Creative Tuesdays - Pig(gies)

Thanks to Michael M for hosting! Always happy to participate in Creative Tuesdays when I can

Of course, of course, I had to, when i saw the theme, bring in the Beatles'/Harrison song "Piggies", a brilliant social satire if ever the Beatles came up with

3 guesses which my favourite line in the song is?

sort of a perfect theme as I've been listening to a lot of White Album lately, though the song I've liked a lot for some reason has been Rocky Raccoon.

"Piggies" is great though - here, to refresh everyone's memory:

creative tuesdays, oak tree

Hi all at creative tuesdays! http://www.dottyhill.com/blog/ If I don't get to everyone today, I apologize.

 I spent some lovely time last week at a lovely place in east Tennessee, the Highlander Center. A very special place in the history and development of various social justice movements, progress, etc.

 In fact I was sitting right in front of an oak tree in front of the library when I checked on the ct blog and saw what the theme was! So I drew it right there and then. Some pics from there follow. Hope everyone is doing well!

Creative Tuesdays - Birthdays

The theme at Creative Tuesday is Birthdays, in honour of a particular birthday member of the group - the lovely Wanda.

This is my fun-filled rendition of a birthday card. If there's one thing I know about Wanda, is she'd be very fun, especially in a party. Probably not exactly in the way I portrayed, but fun and up for a good, cordial, friendly time nonetheless. I think it is a great accomplishment to acquire so much time, experience, and living, always maintaining good cheer, good looks, health, and a fun, lively spirit - as our Wanda does. So saying, I am more than proud to participate in the birthday wishing round robin.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!

Just learned that Alexandra had a bad car wreck - I am very deeply sorry about her difficulty and hope she recovers quickly.

Anyway - might as well get on with this even though the news put a damper on things....

When thinking of fun birthdays befitting someone fun, I recall those epic birthdays we all used to have as kids - who remembers that? Music, and clowns, and pinning tails on donkeys, hide and seek, and musical chairs. And, of course, epic quantities of cake, sugar, ice cream, etc etc etc.... in my case, we'd also always take home 'surprises' - parcels with yet even more candy, after the event.

We also had Piñatas, which were very popular with all the other kiddies ... not so much with me. I could never see the point of going all feral, attacking a poor papier mache animal and getting all stepped on - just for the sake of more candy, of which there was plenty enough in the bowls anyway... like, who needs that?

But I had fun imagining a 73rd year celebration as epic as those we had in childhood, complete with Piñata and all. I think I am promising to myself today that, if I do have a 73rd birthday party, I will have one - and go give it a good whack to make up for lost time.

Happy birthday Wanda! May you have fun whacking Piñatas.

creative tuesdays - nursery rhymes

Hello all at creative tuesdays http://www.dottyhill.com/blog/

I am on the road and were it not for a stop in Chattanooga on the way back from Texas to Asheville Nc, I would probably not participate today. Been in cars for 30 hours this week,  man...

Have been all week on the road and all weekend at an art fair which was cool

I am writing on a tablet so don't want to write too much but more later. This is a nursery rhyme we had in Chile, analogous to the black Sheep have you any wool one from Britain.  I am embarrassed at my horse drawing skills which is why I ended u p doing 2.

Have a great day!


This is the song.
http://www.mamalisa.com/?t=es&p=196&c=33
http://www.mamalisa.com/?t=es&p=196&c=33

The words of the song are here, and the link above has some videos of folks performing it

Little White Horse

Canción infantil

(Spanish)

Children's Song

(English)

Caballito blanco,
llévame de aquí,
llévame a mi pueblo
donde yo nací.

Tengo, tengo, tengo,
tú no tienes nada,
tengo tres ovejas
en una cabaña.

Una me da leche,
otra me da lana,
y otra mantequilla
para la semana.

Levántate Juana
y prende la vela,
anda a ver quién anda
por la cabecera.

Son los angelitos
que andan de carrera
buscando la leche,
pa' la mamadera.

Little white horse,
Take me away.
Take me to the town,
Where I was born.

