Happy New Year!

Below, please find my Xmas Eve day.

I drove to the beach and sat on a rock and hummed Christmas tunes in my head.

A very Merry Xmas and/or any and all other holidays you might happen to celebrate. (I grew up celebrating the former.)

I'm spending this eve alone. I'm not sure I've ever done that before. This has nothing to do with depression, loneliness, or anything else blue and sad. This is simply timing, circumstance and free will.

I'm blessed and fortunate.

I hope everyone who happens upon this has a wonderful week and a tremendously happy 2009. We all deserve that.

And love.

back online


GREETING CARDS


More to come, I promise!

There's lots to be done -- not the least of which is update this artblog and entertain/perplex it's 3 readers...

Happy Leftovers Day!

thanksgivingtime
----

We just had a "winter storm". There was thunder and lots of rain and now my car is much cleaner than it was yesterday.

Also, it's the big old Thanksgiving Weekend!

And no mashed potato poem. I'm retired, remember?

But I did spend this evening letterpressing and we made some dope cards that will soon be for sale. (yes I said "dope". no I won't take it back.)

What I'm grateful for today (a top 5 list):

1. KP, for his help and guidance and extra hands and tutorializing and general awesomeness.

2. My family-- the immediate members who are temporarily in Pennsylvania for the weekend, and the extended members who are all over the place, but some of which who are located Eastward off the 10 and who I will be seeing soon.

3. My darling friends near and far. You know exactly who you are.

4. My delightful studio apartment, which is decidedly not haunted-- especially now that I figured out the loud tap-tap-tapping on my window is water falling from the roof onto my AC unit.

5. My mom. I was lucky enough to have her around for as long as I did. And I know she is there (a still, small voice) quietly guiding me along.



I hope everyone has a wonderful turkey day-- or tofurkey day, depending on how you do.


Here's an oldie, well it's an oldie where I come from...

wherein I pretend I don't watch The Hills on mtv.com during my lunch break...









Of COURSE I know better.
Don't judge me.

Okay! Back to artstuffs, folks.
Thanks for bearing with me during that brief "artpalpitations gets political" moment. I know it was tougher on some than others.
To reward you for sticking with me through superTuesday and beyond, i give you...

Down and Dirty Scratchpaper Scribbles

It's Monday, darlings.

This is what I drew tonight to distract myself and stop myself from eating a third cookie.

Had I had this idea earlier, I might have avoided the 5 potstickers, 20 wasabi peas, two cookies, a glass of apple juice, and an hour of sitting/staring/drooling at last week's episode of the Office.

I did hula hoop earlier while watching 30 Rock on my computer, which indicates I am nowhere near rock bottom. [This is how I joke, family! ... seriously. Don't call me to express concern. xoxo]



Why am I so soft in the middle, now?




I tell people I don't have a TV, but hulu.com is arguably worse.




I've been having bad hair days.




I'm eating my feelings.




If you think this didn't happen, you have me confused with someone else.



I'm glad we had this talk.

File under: still not drawings, just thoughts and links

It will be interesting to see how this all plays out.

click here to re-live the magic (seriously uplifting!)

but remember..

the work is far from over

I will get back to art soon, I promise.
But I'm fascinated by how it feels to live in America right now. I have a hope I haven't felt in 8 years. It's amazing. Who knows how long it will last... But as long as it's around, I can dig it.

Also, here's something:

Protest

And if you're in California:

Look here

It just feels important.

That is why I'm sharing this.

I came home this evening to find a package waiting for me at my door.
Finally! My campaign shirt.

Better late than never...

Right? Exactly!

"If you bring forth the genius within you, it will free you. If you do not bring forth the genius within you, it will destroy you."

Since I feel I should probably cite my references, I'll mention that the internet attributes this quote to Jesus. Either way, it's a compelling thought.

An open letter to California -- and some of the people in it.







October was bizarre.
November is just surprising.
And it's only the 5th...

Seeing "Goonies" for a good cause? How can you not???





I'm going. You should too. Because it's our time. It's OUR time... down here.

Click HERE and HERE for more info.

This will be my wild-card post that I should have posted Sunday to complete my challenge.

Mostly this is a post about how I'm proud of being able to come up with a new Halloween costume aside from my Autumnal Splendor outfit I usually wear.

I assembled my flapper kit somewhat from scratch. And I feel like I managed to rather successfully live up to the hand-drawn iconic representation that I sketched earlier (prior to drawing that sketch, I had only found the dress and was still working on gathering/creating the rest of the ensemble...)

So there ya go. Consider my own horn sufficiently tooted.


And consider this week-long artblog post challenge OVER. Stay tuned. I want to do more of them in the future!

Sunday came and went so quickly. I never got a chance to sit down and post my final weeklongpostadaychallenge post. There was no theme-- just total whatever.

I will post tonight though-- a day late. Better late than never.

Please check out my darling cousin Jesse's site. He managed to maintain his prompt postings for all 7 days and if there were some sort of winner to be declared with this challenge, it would be him.

I want to also send out highfives and thanks to Kevin, Matt and Greg for doing as much as they could. This was fun!

When did it get to be November all of a sudden?

Don't forget to vote tomorrow!

This artblog recommends:

Obama/Biden
and
NO on Prop 8

DAY 6 is "hybrid"

meh. It's Saturday.

Day 5 is "HALLOWEEN"

Below is a rendering of the Halloween costume I've put together this year.

I'm going to party like it's 1919...

Day 4 is "self portrait"


It also happens to be MattyO's birthday. Happy Birthday, bubba!

DAY 3 is "record album"










I was bequeathed a bunch of great old vinyl a few years back, but the album I've listen to most on the record player (unapologetically) this year is In Rainbows.

