tashina knight

Wish I had that MacKenzie Childs cake! ( I believe this one is from Colette’s Cakes)

I’m not sure what to think of being 43. Seems each year brings a new theme. 41 was the year where everything I worried about turned out not to be a problem. All my problems were things I had neglected to worry about! 42 was the year of every appointment with anyone turning into several more appointments. I’m hoping that 43 is the Year of the Excellent Opportunities, or the Year of The Perfect Vacation. Think big!

I didn’t do anything big for my birthday (Tuesday). My husband is on night shift which makes it hard to do much during the week. Maybe we’ll go out this weekend. My best birthday present is one I’ll have to wait a little while for. Remember the crocheted hat in this post that I was swooning over? She’s making me a similar one! She thinks it’ll take about 150 little flowers. What a great mom I have.

I’ve still been a little scattered art-wise. I’m thinking of restricting myself to one or two styles for the rest of the year. That’s what Carla Sondheim did and it seems to be working for her. I can see why it’s hard for people to follow what I’m doing when it’s an acrylic painting one day and a totally different style of computer illustration the next. Do any of the rest of you have trouble like that? I just have so many things I love and I jump from one to the next to the next.

In other news, I still have the original charge for $50 on my Visa card for the DPI magazine. No shipping charges have been added and no emails to suggest they shipped. Guess it’s wait and see.

My mother is vacationing in  Palm Springs this week - only a one hour drive from her house actually, but it is a change of pace. She’s making me jealous because Palm Springs/Rancho Mirage is one of my favorite places. There’s a wonderful street there with an grassy island in the middle and all the way along it there are fun sculptures. Coda Gallery, one of my all time favorite craft galleries is there and so are a number of j.jill type stores. I think it’s about time for my husband and I to take a vacation. He’s had some heath issues this year taking up his vacation time, but he’s been given a clean bill of health at this time so maybe it’s time to start thinking of a trip. We definitely should at least explore the Hil Country more.

Don’t laugh (at least not where I can see you).
I’ve never drawn in Photoshop before. I thought I’d take a basic photo from the web (below) and work from it since I’ve also never drawn a car before - not once. I almost passed on IF this week, and then I decided to stretch a little and learn something new.

I didn’t really want to draw a boy; I’m in a girl phase. Up until a year or so ago, I was mostly doing abstract art and stick figures. I’ve “graduated” to real illustrative faces, but I don’t claim to be good yet. I’m getting better and that’s all I can ask.

In the end, I feel like I learned a little something. And I feel better about it that when I post something I did a year or more ago.

For other beginners: I just opened the photo in Photoshop. I then clicked on Layer, then New and did all the drawing on the second layer. I actually even started a layer three for making guide lines on the face for where the eyes and nose should go. Then I just unclicked the eye next to Layers 1 an 3 before I saved the final. Probably my biggest problem is that I had the resolution of the original image so low that I couldn’t really draw the face. I had to increase the image size and that made my pen lines even more jaggy. That was my other mistake. I drew the car outline with the pen tool and everything else in the brush tool. I should have just started with the pen tool.

Happy weekend, everyone.

I.must.have.DPI. Really. I have heard nothing but good things about DPI magazine. From Taiwan, it’s an art, graphic design, animation and toy magazine. Glossy and beautiful and full of artists you don’t see often in American magazines.

So, how do you get one? That’s the tricky part. I emailed them a few months ago to ask if I could make an order to be sent to the US and received not a single word of a reply. So I assumed I was out of luck. Then my husband visited Singapore (and S. Korea) and I asked him to please please keep an eye out for it, but alas, it was not to be found in Borders Singapore nor the Japanese bookstore nearby.

Not to be deterred, when I saw that Anna Ventura was in the latest issue, I thought I’d make another try. I also saw that someone from the magazine left a comment on her blog so I took that as a good sign that someone there speaks a bit of English.

First I went to the site with Chinese translator software running. I actually got everything in the cart and got to the payment part. It connects you to a separate service for credit card processing and that site refused the connection. AAARRRGGGHHH!!! But lo and behold I found a different page to order through and I gave it a try. I got an automatic order confirmation, so I’m holding my breath to see if I get a real person to tell me shipping cost or just to send them. I don’t really care about the shipping cost. They would be be birthday present (next week). The currency works out to $6 per issue without shipping. I expect the shipping will be quite expensive as a year’s subscription sent to the US is $300. I think that’s for 12 issues but I’m not sure. This order should be cheaper since they are not being sent one at a time. If you want to see some more dpi goodness, try these links:

• Small Object - scroll to the bottom
• Joe Bling
  
• Helium Cowboy’s blog
• Kelmurphy
• Alex Noriega
• Nate Williams
• Jill Bliss
• Crick Skipper - has a link to the pdf file of his article
• lili piri
• and my favorite, the wonderful Amy Sol

If my order goes through, I ordered an extra copy of the latest issue (Anna Ventura’s) for a blog giveaway. Stay tuned!

