Falling for her

Kelis Kelis Kelis. Been listening to her CD since it came out and I'm still listening to it with fresh ears.

What!!!

I love the fact that she transitioned into dance music. Maybe it's because I feel like I better connection with her music now but whatever it is I personally think this genre fits her well

#thatisall

"Masquerade"

                                                 "Masquerade" Acrylic on 12x16 wood

I have two guilty pleasures. I  listen to Britney Spears religiously and I still watch cartoons. I absolutely j'adore cartoon action figures (esp Batman, X-Men, Sailer Moon, Sonic, and Yu-Gi-Oh) and I don't think I'll ever stop watching them. It gives life to my imaginations. I'm not crazy, well I hope I'm not, but when Mighty Morphin Power Rangers first came out, I fell in complete love with action heroes and created cartoon fantasies of my own. In fact, I grew up wanting to be a cartoonist, but I never believed that my dreams were realistic so I kept my comic journals a secret and focused on something else.

Although I don't have the same desire to be a cartoonist anymore, this piece helped me realize that I don't need to stick to one style. I'm a very random and unpredictable person that if I stick to one style, I'll be bored out of my mind. Art represents who you are as a person, therefore I'm accepting the fact that I may never have a distinct style due to my eclectic being.

I've been wanting to do this piece for so long but was afraid that people would think that I'm into "demonic" scary dark figures. But since I decided to step away from "groupthink", that's the least of my concerns and I'm happy with my new ideas. This was the first time I painted on wood panel and I enjoyed it so much. There's something sexy, raw, and organic about it and I encourage everyone to try drawing on wood. 

With that said, I decided to use my cartoon/action figures influences, and will focus on drawing more super hero characters from now on. The names will probably change along the way since this is an idea that's still marinating but let's call this one "masquerade" for now...

"You’ve just gotta fight your way through."

"Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through."

 

via:blog.nancylicious 

so cute

via: fragrantlyfragrant.

New sketch

 Sketch done on wood.
Can I say that drawing on wood, hardboards, and panels will be my new thang. It's divine. I love it better than canvass. Curious to see how well it'll hold paint...


Any thoughts? Opinions?

Glad I read this

“The advice I like to give young artists, or really anybody who’ll listen to me, is not to wait around for inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself. Things occur to you. If you’re sitting around trying to dream up a great art idea, you can sit there a long time before anything happens. But if you just get to work, something will occur to you and something else will occur to you and something else that you reject will push you in another direction. Inspiration is absolutely unnecessary and somehow deceptive. You feel like you need this great idea before you can get down to work, and I find that’s almost never the case.”
-Chuck Close

Funny. This is exactly what I learned this weekend. I thought I was wrong for not waiting for something to inspire me but guess I was wrong for thinking that way


Stop waiting for inspiration and just do it...

15 months locs

I tried to semi freeform but popping my hair hurts so I'm going back to my re-twisting every 3 weeks routine.
Since winter is own its way, I will start conditioning/moisturizing my hair with coconut milk. I love the smell of coconut and it also makes my hair very very soft. I love it and once I find coconut oi, I'll add that to my water hair spritz.
 What else what else

Oh
I'm also making my own flaxseed gel mixed with olive oil today because I'm getting bored with aloe vera and desire some sort of change. I met a lady on the train who's been locing for 10 years, and her locs doesn't look old at all. It's extremely thick and healthy so of course I had to ask her how she maintains her hair, and she said she re-twist with flaxseed. I love flaxseed in my bread and I usually sprinkle it on oatmeal and cereal, thus I'm curious to see how well it will hold my locs. I'll come back with the results in a future post.

Besides that still loving the locs. I'm glad I keep a hair journey because it's nice to look back and see how much progressive and growth I've made.

Also I look back on my budget sheet and I think I spent a little less than $30/year on my hair ever since I started locing.

Talk about saving money huh???

Stay inspired

Debra Meeks Photography

Pic of the Day

via:afro-art-chick


Depth and Soul

Pic of the Day

[in the voice of Lil Jon] OKAY snap snap.  FIERCE
Another beauty
taken from
 via: locluv

source: blkgirlsrock

Have a safe weekend!

One of my favorite songs. I'll never get tired of listening to it. I wish it was longer than 2 mins 30 secs tho....

Keep an eye on....

Roxanne Tataei aka ROX

and

Paloma Faith

I'm definitely buying these ladies CD's

Latest art pieces

"Hidden thoughts" is a rendition of one of my doodles.

                                            "Hidden Thoughts" Acrylic on canvas, 10x10

 Yep. I'm a chronic doodler. It's so serious that for years I've carried a notebook with me specifically for my doodlings. Heck in High School my Pre-Caculus teacher semi-embarassed me by showing my notebook to the whole class to poke fun of my doodles. Talk about invasion of privacy! Granted my doodles are super odd but whatever it shows that I'm thinking. I think.
Anywhoever, I wanted to share one of my doodles with the world and maybe encourage someone to continue doodling because it is an art in itself.

