Tag: art

Tulips

I’m practicing my botanical drawing and coloring because I’m painting a box that I’ve been meaning to get around to for ages. It’s been a while since I’ve worked on flower illustrations and this was a quick and fun exercise 🙂 It reminded me how much I enjoy this kind of illustration.

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Tulips by ~gricel on deviantART

Happenstance does happen

My b-chan and I have been meaning to go to the Ft. Lauderdale Museum of Art to view the Norman Rockwell exhibit for months now, but in typical leave-it-to-the-last-minute fashion, we didn’t get around to going until the last day. As it coincided with the Suntrust Sunday Jazz Brunch on Riverfront, we decided to make a day of it and have lunch/brunch before heading to the museum. The Jazz Brunch was lovely, but we didn’t know what to expect and were unprepared to take advantage of the picnic setting. Next time we can make it, I will definitely plan a picnic. We ended up making our way to the Indigo Restaurant at the Riverside Hotel instead. This is the second time we’ve eaten here and the food has always been great. I think it’s quite possibly one of my favorite places to eat on Las Olas. Plus, they bring you a swizzle stick with your latte… how charming is that?

After brunch, we made our way back to the museum, only to find that the line to purchase tickets was circling the block. One of the guys in line compared it to the lines to go on the rides at Disney. As we’re standing in line, this older man approaches us out of nowhere and asks us where we’re from; this is highly suspicious behavior in South Florida where we are all used to rudeness and the like. He’s waving two tickets and tells us that today is our lucky day. We, of course, think scalpers, though he looked too decent for the usual shifty scalper. My b-chan was waiting for the guy to tell us that he would give us his tickets for $XX, but he just tells us that he received the tickets from his wife’s company for free because they are museum sponsors and that we can have them. Skeptical Miamians that we are, we thought he was joking, but he gave us the tickets and walked away laughing, telling his wife that we wouldn’t believe him. The lady behind us was curious to know if they were real too, but we refused to give up our places in line on the chance that they were authentic.

To our utter astonishment, they were.

When we reached the counter, the lady at the ticket booth told us that we could’ve skipped the line and walked right in. She was just as amazed when we told her our story.

So, to the stranger who gave us these tickets… Thank you and sorry we didn’t believe you. 🙂

under the rainbow

I may be losing more hours than I thought, I may be losing a whole semester actually (summer term, but a good six weeks nonetheless). It looks like the budget for my department has been squandered on who knows what, seems that our brilliant director wasn’t doing much.

I’m trying to stay positive and take things as they come. There are others facing situations that are far more dire than mine. It’s hard. As someone who just completed a graduate degree, I’m one of the many dealing with the lack of options brought on by the recession. The markets I would have worked in with my degree (publishing or advertising) are nearly nonexistent in my region at the moment, so I decided to get my MLS sooner rather than later and take advantage of the upswing in library jobs that are predicted to result from baby boomer retirements.

I’m hoping and waiting and taking the extra hours in my day to get creative (and work on schoolwork when I start the library program in May). I even took advantage of the Tara McPherson coloring book kit that my friend gave me for Christmas. I took it to work and colored these two pages. (pictures taken with my phone while at work).

The kit brings a coloring book, art cards, and a box of crayons in the palette that McPherson generally uses for her artwork. It was fun. It has been ages since I used waxy crayons.

the munnys and the moneys

Now that I am in a relationship, I have been attending more festivals than ever before… I wonder if this is because I am not taking classes at the moment, or just because my bf and I seem to share an interest in festival hopping? Hmm… Perhaps a combination of both? Anyhow, classes start next week so I’ll see if this trend continues.

getting creative with the munny mobile

We went to a local festival on Saturday night and had some of the best soft serve ice cream I have ever had, so creamy it tasted more like mousse than ice cream. Then on Sunday we took a trip to PinkGhost for a Munny Mobile painting party… and got free Munny Mobiles! It was lots of fun, though I really didn’t think they were going to be giving the Munnys away, so I didn’t plan a design and just started painting with the supplies on hand at the party. This limited me to a palette of yellow, red, blue, and black (and some blue glitter than the bf managed to grab for me), but I managed to create a whimsical dandelion design on my little buggy.

They had a nice crowd going at the shop, lots of the other artists obviously planned what they were going to paint on their Munnys and clearly had prior experience, so I learned some strategies that I can use when I decide what to paint on the little Munny that came with the kit.

So it was a nice, lazy weekend… then I found out that they had to cut some of my hours at work, if only for the Summer A term.  I’m lucky enough that I can get by with my second job (barely, but still managing), but it makes the job hunt all the more desperate. I’m applying for every library job that I qualify for so I can get some experience/money/benefits while I work on the MLS, but many of these aren’t even going to start hiring until August, meaning it might be months before I hear from anyone 😦 .

i’m not being nosy, if they’re being loud

Sometimes sitting in the cafe on campus provides me with hours of amusement, if only because of the foolish things people say/do.

Like, just now, when a sales lady who is pitching a deal to the bookstore director said “Scone is just a made-up word for muffin.” Apparently, she doesn’t like having “desert for breakfast,” since scones are just “dry, hard muffins”. And I always thought they were a British breakfast item o_0.

She’s pitching Britto merchandise… blech. Hurray for artists who can make it big, but Britto’s art is soooo kitschy. And not in an ironic kitschy way.

doodling

So, I should really be getting back to writing, but it’s been an unusually exhausting week for me – both school and work-wise (and all the other -wises)…

Instead of doing something productive, I ended up playing around on Illustrator and Photoshop. After all, I got the suite for my birthday, I may as well use it.

I’ve never used Illustrator, but always wanted to give it a try.

I’m still not quite sure how it works, but I managed to produce this little doodle (then I had to save it in PS because I could not figure out how to save it on AI 😡 … oh well, I’ll learn).

Not much, but I was very excited to work those vectors.

sinful

These are quite neat, so I thought I’d share.

The “Seven Deadly Glasses” – a limited edition, handmade wineglass collection (ie – something only a moneyed type can afford), that celebrates the seven deadly sins.

Personally, I think they look like something that would have been used to torture heretics in the Tower of London… but they’re still quite nifty.