Greener Pastures - Leaving my GoggleWorks studio after 8 years!

Well, the time has come.  And very excited about it!  I'll be closing shop July 31 at my studio in the Goggleworks in Reading, PA.  On to working with the Humane Society of Berks County, continuing work on my coloring books for Dover Publishing and my Spike and Tilly children's book - in addition to painting, painting, painting!  I'll continue to have a presence in the Reading area stores and in Lancaster, as well as a new presence in Phoenixville, PA (very excited about this too!).  I will miss so many smiling faces there but am thrilled with this new journey!

Please come to my going away party at my studio (#317) this Friday, July 26th, from 6 to 9PM - ALL art and merchandise (except coloring books) will be 30% OFF - I hope to see you there!

Illustration Friday - Wilderness

So this week's word for Illustration Friday is "wilderness". First thought that came to mind was "the wild", then nature, then high winds, tsunamis, hurricanes, and earthquakes...all catastrophies which of course led me to the think about the devastation in Haiti. Seems like everything is leading thoughts to that... i want to help so i donate to charity (my charity of choice is Wyclef Jean's charity Yele.org) and am now collecting shoes that Soles4Souls will ship to Haiti. You can do these things to. It's so easy. And desperately needed. And there are so many other charities that are reputable - such as Oxfam and Doctors Without Borders...so many more... Wish i was in a position to put on some workboots and fly down there, but i'm still not comfortable leaving my girls for long stretches... Give if you can...every little bit will help them...

Illustration Friday - Pioneer

"Have Raygun, will Travel"

i set out to make a pioneer woman and this happened. It's subtle but i think it's there...

The raygun was inspired by a group of Steampunk enthusiasts called the League of Victorian Imagineers (article here) - they have extremely cool props and costumes...check 'em out... also, the set of Sherlock Holmes was very inspiring too...go see that ASAP!

How Awesome is This???!!

i designed a patch for urbanthreads.com and this is what it looks like...


from this art:


"Winter"
i am artist of the month for December at their website and absolutely love all the cool, edgy, snarky and beautiful designs they make over there - please check them out!

i also had to add this amazing song...can't download this yet in the US - RATS!!
(thanks to the amazing artist Danielle Barlow who had it on her blog...)

Illustration Friday - Unbalanced

wow. it's soooo nice to be pulling the watercolors back out...so nice to just have this pan with the paint squeezed right on every few months or so, not worrying about it drying out, not cleaning up much and so forth... instead of acrylic which i've been working on the past few weeks for a show...continually squeezing the paints out, cleaning the brushes, squeezing more paint out, cleaning more brushes... can you imagine?? where is my assistant to do this stuff?? yeah, go ahead...call me the Queen of sloth...i can take it.

ok back to Illustration Friday's word of the week - Unbalanced. I had started this painting for my Oracle card deck a little while ago to represent Fertility but i thought it also went well with unbalanced. And since i'm constantly doing the OPPOSITE of Illustration Friday words, i'm sticking to that theme. At first glance a pregnant woman looks all sorts of unbalanced...but the body is an amazing thing. It adapts. Frankly i felt like a swan when i was pregnant - magestic, plump, important. Balanced. i was definitely one of those crazies that loved being preg.

Illustration Friday - Skinny

Mucha's woman were not skinny...they were what we now call plump in many instances - greek sculptors, DaVinci, on up to Rueben, Klimt, and Manet and so forth...all were inspired by plump models...when did it change? why did it change? Men's ideal bodies have pretty much stayed the same over time...You can look at male movie stars' and at male models' bodies and most resemble Michaelangelo's the David (which Michaelangelo modeled after the perfect male form in his mind - which i must confess is hard to argue with - but why do i think that???)...how do we figure out what is attractive and what is not? these things fascinate me...and i don't know why.

Anyway, this girl is not skinny. But i think she's beautiful in her way.

The Wish Dish

this is what it started out as - the wish dish - but that's too corny. What i really had in mind was a dish you could look into that would tell you the future...wouldn't that be awesome?

anyway, it's been like a hundred years since i posted last and if you noticed that, sorry for the mini break...i seemed to hit a wall there...

