A Doodle in my Jill Bliss Journal

That super cool matchbook cover from Mexico City I was talking about. I love it!

Some collages I started several years ago, I was making an altered book with all the ephemera I had collected on my various trips to Mexico, over the years visiting family and friends in Mexico City. Checking out Puebla. Exploring Manzanillo, Barra de Navidad, Taxco and Cuernavaca and popping into Acapulco. Those experiences inspired a lot of my art projects during college. I plan to add some drawings and color to these, layer them up even more. I always have tons of works-in-progress for my easily distracted-self to work on. Ok. Now back to my last day of work in NYC, then finishing up packing and saying goodbye to my life in NYC and hello to my new life in Boston! See ya from New England!

Yeah, looks funny right? Spring flowers, Hyacinth and Tulips, sticking out of the snow. Poor little flowers, they felt the 70 degree weather, sprouted out, then had to deal with the blizzard last week. I have been wearing rubber rain boots for over a week because of all the snow, slush, and rain. Anyway, I am going to take a little blogging break to finish packing up my life in NYC, design the last round of spring shoes for my main freelance gig here in NYC, and then drive North to Boston next week. I’ll be back when I get to New England with photos, a clear head, a new domicile, and hopefully, finally, a new look to this website too! Take care and see you soon friends. XOXO

Yippee! It’s 70 degrees today in NYC! Wow! I swear we are having bizzare weather. One day, it’s 9 degrees and snowy. Then a week later, it’s 70! Freaky! But I’ll take it, cuz it means I can wear my new poetic license funky flats I got in California! Wheeee! No socks, no down coats, no gloves! And it’s still light out when I work late, and leave at 6:30 or 7:00 at night! Yay!

Oranges and Grapefruit on the Upper East Side and Animals at the Central Park Zoo! I also saw this exhibit at the Met last weekend.

We got lots of snow on Wednesday! Now, it is all gone. That’s the the Long Island Railroad that runs behind the apartment building, I hear it all night and day. It sits behind what used to be a donut factory, thank goodness that closed down because the smell of donuts was a bit much in the hot summer months. It’s a pretty cool looking building though.

Anyway, It snowed a lot on Wednesday, and since I’m still recovering from Bronchitis (pesky little nagging cough acts up in the cold) I stayed in and worked from home. At one point I took a walk to the corner store, because we had run out of olive oil and we all know how important it is for cooking; I mostly use it to pop popcorn over the stove with. Some day I’ll start cooking real food again. Home-cooked popcorn goes great with my various netflix selections. The walk was beautiful, the snow was powdery and fresh, lots of untouched snow to trample on, but alas, the pesky cough came back so I had to cut it short.

I’ve been catching up on a lot of movies lately. I told you I watched Rocky 6 at Christmas-time, but had never seen 1-5. So I watched all of them. I liked 1 & 2, but 3 - 5, eh, kinda silly. The music in Rocky 5 was terriblie, too many bad guitar riff’s. But I have to admit, I am still rooting for the Italian Stallion. I wonder why Adrienne didn’t want to come back for Rocky 6, and instead they had to kill her off? Hmmm. She’s such a strange character that Adrienne. Also, I had never seen Risky Business (because I really loath Tom Cruise) but it was on cable so I watched it. I also watched the Rocky Horror Picture Show (not as good as I had hoped for), Breakfast at Tiffany’s (wonderful), and next is Grease. I’m not much into musicals, whether on Broadway or the screen, but I will watch Grease because it’s a classic after all, and there are so many references to it, and honestly, I like that TV show with people trying out for the new Grease broadway musical. I can’t believe I like the show, and don’t really like musicals. Some of these new shows, they just trap ya I guess.

My most recent delightful movie-watching experience came from seeing what has become one of my new favorites, The Science of Sleep. It is from the same writer/director (Michel Gondry) who did Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which was also very clever. The Science of Sleep is an absolutely hilarious and innovative movie-watching experience, please check it out! I connected with it so much, because I get so many of my own wierd ideas from dreaming, whether at night or just daydreaming. If you have a chance, watch the making of, it will blow your mind how much of their own blood, sweat and tears the team put into literally making the set. Have you ever had one of those experiences where you watch something and you respond to it instantly, like it’s something that could have come out of your own head? This is it for me! This movie is really creative, and funny and I really value the artistic production of it. It’s nice to see something clever once in a while, really inspiring!

A couple of weeks ago I tagged along with a friend of mine on one of his photo shoots for a work project. He is a freelance illustrator and along with editorial illustrations, he works on a lot of harlequin-type book covers. An interesting part of the project is having a professional photo shoot, complete with model, giving him something to work with when he goes home to create the narrative that surrounds the image. Some of the book titles are pretty hillarious, this particular one was called Dog Days. The story is about a magical miniature doberman pincher. Don’s art direction to the model was, I kid you not- I wrote it down, “So you will be standing there, looking concerned but not pissed off. Okay?” Haha.

Here you can see the photographer, the model, and Don, working with different poses.

Then they look at the digital proofs, and re-strategize some of their poses and go back for more shots. This goes on for about an hour. And then you can see the finished product, Dog Days, with cover art by Don Sipley.

The photo shoot was fun, and Don is very talented, seemingly creating a whole mood and world, out of some shots of a model in front of a grey background. So just another day in the life of another NYC freelancing creative person, another reminder that there are millions of people out there finding a way to work at home (mostly) and using their creativity to make a living. *** Oh, and Don really is more professional than I gave him credit for, I swear.

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!

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’ve been staying on the upper west side, at Rose’s apartment while she’s out of town, dogsitting her puppy Basil. Woke up to find it had snowed finally a few days ago! I love leaving the apartment and seeing Central Park first thing in the mornings, the freshest air you can get anywhere in NYC!

So when my hands are gloved and shoved in my pocket to avoid frostbite, sometimes I take my camera out and snap a shot. But it has to be really worth it cuz it’s really cold. And windy. The other day I walked down the street I always do, to catch my subway, in my neighborhood, and I saw all these (mostly blonde) dogs tied up outside their apartment building, sunning themselves I guess! It was really funny. They were just hanging out, big ones and little ones. No owners anywhere near. I don’t think they could belong to all one person, maybe a dog walker brings them out for sun? I don’t know, but it was really cute, cute enough to take my gloves off and snap a shot. Happy Weekend!