.art.work.

The other day I brought my camera to work, because I thought it would be cute to take a couple of snapshots of where I'm currently working!





I work at a paint-your-own-pottery studio, where I've created several of my own personalized dishes, mugs, and figurines over the years! It's a tradition for my aunt and I to go and paint something when we're together (if we have the time and resources), which is how it started it all. Her encouragement to make my own artwork and express myself with painting (as well as other artistic mediums) is part of why I'm so crazy wonderfully creative today!









People can come in, chose a piece of pottery (pre-made, so people who are not super great at the pottery wheel aka me do not have to fear), and then get to work painting it in any way, shape, or form they want. The only thing I'm pretty devastated about is that there are no sparkly/metallic colors (because it wouldn't be food-safe), but I guess I'd rather be able to actually eat off the dishes I create. After people finish painting, they leave their pieces for us to glaze (which is a fun dipping process in a vat of light blue substance that gets EVERYWHERE) and fire in the kilns. I think our kilns are so pretty and shiny.



I adore this plate that someone made a couple of days ago. SO. CUTE.

Other than working and applying to jobs (and perhaps even getting job offers...more on that later), I've also been creating charms. A LOT. I actually made my mom ornaments of our dogs, Winston and Taffy, for Christmas (well, belated Christmas). I just finished Winston the other day.





I love it. It makes me want to take on other challenges, so if you would like to custom order your own pet immortalized as an ornament or charm necklace, please don't hesitate to check out my store and contact me!

Time for bed!

practice

Tonight has been a night of watching The Bachelorette and playing around with my tablet. I wanted to practice drawing and writing with it, since stuff I draw/write on my tablet still isn't as smooth as ink on paper.

I've always loved the look of drawings on top of original photographs, and I've purposely taken some pictures with the intent of drawing little creatures or people in them (on a cliff ledge, on a rock, in a tree, etc.), so I'm going to try and do it more often.

Nighty night :)

new watercolors

Check it out





I've started to sell some of my watercolor paintings on Etsy

http://www.etsy.com/shop/OtterlyCharming

More to come soon!

get back to where you once belonged

Since it is my version of Sunday, it means that I'm procrastinating HARDCORE, so I have taken the liberty of taking photos of the collages I've been making so I can post them here (instead of readng the five scientific papers I need to analyze cough cough).













I did the Get Back collage first the other day and then decided I wanted to fill up my entire sketchbook with collages with lyrics over them (I've got the Beatles kick going right now, but maybe I'll verge into something else later). I'm off to read papers aka paint my charms now, pip pip.

this looks like a job for mulder and scully

My page of X-Files characters I drew the other day while bored. It is not complete, by any means, so I will definitely do another one soon. Also it's (obviously) a super sketchy, cartoony style (like all my comics I draw) for speed's sake.

First Row: Mulder (in his little alien tie), Scullsmagulls, Skinner, Doggett, Reyes

Second Row: Smoking Man, Krycek, Marita, Well-Manicured Man, Fowley

Third Row: Spender, X, Deep Throat, Flukeman, Langly

Little lone Frohike at the bottom because I realized at the last second after I drew Flukeman that I totally neglected to include any of the Lone Gunmen. So get ready for another sheet featuring THEM and some other characters I'm sure I forgot. Plus probably Mulder again.

I have a ton of doodles I uploaded today as well as a comic about my version of "studying" (which is applicable since I should be studying for my lab practical right now) and also stories about football games, wine and cheese parties, Oktoberfest (or our version of it which is not super exciting since I didn't drink due to sickness), fall colors, and HALLOWEEN (since it is the best month of all).

PEACE OUT

artsy

Today has been a day of STRESS.

But that's boring, so instead I will beguile you with my arts and crafts.

One thing that I love to do is make charms. I make little creatures/pokemon/items/video game characters/etc. out of clay, bake them, and then paint them with acrylics. I finished painting a little deer and an Eevee a few nights ago (though I haven't glazed them yet).

The little deer









Eevee!









I also have a Pikachu in the works, though yellow is a bitch to work with for some reason. So that awaits a night when I don't have finals, papers, or bird phylogenies to worry about.

You can purchase my charms (or look at other charms I've made) here!

I also painted a picture months ago that I was going to post, but I forgot to take a picture of it. It's of a desert sunset with a cloth owl sitting on top of a cactus silhouette. I like the effect of the cloth on the painting, but the owl I made looks sort of...ugly. So I'm going to try to fix it at some point as well.

The last sort of artsy thing I've done in awhile is draw this picture



It's mini Otter as a pokemon trainer with her shiny vulpix. Have I mentioned that I'm a huge pokemon nerd?

As long as we are talking about ART, let me bring this up.

http://www.arthousecoop.com/

ART HOUSEEEE.

There are two major projects that Art House does, "A Million Little Pictures" and "The Sketchbook Project". The former is a cool program where you sign up with a theme and they send you a custom tailored disposable camera to take 24 pictures that go along with the theme you chose. You then send back the camera and Art House takes everyone's pictures and tours the country with them in a giant photomobile. Cool right? The Sketchbook Project is similar in that they send you a sketchbook and you have to fill out the entire thing according to the theme you chose. Then you send it back and they tour the country with that in a giant library and then the sketchbooks remain at an art library forever more, so anyone could pick up your sketchbook and check it out at any point! One of my 101 in 1001 days is to enter an art show, and this is how I want to do it. I'm going to sign up for The Sketchbook Project as soon as I'm back from field work :)

As an ending to my post