Getting paid to Art

One of my resolutions this year was to make and sell more art. I actually wrote it down in my moleskine. I've made a few things, sketched a few things, but the selling has been hard. This blog is difficult for me, because I'm fairly shy; I know talent when I see it--in my architecture studies, and career, there were things that turned out great, and others that were not so great. I looked around and saw the cool things my classmates were doing, and we learned from each other, and from our mistakes. My dad always used to say "Sbagliando s'impara!" which is Italian for "we learn by making mistakes" or we can only learn by doing, and then sitting back and wondering where things could have gone better; such is drawing, and art in general. So, this blog has been difficult for me in that I don't like showing my work--I know where the pen moved and shouldn't have, or I know where I wanted to go with it, and where it fell short. But, hey--sbagliando s'impara! I'm trying to relax and let go of the self-criticism, the shyness, what have you. Recently I've seen a bunch of things selling on etsy and ebay and thought, well...good on ya for putting it out there! So, my shelves and books are getting filled with things I make and do, and never anyone sees them. But no more--I just started selling stuff on ebay, at a modest price, but still it's something. I will show you what I've sold.

These all went to the same lovely person. They're matted with 100% acid free museum mat and ready to be framed. These are part of my abstract expressionist watercolor series. When I studied in Italy, one of the profs would have us listen to music, and just shut our minds off and doodle and explore--I got so into the habit of doing that before painting or sketching that I kept doing it--these are the result. I love the way this exercise frees up the mind and sort of gets you tuned into the media. Then I sold some art cards (small trading cards called ACEO)

Also sold, to a different ebayer--I've made 25 of these little buddha cards--they're so fun to make, I couldn't stop. Each one is different and embellished in ink pens for an individual look. That's it for now. I will keep listing stuff on ebay, since it's going well :)

I am an urban sketcher :)

I'm an urban sketcher
Yay! I'm official! :)

Random Sketches

After spending the last 12 years or so in the health care industry, studying sciences, I decided it was time to get back into the sketching. Below are some of my attempts at sketching with any dedicated regularity. I'm hoping that I will look back on these and see how much I've grown and how much better I've become :\

Latest "sketch book" is a case for an ipad mini (maybe?) That I found for $3 at the thrift store. It holds paper that's 4.5" by 6" or so. I filled it with all sorts of scrap paper and watercolor paper and this way, I can pull the sheets out if they don't turn out, and so far, this freedom keeps me from being too puckered-up when drawing. The ability to pull sheets out and throw them out paradoxically keeps me from having to do this--because I'm more free and unconcerned with how the drawing turns out, I can loosen up and just sketch. So far, I see a slight improvement each day, and that's all this exercise was intended to do.





Here you can see some pages pulled out of the speck case

Castiglion Fiorentino

I studied in Castiglion Fiorentino with the Cal Poly Landscapers for a semester--it was a way to get back to Italy after I had come home and finished up my thesis project in architecture. I had spent my 3rd year studying in Florence, and going back to the So. Cal. area was bloody torture. I had some remaining elective units I needed to complete my B. Arch, so I opted for taking the entire curriculum the landscapers were offering and calling them electives. Here are some of the sketches I found in the book I was toting around in my purse during that academic semester. This book is obviously bound, but I obviously didn't care much about it because the paper quality was pretty bad, and I only seemed to write/draw on the right hand page. These are sketches made in Montepulciano, Ravello, Pompei, Positano, San Gimignano, Vicenza, Cortona, Fiesole and Firenze.




















Check it out! There's more info about some of this area here, if you're interested










HIDEOUS! Trip to Vicenza to see Palladio's Villa Rotunda, and I had to break out the pastel pencils...dummy.







The cover of this sketchbook was my favorite--I wrote the poem "Last Laugh" by the author Sir John Betjemen and a bit of grafitti carved into a park bench outside San Gimignano which reads "if the sky were a canvas, and the ocean were ink, they would not suffice to write down in words, how much I love you." My people are hella romantic ;)

Finally, I was cleaning out some papers and found this folder with a few drawings and renderings that were part of a presentation I did for the final project of that academic semester. While I was with the landscape architecture group, I designed a small museum to be inserted into a nook next to the library, accessible from the inside. There was a huge load-bearing wall, and behind it a small courtyard that I intended to access. The museum would hover in the corner, without touching down on the ground, and would offer a view to the small courtyard in front of the library. Here are a few renderings and sketches







and here is proof I have never been fond of rendering trees...



Small church in the Valley below Castiglion Fno.




This is a very quick sketch of the main piazza in Castiglion Fno. This was the view from the proposed museum site.


A watercolor sketch I was going to render over (using trace) depicting the wall where the library was and where I proposed the museum



And, if you're interested in the lovely little walled city of Castiglion Fiorentino, you can look here at some lovely views around town

Some old sketches of Bali

So here are some old sketches.

In 2001 I took a trip with my friend Jean to Bali, Indonesia. I was between architecture firms at that time, and though I had lined up a job to come home to, I was enjoying the liberty of traveling and not having work weighing on me. But, the sketches seemed so rough to me at the time that I hated every one of them, but I kept on sketching. I'm glad I did, because now I kind of appreciate them more. When I look at them, I am back in Bali, and the memory is so vivid!

I hope you can excuse the poor quality images--I can always find an excuse for not doing something "oh, my camera needs the battery charged" and "oh, the scanner isn't hooked up to the computer" etc. In an effort to get off my rear, I just took the pics with my iphone. They're in no particular order.



Permuteran. The Balinese believe where water meets mountain there is a sacred balanced energy--yin and yang, male and female...call it what you will, the energy there was amazing and relaxing!








This one cracks me up because we went to go see this guy who was a healer. He took his time with each of us, giving us a sort of aura reading, and then, sitting at his feet, facing the same way he was facing (your back to him, sitting in a chair) he would kind of "find" these areas of pain on you--I wasn't having any pain, but he was able to find a spot under my jaw, and said something in Balinese, to which, our guide said "cavity" and I said--"Wow, yeah, it's a temporary filling!" (so creepy!) Also, there was a guy in our group who was spiritually a wreck. Was practicing paganism, and mysticism...all sorts of mumbo-jumbo (I'm open minded, but he was dabbling in anything and everything) Anyway--this dude had such weird energy...I was interested in hearing what this healer was going to say about him. He ended up touching his shoulders, his head...and then said (per the translator) "I can't read this guy...too much stuff going on." It was really weird! You can see that my sketch went unfinished because it was my turn to get read--this was the area he used to do his readings, a sort of big platform in the middle of his home compound.











While Jean was meditating, I decided to work on my inability to sketch people. As you can see, this was the first sketch on the trip (Taipei, China airport layover) and also that I didn't like the cover of the sketchbook, so I flipped the lid around and put black paper on the outside (this was probably the only reason I was able to sketch at all--that it wasn't a nicely bound book!)

Must profane the book! respect it not!! #mystyle