Monday, July 30, 2007

My favorite little Pokemon inspired me to see if I could sketch him real quick... not too bad for being years out of practice. I only had crayons to color him so no fancy shading but you get the idea. Yay for Turtwig!


Thursday, July 26, 2007

And so it begins...

In moving forward sometimes you don't think about what's left behind.

Future = Forward

In order to begin again, constantly revisiting old wounds and trying to retear them open just prolongs the inevitable and quite possibly pushes away any normalcy that could be with others in the future.

Two paths once on the same road. One thought this shortcut was the way to go and the other wanted the scenic route. Hoping they would eventually meet up, one made it to where the roads met and the other did not.

Question is this: does she wait or does she go on...

Monday, July 23, 2007

Moving Along

You always here those cliches. You know the ones? They want to make you scratch you're eyeballs with Freddie Krugers claws and then launch them at the people spouting off those words of wisdom. No I'm not bitter at all. Really I'm not. I am in a bit of a mood though.

"Well it's all for the best." IF it was really for the best, why does it hurt so much? Fuck you #1.
"Time heals all wounds." No shit asshole. Fuck you #2
"There's no place like home." Well what happens when one of the parties in said home decide to leave? Then the home is just a house... Fuck you #3
"The light at the end of the tunnel." I like the dark anyway. Fuck you #4
"Love is blind" That goes for falling out of too... sometimes it's gone and you never even saw it coming or going as the case may be... FUCK YOU #5

Tuesday, July 17, 2007

Dinner With an Artist


So after one of my many, many, many (did I mention many?) meetings. I went out to dinner with some friends. One of whom is an artist of sorts and apparently is known to make designs with leftovers. Here is her toothpick/fry creation with a beautiful blue napkin back drop. :)

Monday, July 16, 2007

Tree/Flower Zoo





So this past weekend I was at the L.A. Arboretum in Arcadia, CA. Basically, its a zoo of plants, flowers and such. Very beautiful and a place to be visited often. Anyway, believe it or not, I resigned as the Executive Board Secretary for the Turtle & Tortoise Society. Oh yeah, you read that right. I'm thinning and reshaping my life and I'm taking it very seriously. I have so much I want to do and keeping myself so busy isn't making me happy. I thought that's what grown ups do but guess what? I don't function well with the business aspect of it all. And I'm learning, that's okay.
Anyway, I really have my camera outfitted pretty well (well both cameras) and I decided after my LAST official meeting, I was going to take some black & whites (yes actual film, I don't do digital) so I can work on the next part of what I want to learn. Painting on pictures. In order to do that you need some good black & whites to blow up. I think I got some. Here are a few of the pics I did. I'm pretty rusty but I didn't do too badly.
Hello fun stuff


Okay, my first attempt at actual double exposure. SWEET! It worked. Not the best but not bad for my first one. The web looking background is a spiny bush with mini lilac flowers in it. I like it!

Some Asian women kept chasing this poor guy up a walk way, no matter where he ran to, they tried to get right next to him. He finally got fed up and went up a tree to get away from them. I was getting ready to head out for the day and thought this was a pretty shot.


My favorite flower... the Tiger Lily. I took out a Macro +10 filter cap, screwed it on and this is what I got. Pretty cool. Needs some work but it's pretty tricky to work with.


Basking in the sun, this peakcock was talking an awful lot. He kept giving me the "eye." I caught him with his beak open while he was yelling.

Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Look into my eyes.


Look into my eyes.

If you look closely (you may want to click on the pic so it enlarges into a new window) you can see me squating to get a close up of Widget. :)

Monday, July 09, 2007

Card Pulled: Shouldawouldacoulda

After explaining my dilemma to a friend about the book incident of 2007. He pulled 2 cards on me. The "what if" and "time lost/wasted" cards. Ouch. Talk about hitting the nail on the head. So after feeling pretty ridiculous about not buying the book, I decided since I had to pick up some photos and it was going to be on my way home, I should just buy the damn thing.