Update: I just got a call from my credit card company to see whether I really made a payment today for $51 to Taiwan. Well, yes indeed I did! Let’s see what happens next, because that’s the amount of the order without shipping. No emails from DPI yet besides the automated confirmation.

Okay, this is a little corny, but then so am I. I finished this watercolor a few weeks ago (see April 23rd entry) and digitally altered it for the topic today. I was listening in the car to Gwen Stefani’s current single:

” If I could escape
And re-create a place in my own world”

Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to live in your own illustration world, if only for a little while? In mine, everything would be colorful, clear and cheerful. There would be no muddy decisions to be made, no dreary days. Just a little corner of happiness to escape to. 

Happy Friday, everyone.

Introspective today.

How you know when you are home - in a world where people move and change jobs so frequently? I guess I’m feeling a little out of place. I lived the first 22 years in the very same house. Went to the same elementary school for 7 years, the same junior high and high school all years and then did my 4 years at University still living in that house. Since then I’ve lived in San Diego, London, San Francisco, East Bay Area, Temecula, and Austin. In the last 5 years, if you count places I stayed for at least 2 months, I’ve lived in 5 places, including 6 months in 2005 in the Extended Stay America Austin in the photo.

Actually, that Extended Stay America was quite a nice place to be. Very free-ing. As my husband was moving several months after me (job transfer), I was able only to bring with me what I could fit in my car (along with my husband and small dog). I had one box of books - choosing all the juicy ones I’d been hoarding forever, 1 box of clothes for the Texas summer, and 1 box of art supplies plus a few canvases. I learned that I can live and be happy with very few items around me. I missed my stuff in a sort of distracted way like I might miss a box of memorabilia stored in my attic. I thought of my stuff fondly, but without any real desire to have it near me all the time.

We’ve lived in Austin almost 2 years from now and I don’t feel I’ve gotten to know the city very well. It’s very divided into districts in my mind, SW Austin, SoCo, downtown, etc. SoCo is where all the “hip” stuff happens, live music, eccentric shops. I’ve been there a few times, but it’s a very small not-so-me version of Melrose Ave in Hollywood. There’s nothing wrong with downtown Austin except that it doesn’t feel like “my” downtown. How long does it take to feel at home in a new city? If you don’t feel it after a couple of years, is it time to go elsewhere?

We’ve been cleared to move to any of 10 places around the country and are considering (North) Dallas. It’s supposed to be flatter and more conservative than Austin. (I’ve never noticed any city in particular being conservative or liberal - I don’t much talk to the neighbors about their voting habits.) It looks like it has a much better library (important to me) and a great chess club (great for my husband). I suppose we’ll have to drive up there and spend a few days and see what we think. I don’t know anyone there but then I haven’t met too many people here yet besides some of the neighbors. I’d like to feel settled, but I’m not sure what that would take anymore. Stay in one place for 5 years? Just have a “feeling” about it? Have some friends I wouldn’t want to leave behind?

I feel like a leaf, resting someplace for a few moments and then being gently floated in another direction.

I just bought, after all these years of wanting it, Adobe Illustrator. They rarely have reasonable competitive upgrades, but as they released CS3 they finally offered an upgrade from CorelDraw for $199 and I jumped on it. So far it’s lots of fun, though not as intuitive as CorelDraw. This drawing is for Illustration Friday and is my Citrus Mandala.

I showed you last post what I had on my “easel” and I’m somewhat mystified by what happened next. First, I wasn’t sure I liked the clothes I cut out, then I wasn’t sure I liked the face so I painted a new one and it turned into a rabbit girl. Then she wanted all new clothes and now it bears very little resemblance to the original. Sometimes that’s what happens and I try to go with it. I haven’t decided whether to finish it by gluing it all down, or by doing a digital version. Some of the pieces are from vintage seed catalogs and I don’t want to glue them. So I’ll have to wait til I get my new printer with archival inks (coming soon so I can make etsy prints!) to make copies and use those instead.

It’s lovely in Austin this week. 80’s and perfectly sunny today. I went to Goodwill and bought half my summer wardrobe for $43 plus a tchotchke (love that word) for above the kitchen cabinets - a delightful little summer pail good for absolutely nothing but looking at.

I also got a box in the shape of a cat’s head to paint, a set of 4 ice cream dishes for $3 and a small fork because I like little forks to eat with and I threw away my favorite one by accident a month ago.

Things are going to be busy around here. I’m finally going to invest a little money into getting my art business going. I’m frugal to a fault but I can’t get anywhere without a decent printer, and maybe even a new digital camera since mine is a heavy 3.3MP beast that I bought for my eBay bead business about 7 years ago. I’m off to look at the other Illustration Friday entries. Have a great weekend!

