gifts with some custom gift tags, in attempts to make up for the saggy corners and uneven tape that will undoubtedly be featured in all of my presents.

I added them to my site as well, so that anyone can download the tags and print them off. Simply download the .pdf (its pretty large) and print on any thick paper you like. I tried my Hahnemuhle Bamboo paper as it has a nice warm glow, but any cardstock will do just fine. Just cut around the dashes (or keep them if you like the way it looks) and voila! A set of custom illustrated gift tags.

The watercolor animal illustrations are also featured on my 2012 calendar from my Etsy shop :)

Happy Holidays everyone!!

Oh Skyrim....

Skyrim is fantastic. AND, eating up the majority of my free time.

The other night my Nord ran into giant mourning his dead mammoth. It was really rather sad, so I walked over (slowly, to avoid space-flight.) Knowing that there was really nothing I could do to help, I dropped a flower before continuing on.

From the Sea!

I've been on a sealife kick for a bit now. I suppose living down the block from the bay and being an avid aquarium fan will do that.

With the opening of my Etsy store, I've been trying to create more physical paintings that I might be able to offer for sale.

The painting on the left (Tentacles) sold recently, so I was hoping to make a few prints of it. Unfortunately, my love affair with gloss gel seems to have made this task rather difficult. The glossy brush strokes scan *terribly*. They look like little white hairs all over the image, and ruin the feeling of the painting. While it looks nice in real life, I may need to abandon the gloss texture I've come to adore if I want to reliably scan any new work.

The painting on the right (Octopus) is a work-in-progress shot, which will NOT have the thick coat of gloss gel. I had a professor at MSU who abhorred the use of gloss medium, and I may need to channel her hatred for it if I want to leave it out!

In other news, I am still working on The Sketchbook Project sketchbook. It is still in pieces scattered by my desk, easel and work table. The due date is quickly approaching, so I am going to need to spend some serious time finishing it relatively soon. I'd like to create a time-lapse video of the project too, but that will probably fall by the wayside as the holidays approach.

And speaking of the holidays, I printed my Christmas cards with moo.com again this year!

I love, love, love their paper stock. The outside has such a soft velvety sheen to it --- perfect for Christmas cards! I've got them up on Etsy in packs of 10 (with matching envelopes of course!).

With so many things to work on, I have been running around a bit crazy. In the words of my favorite Companion, "Eyes on the prey, not the horizon".

...and yes, Skyrim is amazing :)