Last week I went to New Jersey to the Garden State Mall to continue shopping for spring inspiration. Lucky for me, I stumbled across a pair of ultra-reduced clearance special Missoni sunglasses. Fab-u-lous. Look at this gigantic pile of crusty dirty snow. Yeck! Anyway, then this weekend I caught the flu, and then it turned into bronchitis. More Yeck! I am sick sick sick and have been in bed sweating out the poison for the past 5 days. Finally made it to the Dr. today so should be better within another 5 days thanks to antiobiotics. I hate being sick, I hate being home and feeling so bad all I can do is sleep. I want to draw, to work, to knit, to sew, something. But I can only sit up for about 20 minutes at a time before I feel dizzy or have a coughing fit that turns into an asthma attack. Okay. gotta go before the wheezing takes me over!

I love to work with color. I have this tiny sketch book, it’s 3.5″ x 5″ and it’s a great little place to try out color combinations and capture little bits of things. I did two of these on the plane and even though they are small, I’m counting them in my list of drawings for the year. For as much as I love color, I find it really satisfying to work tonally, and in black and white, and I am going to continue on with my black and white series because I think there is something very liberating about working in just one color. Drawing #10 is almost complete and ready to share, and it is drawn in black and white, in the same vein as the first 5 of 2007.

What a lovely week of doing whatever I felt like, which meant after spending the first two days working, I spent the rest of the week not doing a whole lot of anything in particular! No commuting, no schedules, no agendas, no deadlines. Just eating, drinking, sleeping, relaxing. Petting and walking my dogs. Hanging out with the family. Eating some more. Catching up on some t.v. and movies, and dreaming vividly every night. Sorry to report I only have a few photos to share (you see it was too exhausting to lift my hand up and press the button on my camera so I just didn’t. haha.) I was happy to hear I missed the NYC snowstorm. It was in the 80’s in San Diego, absolutely divine. I would walk outside, and the best way I can describe the temperature; this is what a perfect bath feels like mid-bath. Not too hot, not yet cold, just perfectly comfy. Niiiiiiiice. Look! Flowers blooming on the trees there! We made a few trips to El Indio, for some delicious chicken tacos. Yum. Ate at In-n-Out, had to have the full gut-busting combo with vanilla shake. Burgers and Mexican food taste so damned good in California. Had seafood too. And Ice Cream. And…. Ok. I sound like an old person now. All I talk about is the weather and food. Haha. I should start talking about medical procedures too. Well back to work now! Happy Weekend!

Another of my footwear design samples returned to the office while I was gone! I was influenced by old-fashioned, upholstered big heavy furniture when I designed this tufted pleather bootie! This sample came back exactly as I designed, which is always a great thing to see, I love it when a plan comes together.

I’m heading to California Tuesday a.m. for a work shopping trip and will stay until next Tuesday to celebrate my Mom’s birthday, and soak up some much-needed California sunrays. I am also hoping to avoid the impending snowstorm threatening to hit NYC any day now! I’m leaving my huge down coat here, the one that looks like a sleeping bag. Not even kidding. And I am packing my ipod, sunglasses, sandals, sketch book, and of course, my camera. So, see you guys later!

I’ve been sketching some ideas for my new website design. I need a header and I want to draw it by hand, versus on the computer, but I think I need to go back to the drawing board and come up with something a little less crowded! Talk about crowded. This is how I like to work. With stuff all around me. Fabric swatches, inspiring images, my stuff!

Brrr it’s cold here in NYC! But still trying to get out for a little fresh air and socialization here and there, meeting up with the brave friends who don’t let the cold keep them home. I saw a one-man play starring my friend Davide, whom I worked with at YSL. It was fantastic and he is a brilliant performer! That was 2 weeks ago when I had light hair. Now, I have dark hair now! A nice change, I always like to switch it up.

I have been working on desiging a new graphic header for the new funcupcake. I have been going through my treasure trove of interesting bits of inspiration. I feel like I took a trip down 10-years of paper inspiration memory lane. And I have a new rule. While going through my collection of paper ephemera I realized I have to get a handle on hoarding paper bits. I keep files of paper bits with things that inspire me; like animals, inspiring print patterns, color palettes I like, architectural images and sculpture, anything on a subject I am currently into, like my little collection of anchors I’ve been working on (with digital images though.) So in my stash, I found photocopies from a book from the Portland library from 1998 and people, that’s just ridiculous. That means the stuff I photocopied, for inspiration 9 years ago, has moved house 10 times, through three states. But it’s interesting to note they have made it this far, a longer lifespan than many of the other material things that have passed through my life. Anyway, I did some sorting through and figured it’s time to use and be done with them. Time to draw from these things, then throw them out (recycle them.) I am NOT moving them all again. And let’s be frank, there will always be a continuous movement of inspiring things coming in, why shouldn’t some that are outdated, go out?