So I walk in and take in the smell of the books and head toward the back to the art section. I scan the area and can't find the book. Well of course I can't. I read that section over twice and it just wasn't there. I went to the not-so-help center and of course they could answer this. It was sold yesterday. Apparently, it was a hotter commodity then I thought.

Lesson: I "shoulda" bought it. Then I "woulda" had it and I "coulda" been on my way to drawing. DAMN IT!

Sunday, July 08, 2007

In my attempt to not do my work, I decided uploading pics and blogging was much more important. Here are some way overdue photos from Zion.





Just a couple 4th of July pics I wanted to share. The 2nd one was a mess up by the photo place but I liked it. They printed 2 half frames, pretty cool.




Playing the Part of a Chicken

So I spent a portion of my day at Barnes & Noble working on notes and such. It is far less destracting than my own home even with all of the books surrounding me. I found a cozy seat by the cafe which lofted out some very yummy smells but I resisted and kept right on working along. Unfortunately, about 20 minutes before I needed to leave to meet for dinner, my lappy battery died. Well F*%@. I didn't want to arrive at BJ's too early because they are one of the only places that carries cider on tap and I was only going to have one since they are a tad on the strong side. So I decided to see if B&N had any art books I couldn't live without. I couldn't find one in particular I was looking for and the guy looked at me like I was a ghost when I explained to him what I was looking for. People skills, come on dude, grab some, I know you have books on that shit.

Anyway, I did run across one on the How to character faerys and other mythical creatures. OMGosh! I've been wanting to do this but I don't necessarily know the "rules" or if there are any to what they can and can't have. So I found this book to be very handy. So I was all gung-ho for about 3 minutes. I headed toward the front to pay for it and it happened. I looked down at it and started thinking... what if I can't do it? What if they don't come out right or I can't get the structures of their details right on. I can't certainly display anything that looks like shit...

I set the book down and walked out. Fear of Failure. So far my mind is winning over my desire.

So I had an extra cider to make me a little more giddy and forget about my internal struggle that happened 60 minutes prior.

Fear - 1
Me - - I can't even justify a zero, my 3 minute attempt was just sad.

*sigh*

Friday, July 06, 2007

Ghost Hunters

Okay so I called my friend to see if she wanted to meet me down at the batting cages. Her response was simply this, "Oh I want to but we're going ghost hunting downtown. Wanna come?" Now to some of you this may sound a bit odd but I thought it sounded like a lot of fun. Now see they weren't meeting till 10:00pm at the #1 haunted building in Bakersfield: The Haberfield Building. So I told her I'd call her if we could make it. I bounced the idea around in my head because there was that voice. You know the one. "You need to get to bed early, you have a lot of work to do tomorrow." As I was about to give in, I snapped up my head and became really angry. I have no children. I can drink a little caffine and sleep in on the weekend. If I want to go ghost hunting, I should just go ghost hunting. I walked in that batting cage and killed that ball. I am tired of always doing "the right" thing. I want to have fun and sleep should not be why I don't do something. I can always catch up on sleep.

So after 30 minutes of killing the ball and myself, we hurried home to change and head downtown. We got there and settled in. Jenn gave us some background on the store and things that have occured over time. Apparently, this ghostie or ghosties do not like the beanie babies in the store. It or they also like to rearrange things around the store as well. She took us around and showed us different parts and rooms around the store.

So we got our instructions and just sat around, attempting to be quiet but put 8 of us together, 2 being big chickens and it makes it kinda hard to be quiet. Lots of giggling and such. We decided to roam around a bit with the night vision cam (very fucking cool btw). Denise handed it to me and I started to walk toward some of the back rooms and it shut off. Weird cause I my hand felt like it got bumped and then the camera turned off. Okay whatever. Then she had trouble getting it back on and decided to talk to the ghost: "Okay little ghostie, since you're so technologically advanced, why don't you turn the fucking thing back on." I don't know that I've laughed that hard in a long time. Leave it to Denise.