I have, I have, I have,
You have nothing.
I have three sheep,
In a cabin.

One gives me milk,
Another gives me wool,
And another, butter,
A whole week's worth.

Get up, Joan,
And set fire to the candle,
Go see who's walking
On the headboard.

It's the little angels
Who go running
Looking for milk
For the bottle.

Creative Tuesdays - Jump In!

....or not....

Dear friends at Creative Tuesdays - I was very happy to note that CT is back in business! I loved this co-op, and the way it allowed for things to emerge due to the therapeutic nature of, a task a week, a creative task a week, really brings out things.



I have been updating various web thingies lately, which brings me back to blogging - was happy to see in Sunday Sketches that CT was on again - and seeing there might be a prize - well! I just had to jump in - this was drawn freehand on Photoshop, experimenting with layering

The theme immediately took  me back (see? therapy, har har) to one of the more traumatic events in my childhood (possibly more than once?). I was incapable of diving/jumping into a lake from a rock. It wasn't that tall of a distance but for some reason, the thought of hitting my head terrified me. Never mind that all the other kids did it, and were taunting me to do it - I stood there for like an hour, paralyzed, unable to either give up and go do something else, or jump in.


This drawing is a homage to all the fears and dangers, real or imagined, that have kept me from doing so much in life.

I am haunted by all the things I have been incapable of doing in life. Я преследовал всех вещей, которыми я был не в состоянии сделать в моей жизни

THe soundtrack to this little moment of joy was brought by Shostakovich - probably explains why it came out as it did - thanks to all!

PFF - SS - Love Commemoration

Radical Love Revolutionizes Everything

Yeah, I don't blog anymore so sad :( I unfortunately am not one of those people who can have many long-term commitments, or, too many things in my mind at once - mind like a sieve no doubt!

However today I want to commemorate love, not only bc it's so close to V Day, but because the 24th is the anniversary of the date that I met my own husband, exactly 9 years ago. So... my love to him always! We both made the above wood. Actual wedding anniversary would be May, but the day we met was special, clearly! We have had many adventures in the short yet long time we've had together, and I only pray we have many more still.

Speaking of love - every couple of months, though I've quite abandoned the enterprise, I have a hankering to go back to the old haunts, and the 3 that I always took to the best were Sunday Sketches, Creative Tuesdays, and Paint Party Fridays. So I went snooping the other day.

So I find out that not only has "Mr Toast" at Creative Tuesdays closed up shop, but he has joined forces with Alexandra from Sunday Sketches!

Wow.. the things you miss when you're away!!

Their lovely union weirdly means a lot to me because, even through the roughly year and 1/2 that I DID commit to participating, I came to know both of them fairly well - just through their work, their art, and their own committment to their blogs. And though I didn't know them in person, and didn't exactly intuit it, somehow mysteriously, after I found out about it, it seemed PERFECT. Both are very dear people, sensitive, creative, hard working and disciplined - you can just tell. And both are very good looking too, so there you go! Luck all the way around. 

I also just really enjoy the whole meta narrative of it - art blogs, blogging co-ops, together in cyberland, together through art, and then in person.....and all the people who knew and followed them without necesarily knowing that THEY knew each other... and am just madly curious - how did it all come about? When did they meet? Had they always lived in Colorado together and one day ran into each other at Starbucks and said "HEY@! I Know you!!!" Or did wily fate make one move across the country to the proximity of the other? Did they meet because of the blogging, or was that just some bizarre accident, and proof of synchronicity? Enquiring minds would like to know ....

So I commemorate their union as well and congratulate them with this image of a recent art piece of ours "radical love revolutionizes everything". More images can be found at our facebook page, and I invite all who care to to stop by and say HI.

-- linking to Paint Party Friday & Sunday Sketches

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Creative Tuesdays - Forest

Hi all at Creative Tuesday!

I live in a very wooded area, so I definitely appreciate the theme this week! Seems everywhere I go, there is a forest.

