Made In San Jose

I had a busy, crazy summer opening up an art supply store with Sean Boyles.  We did it!  It's called The Arsenal, located at 1202 The Alameda in San Jose.  Here's the website http://www.thearsenalsj.com

In the midst of all that I have managed to work on little projects.  Here's one of 'em...

I did these illustrations for a magazine called Made In San Jose.  Thank you Marie Millares, owner of The Usuals, for the feature.

I'm also working on a mural in a residential backyard garden, photos coming soon!

Plumline Vintage, Boulder Creek

I have my stuff up at a cute vintage shop in Boulder Creek, Plumline Vintage.

The "Flower Head" prints and "Ca Natives" ladies are being showcased during the Boulder Creek Music and Art Festival on May 14, Saturday.

Sean Boyles painted the mural in the front.

California Natives

About 5 years ago, I became obsessed with gardening. I mainly enjoy growing vegetables and more recently, California native plants. I even took some horticulture classes at Foothill College and later on was so fortunate to work for Agi Kehoe maintaining gardens for like, half a year. My favorite thing about native plants are the wildlife - bugs, bumble bees, butterflies and birds, oh my! Since then, I have much incorporated plants and flowers and bugs into my art. It's weird, every once in a while I would pick up my "California Native Plants for the Garden" book and read it from cover to cover as if it was, let's say, Bukowski's "Ham On Rye" (my all time favorite book). I know... dorky. Anyway, the last time I did it, I got this idea of personifying the plants, some of their descriptions in the book just lent itself to it. So, here's my first batch, I actually put it together as a zine which I am not so happy about layout-wise. But here's the art:

Arctostaphylos species (Manzanita)
-"unique beauty and grace" and "fragrant winter blossoms"

Ceanothus species (California Lilac)
-"They grow in some of California's harshest habitats."

Oxalis oregana (Redwood Sorrel)
- "delicate and tenacious character"
Romneya coulteri (Matilija Poppy)
- "queen of wild flowers"

"Ms. Manzanita" in progress

This one is on an 11 x 5 1/2 inches paper... fairly small. I used a doily I got from Pasta Market (baked lasagna sits on top of it on a plate) as stencil for the pattern on her dress.

... and done.

I finished the first piece of my new series that I've decided to call "Damsels in Distress".
I only have photos taken with my phone right now, so it's grainy, but here it is:

Here is a detail of the flowers on her head that I drew in graphite:

And here is to give you a sense of how big it is:


It's on a 30 x 22 inches watercolor paper and I used house paint, watercolor, graphite pencil, sumi ink, china marker, white oil pastel, black conte and gold acrylic.

Work in Progress

...still a long way to go.

Abstract Expression

Just experimenting with mixed media on paper. Each piece is about 7 x 13 1/2 inches. Let's see... for these ones, I used black conte crayon, sumi ink, watercolor, white oil pastel and graphite pencil.

Flower Head Prints

These are partly-monotype silkcreen prints. The first two passes, background and the shape of the figure are all the same. And then I painted details(face and flowers) on the screen, then squeegeed them. Pretty tedious process, I must say. The painting part takes a long time because water-based ink dries so quickly and clogs up the mesh. I had to wash the screen after every pass which was about 7 times on each one excluding the first two passes. Boo!

These ladies turned out the way I envisioned them though. Screen printing is in itself a tedious process anyway but most of the time pretty rewarding.