working on that sweet man of mine XD

I ran out of paint and I have to wait until Friday to buy some more. haha I was all set to get further along with my painting when I looked down to see I don't have the colors I needed. You can't really have a blue nude or a red mood without blue or red. I stayed up way past my bedtime last night to work on a new website for my images. I can't explain it but since I can remember I am always my most productive and creative when it's night time. I am a night owl. The day job hasn't stopped me from staying up too late here and there. I'm not allergic to the daytime but that's just when it hits me to create.
Like everything else in my life...it is all a work in progress...

A Dude led me to a Blue Nude with a Red Mood.

3rd Ward in Brooklyn holds a Drink and Draw every Wednesday night. You pay 15 bucks to go sketch, draw or paint a nude model with unlimited FREE cheap beer provided. I only ever made it to drinking two beers in 3 hours. I did however end up with sketches of nude men and women. It's just another way I can get some drawing exercises in so I can improve my skills. 

Fast forward to last week. I was at work and I got inspired by a faraway homeslice to create Blue Nude Red Mood. I haven't painted a nude figure since college so I was excited to take it on. I just wasn't sure how to go about it. I image googled nudes, I went to bed and woke up every morning thinking about it. 

It was until I went shopping with my ma and my little sister that I came upon a set of salt and pepper shakes in form of a nude male torso. 

Once I stopped giggling and fantasizing about the kind of person who would own them and use them. A light bulb went off above my head and I remembered I had old sketches of a nude man to work with. Yay! The model was a lovely man with a talent most women would appreciate. wink*

And so I found 2 BFK Rives papers in the back of my closet. That is one of the best feeling ever  - finding something you thought you didn't have or thought you lost. EUREKA! 

I don't want to make it just another nude painting. I keep staring at it trying to find the  Z twist to add to it. Something will come to me. I wasn't expecting to be inspired by an email from a homeslice. 

But it happened so high five for a muse!

Here's what I have done so far. 

A work in progress for sure. I am not sure what has gotten into me but all I want to do is paint. My dry spell is over and now it's time to bust out some sweet visuals. And my next paycheck will go to stocking up on some much needed acrylic paints. It's going to be an awesome week. :)

I don't clock out at 5...I clock out when it's done.

I'm painting as soon as I get home from work. well, sorta. I let the dogs out first, feed the cat, make dinner and take Pandora upstairs to my "studio". I was inspired by a recent trip to the Museum of Natural History in D.C.. They had a small art exhibition in the ocean hall of animals. The exhibition was an assortment of x-rays of fishes. One of my favorite x-rays was the one with an eel.
So I went home thinking about it and came up with this first...

I don't know why I thought of a mustache creature. But it is the image I saw in the x-ray, does that make sense? I am a visual person and my imagination is never turned off. I love when an image has an immediate sense of movement even when it's two-dimensional. I keep working on it as I type. 

Here's how far I've gotten so far...

I know it's not done yet. It does need a little more work and then I'll be satisfied with the results. It's always a delicate balance figuring out when to stop painting. Everything is a work in progress.

Part-time artist full-time delayer of dreams

If anyone ever asks me "What do you want to do for a living?"
My reply is always  "I want to be an artist BUT you can't make a living off that. So I work in this job."

I'm still an artist regardless of how much time I allow myself to devote to the craft. The way I process my world and the people in it is all visual. That's the way I learn the best. I need giant in-my-face signs for me to fully comprehend a subject matter. I remember my professor in college telling our class "You make time for art. That's it!" I can say I have given 40-50% of my time to art. That's one of my goals in life - keep adding more time for art and less time for other things. It has yet to happen.
OH you know! LIFE. I have bills to pay, the cat has come down with something, my friends want to go away for the weekend to Atlantic city, sure!! why not. I'm not 90. I need to live my life.
I'm a young lass with a lots to do and say.

oh, art. You're always my number one even when I take you down a peg or two or seven. I can't give it up. I get an itch when I haven't drawn or painted something in a while. This itch happens a lot more when I see another artist creating in front of me or I visit a museum full of works of art. Case in point, the sketch below. I had just finished watching a documentary on Jean Michel Basquiat and it killed me I wasn't making art to his degree or to his devotion. so I busted out this sketch.

