Woman at night: Last post of the month

This is my last post of the month! This means that minus Thanksgiving, I managed to complete my goal of posting a pic a day for an entire month! Thanks to all who have stopped by and all who have left comments.  This is a collage I have on my wall at home, but I edited it digitally. For whatever reason it is one of my favorite images. I leave it for you all as my last post in November.

Retro Cat

Today has been really, really busy. I could bore you with details of all the things I did that include such fascinating events as making cupcakes for a bake sale after work and volunteering at the shelter, but really it's just an excuse for posting a piece from last year. This design is a little retro cat I call Lucinda. She has a counterpart named Audrey and they are both available on merchandise from Cafe Press at http://www.cafepress.com/zitacita

La Llorona: The drowned woman

The story of La Llorona is an old tale that has many different tellings. In most of them La Llorona drowns her children and then herself. She is forever cursed to wander looking for her children.  Growing up I was told that her cries could be heard througout the night by any body of water. This made for some fun and scary nights at the beach. 

Doxie with Moxie

Okay maybe you can't see the moxie that this dachshund has, but he's wearing a top hat so it's implied.

It was suggested that I add goggles and make him a steampunk doxie. So I did. He's still dapper as you can see. 

Fox in the Wood

Another watercolor today; I'm making sure to get my $2 worth. I used to live next to an open space area called Red Fox Medows and every now and again I'd see a little fox looking curiously at me and my dog as we walked along the path.

Town House Illustration

Posting a piece a day has its drawbacks; new items that take weeks to create don't have a chance to go up and quick works take their place. Todays post is a quick watercolor illustration. I love the look of watercolors and have practically zero experience with them. Unfortunately watercolor can be intimidating because it is such an unforgiving medium. The best way to get over that is to just dive in,  so I bought an inexpensive ($2) set and decided to give it a try. It was really fun and I decided to keep it simple by doing do a little row of  houses. I hope my attempt to try something new inspires you to do the same. What new things do you want to try?

Peacock Ornament

Do you ever get stuck on a color? I mean really can't get enough of it?  I am obsessed with blues: teal, sky, cerulean, aqua, turquoise and peacock. It's not my favorite color, but it's close. Green is where it's at. But for some reason I want to cover everything tiffany blue. This was attempted on my kitchen chairs and they ended up looking like smurf furniture. Which is ok, since my decorating style runs from the late hobbit dynasty to the early gypsy wagon period. 

This peacock is the perfect emissary for my favorite hues. He ended up with quite the sassy smile too. 

Mini Sculpture: Dachshund's dinner

 Last night there was a loose dog running down the median of a very busy street near our house. We always carry spare leashes in our cars for such occasions; so when we saw her, we pulled over, coaxed her into the leash then brought her safely out of traffic. Luckily she was wearing a tag and we were able to call her owner before animal control pulled up. Just glad Trixie got to go home and have her special dinner instead of spending Thanksgiving in lockup! In honor of special dinners and happy pups, today's posting is a very tiny dachshund getting ready to munch on his favorite kibble. Hope you all got to enjoy some great kibble too!

Green Man

Fezzes are cool

Do you think kitty timelords only have 9 regenerations?

Portrait of a Lady: Fall Leaf Colors

 I worked on my leaf colors portrait a little longer than I thought I was going to last night. In case you didn't read yesterday's post, I attempted to pull colors out of some leaves I gathered and paint a portrait from them. I finished this evening so here she is...

I was mostly able to use only colors from the leaf palette; the white was simply the color of the background. The black is in there if you magnify and look closely at some of the decay spots on the leaves. I think this will be a fun project to attempt again in spring when the leaves are fresh and full of yellows and greens.

I've really been enjoying creating frames as much as the figures. I did this one free-hand using a mirroring tool.

Flying banjo and preview of next piece

Right now I’m working on a project based on the colors in fallen leaves. I had thought of this project a while ago, but didn’t execute it right away. Translation, I procrastinated. Luckily there are still some brightly colored leaves left, but if I waited a few more days this project would have had to wait until next year. I am attempting a portrait done only from the colors in the leaves. I thought of this while walking my dogs around the lake last week, but pulling the colors out of a photograph was inspired by the website http://design-seeds.com, I love everything about this site.

