I Lisa Franked out on a penguin and zombied a painting.

You can see me often outside of work right before clocking in sketching in my book. I make it a habit to take it almost everywhere so I do at least five minutes of drawing every day.
I did a trade with a fellow artist- a jewelry maker with some sweet style. I drew her a penguin with orchids ala Lisa Frank and in return she gave me some awesome bug hair clips.

I don't often draw pretty images but for a friend I will take that candy coated path to sweet happy things. At the moment I'm working on the painting below. It's my response to working in a retail environment. It still needs a lot of work and I work on it when I have some time to spare.  

When I get time to work on art I feel so much better and little more alive when I clock into work. I feel more human and less like a zombie. My purpose in life becomes more clear and the retail job seems less soul sucking. :)

I left my house and only good things happened.

My perfect day is sitting somewhere outdoors - the beach, a park or by a lake - listening to music with my headphones on and sketching whatever comes to me. 

And so it was so. 

I was waiting for my friend to get to the park so I sat on the bench in Prospect Park and whipped out my sketchbook. I never know what I want to sketch so I began looking around for inspiration. 

And there he was! A dude with the silliest hairstyle ever - I call it a shark fin. But this one was exceptionally well groomed and it almost looked like he could direct lost ships back to shore with it. It was so shiny and pointy. haha. 

I was listening to Luciano Pavarotti on my iPod and began. His voice totally gets my creative juices flowing and I should own more of his music than I do. And then this happened...

He's a creature ready for action! He has horn that will attract only the finest mates. And he drools in anticipation for his next conquest!!

But I didn't stop there and continued onto the next page. I got silly and started sketching the girth of Luciano's voice. The sun was warming my skin and my good mood. 

I started thinking about an old Bugs Bunny cartoon where he's just trying to play his banjo and he's playing it near the house of a famous Opera singer. The singer becomes frustrated with him and proceeds to shut him down anyway he can. It was 5 minutes of Looney tunes greatness.  And then I imagined my opera guy wearing a tuxedo shirt and hawaiian pants at all his concerts. No tuxedo! 

He would play by his own rules and rock it. 

A couple of hours later I found myself sitting in the middle of the park with 3 of my friends and just hanging out enjoying the beautiful weather. One's a knitter, two are writers and I'm the visual artist. We were listening to Animal Collective and a drumming circle in the far distance. It was a nice group of creative folk. One was up in the tree writing in his notebook, the other was sitting next to me reading and the third one was sketching her own awesomeness.

I started to hone in on the drumming and imagined a lady shaking her entire body to the beats of the drums. My imagination started coming up with circles and lots of movement and electricity. 

I still have a little more work to do to this sketch. She oozes electricity by her two little companions on the side. Her head opens up to the beating of the drums and she expels circles of movement through her body and head. She's a primal figure that comes up from the ground and toward the sky. Oh lord! I think too much and my imagination never shuts down. I'm a quiet person because I don't feel the need to talk that much but my brain is always jumping with too much thought. 

I considered this outing a success! I was able to improve my stressful mind and cool it with sketches, friends and music.