Illustration Friday - Magnify

mermaid's allure magnified underwater...hmmmmm....i was thinking of the delirious and dehydrated sailors that would "see" the mermaids when i made this...

Contest Winner! Thank you so much for all your comments last week and congrats to Loni Edwards who's name was picked from a baseball cap by my daughter - you've won the Queen of Hearts print - please contact me with an address and i'll mail it out this week...(i'll have pics soon of the actual name picking process - i'm just a little behind due to a minor but painful injury - and no i was not bitten by a horse like my friend she-who-must-not-be-named)

Illustration Friday - Caution - and a Contest Giveaway

i had posted this last night but felt it sort of fits with "caution". i was thinking about how the ancient Greeks thought our lives hung from a thread and that the gods had the power to snip that thread at any time - and that is not too shocking a concept to grasp...that life is delicate, unpredictable, fragile and should be appreciated every moment, even the sad broken moments...this young muse is holding someone's life by a thread, maybe it's her own. Should she use caution?

Anyways, today is my Blog's 3rd year anniversary!! I'd like to thank all who've come in to look, lurk, and comment by giving away a giclee of the Queen of Hearts...



please leave a comment on this post and then next Friday, August 28, 2009 i'll place all your names in a hat and choose a winner - wheeeee fun times in Adrienne Blogland!! xoxoxo

Illustration Friday - Craving

this is kinda corny but let's face it, what do most people crave? why, heart-shaped rubies of course! Ok, not that...we crave love love love...

the tattoo on her left arm was inspired by Mike Tyson's face tattoo - how many people can say they were artistically inspired by Mike Tyson today?

Illustration Friday - Contagious

Happiness is contagious. So is melancholia. I think this young woman is making me feel both.

Illustration Friday - Fleeting

my dear friend Tami was here yesterday and we were drawing and chatting - she was drawing a lovely woman under the cherry blossoms and DING! i was like, well, i must steal that for fleeting because, after all, cherry blossoms ARE fleeting and ARE my favorite flower and tree and so forth so this painting happened...some of it was inspired by a painting done by Mucha...the cherry blossoms are falling down around her already...fleeting...

so we went outside to take pics of my most prized possession in my yard - my scraggy and lopsided cherry blossom tree (Tami called it a Charlie Brown tree which is perfect) lopsided because i refuse to trim it and important because it grows on top of my beloved cat, Jordan, sort of like his crown...anyway, Tami used her new space shuttle camera and i used my old toy pretend camera - here are some pics...go here to see REAL photos of the blossoms...



sadly Tami and sons had to go and i'm already looking forward to the next visit...

Also, thank you so much to David McMahon at Authorblog for this truly amazing shout out - Post of the Day Contender

(Now that i know how to hyperlink, i'll never stop...)

Deepest Loss

Promise of Water


There before me are
the jutting black rocks.

You are beyond those rocks
beyond those trees.
you are beyond those waves, that horizon
on some island
and you are distracted by
smiling.

i inhale a long
soupy breath.
there are voices in the distance;
there is some concern.
i will probably not move
from this spot
for a while.
without help.

at some point i will
look straight ahead,
but now only know the
saltiest tears.
they are like the waves
that break against the rocks
you hide behind.
they roll to the beach like they
roll down my face.
they are almost a
relief.


Many things were going on when i wrote this and painted her but i was also imagining Bella (from New Moon) lying down in the woods after being left behind.

In about a week i'll be offering 5 x 7" prints of this and other works of mine from my shop on etsy.com. I will post about this as soon as i have more information.

Illustration Friday - TIME

Illustration Friday's theme this week is TIME. hmmmmm....yeah, i've been kind of painting about this in some form or other the last month...Time is running out? time is flying by? too quickly???

Secrets

Everybody has them. Except for people on reality TV.

4.5 x 6.7" watercolor and ink on Medioevalis Fabriano paper

Death Becomes You

i looked at a photo of my old cat that is now buried under my cherry blossom tree. i wish he was back but that would be too Stephen King-ish. But since we're there, i'd like my grandmother back too.

Illustration Friday - Resolve

Resolve to begin each day in a positive way and then carry it through as best you can

more Mucha-inspired stuff