It’s a work in progress and I should have it up by Wednesday. Here is my color palette.

Nowhere nearly as well done as design seeds

In the meantime I leave you with an image I did last year of a winged banjo, because  despite those "paddle faster jokes" banjos are super cool.  And I’m pretty sure wings are how you get that really high and lonesome sound. 

Mini Sculpture: Yeti

Today I'm back with the mini matchbox sculptures. I wanted to create a tiny yeti for some inexplicable reason. So here he is; no longer a myth. 

I may actually end up pulling him out of his matchbox and placing him in a terrarium that I am working on. I've been growing jade plants and others from cuttings for since the summer and only need to find the perfect container. 

Pet Portraits

Last year I made a few pet pendants for a local animal charity and then was asked to do some custom portraits. I enjoy trying to capture the personality of each pet and see them through the eyes of their families. If you would like a portrait done of your pet you can contact me by e-mail at Zitacitadesigns@gmail.com. Each portrait ranges from $25 - $40. I do have an etsy shop as well and will post the link when I get some new projects up next week.

Starwoman doodle

Today's post is mainly a doodle and was inspired by my strong desire to post more than a happy faced stick figure. I was playing around with different brushes etc. I may have gotten a little carried away with the star brush, it's a STAR brush people. Besides, I was listening to a Cat Stevens song called Boy With the Moon and Stars on His Head and was really feeling all those stars. I may be more of a dog person, but I really love the Cat.

Christmas Beaver and Friends

 I hate to post holiday cheer too early, but I've been busy making ornaments for selling and for giving and decided to share a few of them here. The mouse is my favorite but I've also made a peacock, bear, cats and various other critters to decorate for the holidays or just perch on a shelf. The Beaver is an old favorite that I must have made about 15 of over the past few years. They sold really well at various christmas bazzars. I'll leave the Christmas beaver jokes up to you guys, I just sculpt them.

The beaver is carrying a real twig

They are all wearing hand crocheted scarves and carrying their favorite treat. Except the owl, because I was so not into sculpting him carrying a dead rodent. Enjoy!

The Four Seasons: Autumn / l'automne

This is the first installment in a series on the four seasons that I’ve been meaning to do for a while now. While looking at the brightly colored leaves on the ground this past week, I decided now was the perfect time to start it. So while it is based on the trees in my back woods, I would also say it is most definitely inspired by the work of Alphonse Mucha. I bought a poster of Mucha’s four seasons (he actually did several versions of this) in college and I still have it hanging in my room. This version is a rough draft and I will probably edit it quite a bit before I do anything else with it. While I was getting started on this, I though a cat or dog version would be fun too.

Shelter Dog

Shelter Pets Rule!

Mountain Man

 This piece was created about a year ago when I started trying my hand at digital images. The inspiration came from one of my favorite songs by one of my dearest friends: Candy Craig's Mountain Man. If you have never listened to Candy Craig, please have a listen now... http://us.myspace.com/candygirl . 

Her voice reminds me of the memory of clear summer day in childhood: beautiful, sweet and filled with a little bit of meloncholy and nostalgia. Which is pretty darn hard to capture in a logo type drawing. I immediately saw a gentle, hippy, kawaii type Mountain Man rather than a rugged hunter type. A wayward lumber jack maybe? This is one of my first digital images and I can't wait to get started editing it again. 

A few weeks ago while talking about childhood toys, I made an interesting discovery about my picture of the Mountain Man. Some of my favorite toys when I was small were handed down or given to me by my big sisters. Sorry about breaking your Johnny West dolls L.  One set of dolls that I adored were a happy hippy family called The Sunshine family. They had a craft store, which I never had, (I think my sister had that as they were her dolls first I believe) complete with pottery and spinning wheels. For whatever reason, the dad was my favorite. Here he is below.  

Sunshine Family Dad

When I look at my Mountain Man, I realize that the Sunshine family must be pretty hardwired into my subconcious because he is a bearded doppleganger of Steven Sunshine.  I guess I can now safely  blame my failures on the pottery wheel on the fact that I never had the craft store. 

Mini Sculpture: Go big or go gnome!

Go big or go gnome?

I didn’t just title this post that, did I? Sorry but I couldn’t help myself. There is just something about writing a post on a mini gnome sculpture that begs for puns. So meet my gnomie, Gneddie, yep, I gnamed him too.

The thing is the title really isn’t that much of a pun; I began making tiny sculptures because I lived in tiny spaces. For a while there I moved pretty often. And by often, I mean enough to make the Johnny Cash song I’ve been everywhere sound like a list of my previous addresses. The big metal lawn sculptures that I’ve dreamed of making have just had to wait, as have the hand made ceramic lawn kitsch I can see so clearly in my mind. This means instead of going for larger pieces, I had to go for tiny treasures. So my gnomes are less lawn and more terrarium. The upside to tiny sculpture is that it’s portable and can go where you go. This means you may be far from home, but you don’t have to be far from gnome. What? You didn’t think I was just going to leave off the puns did you? 

Chubby Owl

Version 2

                                        I'm in a bird mood. Today's entry is a chubby owl on a floating tree limb.

The Peacock or Keats and Yeats are on your side

“The innocent and the beautiful have no enemy but time.”

~William Butler Yeats

“A thing of beauty is a joy forever: 
its loveliness increases; it will never pass into nothingness;”

~John Keats

The peacock has had many representations in art since antiquity. As a symbol its meanings can change from culture to culture. It has represented luck, immortality, resurrection and royalty as well as vanity and superficiality. When found in modern design and décor it is often representative of elegance and beauty. I love the colors and textures that can be worked into a peacock design as well as the use of flowing curves. This peacock is another example of cut paper collage. I have used colored paper, Washi paper and various scraps on lacquered wood to create two peacocks. A third is on its way. Because it was digitally enhanced I was able to create another version in purple.

“All art is quite useless”

~Oscar Wilde

Fall Fairy

In college the sculpting class spent an entire semester working on one bust. An. Entire. Semester. At the time this seemed unbearably long, but now it seems pretty reasonable. Time changes everything I guess. My point in mentioning this is that while I have an art degree I am self-taught when it comes to sculpting. One of the best ways that I found to practice on a small scales was to create small figures. This eventually led to making dolls. I know, I know when I tell people I sometimes make a doll or two (or 20) they usually reply, "Dolls are creepy".  And indeed sometimes they are. I spent a year culling a museum's collection of over 1,000 dolls that were not stored in ideal conditions; let me just say that 30 years worth of heat, humidity and insects makes for some creepy and smelly babies. I'll have to post a few here sometime. 

But even after that experience I still make dolls. For an artist working in different mediums they are engaging. While I am comfortable sculpting the heads, hands and feet, I wish I was better with fiber arts so I could create fabulous clothes. The bodies and clothes create a challenge but I do like that.

 This little fairy lives at my mom's house. My mother badgered me to photograph her doll at the edge of the woods, "with the fall leaves around her". Doing this put me lying on the ground and taking pictures dangerously close to a red ant hill however, it did turn out pretty well. Mother knows best. 

Little Buddha

Today’s entry is a tiny Buddha sitting in meditation on a flower throne. He was inspired by Tibetan Buddha statues and even has tiny prayer flags behind him. He was absolutely not inspired by the 1993 Keanu Reeves movie Little Buddha. Much. 

While making anything tiny tends to Kawaii it up, I still tried to keep this little Buddha true to traditional depictions of the Buddha.  His ears are elongated because as a prince Siddhartha would have worn heavy earrings that elongated his ears. When he left the palace to become a wandering ascetic he left behind worldly things. Elongated ears are also a symbol of great wisdom. There is a flame on the top of his head to denote enlightenment and he is smiling because to find enlightenment is to find bliss. In the 80 characteristics that describe the Buddha he is supposed to have long fingers and toes. This was something I attempted and failed. Because I sculpt with an Exact-o knife and a pin on such a small scale his digits are sort of stubby. But he mostly has them, so we're good there.

The Quarter is for scale

Little Buddha is on his way to Colorado right now as a gift for my Buddhist brother-in-law who received the gift of life yesterday through an organ transplant. I hope little Buddha brings him joy and peace.