Here’s what’s on the “easel” right now. My husband handed me a Coke Zero which got just a wee bit too cold in the top of the mini refrigerator. I opened it a little too near my blank watercolor paper and ended up with a fine spray of Coke all over the page. I’ve heard of tea-dyeing, but not Coke dyeing! I had been planning a drawing on white paper, and considered for a moment being upset about the whole thing, but quickly made lemonade of the lemons and got out my favorite watercolors and oil pastels and covered the paper with salmon pink happiness. Now my problem is with the girlie’s clothes. I keep trying to put her in something fashionable but she insists on a somewhat frumpy mushroom-inspired style.

I had a pretty relaxing weekend around the house. Spent Friday running around to my favorite health food store for cinnamon pita chips and herb popcorn, then came the long-awaited trip to the new Border’s Books in the area where I bought the latest Barbara Kingsolver nonfiction Animal, Vegetable, Miracle - A year of food life. Then I was free to spend the weekend reorganizing my studio. My studio, alas, is not like all those pretty pretty studios you see in the magazines and the lovely blogs. We live in a regular house but we live as if we live in a loft so we spend most of our time living in my studio (which was “the game room” in new house speak). When we first moved in, I had the whole room to myself and my husband used the media room and his office nearby. But we are used to being in the same room so we moved a big comfy chair in the studio for him. So then there were two chairs and the little TV in addition to my art desks and supplies. Then a few weeks ago, he decided to be a model shipwright building wooden sailing ships. And guess where the best light is in the house? Yep, my studio. So I gave him one of my tables under the window - I love him and it’s nice to have him close. I fear though, that I am not the sort to ever have the studio that will be featured in a magazine.

My other jumbled thoughts are about envy. Primarily city envy. Maybe I’m just not used to Austin yet, but I haven’t found a lot of my sort of art here. I’m sure I need to explore more, but I think that a lot of what I love is based on beach communities. I lived in San Diego most of my life and shopped at Gallery Alexander, Gallery 8, Many Hands Gallery, La Jolla FiberArt, etc. There was a certain bright and pastel colored whimsical aesthetic there that suited me more than say, the Southwestern Style or the Alternative Craft movement which is what Austin is known for. I love a lot about Austin, but I’m not sure my people are here, if you know what I mean. But coastal areas are sooo expensive. We are in an interesting situation in that we can move any of about 12 locations in the country that have offices of the company that my husband works for. As long as he is within about 20 minutes of one of the offices, they don’t mind which one. Problem is I hate cold weather, and the company doesn’t have any really tropical type locations. No Florida, no Southern California. We could go to Portland where there is a thriving art community, which Kelly Rae makes sound wonderful (!), but again, all that cloudy weather would do me in I think. I lived in the Bay Area for a number of years and was depressed like a Seasonal Affective Disorder thing. As soon as the sun comes out and there is warmth on my skin I am instantly happy again. I miss the palm trees and tropical flowers of San Diego. Today, I just don’t know where I fit in. Where is my place?

This is a painting I just finished. I did the big areas in acrylics and the detail work in watercolors. I have no idea where this idea came from. I just sat down one day and there it was.

Sometimes your neighbors live in houses; sometimes they live in pots.

I haven’t taken part in Illustration Friday in awhile.

I was looking at this week’s illustrations and saw the topic - Remember - and the first thing that came to mind was “Remember the Alamo” which seemed fitting since I recently moved to Texas.

While I was sitting in the hotel room waiting for my house to be ready, I painted this version of a Texas flag. I’ve never seen anyone so proud of their state as Texans!

I’m told I cried as a child when my mother tried to teach me to crochet. Unfortunately, I generally got my own way and I was never taught. I know it’s not possible to be a master of every craft or even have time to try them all, but this hat sure makes me want to try crocheting again.

This hat is by Helle Jorgensen. Visit her blog or her flickr account for some amazing things crocheted out of recycled plastic bags.

My mother, Valerie Dawson, is a master crocheter. She really can do anything. If she’s seen it or thought of it, she can make it. I’ll have to post a few of the things she’s made me - in my post on Stitch Austin, she crocheted the kitty ears I’m wearing. She is really amazing. I told her to submit one of her crocheted necklaces to Belle Armoire for their jewelry publication. She wasn’t sure they’d want to use it, but I was pretty sure they would. They didn’t end up publishing it in the jewelry publication, but it is in the current issue on newstands now May/June 2007.

Here’s a scarf she made for me:

She’s very prolific. She made about 7 scarfs that day and sent me photos of all of them asking me which I wanted! Here’s a what-do-they-call-this? A shrug?

She’s moving to Austin at the end of the month and maybe I’ll try to learn from her again - without crying this time. Here’s a necklace - maybe the same one she has in Belle Armoire?

I have to go pick up that issue on Friday.I wrote a little something for her birthday that just got published in Letters to My Mother - in bookstores for Mother’s Day.She doesn’t have a website yet. We’ll be working on that when she moves here. Isn’t she great?