THis mini sketch was made at a friends' backyard - I was trying to write something in a journal, killing time, and found nothing to write! So I drew the trees instead. Funny when I think of how many weeks of my life went into writing long, rambling, self-involved journals, and now I can barely think of what to write when i feel like I might wish to! ha ha

Hope all have had a good August thus far!

Creative Tuesdays - Ships

 Hi all at Creative Tuesdays!

This year has not been the year for blogging I'm afraid - but when I happened upon the CT blog after months, I noticed the theme - yay!!!!

If there's one thing I still have plenty of in the old sketch reservoirs, it's sketches of boats & ships of all sorts, from the huge painting project i FINALLY FINISHED sometime in June. People can look at it in the post below this one, in case it hasnt' been seen yet.

Another  issue for me has been being away from the house a lot and finding out that, unfortunately, not all my spiffy technology saves me while interacting with Blogger. Sigh...

In any event will y'all a great Tuesday and hope to see y'all soon! Happy summer.

Creative Tuesdays - Newborn

HI all at Creative Tuesday! It's good to be back after my generalized global blogging hiatus which, weirdly enough, coincided with my giving up coffee for all of Lent.

 Speaking of Lent (and the theme 'newborn'), I recently had a chance to see O Brother Where Art Thou for the 358th time and I recalled the great scene of the baptism happened and for some reason it completely reminded me of the theme 'newborn' - because, truly, for these religious occassions, one is said to be 'newly born'. I am really (I mean, really) not that religious at all but I have always been fascinated by the rituals, disciplines, and even beliefs that religious people have. I also lived in the deep SOuth for almost 10 years so this sort of thing is familiar to me.

 I actually really dig the concept of being 'born again'. Clean slate. Newly born. To have a chance to wash off all the slime, lies, trauma,distortions, prejudices, and general BS we all mentally/psychologically accumulate (no matter how 'good' we've been & no matter how 'functional' our families). What could be better! A concept not alone to charismatic Christian traditions, but Hindu/Buddhist notions of Karma/meditation have it as well - that you can wash your spirit clean.

Please excuse the ink pen & notebook paper - I was out all day selling arts but I did want to participate!
Hope all have a great week!

Creative Tuesdays - Voyage

Hi all at Creative Tuesday!

what better homage to Voyage than a wonderful ocean landscape sketch?

I am here continuing my studies for the large painting that it seems, at this time, will never actually be started, am having so much fun with the preliminaries!

This is a sketch I made of an oil painting by the British born painter THomas Somerscales who, by a weird twist of fate, spent virtually all of his career in little-known Chile, south America. As such, he is no doubt not nearly as famous as he probably deserves to be. Here is a wiki link in English, which says practically nothing. The Wiki entry in Spanish is more forthcoming.

The circumstance of Voyage is, of course, represented by the boats. As well, it is represented in the life of a British painter, through some random voyage, having come to inhabit and belong to as different a place as you can, if you're from England (probably). At least a handful of British artists and other sorts decided to migrate to Chile, though, so it can't have been that lonely.

original by Somerscales

Speaking of voyage, Chile is actually sort of rife with it. Heaps of people either coming and going - Chile has, bizarrely enough, the 3rd largest population of Croatians in the world - Chile also has a huge percentage of expat Greeks. Also a large collection of Palestinians, Armenians, Swiss, Italians, Hungarians, Russians, Spaniards, British, as well as any number of native Amerindians and travellers from other places. From the 1840s on, a large percentage of Germans went over, and this group has largely contributed to the cultural & ethnic genotype of what one might call Chilean society ever since. During WWII you get the curious phenomenom of Jews fleeing Hitler, and some 10 or 20 years later you get the phenomenom of ex Nazis fleeing a post Nurenberg Trial Europe. What a confused mishmash! I wonder if they all ever met in the streets of Valdivia and if so, what did they say to each other....