Art is that passion I feel inside.
A passion that makes me tick and makes me feel alive!! says the procrastinator.
So why am I being such a pansy and not committing to this awesome discipline?
........youth is wasted on the young.


It doesn't help I don't have a studio of my own. The only space I have is my bedroom and my bed gets the lovely task of being one of my artistic wastelands. Oh and my cat is usually at my feet or around said artsy madness sleeping off his meals.

But I am claiming this the "The Year of more art from Z!" where's my flag?
I'll stab it into the ground and make some primal loud noise for the universe to hear. hahaha
So with that said...I'm starting another painting.
This guy was done in two days...

so now ONWARD to the next idea bubbling in my head. It's late and I should be getting to bed. But I said Nay! I'm going to stay up late painting and treat my tired self to more coffee tomorrow at work. 

GO BIG OR GO HOME!

Inspired by heartache and the search for love

I thought my world was going to come crashing down and I would die alone when my last relationship ended. That was 2 years ago and I've been on my own ever since. Sometimes I feel like if I became successful at love and nothing else I would be a happy clam. I have always been fascinated by this intangible entity that everyone wants to feel but most of us are lost in it, end up settling for something less or giving up on it completely.

I don't have the best examples of love growing up and now as an adult I've had my fair share of heartaches. Despite all those negative experiences, I am still OPTIMISTIC love will find me and we can finally be buds. People I love are hurting right now and it just got me thinking about love all over again. I haven't been thinking about it much since I am constantly distracted by other things in my life. How can an emotion that gives you a high in the beginning be the same emotion that brings you down in the end?

You invest so much love into another being and when it goes to shit...you are left to wonder how that didn't work out?  I don't have a definitive answer to this. I'm 30 and I'm still trying to figure it out. The only thing I can do is handle my shit and if it happens...well hot dog! I'll take that risk once again and see where it goes. Love is risky. It is part of the human experience and we all have to take a sip here and there. I've never been one to turn down a challenge so I keep getting on that horse despite my short legs. I see love as a tall horse. I look up at it like most things in my life but I can't seem to stay on it for too long before it bucks me off.

I am not sure what kind of drawings and paintings I would produce if I was happy in love. I'll come to that dilemma when it happens. haha

So all these conversations of love and heartache made me want to paint again. I'm not the one hurting over a broken love but I wanted to paint it. For the first time I am trying to paint heartache without being able to feel it.  I am happy, calm and having fun with my life.
So I'm not sad due to another significant other. I haven't said " I love you" to another guy in 2 years because I don't like tossing those words around unless I mean it.
But like Frida Kahlo, I paint the elements that surround my current life.
 This is what I'm working on so far....

I'm broke so I can't afford canvas - what I do have is leftover paper. And to boot I don't have enough paints to make it more colorful. So I'll make this part of my red series like Picasso's blue series. I made the heart the center of everything since that's what starts everything. You consume love and can't get enough of it in the beginning then if that love turns toxic you just want it out of your system. However, it can act like a drug sometimes and you don't want to give it up despite all the red flags.

The painting is not finished by any means and I hope to finish it this week. I don't have a good reason not to finish painting or make more. I am not in love so I'm not distracted by it. hahaha
The human experience will always be the constant muse to this artist.
How do you visualize something you can't put in a jar and keep forever?
I feel productive today and very glad I got the chance to paint today. Creation is the shit yo!

Valentine's Day

My Valentine read me like a book and surprised me at work with this - not a bouquet of roses but a bouquet of tequila with a card. I don't want to consume each bottle quite yet but the sentiment blew me away. We had dinner and drinks and it was just right.