i have been preoccupied in the last few days running around and getting paper work in paperwork style order so i can apply for registration in this foreign country of mine. it involved a lot of train rides and government buildings. so i am just now trying to get back into my painting/sewing schedule. for now here is a painting i did a few months back. wish i was having a cactus party today.
while looking through old files i came across this photo and remembered cold brooklyn winter/springs years ago.
this was a favorite drink of those days. champagne and pink sorbet.
and now i’m kind of dying for one. i will definitely be making these for some future vondelpark picnics.
a yarn elephant from africa.
bits of my bag.
i am loved.
a new illustration i made today.
i feel like i’ve lived many lives. perhaps a common feeling for a 26 year old. but i really do not know. they are all so different. the colors and smells of them are burned in different corners of my mind. turpentine and cigarettes with savannah street gravel. hot restaurant kitchens then office desks. chinese factories. a sailboat and behind a bar. poetry and paintings. harlem in the winter and brooklyn in the summer. a fresh fire and bicycles, automobiles, and airplanes. and now northern europe. through the scattering of it all, here are some things that over time have stuck with me.
fur coats and hair cuts.
i have 15 fur coats. and have changed the hairs probably more than 15 times.
psycho killer.
the love of my life is a little tuxedo cat named psycho killer. he died in my arms on my last birthday. i miss him everyday and i want to cry every time i hear the talking heads song ‘psycho killer’ (his namesake).
things. and things.
i am a collector in the most obnoxious of ways. i hold on to everything and then hang them on the walls and put them into piles. i keep multiples of things. the 15 furs coats, 4 typewriters, 20 or so mason jars. i will probably never stop.
guns and tattoos.
if you ask me to shoot guns with you i will always say yes. i will also save all the bullet casings.
likewise if you ask me to go get a tattoo with you. i will always say yes. i already know my next one will be a little drawing of an angel psycho killer.
in the past 6 months i have taken on the hobby of puppet making. with some hopes that in a few years i’ll be confident enough in my puppet master skills and try to profit from them. when we moved here i had to leave behind a lot of things. and my sewing machine was one of them. so i’m back to hand sewing the puppets, which is what i originally did until i became a lazy machine dependent person.
so yesterday i made this little fellow.
and gave him a fairly minimal color scheme.
next i am working on painting this guy.
but, that is for tomorrow. right now it is rose wine and painting my nails with glitter.
this dog is cute! this is what she does while i paint.
i’ve been working on a series of images based on an old book i made way back in college. ‘an anthology of alphabetical alliterations’. the old book was all in black and white and pretty shoddy. but i loved the concept, so i’m redoing it 2011 style! i’m doing 2 things with it: a series of prints with 3 letters on each and an actual book. here is the first 3 letters together print. i had to change some of the colors so they melded together better. but that is probably a good thing so the prints and the future book will be a little different.
it’s important to evolve. like weird butterflies and fish who grow legs, every now and again i try to change the way i operate. often it is just adding to or subtracting from the way i illustrate. sometimes it sticks, sometimes it doesn’t, most of the time i incorporate parts of it in my style. lately i have been subtracting ink pens from my normal pencil, ink pen, paint strategy. i like it. i may keep it. it certainly cuts down on time.
it certainly is different from illustrations i made 2-3 years ago.
whether it is better. eh, who knows? maybe after i spend some time working with it.
a new year (a month and a half ago), a new blog. one of my goals for the grand year of 2011 was to improve my blogging and branding. so i came here for more control. i’m working on a schedule to stick to and trying to move all my previous posts from tumblr to this place. so bare with me and by the end of this month i should have it figured out and maybe even make this page a little more pleasant to look at.
sarahgoodreau 