Same thing happened in Sweden and nearby countries. Elite CHileans fled the communist elected president Allende in 1970, and 3 years later, Allende's advocates fled when the wheels of history turned against them. What did a 'facho' anti Allende say to an Allende advocate whenever they happened to meet at the market somewhere in Östermalm?
Here, an art critic's rendition of Somerscales' contribution to ocean landscapes:

Nos instalan en alta mar. Ahí respiramos ráfagas de humedad salada, en tanto que consiguiéndose así el acorde cromático preciso con los azules intensos del abismo acuático. Están "Fuera de Valparaíso";"Homeward Bound", el gran lienzo del Congreso Nacional, etc. Para sus versiones de "El Estrecho de Magallanes" cambia la paleta: verdes y azulosos se contraponen a picachos nevados y a cielos henchidos de nubes lluviosas. Unos y otros rescates del mar nuestro, por supuesto, transmiten la circunstancia climática de latitudes diferentes.

a rough translation would be:

The best moments of Somerscales take us to the high seas. There we breathe bursts of salty moisture, insomuch as the winds blow up voluminous quantities of orange, managing thus the correct chromatic precision with the intense blues of the aquatic abyss. There are "Outside Valparaiso", "Homeward Bound", the great canvas at the National Congress, etc. For his version of "THe Strait of Magellan' he changes his pallete: greens and blues are counterpoint to snowy peaks and skies swollen with rain-soaked clouds. One or another rendition of our ocean, of course, transmit the climactic circumstance of different latitudes.
I really like Somerscales work in general, from what I've seen. Doesn't have quite the scope of Turner (but then, who does) but he does make some magnificent, dramatic seascapes.
Hope all y'all having a good one!

Creative Tuesday - Lighthouse

Hi all at Creative Tuesdays! Nice to be back!

It's always hard for me to calibrate everything between one year and the next, which is why I'm so pleased that this week's theme is in alignment with my current project!

This is a sketch of Viña del Mar, one of the most famous and popular balnearios in Chile. It is home to a fairly popular international Latin American music festival we all like to make fun of, a casino, and a couple of castles and lighthouses.

Yes, I used to hang out a lot there back in the day, but if I remember correctly, all people ever did was gripe about how "all those Argentines" came up over the mountains to take over all the good stuff. Ungrateful beneficiaries of a tourist economy, I say! What would Walt Disney say!?!

Anyway below the tall tree is a place called Wolff Castle with its lighthouse which is some sort of museum, and somewhere beyond that is the aformentioned Casino where, it is said, ruined gamblers would on occasion take their lives by casting themselves into the surf.

Lately I like to listen to Magical Mystery Tour whenever working (for whatever reason) so I leave everyone with this great little Busby Berkeley inspired number:

have a great week y'all!

Creative Tuesdays - Holiday Songs

Hello fine CT folks!

So... holiday songs it is, eh?
I must admit I am not a huge advocate of holiday songs, I have tended in life to favour Hitchens' opinion regarding the "tinny, maddening, repetitive ululations" that permeate the atmosphere this time of year though, like with most things, I have become more jolly and tolerant with age, even about that.



So saying, there are not a lot of holiday songs I can either conjure up in their entirety nor express anything about, though while I was looking at this riddle the absurd song 'Grandma got run over by a reindeer' came to mind. If I'm ever going to advocate for a holiday song, it would have to be one to so gleefully NOT take itself - or the season - seriously.



Meanwhile, I learned a few things about reindeers:

The reindeer is actually another name for the caribou, as it is known in the US. It is a species of deer native to Arctic and Subarctic regions. This includes both resident and migratory populations.


Reindeer have specialized noses featuring nasal turbinate bones that dramatically increase the surface area within the nostrils. Incoming cold air is warmed by the animal's body heat before entering the lungs, and water is condensed from the expired air and captured before the deer's breath is exhaled, used to moisten dry incoming air and possibly absorbed into the blood through the mucous membranes.