When I first moved out of my parents house in 1994 after graduating high school, I had a massive collection of ticket stubs, namely from the $2.00 cinemark movie theatre in Cathedral City. But also from anything I had ever been to that required a ticket. And I was a social person, so I had a lot of ticket stubs; to raves, to museums, to plays, to concerts, to parties, to dances, what-have-you. Anyway, I had so many stubs I could cover a wall in my room with them. But then I thought it was silly to keep all these so I threw most of them away, but kept a few. I don’t know what it is about paper, I have a hard time getting rid of it. Old magazine tears, old drawings, old sketches, old stubs, old playbills, old cards. Well, not anymore. Everything has to fit in a little multi-filing thing, or else, goodbye. I suppose I could scan some things that I must keep, so of course, the entire stash is not going into the recycling, but some of it has to. Because the reality, is my once inspirational treasure trove of paper becomes overwhelming and then I don’t look at it at all anymore, instead of inspiring, it’s just scary and overwhelming and I avoid it! I just found a match book cover I saved, with a cool old-fashioned line drawing of a german shepherd on it, from a trip to Mexico City back in 1999. I couldn’t get rid of it, even now, so I pasted it into a little book I write in often. This owl drawing is a little scene I started a while back, and I consider it unfinished, but since I lack the motivation to do anything else with it, mostly because I am on to other things right now, here ya go, it’s going out there as-is. Make room. Clear out. Clean up. Throw out. Is it too early for spring cleaning?

Okay I’m caught up! I am still on track to do one drawing a week in 2007! Even if I don’t actually do one a week, on time, I still aim to have 52 drawings by the end of the year. Farah, my roomate (also a footwear designer) just came back from 3 weeks in China and gave me a package of butterfly temporary tattoos. The outlines of the butterflies in this drawing are inspired by those. She said “I wonder what an analyst would say about your drawings.” I never thought of that. I suddenly felt a little exposed. Then I said “Farah you might kick me out, they might say I am m-e-n-t-a-l. Look at these! Some of the women have no hands, instead they have claws and jigsaw puzzles for hands. And they are full of symbols that don’t make sense.” She didn’t seem worried, she laughed it off, and in a way encouraged me further by giving me 4 darling little blank books from China to capture my ideas in, along with those butterfly tattoos.

Some FAQ I’ve been getting:
Do you pencil them in first?
No. I just draw them using a Micron blue or black pen. I have a really heavy hand and I almost always destroy the 005 pens tips because I press so hard, so mostly, I use the 05’s. On one of the drawings, I had it mostly done, and I messed up a part, so I cut a chunk out and I attached a new piece of paper to that part, and just drew that part again. Old skool. Or to lazy to start over, but really to lazy to use pencil in the first place. I just hate pencil. Did I mention I have a heavy hand? I had a hard time in jewelery making class for the same reason. Give me something to weld, fine, but the little delicate stuff… ugh.

What do they mean? They don’t have any pre-planned conscious contextual meaning. I swear. I don’t plan them out, I usually just start with one image I’ve been inspired by and go from there. But it looks like I unwittingly found a template; each drawing has an architectural element, print patterns and textures, flora and fauna, a figure inspired by fashion photography, and something man-made like something plastic, metal or electronic.

What are they for? Just for fun. Okay maybe for a little art therapy going on. Okay, maybe proscrastinating in drawing shoes, which I should really be working on cuz then I can buy groceries.

Will you make a coloring book with these? Maybe I will, Mom. Good idea. I’ll draw some more first.

How long do they take? I like to work slow. So I seem to spend between 2 - 6 hours. But that’s because I usually get distracted; make some tea, or get a beer, or make a snack, or look for more inspiration in between. Usually I don’t realize it’s 1:00 a.m. already. I always listen to music when I work so time does fly.

Other progress towards my creative goals this year…. I actually wrote 2 hand-written letters last month (to my Dear Granny Dot in Portland … and to my pal from Junior High School in the late 80’s, Dear Michaela, in San Francisco) and started working towards updating this site (thanks in advance for your help on this, FCC’s webhost, Jake!) Alright, need to work on shoes now. Seriously. It seems a joke to be drawing flip flops when it’s so cold, but I gotta do it.

I love polar bears, and of course, I love music.