oh hey, flying cupcakes.

...that's pretty much what we've got here. officially, this is "what if you could move things with your mind?" but i lovingly refer to it as "telekinetic cupcake party." the "lovingly" part is only true when i'm not thinking about what a pain in the butt those sprinkles were.

this is another gouache painting layered with an ink drawing that has been digitally colored, like the last few. i will be, however, venturing into full digital for the next piece in the series, as yet to be determined. maybe something about dopplegangers, because the idea of a carbon copy you somewhere is sufficiently weird and terrifying.

also, thanks to all of you who came out to my opening on friday night! it was real swell, and a lovely departure from the crazy crazy week i had leading up to it.

dailies week OH NO, or, flowers for everyone.

it's finally happened for real. while i did manage to churn out another two weeks of dailies after the initial I DON'T HAVE TIME FOR THIS panic session, they are for real on hiatus. february appears to the month in which everything ever happens, so i am swamped. they are good things, but there are just so, so many. so many. the dailies will just have to wait. but i love them, so they will be back, i promise.

so that this post isn't entirely void of substance, here's my second 'what if' piece, "what if... flowers bloomed with your every step?"

it's a little desaturated, story of my (and everyone's) blogger-related life. next up is "what if... you could move things with your mind?" and i will give you just one clue: TELEKINETIC CUPCAKES. make of that what you will. fun fact: row houses are the greatest kind of houses.

lastly, my 2008 dailies in their entirety are currently installed in the gateway here at mica. while it was a rough time getting them all ready and installed, it is really exciting to see them all together, fancy style. the opening will be on friday from 5-7pm, and the lovely marika mccoola will be having her opening simultaneous to mine in gateway too, so you can come love on us both!

dailies week seven: adorable everything.

happy late valentine's day. this whole week of dailies was lovey-romantic everything, since after all, adorable is what i do best. gotta exploit it when i've got the chance. considering my actual valentine's day involved teaching third graders to play exquisite corpse, making pizza and watching snl, the adorable's gotta go somewhere. and here it is.

i'm finishing up the next "what if?" piece for thesis like right now (it's what delayed the posting of these dailies yesterday night, actually), so that should be up later this week. also, i'm sorting out a business card design, so i may post some of my comps for feedback (question mark? maybe? please?) a little later this week too. i'm trying to give the blog some love even when it's not a holiday.

in which alissandra is a big fat liar.

so i lied. i'm not making any promises on how long this'll last, but apparently, i'm not ready to give up just yet.

man, does that sound familiar.

in which the dailies take an indefinite hiatus.

hello, everyone. it's a bit of a melancholy day here in the studio, since my beloved dailies project, well, how to say this, um, tanked this week. i completed half the week as normal, and then, boom, catastrophe. not in the form of something dramatic, like chernobyl and the hindenberg combined, but in a quiet, sneaky way. before i knew it, my ever-growing list of things to do (like that weird fact that if the population of china marched past you in a single-file line, the line would never end due to the rate of population increase? if that's the case, china and my list have that in common) had grown out of control and my dailies were the sad casualty.

especially since this year's dailies are designed with a "be better" sort of purpose in mind, i wish i had the time to treat them that way. instead, they feel like an afterthought. so... until i get out of the "oh (expletive deleted) i'm (expletive deleted) graduating (expletive deleted) (expletive deleted)(EXPLETIVE DELETED)" woods, the dailies will have to wait quietly on my desk to be resumed. tentative plan? my birthday is in may. birthday day will be the day.

well, now that all that unpleasantness is out on the table, here's the first of my thesis pieces in the what if? series, "what if we could talk to animals?"

apparently, if she could talk to animals, she would have forest-storytime. wouldn't you? while i was thinking of these strictly as a series of adorable for kids that would allow me to work with whimsy and narrative, whitney sherman suggested they might accompany a fictitious monthly short-story installment in a kids literary magazine. I THINK THAT'S A GREAT IDEA, CRICKET/LADYBUG/SPIDER ART DIRECTORS.

i'm trying a couple new things with this series, so this one is an ink drawing with a gouache painting layered in photoshop. i'm pretty okay with the process, it's doesn't feel/look too too digital for me, almost. stay tuned to see how things progress! i should have two sketches this week, and since my dailies took a nose-dive, i think i'm going to start posting some of my sketch-phase work (pencils? color studies? something?) so as to not completely neglect the blog here. i'm working on the next one, a "what if flowers sprouted with your every step?" i'm not 100% sold on the language for the title, but you get the gist of it, like the king midas effect, but with flowers and your feet.

dailies week five: rearranging inside and outside my brain.

now, not many of you may notice (or maybe you do, i don't know how detail-oriented you are, lovely readers) that i notoriously post my dailies as close to the end of sunday or into the beginnings moments of monday on a regular basis. and then today, all of a sudden--gasp--it's 9:30! in the morning! on a sunday! and here i am.

getting acquainted with my new (and FINAL wow) semester at mica has taken a little more adjusting than usual. i'm always a little bit slow finding the right times to complete my work for my various classes, schedule my hours at work (like this delightful sunday morning desk shift at the gateway allowing for prime daily-uploading time), etc. maybe it's because of all the miscellaneous things that are super-important but not presently action-oriented but still swim around in my brain like, you know, GRADUATING and FINDING A HOME. it seems like i spend more time trying to figure out what i should be doing, rather than actually doing anything.

the only constant has been my unshakeable obsession with pale young gentlemen. they have been on constant repeat (sometimes just in my head) everywhere i go, and they have an mp3 on their website of their cover of m.i.a.'s "paper planes" that is epic. AND there are ladies in the band even though their name insists otherwise. so good so good.