Reindeer hooves adapt to the season: in the summer, when the tundra is soft and wet, the footpads become sponge-like and provide extra traction. In the winter, the pads shrink and tighten, exposing the rim of the hoof, which cuts into the ice and crusted snow to keep it from slipping. This also enables them to dig down (an activity known as "cratering")^[19][20] through the snow to their favorite food, a lichen known as reindeer moss. The knees of many species of reindeer are adapted to produce a clicking sound as they walk.^{[21] This is why they are such successful winter animals!}
 

Balla, Giacomo Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash 1912 Oil on canvas 35 3/8 x 43 1/4 (89.9 x 109.9)

Balla, Giacomo
Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash
1912
Oil on canvas
35 3/8 x 43 1/4 (89.9 x 109.9)

As far as the piece itself, before I finally read the words of the song, I had decided on a narrative where Grandma was walking across the frozen tundra to hand Santa some cookies and milk in a glass. The reindeer, seeing Grandma approach, reacts in a fit of pique, attacks grandma, and causes the carnage of cookies & milk.




I grew inspired by contemplating the dizzying portrayals of motion of the Futurists in general, and Balla's 'Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash' (1912) in particular.

Marcel Duchamp. Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 1912. Oil on canvas. 57 7/8" x 35 1/8"

Thanks to new technological advances in photography and the cultural/moral landscape of the 'modern era' (abstract art, etc), a certain group of artists set about creating an accepted visual language of motion in art. Duchamp's "Nude Descending a Staircase" is a good first example of that style - a painting which bended the minds of many incredulous and impressionable witnesses at the 1913 New York Armory show.


According to Tom Lubbock, upon discussing the above painting,  Balla's painting is particularly striking because:

Their legs have multiple positions, indicating brisk walking. They should be tripping along the pavement. Their bodies, on the other hand, have only one position in the picture, so their bodies are not advancing accordingly. If they're moving at all, it's much slower than the speed at which their feet would seem to be carrying them.

It's an awkward sense of movement that results. The lady's bunch of hard heels, scrumming under her skirts, promises a general trip-up. (An apparently unnecessary group of four kick out in front). The dog, meanwhile, gives the impression of frantic scampering. Its legs thrash beneath a body that makes no progress at all.

In my silly sketch I managed to also show the pathos of the attack, the fall, and the descent of the milk jug and glass, to its final conclusion. Yet the bodies are mostly stationary, albeit holding dynamic, awkward poses that portray a narrative of subjugation and domination - beast against (wo)man.



Hope all have had great holidays!

Creative Tuesday - Starry Night

Hello friends at Creative Tuesday!

I am as fond as anyone of a starry night, but for the life of me today I could not get inspired! So I offer two possibly not so inspired offerings for CT Starry Night theme.

The theme reminded me of the van Gogh tribute 'Vincent' by Don McLean - a song probably worth listening to at least once. 

The first one is a photo of my backyard right after the sun has gone down, with some contrasting filters added as well as some stars. Not the most inspired of representations as I said but, at least the photo is worth looking at!

The second piece is done with pastels. The idea was a moon, some stars and a city scape of some sort. It came out looking sort of angry to me I wonder why?

Hope all are having a great Tuesday!

Creative Tuesdays - Bottle

Hi all at Creative Tuesdays!


This bottle is one I drew just in time! Spending time with folks in Tennessee this weekend, thanks to a fun arts festival that included old car shows. 'Sans y Penser' is one of my fave Edith Piaf songs- something I like to listen to when drinking wine after all the hectic things of the day have been put to rest.

Am sorry to hear folks are unhappy about the Elections - there's a lot to be unhappy about, no doubt. In my view it doesn't matter as much as it seems to for various reasons I don't care to go into because

1) this is not a political blog
2) nobody asked me
3) I still remember somebody telling me re 'the three things you never speak about in polite company' and I guess the benefit or stakes aren't high enough for me to break that rule ;)

So, am double sorry I have nothing else more interesting to share, save this sketch of this bottle.

Hope all are having a great Tuesday!

Creative Tuesday - Breaking New Ground

Yay!! Happy to be able to join everyone at Creative Tuesday again! Been busy selling arts and having ridiculous misadventures, - hopefully the former will go on for quite a while (weather being the variable) and the latter will cease.

