Ho Ho Ho

I had been having such a lousy week: cracking a tooth, getting bitten by a squirrel (I'm not kidding) and last but not least having my wallet stolen yesterday. So after canceling my credit cards and going down to the DMV today I decided I needed a little darned Christmas. I packed up Bingo and headed down to Chambers St. to Unleashed (a division of Petco) to have his photo taken with Santa. They could not have been nicer. Anthony suited up and they took this adorable photo. Then to top it off they told me it was FREE! It made my day and restored my Christmas spirit. I thought I'd share my experience with you in case you too are feeling a little rough around the edges! Merry Christmas!

Squeaky Santa

Just to follow up on my  Christmas Inspiration post of a few weeks ago where I showed some of the vintage rubber and plastic christmas figures that I had collected. The most important one was Squeaky Santa which is a squeaky rubber Santa that my Mother always put out as a decoration. A few years ago my Sister re-discovered it and upon seeing it for the first time in so long I was filled with such nostalgia. I just had to do a portrait of him and show all his old fashioned, simple charm.  

Red Velvet Cake

It was my friend Kristina's birthday on Friday and I wanted to make her favorite cake for the occasion. Now being italian-american Red Velvet Cake was not in my recipe box of traditional cakes so this was an adventure for me. I ended up using Martha Stewart's recipe from her website as I figured I could trust her.

It is an unusual recipe and I admit to being skeptical when it called for mixing baking soda with vinegar  not to mention all that red food coloring!

But in the end it was so light and delicious, was great fun to make and got me into the holiday spirit of baking!

Did I mention how yummy the cream cheese icing was??

Christmas Parrots

Well I took the sketches I did on the table cloth last weekend and worked them up into proper drawings for a pair of paintings. I got the idea from looking through my sketchbook where I had found this old sketch of 2 parrots together. I thought green parrots with red fezs would be beautiful and strangely Christmas themed so I am adding them to my Christmas portraits queue.

Creative Brunch in Tribeca

Yesterday I had to go down to Tribeca to my favorite fabric/yarn store and met up with my friend Stephen Spera (artist extraordinaire) for brunch at Walkers. Aside from the delicious food and creative conversation the best part was the paper tablecloth and jar of crayons on the table. I was able to sketch out for Stephen in a very primitive way the new parrot portraits I want to do. It was great fun!

Preparing for the Holidays

I've been busy this week transforming my portraits into notecards to sell in my Etsy shop. It takes a surprising amount of work to size everything up, lay them up in an attractive listing, write descriptions, lay out the images onto the cards with the type not to mention listing them on Etsy... Phew! Here are the ones I've finished so far. I love how they look on the colored backgrounds. I've already sold a set of the Steiff cards so I am feeling encouraged.

 

A Fresh Blog

As much as I loved my old blog Studio Bingo with my dog as the header I've been feeling that since I now have an Etsy shop called Curious Portraits I ought to coordinate the two just to keep it all simple. Farewell loyal Studio Bingo....

Christmas Inspiration

Now that Halloween is over I am trying to psyche myself up for Christmas. Halloween is just so inspiring for me with all the dark, macabre images it brings to mind. But Christmas is supposed to be merry and bright. My work  just doesn't naturally go in that direction. So I turned to nostalgia which is always a big inspiration for me. I decided to try photographing an old squeaky Santa that my Mother used to put out for the holidays. Seeing his smiling, rubber face brings me right back to my childhood and I thought that might make an interesting portrait.  That got me looking on Ebay for more vintage squeaky Christmas items and it all went downhill from there. I am now the proud owner of a group of wierdly jolly, smiling rubber Christmas toys that are all waiting to be immortalized. I know they are a little creepy but I can't help myself, that is what makes them so appealing to me. Here is a sample of what might become a curious portrait in the next few weeks...

Acorn Man Portrait

I have always been interested in anthropomorphic fruit and veggies. I love giving them faces, arms & legs. Essentially giving them personalities. When I was a kid I used to collect acorns and make little people with them using pipe cleaners and painting faces on them. Well last week I was out jogging by the Hudson and saw the acorns were ready and falling from the trees so I collected a bunch to give to my squirrels. (The ones I feed from my fire escape). I kept looking at the bowl full of them, admiring their smooth brown surfaces and remembering how I used to love them. That was what inspired me to immortalize one in a painting. To honor the humble acorn, a true symbol of autumn.

Halloween Portraits

This is my favorite time of year, I get so inspired thinking about Halloween! I've always had a love of vintage Halloween decorations and have a nice collection of things mostly from the 40's and 50's (lots of Beistle made). I've recently been looking over things from the 20's, mostly german made that are just gorgeous and soooo perfect for portraits! I must have 20 items sketched out so far but am starting with a few plastic ornaments from the 40's the first of which is this Jack O Lantern. This is the sepia underpainting, color will follow.

Pieps the mouse

I am so happy to finally be able to start my portrait of Pieps the mouse (by Steiff). I won him on Ebay back in June and I knew already how I wanted to paint him. I love how his arms are outstretched, it gives him so much emotion! I decided to leave the little hole in his ear left by the Steiff button that is lost, I think it gives him character. This is the underpainting done in burnt umber and white but I imagine the final won't be far from this as he is all beige with just touches of pink in his ears.

Gentlemen Doves

For some reason I didn't post these in progress. Probably because they are a little different in style and I wanted to see where they were heading. I sketched these out over a year ago and even converted them into needlepoint charts which I'll probably be working on for the next year. The sketches have been hanging on my wall of ideas waiting for me to decide how I wanted to approach them and finally a few weeks ago I just dived in and began. I am very happy with them; they are a little whimsical but I think they convey the warmth and dignity of the humble mourning dove which is after all my favorite bird.