Extreme close up

Gato de Los Muertos

I’ve had a lot of requests for a Gato de los Muertos. Especially since most of my friends are “cat people”.  I know I said “maybe next year” but I went ahead and did one last night. This will probably be the last Dia de los Muertos theme for a while, but  you never know because I kinda want to make a goat. 

 I don’t consider my love of dogs to be exclusive of cats, and I’m a sometimes “kitty cuddler” at the Shelter. Especially after a few hours of walking dogs who are jumping on me and pulling to get out of the shelter. I have signed and watermarked this image, sorry if it distracts anyone. 

Unemployed Claymation

It’s Sunday so I am reaching back into the art archives and pulling out an oldie but goodie. My cousin requested the link so I’ll just post this little guy here.

 A few years ago I had a brief period of unemployment and decided to make claymation to pass the time. I think they used this very scenario as a joke on Parks and Rec, but unemployed claymating really happens. When I saw that episode I swear tea came out my nose from laughing so much. I have not shown this video too much as it very amateurish and well the Parks and Rec thing. However, I am attempting to blog an image a day in November so I’ll post it as my Sunday cheat entry. For those of you who have attempted National Novel Writing Month or NaNoWriMo, I salute you and attempt my own Art Blog Writing Month; ArBoWriMo. Which really doesn’t sound as cool, but hey, maybe like unemployed claymating it really is a thing. 

Folk Inspired

With the arrival of cooler weather here in NC we are saying goodbye to our green leaves; so, I’ll post this picture as a farewell to all the lovely greenery. It’s a mixed media work that was inspired by Russian folk art lacquer boxes. I love the look of bright colors against a black background and depictions of scenes from folk tales. As my good friend Liz used to say, “here comes the sappy part”; I like to think this picture is an image from a lost folk tale, or one that hasn’t been told yet. Shhh, don’t tell anyone that I’m probably a romantic at heart. 

The purpose of starting this blog is to find a way to showcase and curate some of my art into a unified body of work. I like to work in so many different medias that sometimes it seems like I am going in seven different directions with my work. For the last few years I have worked in clay, pencil, paper cut out, acrylic, collage and digital media. This piece is a pretty good representation of all of that. Really. Well except the clay. The tree branches are recycled paper bags (Thanks Trader Joe!) and the green is tissue paper. There is some origami paper in there too or it might have been old wrapping paper since I hoard the stuff. I really like how the texture came out. Now if I can only work in some clay. 

Mini Sculpture: Day of the Dead aka Diorama Junkie

Dia de los Muertos  Matchbox Mini

When I was a wee thing, my parents took me to museums all the time. I especially loved the tiny dioramas and used to pretend to be shrunk down and in the action, whether it was a scene from daily life or an epic battle. I just adored the completeness of the tiny worlds and their frozen-in-time quality. Can you guess who spent a lot of time alone as a kid? Museums gave me a love of miniatures that grew into awe when I went to the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago to see Colleen Moore’s fairy castle.
If you have never heard of this magical castle, look it up. Right now. It sported tiny goblets, chandeliers with electricity and a tiny bathtub with running water. If I could have shrunk I’d have moved right in! So naturally I started to make miniatures of my own. When I was eight they were crafted in tinfoil; today usually Fimo or potter’s clay. Inspired by the folk art of Mexico, today’s post features a tiny diorama for the Day of the Dead depicting a little calavera figure setting up an offrenda. Props to museum dioramas, José Guadalupe Posada and folk artists of Mexico for the inspiration.

So tiny!

Perro de los Muertos

November 1st is commemorated in the Catholic faith as All Saints Day and the 2nd is All Souls Day. These are often celebrated in parts of Mexico, Latin America and the U.S.A. as Dia de los Muertos or Day of the Dead. Traditionally November 1st is in honor of children, while November 2nd is in honor of adults. Here in the U.S.A. November 2nd is more commonly considered The Day of the Dead, but I prefer to celebrate both. Because I only have furry children I decided to create an image to honor all the furry family members and Shelter pets that have passed this year. I really love dogs; I have 3 pups and foster and volunteer for my local animal Shelter. We lost a few Shelter favorites this year, but had a happy ending for our two foster dogs. I'm remebering the lost tonight with a candle, treats and some kibble. Maybe next year I'll comemmorate a kitty.