Appropriate for Saturn's recent ingress into Scorpio (for those into that sort of thing), I really found the theme of today's CT very fitting. Scorpio's all about destroying the old so as to create the new, and what more approprite image than destroying the ground, upsetting everything, and planting a seed?

I had a moment to free-associate doodle on top of an existing image in an old sketchbook (the weird flower next to the giant face) sort of thinking about these and other astrological things and the result to me was very much the epitome of 'breaking new ground'. To me the image came out weird bc it's almost as if these things are uprooted and floating around the earth and looking for ground to plant themselves in! Sort of different from the habitual conception of things being born in the ground.

Hope all have had a great Fall so far!

Creative Tuesdays - Curls

For today's Creative Tuesday (themed 'Curls') I wished to revisit a piece from the past - pre 2005! For some reason also I had never posted this one on my blog... so there we are.

I went through a decidedly 'curly' phase during that time - everything I was doing was, well, curly - I was working almost exclusively in pen/ink - and everything, no matter how simple or elaborate, possessed many curls.

I wanted to take the time to say that I really appreciate this blog hop! I love the challenge of a weekly assignment - somewhere I read that limits create larger freedom by eliminating needless, distracting options - this is something I strive for in my life & which I find plenty of in Creative Tuesdays. Almost more than other blog hops it seems to instill biographical/memoirish moments which are satisfying to me at least LOL!

Speaking of 'curls', I've been a bit of a TV bunny lately (online anyhow) because I've been 'stuck' doing a lot of admin/computery-type stuff - I can only focus with noise in the background - so, I wanted to share something I bizarrely ran into yesterday as I was working on a facebook page (please visit my page!!! please like!! it's here)

the show was Toddlers & Tiaras. Plenty of curls to be found there!!!!! (roll eyes)

At one pt in my life I would have boycotted this sort of show - I mean, gee whiz - here's the almost misogynistic objectification of women and early indoctrination into outdated gender roles - not to mention other icky icky stuff. Fundamentally, I find NOTHING GOOD about this show, or really, about the people who buy into the lifestyle (one woman comments with no sense of irony "after all, I had kids so I could put them into pageants") - but, eliminating critical distance ... it doesn't seem so bad... just children wanting to look pretty. Pretty silly, though, no matter how you slice it. It did get me through a particularly boring stretch of image uploading, so it did its job anyhow.

Creative Tuesdays - Spy

For today's Creative Tuesdays, I briefly illustrate the case of the Pinkertons, one of the most famous private detective/goverment security firms, still active to this day, at one point as a branch of the Swedish company Securitas, and now seems to be Pinkerton again.

Famous for allegedly thwarting an attack on president Lincoln (alas, the one before the theatre), the Pinkertons were also famous for bringing many Wild Wild West outlaws to justice, and reputedly were the ones who came up with the idea of mugshots - collecting a database of images of 'undesirables' of all stripes so as to help law enforcement efforts later on. Their logo was "we never sleep".

Their bread and butter, however, was as hired guns to the Carnegies and other deep-pocket railroad barons and industrialists so as to protect their vast interests against those evil greedy rowdy little factory workers who were producing all the stuff that made them rich. How dare they request a livable wage and non-hazardous working environment? Yes, shocking. In any event, the firm found plenty to do in busting up Unions all over the U.S., when not busy hunting down train robbers and rescuing rich old ladies' fancy necklaces.

I first became interested in the Pinkertons after watching Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid for the first time (not a stellar script, but INCREDIBLE cinematography, as well as amusing to see Redford and Newman strutting about in their prime)

Then, they showed up again after reading The Devil in the White City, which tells the story of the ghoulish H H Holmes - they were the firm that finally brought the fiend to justice.

All in all, a busy lot - 'we never sleep' seems a well-earned name.

When the SPY theme appeared, it seemed as good a time as any to look them up.

Bee stuck in front of the computer for a few days working on some projects and this seemed a good break in any event. Collage above done with multilayers in Photoshop.

