Snow Fairy Invasion…Merry Christmas!

If you've ever seen the fabulous movie "Barbie in the Nutcracker", then you'll understand where this is coming from. If not…get yourself on this train, my friend! Anyways…

These little snow fairies flitted into our house one cold December evening and have been dancing around the kitchen, sprinkle glittery ice and Christmas-time cheer wherever they go!

Modelled after ballerinas, they're about the size of your hand, pure white, and encrusted with glitter (it's hard to tell in the photos). They spin and twirl as the drafts flow through the house.

May your home also be graced with magic this Christmas season!

Japanese Cherry Blossom

They call it "The Little Black Dress of fragrance".
That's right folks...

Japanese Cherry Blossom, America's #1 fragrance since its humble beginnings in 2007, was my inspiration for this next piece in my BBW series of paper sculptures.

The fragrance--a soft blend of florals, asian pear, and cedarwood--has both sophisticated yet feminine qualities. As one of the first BBW fragrances to incorporate more nuanced, perfumey notes like cedarwood or musk, it broke away from the previous generation of simpler, fruit-centered fragrances that featured a strong single note. To avoid the realm of fruity-tooty, I wanted to create a woman who was both soft and sweet, yet elevated and refined at the same time.

What think'st thou?

And, just for fun, here's the silhouette. I love focusing on a strong silhouette to make the design work. Lots of detail, things sticking out here and there, shape language, etc.
Fun fun fun!

A Paintbrush in hand is better than two in the bush...

I've been itching to pick up a paintbrush again for a while now, and have just had trouble getting over that initial investment of energy to set up the supplies, get started on a project, etc. Amazingly, I got a free easel from a woman at church, which got me more than halfway to the starting line. 

It finally happened last week as I was hanging out with my soon-to-be roomate Frances. We spent the whole day together and while we were digesting dinner and reading on the couch, the mood hit!

I set up my easel, resuscitated all my emaciated paint tubes and derelict brushes, and went at it with gusto. I didn't really care what it ended up looking like...not having put a brush to canvas in almost a year, I just wanted to feel the bristles pushing the paint around again!

This is what I ended up with about an hour and a half later.

Of course it's not finished, but what art ever is?

Here's Frances, reading away as the candles are burning:

Bath and Body Works

So yeah, I'm currently a Co-Manager at one of the 1500 BBW stores in America. Guess which one?
Aside from all the fun I have with my customers, (Which, let me tell you, is a LOT of fun) my hours at BBW fuel my artistic inspiration.

Imagine spending all day surrounded by bright colors, mood-setting music, and custom marketing all designed to convey simple and powerful messages. Now inhale deeply...ahhhh. Those are the handcrafted fragrances designed by master perfumers to capture a things such as the freshness of a juicy piece of fruit during the summer, the softness of fresh snowflakes in the winter, or the depth of a woman's vitality.

I had to do something!
I'm currently working on a series of paper sculptures inspired by each BBW "Signature Collection" women's fragrance. Each fragrance has a 'personality', and so does each sculpture. In the sculpture, I try to capture all that the fragrance is meant to convey in a design that is simple, yet unique enough to clearly point back to its specific fragrance.

Here's the first: Beautiful Day.

Beautiful day is a blend of juicy green apple, dewy pear, soft pink peonies, and daisies. The fragrance was designed to capture the joy of a perfect summer's day, when everything around you feels heavenly.

And another lighting angle, so you can see how different something like a paper sculpture can look depending on the way it's lit. I love how 3D art relies on its environment so much. It's not finished without my desklamp being switched on. Ha!

Again, if you're at all interested in this type of art, please check out my first and last love, the art of Brittney Lee. I could rant and rave for pages, but I'll spare you. Just check her out.

Can you tell I like my job much?
Someone save me...

Butterflies and X-acto Knives

Something fun to pass the time...cutting out tiny butterfly silhouettes from white cardstock.
I put some on a gift I wrapped for my sister:

And I used the rest, plus the sheet I cut them from, to make this angsty collage using a magazine page I found in my pile of papers:

Wow...that black is just overwhelming!

But where be the rum?!

Ahoy, matey!

Take a gander through yer lookin' glass, and see! Yon there be another one o' them pirate ships!
Seems like I can never escape the pirate motif...haha, but then again, why would I want to?

This art is a sampling of pirate ships that I designed on behalf of Graham Oyoung, who is busy creating a wonderful animated thesis film for his final year at USC. The film stars father, son, and a homemade pirate ship consisting of household items!

His thesis is coming along really well--his story is clever and cute at the same time, he's got an excellent board artist on his team, and he's put together a great animatic of what's to come.
Check out his animatic here!

It was an absolute pleasure working with Graham, and I'm so excited to see how the final film turns out, ship and all!

Enjoy!
...and because this is a film about a child, there will, sadly, be no rum. Yarrr!

Here's the silhouette we worked off of (trying to combine household objects into something shipshape), and a construction sketch showing the shapes fitting together:

And a final drawing:

And this last sketch is one of several alternate designs, in which we explored different types of attitudes for the boat to have...this one was "whimsical, endearing, slow". Something about the droopiness of the sails and the momentum of the boat almost seeming to go backward...haha!

Sculpey Fun

My dear friend Amanda just recently got married, and she and her husband asked me to make the wedding cake toppers for her...two golden retrievers doggies walking through the snowy forest!

They are both dog lovers, and sent me reference photos of their two lovely golden retrievers to capture the personality!

Then the baker added them to a snowy scene on top of the gluten- egg- and dairy- free cake...a masterpiece of baking, if you ask me!

Here is a pic of the dog sculpture after coming out of the oven (it's sculpey), sitting on my MacBook, for scale:

And here they are with a coat of fresh paint:

And lastly, the glaze! I love sculpey glaze...it takes boring old plastic clay and makes it look like real ceramic! Haha, and it's WAY easier than buying a kiln ;)

Here they are, glazed, on top of the cake:

The Lost Fraulein

Yes, she belongs with the other characters from Mark McDonnell's gesture drawing class from 2012, but she was lost in the shuffle of papers decorating my bedroom floor.
Now, finally, she resurfaces.

Enjoy!

1-2 min poses:

5-10 min poses: