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Monthly Archives

November 2014

Jurassic World

November 25, 2014

One of my favorite and influential movies during my kidhood was Jurassic Park. Well, Jurassic Park and Back to the Future. Part of that was because both of these movies came with specials on how the movie was made. Both films made me want to go into entertainment, specifically making movies. Since we all know how that turned out it’s clear that perhaps the movie thing didn’t work out, but the entertainment part did. Just sittin’ over here… being part of the magic…

Now enters Jurassic World. It might be dumb; I mean why did they need to invent a new dinosaur? I may never know but despite odd story plots I am still excited. Who doesn’t love dinosaurs!? Here’s the trailer so you can decide for yourself.

In this drawing I combined my themepark expertise and know-how with genetic engineering of a new dinosaur. It’s a happy t-rex with a propensity for giving hugs and rides around the neighborhood. Don’t act like you wouldn’t line up for a t-rex ride. Look at her. She’s so happy about life.

 

xoxo

-Trace

Mermaid Sponge Garden

November 24, 2014

If you’re going to take a bath, take a colorful one. MondayMerms!

Raised by Sloths

November 21, 2014

Some kids are slow and lazy and poop once a week at the bottom of a tree.

This is way more fun than I anticipated. How weird can this get! How about raised by sea cucumbers?

Penny “The Hams”

November 20, 2014

Adam and I like to give our cats a lot of backstory. Penny is a wrestling champ in her extra-large weight class. We call her Penny “The Hams” Pennington. She mostly just sits on socked toes and inconveniently parks her bum in places that make us uncomfortable. She’s really sweet and doesn’t actually beat anyone up, but she’s so big she can just sit on something and win a match. She’s got big hams, that’s all there is to it. So here she is in a fetching Lucha Libre outfit.

Raised by Squirrels

November 20, 2014

Raised by squirrels! This is a WIP or work in progress for those not savvy with acronyms. It’s part of the Feral Kid book I’ve got big plans for. It takes me a little while to do these things in watercolor. Since I can really only do them after work and in between workouts the accumulated time I have to paint isn’t a whole lot. While I would like to do one a day it’s more like half a painting a day. So while this isn’t finished it’s close enough to show.

Feral Jungle Kid

November 18, 2014

I’m making a little art book! It’s my first one and probably NO ONE will buy it, but I think that’s okay. I just want to work towards a goal.  It’s going to be about feral children. I can’t decide if I want to call it “Raised By” or “The Feral Kids” Neither of those are that exciting I guess…

I’ve had this fascination with the stories of feral children. They are usually such terribly sad stories of neglect, abandonment and abuse. It is also an incredibly powerful statement on nurture vs. nature, that our humanity relies so heavily on the care of others. When children don’t learn language or meet certain developmental milestones in life they unfortunately aren’t able to recover those skills. They will forever have trouble communicating and in most instances not able to learn more than a few words of a language. Most notably a Russian girl named Oxana Malaya was raised by dogs and is the most studied feral child that I can think of, but there are others. Even recently a little girl in Florida named Danielle is behaviorally labeled as a feral child. She was found in an abandoned home at 6 years old by police and later adopted by a family that have given her a lot of love and support that she will need for the rest of her life. Like other feral children Danielle is extremely developmentally challenged, cannot speak more than a few words of english and cannot feed or dress herself with any degree of competency. The story is especially sad because she did not live alone in the home she was found in. Her mother and brother lived in the house with her, but she was neglected so thoroughly that she never learned language in addition to any other developmental milestone. You can read more about her story here. Grab a tissue.

I don’t want the book to be sad though. I would prefer for it to strike a chord with people that think their kids are wild animals in an endearing sort of way. We all (people) have such different personalities! Some of us are shy and standoffish like cats, some are focused on food like squirrels and some are gregarious and friendly like dogs. I’d like to create art that exhibits those behaviors in a “raised by” series.

I hope you like this one! More to follow, tomorrow is raised by squirrels!

 

xoxo

-Tracey

Wrasse Spa Day

November 17, 2014

Mermaid Monday fun. I’d imagine wrasse fish gotta clean mermaids too right?

 

A Pile of Penny’s is Called a Mess

November 14, 2014

A murder of crows, a crush of rhinos, a clowder of kitties… A mess of Penny’s?

I love that groups of critters have a collective name. Some of them are pretty awesome, for instance a group of tortoises is called a creep. So effectively we have a creep and a clowder in our house- that’s right, two is a crowd (says’s us). I mean if you have two of something it might as well be 11 right?!

Here is a mess of Penny’s. I do love that lady. She’s as sweet as can be and has so much personality. Adam has had a cough recently and she actually gets agitated when he coughs. She grumbles, complains and growls. Maybe Penny has misophonia like her adoptive  mother.

Timing Is Everything

November 13, 2014

I love video games. A lot. If it’s a puzzle adventure game I am on it like a cat with a laser pointer. That’s right, I likes me some games.

Back when I was a wee child I had an NES that I played in between scraping my knees and stealing neighborhood bird feeders (it was a strange phase). I love The Legend of Zelda and their ilk, like Little Nemo, Contra, Mario etc. Basically most of the games on that system were side scrollers and were dependent on puzzles and timing. So my love for spike floors and boss fights run deep.

Onto the art! It’s a watercolor in my sketchbook. I ended up finishing it up in photoshop this morning. I had a little sketch of a girl running and just thought she looked like a badass adventurer. Also it’s a universal fact that boomerangs and grappling hooks are the BEST tools.

I rather like it an I hope you do too!

 

TIMING IS EVERYTHING!

You’re Parked in the Red

November 12, 2014

I had this sketchbook page with these two girls hailing a cab. I had started it with brush pen and then went in with watercolor washes. It really looked terrible and you could tell I lost interest in working on it pretty quick. Since I wasn’t insanely busy today as I have been, I thought I’d play around with the drawing and flesh it out. It ended up being so totally different than what I started with that the only thing that stayed the same was the taxi!

I’m not a great painter. A lot of the time paintings just get away from me and turn into muddy messes. This one did too, but not nearly as disastrous as it could have been. The light is all over the place, as is the composition and color. It’s alright though as it’s still an improvement from earlier this year. I think the trick is to just keep things simple. Start with your light and shadow composition and then work from there. I didn’t do that and tried to add in light later. Don’t do that. Have a plan for where you want your artwork to go.

Frenchies though. They’re so cute right!?!

xoxo

-Trace