Creative Tuesdays - Being for the Benefit of Mr Kite

Creative Tuesdays  - Beatles song!!!
This is a work in process but, to hearken back to college days, I decided to do an uber psychedelic rendition of Being to the Benefit of Mr Kite, the 7th song of the Sgt Pepper album, and a source of many interesting mental voyages back in the day.

Song here -

nothing like digital arts to bring through the trippy aspects of this album and this, to me, the trippest of the trippy songs - there's only one way to do a proper rendition of this song - in an altered state

since that sort of recreation is both beyond my budget and best interests in general, I opt for a trance-inducing Mr Kite and Photoshop experience.

beginnings of process

I sit in a dark room with the poster from which John Lennon based every last word of this song, listen to the song non-stop, and fill in with every colour I wish. If one notices the pixillations of the poster, the strange tonality is achieved with the flooding function set to very low tolerance, so that only a few pixels at a time are filled. This allows for each application of the flood function to occur rhythmically timed to the driving, endless thump of Mr Kite. Blown up big, the eye travels through the intoxicating pixilated landscape and true sensory saturation is achieved.

These methods were advocated by various instructors I had at GSU art school - one in particular had as a thesis project, to draw miles of paper with a red marker - for 7 days straight. With no sleep. Dali and other surrealists also spoke of these states as sources of deep creativity- or at least a good time, after a fashion. 

If I had nothing better to do I could sit here and do this for hours at a time. Whee! But for now, this is what will have to be. The song was played for a total of 40 times or more, during an uninterrupted 2 hour stretch. 

Love this song!

update: I did want to clear up that I did not draw the image of Mr Kite's poster! I could def. not do all that in 2 hours, LOL. I took the image file of the poster and manipulated it that way. The original poster is here, and if you read the words and listen to the song, you see what was done with the lyrics in this song.

Creative Tuesday - Christmas in July

Creative Tuesdays - Christmas in July.

This is a very personally felt theme for me - I grew up in South America, and essentially, every Christmas for me felt like July! For me personally the contrast was heightened when I moved up here and found Christmas in winter, after all.  But I will never forget the bizarre retailing fiction so elaborately set up to hoodwink people into buying into a climatological condition they would NEVER, most likely, come to know - commodity fetish at its best. 


Shop sales and Christmas retail decorations - including fake pasted snowflakes, styrofoam snowy covers, green conifers and Arctic Santas - all showed up in the context of 90 degree heat and summer vacation! A typical Christmas celebration included opening up presents, then heading for the beach. 

This seemed an odd incongruity that the commodities market imposed on us south of the Equator dwellers - this fixation on winter weather in the height of summer - and all attendant imagery - and it's a form of cultural schizophrenia which has, if anything, gotten worse. But you know, when you're a kid, all you care about is loot so we didn't mind too much :D

So that's why I chose to draw what i drew - a memory of a typical storefront in a context of summer haze. As well am trying out a loose form quick sketching style - I have always admired those who can quickly (like newspaper or magazine cartoonists - draw something quick. So am trying it out.

On another note, I actually participated in a crafts/flea market fair titled 'Christmas in July' this past weekend!

Creative Tuesdays - BUNNIES!!!!!!! (AKA 'Simply Cute')

For Creative Tuesday

To me, the sine qua non of 'cute' is BUNNIES. Even the word is, to me, cute. I absolutely adore the fuzzy wuzzy things, and just seeing one makes me absolutely silly.

I live in the country, so on morning walks I invariably run into 2 or 3! They're so darling - they sit there,  & upon seeing me, hop off. CUTE!!!!!

One of the worst times I got into trouble when a kid was upon bringing a rabbit home as a pet - unbeknownst to my mom. The sad d'enoument was that the bunny was given away to someone more willing/able to raise it. Have not had one since - I see what a responsibility animals are, and am not in a position to keep one happy  :( so I just have to look at them.

Here's a site with lots of lovely bunnies to those who love them as me!!!!

This is a pic of me with a bunny, at a petting zoo somewhat recently.