Insani Tea

We are on the brink of a new administration. Out with the old.

I've been really waiting about 6 years for this day. I didn't really think Bush was too much of an idiot until early 2002, right after 9/11, when it became abundantly clear that he really didn't have a clue how to run this country.

This project, a series of six teabags and their wrappers, pays homage to the insanity we have been living with these past several years. Poor Obama - he has his work cut out for him.

This is Donald Rumsfeld. His image, as a faux postage stamp, is inside the spent tea bag.

On the teabag tag, the "daily meditation" reads: We know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat. Cheney's will be the famous "Go f**k yourself" line he uttered to Sen. Patrick Leahy, during an angry exchange on the Senate floor about profiteering by Halliburton, June 25, 2004. There weren't as many famous stupid quotes for Cheney as the others. He is a quiet guy, or possibly he spent most of the past eight years dozing off.

On the envelope back are a series of the individual's most famous verbal gaffes, strung in a continuous line, with only the font altered for a little visual relief.

I would not say that the future is necessarily less predictable than the past. I think the past was not predictable when it started. We do know of certain knowledge that he [Osama Bin Laden] is either in Afghanistan, or in some other country, or dead. I believe what I said yesterday. I don't know what I said, but I know what I think, and, well, I assume it's what I said. Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns -- the ones we don't know we don't know. It is unknowable how long that conflict [the war in Iraq] will last. It could last six days, six weeks. I doubt six months. I'm not into this detail stuff. I'm more concepty.

All the players...

Stamp Sheets - So Much Fun!

The faux stamp fun continues! Now I used Powerpoint to take the one stamp and replicate it into a sheet of stamps, just like you get at the post office, except these are free, and won't work to send any real mail.

There is something very satisfying about making your own stamps, and about seeing the pattern repeating on the sheet.

Yum! Tomorrow, I'll use some of these in an art piece, instead of the stamps from Ireland or Singapore.

Another New Fun Thing To Do With Photoshop

I followed instructions from the www.gomakesomething.com website for making my very own postage stamps. Here are two or three of my favorites.

See all 12 at my Picasa Web Albums site.

Coming Soon - Holiday Joy

These are different color versions of a graphic I did on spec for a major corporation's holiday card. They chose the red, with some swirlys added. I'll post that cleaned up version on Friday here. I'm available for your commissioned work! :)

Solar Rose

11-11-08

• 
  

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween 2008! It is almost time to end daylight savings, vote for a new president and permission to eat a little bit of candy. My faves that we found in small size this year are 100 Grand and the old standby, Reese's P-buttercups. Yum!

We carved punkins on Sunday and then Weds night. They held up pretty well. The mooshy-ness added to the ouerve of the ones that started to go soft.

In order, from upper left to lower right, they are:

1. Laura's improvised negative space - no pattern used. Note the gaged ears!
2. Picasso inspired.
3. Claire's scary clown - I think this is the winner!
4. My friend LB's mad little punkin. This represents how I have felt all week.

Photoshop of Bottle Condensation

Condensation in a Glass Bottle

Pretty in Pink Eiffel Tower

Results of playing around with Photoshop. I did take the base photo while in Paris earlier this month.

Creepy Pumpkin Corn Dog Stand

Look Not at a Woman Lustfully - Cork Graffiti

Photo of the Day from Cork, Ireland

I think they like beer in Ireland.

Another Fave Photo from London

London - Building Embellishments

Vicious Guard Dog in Saffron Walden, Near Cambridge

Enroute to Cambridge UK - Photo of the Day

Daily Photo - From Madrid

Photo of the Day from Paris

Iced Tea in Musee d'Orsay Cafe

Art in Paris

I'm in Paris on a business trip. I brought enough art supplies (small notebook, pencils, pens, camera) to get a little bit of art done every day. Today I will go see some art at Musee d'Orsay too.

Sad Flowers on Tuesday

Bad Mr. Bill

My hero.

