Don't BITE your friends!

I've been really trying to make a habit of sketching more. I feel a lot more confident sitting down to make something if I've got some sketches for reference first. That seems like a really obvious thing, but I'm not always great about it. Sketching is like anything else - you get better with practice. I enjoy the hell out of it, so I'm not sure why I don't do it more often. I guess I don't sit still a whole lot, so I have to make it a point to sit down with pen and paper in hand and dedicate some time to it. I feel like if I still had math lectures and corded phones in my life, I'd get a lot more sketching done.

I started sketching a little while watching Yo Gabba Gabba with Maddy. I'm starting to get addicted to that show. It's not the deepest thing in the world, but the art style and the music are awesome. I would work as a designer for that show in a heartbeat. Also, sometimes it just has moments that I find absurdly funny, like the "Don't bite your friends!" song, or DJ Lance suddenly remembering - "Oh yeah, I CAN fly! WHEEE!" So yeah, I know everyone already loves this show, and it's pretty much targeted at my demographic. But I seem to have the heart of a grumpy elderly old man lurking inside me, so I tend to resist popular things with a scowl and crossed arms until one day I succumb against my will. Then I post about my new discovery on Facebook ("Like OMG, just heard that new Gotye song, isn't it great? Also, what's up with the chevron trend on Pinterest? Is that a thing now?") and my younger friends cheerfully tell me how late I am to the game (looking at you, Erin, lol).

As you can see, I've got MEGA plans and ideas. Soooooo many plans. I took some of my sketches and started carved them into some linoleum blocks to stamp into clay, and now I've got some tiny adorable pendants in progress.

I really love tiny adorable things, and I love drawing, so I'm not sure why I resisted making clay jewelry for so long. I'm looking forward to having a massive pile of tiny porcelain Godzilla tiles. I might even make some extra and just hide them around town. I've always wanted to do something like that, and I just saw this artist's ceramic tagging project, which is pretty much exactly what I'd always had in mind. Why don't I ever act on the ideas I have?!? Someone always does it first! But it's such a cool idea, I love those little hearts everywhere! Wouldn't it be cool to find something like that in your city? Definitely check out the rest of her work, btw. It's wonderful stuff.

Pendant progress

I have a dear friend from back home who recently asked me if I'd be willing to create some jewelry to sell in her Aunt's shop. I had been toying with the idea of making some porcelain jewelry, but I wasn't sure how to go about it. I wasn't sure what kind of things she'd want for the shop, but happily she asked me to run with it and make things similar to my drawings and sculptures and things.

 I decided to start simple, just to get my feet wet. I made 4 little circles to use as mini canvases, and painted some faces on them. I was really inspired by a video on Ceramic Arts Daily about monoprint transfer on clay. Even though it's meant to be a process for clay slabs, it was a really good painting tutorial too, because you get to see her build up her colors and highlights. She started with a red and a yellow color background, and I loved seeing the way the painting build-up was affected by the different colored base. Definitely worth a watch. I started each of my four faces with a different color to build up from, and then played with color based on the background.

I had a lot of fun with these, and I'm really happy with how they turned out. Making mini paintings lets me play with design and color on a small scale, and fully develop the painting in a short amount of time (like a couple of baby naps!) It's really lovely to sit down in the morning and have a cup of coffee and paint. I'll definitely be experimenting more with jewelry designs, and figuring out ways to make cool things that still look like something I would make. I hope you enjoyed seeing the painting process on these. To be continued!