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.

dailies week four: tricked by the sun.

despite at the cold-weather imagery that has been showing up in my dailies as of late, i managed to be fooled into going out to run some errands today entirely winter-wear-less: no coat, scarf, not even any sleeves. t-shirt plus skirt = chilly (and dumb) alissandra. i think it's a flaw in my weather evaluation strategy, which basically is just me looking out the window before i leave the house. "what's that, window? the sun is shining all cheeky and warm, you say? must be delightful outside, let's go!" and that is how i end up freezing my ass off.

the primary ass-freezing errand was a three and a half hour date with a giant printer and all 365 of my 2008 dailies. that's right, the work for my upcoming show is 100% printed out.
it's official.
i ordered my postcards.
i made catering arrangements.
t-minus three weeks.
whoa.

dailies week three: back in bmore.

this week was slightly less hiccup-y than the last with the new dailies formatting. all ink is definitely the way to go, i think. next challenge: color? baby steps, friends, baby steps. click for the big version, please!

in other news, i am back in baltimore, and was greeted by gloriously freezing temperatures (unlike usual, there is zero-percent sarcasm in that statement). it's mellowed since my arrival, though i imagine the two things to be unrelated, and now it's sitting nicely in the 30s. i wax poetically about the weather here because, while i imagine arizona has many redeeeming factors, not the least of which is my family that dwells there, the fact that the sun stupidly shines every damn day is not so much one of them. the moral of the story? i'm glad to be back.

practice makes... practice.

with my precious few remaining hours of lazy tv-laden days before i head back to school on thursday, i have been dutifully practicing some inking and basic digital color. these are the product of my efforts: dandy picking flowers in purple socks, book-reading cowgirl-ballerina, and chilly contortionist & friends, with earflaps.

they are nothing fancy, just playing around with colored line. and... i suddenly notice that everyone i draw has bad posture. anyway, i have many things to take care of before i jump on a plane in the wee thursday morning hours, so i'm off to probably ignore them. oh christmas break, you undo all my studious productivity habits.

dailies week two: comment love.

here it is, the first full week. i like this new practice fine i think, but there are some tweaks in the future. likely color (thanks nancy!), maybe not so with the pencil or the toned-ish paper. any thoughts? sorry for the super-small slash sucky image, it gets better if you click it, i swear.


also, i am making a point to be better about responding to comments that you are all so lovely to leave me. i like you i really do! i'm just maybe not so great about showing it sometimes. and, along a not-so-similar vein, i caved and joined twitter today, as you can see by the mild update to the blog, the "there i am too." section, with other places to find me and my things.

mini-sneaky dailies update.

so. limping into the new year with a mega-late first half-week of daily-drawing things. in an effort to stick to the sunday updating, these are the first of them pre-weekly spreads (that kick in tomorrow).

i ran into quite a few hiccups with the new format, aka, i'm very cranky. i've been flexing back and forth between ink and pencil which makes good scans sort of tough, so we'll see how long that lasts. one thing that won't: brush pens have exhausted there last possible appeal and are dead to me.

tomorrow i'll upload the rest of them. hoo-ray.

the end of an era (or a year, whichever).

so i realize that i'm a few days behind on my happy new years sentiments. i got into the sunday-posting habit for my dailies, even though this week not only ended on a wednesday (when my happy new years-ing might've maintained some relevance), but also ended FOREVER. so here's the last of them:
sunday, december 28th: "i will watch anything and everything in marathon format."
monday, december 29th: "man i just love web-design."
tuesday, deceember 30th: "multi-tasking as if i actually needed to economize my time."
wednesday, december 31st: "nice to see you 2008, nice to meet you 2009."

as far as the new dailies are going, i have decided to treat them something like christopher david ryan's daily postings, which are a smorgasbord of illustration, design, photography, collage, etc. rather than choose one specific thing, i am going to do one mystery thing every day, be it a character illustration, a pattern, some hand-lettering, whatever. JUST AS LONG AS I DO SOMETHING. i haven't scanned the first few quite yet, so hold your horses.

only loosely related is the fact that, embracing the 'new' part of the new year, i revamped my website. the changes are largely in the portfolio department with my comics, but also (fingers crossed) in functionality as well. slightly more related is the fact that you will also find the first half of the 2008 dailies project (never before seen!) for those of you dutifully following them week to week, or just for anyone who's curious.

anyway, happy new years and all that. i'm a resolution-making sort of girl, so here's to 2009 being a fruitful one. also of note: the first book i read in the new year was the delightful "i was told there'd be cake" by sloane crosley. a collection of essays that read a little like sedaris channeling dorothy parker, i super-recommend it.