Two New Mined Art Prompts

These are two more mined art prompts that I used to create small doodle drawings in my moleskine journal. The small 3x5 paper was put on the paper and then I interpreted shapes and colors around the "prompt."


For this one below, I saw the nostrils and skin colors on the paper, and that made me feel that a portrait was called for.

Mining for Art

Here's a fun little art thing I do - kind of like writing prompts. I go to the art store and "mine" the little pieces of paper people use to try out various pens and pencils. Just collecting these is a lot of fun. I know they are just thrown away by the art store as they accumulate, but I still feel like somehow it is stealing to take them. The best ones are on a glassine type paper, but I haven't found any of those in a long time.

I take them and collage them into art, or like this piece, I put it right in the center of the page and worked a piece of art around it. I call this one "Collision."

Today's Art

Today, I managed to get a few photos taken at the 2nd Play With Your Food event. It was well attended by about 40 people. I didn't make anything, instead focusing on taking photos. I was still limping around a bit, and just in a lazy mood. At one point in the festivities, I zonked out for a short nap.

This is a close up of a purple dahlia, in black and white.

The Interpretation of the Large Indian Civet

The approach I used for this drawing was similar to the prior one (abstract flowers shown in yesterday's posting). I get these invoices from a vendor of ours in Singapore from time to time. They use stamps rather than a postal meter, and they are the most beautiful and different drawings. Yesterday's, the Large Indian Civet, is of a small animal that even when I looked it up in Wikipedia, I'm still not sure exactly what this animal is like (possum? bobcat? ocelot?). Of note, the secretions from the anal glands are used for musk scent in the perfume industry. Yuk?!

Anyway, I took inspiration from the stamp drawing and colors, and sketched a small vase of sacred feathers and a saging stick. I tried not to think too hard about it - hence the loose drawing lines. I colored it in with various colored pencils, taking off on both the colors from the stamps, and a coordinating pen try-out sheet I mined from Utrecht's Art Store in San Francisco a few months ago.

Enjoy, and remember that you can see more detail on the graphic by clicking on it to open it larger in a new window.

Today is My Birthday

I have these beautiful canceled stamps from a letter I received from Singapore. Like this earlier set of stamps (see below in the lower left corner - the colors informed the doodling art), I'm going to do some art themed on the colors - aqua blue and reddish browns. The stamp is of a Large Indian Civet, which looks like some sort of ocelot or raccoon to me.

New Photo Album Debuts on Picasa

I'm recently fascinated with the stamens and pistils on flowers. I especially like the ones that are choked with pollen.

You can view all of them, color and some black and white, on the Picasa link to the right.

Day Lily

Stamens - Up Close and Personal

Healing Bouquet

These are some images from a beautiful bouquet sent to me while recuperating from knee surgery. There were at least a thousand wonderful images in this one large package of late summer blossoms. Here are my fave five. Thank you to Teresa & Walter.

Fall Will Arrive Soon

Paper-y Dahlia

My knee is healing remarkably well. For the first time in 4 weeks, I felt like I could do some art that wasn't strictly doodling or computer generated stuff. I took photos of some withering dahlias (is that appropos to how I feel as my last 4-ending birthday comes next week, after 6-8 weeks of awful sick and pain?). Anywhoo, I liked the paper-y quality of the leaves, and the way the colors evoke the soon-arriving Fall.

I'm on the mend now, but a bit melancholy as the end of the year nears. I don't feel like there were as many accomplishments this year. I'm in the home stretch when I normally pull things out, but I'm not feeling so much like making that happen this year.

Knees in Trees

Botanical Knee

Angel Piggy

Something to do while resting my torn meniscus. I moved my gigantic iMAC into the family room so I can occupy myself (read: sit on couch and do something besides watch CNN all day) while waiting for surgery on Thursday.

This is a composite of a photo I took of this fantastic cast iron pig and use of texture stamps and the brushes, with various treatments (lighten, burn, opacity, etc.).