So we were all gathered toward the middle of the shop discussing some stuff and all of the sudden the credit machine starts printing out a receipt, over and over and over. We ran over there to see who did it but we realized we were all together. It wasn't on a whole hour it was 10:57, so it's not like it would be set to print end of the day receipts and it only printed one thing but 3 times. Okaayyy.

To which we walked into the other room to grab the paper and noticed a piggy beanie on the ground. Okay who threw the pig on the ground. Again, we were all together, no one went off alone. At the beginning we took pics of all the areas where things have moved or had something seen. Aaron pulled up some pics he took and one of them showed the pig on the stand with the other beanies. Weird. So Denise decided to sit in that corner because she thought the ghostie was hanging out there. She decided to just ask the ghost if it was there and she noticed a starfish beanie moving. So she asked again and it moved again. Then she began asking yes or no questions and each time this little starfish beanie would wiggle. Clearly move and not just in front of her. Creeeepppyy.

So we heard some chairs (or what sounded like chairs) being dragged across the floor above our heads. So 3 of them ran upstairs to see if they could find anything. Just some abandoned rooms, no chairs, no nothing. Alrighty.

Ghosties? Maybe, but we plan on staying the night some time in the near future to see what happens in the witching hours, it should be fun.

What do you believe in....
Plain Plate

Almost there...

Finished Painting... See you in a week!

Ta-DA!!!




Close Up

If you've never gone to paint your own pottery, you should. It's so much fun to make it your own. I absolutely love it!

Gallery Find

So in my latest adventures in life I have been lucky enough to have met 2 very awesome girls. They own their own Art Galley on 18th Street. Although they may not have it for much longer, I'm glad to have got to see it and will enjoy it for the next few months.


They had a Queen Mab Exhibit/Opening last weekend. I worked a good portion of the day but left to make the end of the show. This particular table had a fun little creature on it. Among a lot of other things. I was drawn to him right away. We wandered around and took it all in. So many things I want to try and explore, I can hardly wait. We have some talented people in this town and it was so cool to see all their ideas come to life.


We chatted with a few different people, continued looking around and enjoying all the creative energy around us. All the while keeping my eye on that little guy. Finally, I walked over to his card and he wasn't badly priced at all. I walked out to my car and grabbed some money to buy him. I named him Widget and he has found a nice place on my shelf near my faery pics and my cheshire cat. He is chatty and gets along great in my "space."


Thursday, July 05, 2007

Where to start...

So I really left for awhile. I don't think I've ever only had 2 blogs in a month. A lot has happened in the past weeks. So much in fact, I wouldn't even know where to start on an update. It's so blurry and so menacing in some ways. My blogs for awhile will be dark, will be vague and will be a lot of jumbled thoughts. I've reached a critical part of my life where doing the right thing doesn't necessarily mean it was the right thing for me. Unfortuantely, people tend to get hurt when such changes occur and that is by far, the hardest part. Mistakes have been made. That is life and it is how we learn. Unforgiveable, hard to say right now. Really causes one to disect herself.

I am working on me. I am finding out what makes me "tick." I mean I enjoy many aspects of my life but I live in fear. "Well who doesn't?" You may ask. Good point but my fear is fixable. This particular fear is failure. From a person who is controlling, the idea of not being able to control a situation or outcome in this case, does not sit well. So somewhere in past years I decided, well subconsciously, to not try at all. Can't fail if you don't put yourself out there.

So in stepping outside of myself and looking at all the things I do I really wonder why I keep certain things in my life that really just give me a lot of grief and don't make me happy. I am working on ways of thinning and it is coming along but as with anything, it takes time. I am more importantly, adding things I've always wanted to do but was afraid to. We'll see where that gets me.

Vague? Yes I know but this is more about reflection pieces for myself. So do with it, as you please.