Spreading like rabbits...

Isn't it just the way this always happens? I have one sketch of a bunny in my house, and then I draw a second bunny... (they meet, fall in love...) Before I know it, there are 77 bunnies! ...or to be more specific, I have had orders for 77 Year of the Rabbit Cards.

I'd like to take a few minutes and thank everyone who checked out my Etsy shop over the last few weeks. The conversations I have shared with Etsy customers have been wonderful! I have attached a map of the United States showing where the bunny cards are concentrated. (I love those red and blue political maps at election time... can you tell?)

The whole Pacific Rim of the US had a great reaction to the cards. Thanks to Darci and Anna in Seattle, Max from Bainbridge Island, Margie in Spokane, Emily in Portland, Cecilia in San Francisco, Mymy in Menlo Park, and my good friends Jarrod and Amnon in the Bay Area. Honorable mention goes to the very chilly Minnesota, Illinois, and Colorado. Thank you Karen in River Forest, Rebecca in Lincolnwood, Lora in Minneapolis, Jeni in Mankato, and Midori in Arvada. I was pleased as punch to receive an order from Texas, Ohio, and Washington D.C. Thank you Barbara, Bonnie, and Gillian!

This map does not even show a little red symbol in Melbourne, Australia, but thanks to Kerry our little bunny is hanging out with kangaroos.

Special mention and thanks to Annette in Toronto who is sure that this is going to be her year! Also, to Howard in Brooklyn for providing helpful design tips and for suggesting yummy, local restaurants. I was pleased to be in touch again with the Parson's Family in South Carolina. (Check out their Etsy page by searching their shop name MonkeysOnTheRoof.) Thanks also to my good friend and co-worker, Nora, right here in New York City.

My friend Tania gave me instructions on how best to celebrate the Chinese New Year on February 3rd. She recommended not washing your hair or sweeping up your house because that might inadvertently sweep away your luck. She also suggested that you buy a new item of red clothing and wear it that day. (Isn't this much more interesting than silly Groundhog's Day?)

2011- Year of the Rabbit

The Lunar New Year is almost upon us! For the last several years it has become a favorite holiday of mine. My birthday is on Valentine's Day and my boyfriend and I have thrown parties at our apartment in the past. We figured out that if we called it a Valentine's Day Party single people would feel excluded. I also felt that throwing yourself a birthday party is self-indulgent... we finally decided it would be easier and more fun to celebrate the Lunar New Year.

Last year was the year of Tiger. Any thoughts? I thought it was an okay year... But now we are heading into the Year of the Rabbit. According to the dependable people at a web site called theholidayspot.com we can look forward to a relaxed year in which, "Good taste and refinement will shine on everything and people will acknowledge that persuasion is better than force." Sounds good to me!

This illustration is something I've been itching to do since the year of the Horse! I have a fasination with paper lanterns and I've wanted to try to create the warm, beautiful glow that you get from them when they are lit. Thanks to my buddy Jen who approved the rabbit illustration in advance to make sure he was cute enough... You can't quite tell but this little rabbit is thinking, "This is going to be my year!"

As always this card is available on my Etsy page. Best wishes to my friends!

Paris From Above

Happy New Year Friends!

I have included an illustration I have been working on of the roofs of Paris. When we arrived in our hotel during my recent vacation there I found myself taking way too many pictures of other people's roofs. Kinda crazy... Later when I was flipping through my photos I kept thinking, "What nut got a hold of my camera and took all of these pictures?"

The image on top is of the original scratch board. The second image is printed on recycled paper and I have added a bright white and a mid-tone shadow. (It's funny, sometimes I prefer the black and white original... thoughts?) Please check out Etsy to find a series of cards that I have made from this illustration. I'd also like to give a shout out to Miss Mishel of Clinton Hill Brooklyn, John J. Hoody of Connecticut, and Aileen of Miami Beach, Florida... These great people bought some of the Grand Central Terminal Ceiling cards to use as Holiday Cards. Thanks a million!

Hope everyone had a great New Years.

Holiday Card for 2010!

Hello Friends!

I am pleased to post my holiday cards for 2010! After I posted the Thanksgiving card on Etsy.com I received the greatest response possible; People bought them! I'd like to shout out to my friends Opera-John and Shawn and thank them for buying. Also, Jordan on Manhattan's Upper West Side, Rose in Florida, Jen in Maine, Melissa in Texas, and the Parsons Family in South Carolina! The boost to my confidence was incredible!

Here you see images of the card and two images of the envelope. My initial idea was to create a three image joke. The front of the envelope serves as our "establishing shot" and shows Grand Central Terminal, here in midtown New York. The person receiving the Holiday Card will (hopefully) flip it over and will see an image of an invitation, inviting someone to a Holiday Party that evening hosted by Orion. Upon opening the card the viewer will find that the Holiday Party is being thrown on the underside of the ceiling of Grand Central Station, with all of the Zodiac signs invited. (Taurus the Bull has a present, Pegasus has three gifts, and Cancer the Crab is bringing gifts and wine!)

The illustrations were created from scratch board and they are printed on a natural toned piece of recycled paper. I used a gold marker to try to recreate the gold leaf and stars in the Grand Central Ceiling. It is disappointing but the gold is impossible to scan into the computer. (Please pretend that each figure shimmers a bit!)

If I don't get a chance to post a message before the Holidays, I would like to wish everyone my very best for the last few weeks of 2010 and joy and peace for all of 2011!