                                                   "untitled" Acrylic on 11x14 canvas

I struggled a lot with "untitled" to the point where I called my mentor for advice. Something about it made me feel uncomfortable. Initially I wanted it to be black and white. But I changed my mind midway and started adding colors to it. Now I regret (I shouldn't regret I know I know) that I did, because it would've been a completely different piece. I'm still not happy with it so I'm leaving it as "untitled" for now.  

                                                "Standard of Beauty?" Acrylic on 11x14 canvas

It's interesting to hear what people consider beautiful and I feel like it's important to ask yourself why certain things may seem beautiful or ugly to you.

When I was painting "(internalized) standard of beauty?" I intended on painting the hair brown, but a few friends of mine who were there watching the whole process, thought that blond hair would make the painting "fierce and pretty". So of course I wanted to add a message to get people to think about the stuff that we internalize in regards to beauty...


Drawing these pieces made me feel like I was going through puberty all over again. Watching and feeling my body go through some changes didn't sit well for me at all because I knew it meant I wasn't a child anymore.
Well, I felt that same awkwardness again and this time it's because my brain hasn't caught up with my transformation yet. I've been working on myself for awhile now, and I can say with confidence that I've changed drastically and doing these pieces made it apparent to me.

Anyway, I don't really have much to share today but I am selling the originals. Contact me if you want to know more details.




Stay Inspired :)

Beauty

via:prettydarkthings

The Artist with Multiple Personalities

Gallery: Kim Noble: the artist with multiple personalities, each with its own style of painting

Kim Noble is an artist with many distinct styles. She suffers from from a rare personality disorder called Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) - formerly known as multiple personality disorder. Many of her personalities paint, and each of her personalities has its own style of painting
She explains: “Some tend to be more abstract and some like using different colours. It can be very strange because I don’t always remember what I have done when another personality has been in control.”
The condition is thought to be related to severe trauma. “It started as just nightmares when I was younger but then it became much more serious when I was 14,” she said. “Over the years different doctors have diagnosed me as having schizophrenia, anorexia, depression. In many ways some of them were right. One of my personalities is anorexic so they weren’t totally wrong. But it wasn’t getting the whole problem”
In 1995 a psychotherapist was finally able to explain her problems as being caused by DID. Kim learned her condition was unusually severe in tests at University College London with memory expert Professor John Morton. “He did a lot of memory tests and told me he had never met a DID sufferer with so such strong divisions between the personalities. He found no memories existed between some of them”
During a session in 2005 at Kim’s home, carer Debbie McCoy – now an art therapist - suggested painting as a means of relaxing and six months later encouraged her patient to take it more seriously. “She took me out to buy some paints and a canvass and we decided I would try and do it properly instead of just doodling” In just 10 months Kim had her first art exhibited and now four years later has produced over 200 pieces through her multiple characters.

Outsider art has always been something that has absolutely fascinated me.  As an artist myself, I’ve always been more interested in the mind of the artist rather than the art’s external history.  A very close family friend is an art therapist who deals precisely with this and the art shows are the most incredible of all I’ve ever been to.  It’s fascinating to examine the similarities and differences between artists with schizophrenia, personality disorders, manic depression, or artists who are murderers, sociopaths, have suffered from severe brain injuries, or are developmentally delayed etc.
If you want to truly understand the mechanisms of art and the inner workings of the human mind, go to an outsider show.  There’s so much art we choose to ignore that’s made by some incredible people.  Great art is not just about “the bigs.”

hell yea!

*fist pumping because that's exactly how I'm feeling today*

I love this quote

"You Don’t Have to Be Pretty. You don’t owe prettiness to anyone. Not to your boyfriend/spouse/partner, not to your co-workers, especially not to random men on the street. You don’t owe it to your mother, you don’t owe it to your children, you don’t owe it to civilization in general. Prettiness is not a rent you pay for occupying a space marked 'female'".

via: dressaday 

Thought for today

"Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things. And the reason they were able to do that was that they’ve had more experiences or they have thought more about their experiences than other people".

via:pixelatedcrack

 

 

Rape Culture

"Rape culture is telling girls and women to be careful about what you wear, how you wear it, how you carry yourself, where you walk, when you walk there, with whom you walk, whom you trust, what you do, where you do it, with whom you do it, what you drink, how much you drink, whether you make eye contact, if you’re alone, if you’re with a stranger, if you’re in a group, if you’re in a group of strangers, if it’s dark, if the area is unfamiliar, if you’re carrying something, how you carry it, what kind of shoes you’re wearing in case you have to run, what kind of purse you carry, what jewelry you wear, what time it is, what street it is, what environment it is, how many people you sleep with, what kind of people you sleep with, who your friends are, to whom you give your number, who’s around when the delivery guy comes, to get an apartment where you can see who’s at the door before they can see you, to check before you open the door to the delivery guy, to own a dog or a dog-sound-making machine, to get a roommate, to take self-defense, to always be alert always pay attention always watch your back always be aware of your surroundings and never let your guard down for a moment lest you be sexually assaulted and if you are and didn’t follow all the rules it’s your fault."

via:guerrillamamamedicine