Things I am thankful for

I have attached an image of a Thanksgiving card I am preparing to send out to friends and family. Everyone who reads my blog (all five of you) will be receiving a card from me. If anyone else is reading this and would like to receive a card please just send me a comment with your name and home address!

This is an image I have wanted to create into a card for several years. Over the years I have filled several sketch books with doodles in which I planned out this card. The sketches have never worked to my satisfaction and I always question myself and ask, "Does anyone actually send out Thanksgiving cards?" Each year Thanksgiving has passed me by making all of this moot. Happily, this year I managed to find one day to get all of the drawing done. Now I just need a few evenings to paint the white details.

The Thanksgiving Parade in New York was one of those things that I LONGED to attend when I lived in Chicago. Now as a New Yorker I just try to keep it in mind and avoid Times Square and Broadway on Thanksgiving. Often it is very cold and the street is always packed like a sardine can. One has to admire the Radio City Rockettes. Rain or shine they show up every year wrapped in short little fur coats and hats, but only wearing nylons and tap shoes. I'd have thought they'd have learned from the previous years and said, "Hey ladies, how about we wear pants this year?"

The card above is a scratch board illustration of the Dakota on Central Park West and 72nd in New York. This is the famous building where John Lennon and Yoko lived and where Mia Farrow as Rosemary cried out, "His eyes! What have you done to his eyes!?"

The large balloons in front of the building are stand-ins for the cartoon characters who float down the parade each year. I expected to run into legal trouble from The Networks if I put in Sponge Bob or Kermit so here is Nicky the Simple Squirrel, Georgie the Over-Indulgent Turkey, and Wilhelm the Aggressive Penguin. (All the names come from a non-fiction book I'm reading on the lead up to World War I.)

Later this week I will be posting some of these cards onto my Etsy site. Please check them out there along with some of my other work. I am thankful and proud to say that I have sold two items off of Etsy. The two images of the vegetables below were sold and will soon be hanging in someone else's kitchen.

Sacre-Coeur

This is a large format painting I have just finished of Sacre-Coeur in Paris. As I mentioned before Sacre-Coeur is at the top of the highest hill in Paris. The area is called Montmartre (the mountain of the martyr) and it is full of shops and cafes aimed at tourists. I was so excited to go there because the area is famous for the local artists who sit in their stereotypical berets, paint the street scenes, and sell canvases to tourists all day long. The souvenir I wanted the most from Paris was a small watercolor or oil painting from the top of Montmartre.

Disappointingly, I found these older Parisians, mostly gentlemen with gray hair, hard at work, creating art which was not based on observation, but only representing big tourist attractions. (In retrospect I should not have been surprised.) I just found it sad that in a city in which almost every view is beautiful, no one was painting from life. One of these older Montmartre gentlemen was applying generous amounts of glitter to a small work of art, making the Eiffel Tower silver, and the Moulin Rouge red. Perhaps the great French Impressionists would be rolling in their grave. (Or perhaps the impressionists just never thought to use glitter in their paintings of water lilies and sunflowers. Who knows?)

Here is my own piece of Montmartre, painted here in the U S of A. Although this church has been painted far more beautifully by far better artists than I, I was still very pleased to spend a few weeks working on this and remembering the food and wine of Paris. This painting is accurate in the combination of both the carnival like atmosphere at the foot of Sacre-Coeur and the serene grandeur of the church itself.

I know what everyone is thinking... this painting just needs a little bit more glitter!

Avenue de L'Opera

This is a painting I have just finished of a grand boulevard in Paris. This is the Avenue de L'Opera, which leads from the Comedie Francaise and the Place du Palais-Royal to the Opera Garnier. What I have tried to recreate is the view from the stairs in front of the Opera House down to the Comedie Francaise. It was my goal to try to recreate the beautiful shadows which had a purplie-blueish tone against the warm building facades.

Paris was so beautiful that I found just walking around to be both exhilarating and exhausting. I am someone who is easily overstimulated and the long walks from cafe to museum would leave me speechless. We stayed in an area called Les Halles ("lay-yall") which at one time had been the food market for Paris. Emile Zola wrote a whole book called "The Belly of Paris" about a convict who arrives in Les Halles after spending years on the run. The book overflows with descriptions of the gossipy fish wives, noble vegetable sellers, overweight butchers, stinky cheese vendors, etc. Much more recently in Julia Child's amazing book, "My Life in Paris" she speaks warmly about wandering the aisles and buying produce there. Sadly during a the 1970's in the name of Urban Renewal the original Les Halles was flattened and turned into a large underground mall. Being one of those New Yorkers who is angry about the loss of Pennsylvania Station it seemed appropriate that we stayed in a hotel right by Paris' identical large urban mistake.

Our trip was so full of fantastic food and fun diversions that I cannot accurately hope to recapture it on a blog. Highlights included visits to the Mona Lisa and Venus de Milos, as well as trips to Versilles, the catacombs, and Notre Dame. In one day alone we took a boat trip on the Seine, looked for lunch on one of the grand Avenues only to stumble upon the Arc de Triomphe and the Champs Elysees. A quick visit to the Arc was followed by a long walk through Pigalle and Montmarte to Sacre-Coeur. The long winding walk back to Les Halles brought me past the Covered Passageways, or narrow streets of shops hidden within irregular city blocks and covered with piqued glass ceilings. A quick walk past the Folies-Bergere took me to our local boulangerie where the bread was still warm. Upon arriving back in the hotel room we would eat warm bread, watch dubbed television shows and discuss dinner plans. We cannot wait to return.