Day 2 is "heaven"

The theme for DAY 1 is "twenty five cents"

It always makes me think of those gum-ball and prize machines in Kroger's when I was a kid. Mom rarely was able to be convinced to give me a quarter...

more hedgehogs

Last night I dreamed about catching hedge hogs in a paper cup.

This morning, I read Ricky Gervais' blog and he talked about hedge hogs. And then I came across a CNN news video segment about rescued hedge hogs in Prague or somewhere.

Hedgehogs! All over the damn place.

Anyway. I drew a picture of the one in my dream. It was little and kept running all over the place, but I was able to scoop it up in a cup to catch it.







I've been struggling against some major creative blocks this year. And I'm out of excuses.

I am a rather flawed individual. My family, girlfriends, boyfriends and ex-boyfriends are all deserving of serious high-fives. I have two giant fears. One is that nobody will notice me. The other one is that somebody will notice me.

I think hedgehogs will be the new animal I like.

[end]

How can i feel so inspired and so paralyzed at the exact same time ... ?

This started out as just wanting to show the one or two friends who would even care about such things that I had a synchronicitous moment while walking to the Tate Modern and listening to Elbow on my iPod. I happened to stumble upon a busker playing music that was in the same key as what I was listening to-- and in fact it fit in quite well to the song already playing in my ears.

I caught the last little bit of what he was playing on video and I have synched it up to "I've got Your Number", which is what was on my ipod at the time.

Then I just put in other random footage and photos from my trip to finish out the song. A bit boring-- but if you want to know what I saw a few weeks back whilst walking around London, here is a good taste.

This currently exists around the corner and down the street from me.





On an unrelated note, the invention of the pocket-sized digital camera is the realization of a childhood fantasy I always had that involved being able to take pictures of everything I saw all the time without having to spend money on processing and waiting days for the pictures to be ready.

I am in constant amazement of the technology that now surrounds me on a daily basis.

Sunday was a waste. But I am unapologetic.

There's nothing like a nice whirlwind visit to the UK to clear the old head.

I'm going to go ahead and admit crushing defeat at the hands of artist-extraordinaire Matt O'Connell. Perhaps we could call it a "draw"? hahaha! ugh.

No drawings for a little bit, but hopefully some updates from Eng-er-land?

ta ta for now...

-me

Today I am getting a haircut.

This is not a selfportrait probably. Although I think it would be cool to have hair like that...

Oh hello, Matt, I bet you thought I forgot. Well I didn't. Happy Friday, loves. I'm off work for 2 weeks. This weekend I have to figure out what to take overseas in my suitcase for to wear. I'll worry about that tomorrow. Tonight, I'm recovering from doing something really stupid to my back-- but I knocked down NINE pins! And I'm enjoying that last bit of my wine on sale at wholefoods.

Thursday's posting is something I drew as I was blurry eyed last night around midnight. I had just completed a 4-hour clean-up (I mopped the kitchen floor even!) and sat down to quickly make some crap drawings for this stupid game that was my idea but I suck at.

Anyway, as I as drawing, I noticed that there were times when the mouse icon kept disappearing off the screen. After further investigation, I realized that it wasn't the screen, it was my eye. I think I have a tiny blind spot in my right eye. I'm still trying to decide if it's there all the time or if it just starts to get that way when I'm tired. To be continued!

Anyway-- the real point of this post is that today is KP's 30th birthday. I wanted to draw him a picture despite my midnight blindness last night. Here it is. I believe the sentiment is what counts here, people.

Happy Birthday, Kev! I drew you a balloon!

I think I have officially lost this game. Tuesday's drawing is nowhere to be found. On Tuesday I kept putting off drawing anything until it was too late and I was at the UCB laughing my ass off at Comedy Death Ray.

On Wednesday, my cubicle mate was talking about oxtail soup. The idea of oxtail soup pretty much grosses me out. I can't quite remeber what an ox looks like specifically, but I figured I'd draw a picture of what pops in my head every time I think of the aforementioned soup.

This one's for you, Em.

Monday's Drawing

Today, i was too lazy to scan, so I used my trusty old wacom tablet (thanks mikejohnson!) and drew a self portrait. This is EXACTLY what I looked like today. I wore my shortpants and earth shoes and new red shirt.

File under "Tired and Uninspired"




I notice Matt had not posted today as of yet (9:55 pm). I think I win a point!

Round Three:

A bottle of wine for Matt. From the FUTURE!

This is Saturday's drawing.

Now, if Matt also drew a frog... um... well, there's some sort of penalty or extra bonus point that should be awarded. This game I invented is becoming increasingly awesome.

I think Matt is still winning because I posted my Friday's drawing on Saturday due to the fact that I ran out of time to scan yesterday and went out last night to see Rob Dickinson (of Catherine Wheel fame) perform at the Hotel Cafe. Side note: he covered one of my favorite Smiths songs*. This is neither here nor there. And neither is the image below. Another side note: when I was a kid I loved catching frogs-- specifically English frogs who resided in my aunt and uncle's front yard in the early 90's.





*yes I first heard the song in Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Nobody in my life prior to that point ever listened to The Smiths-- at least not when I was around.

This is my Friday "play" in Matt O'Connell's and my "game" where we "draw" a picture every day for seven days. The scoring and rules have yet to be firmly established. But I think he might be winning...

A snapshot of what I was working on yesterday. It's far from finished. It's tentatively titled "I wonder what goes well with frozen pizza?"

Tonight I ventured out to my local NoHo laundromat to wash 3 loads of laundry in one hour. There were two TV's on. One was playing some Spanish language soap opera. The other was playing Sarah Palin's speech at the GOP convention.

I'll spare you paragraphs about how angry her speech made me, and I'll skip right to the part when it was all over, and the lady turned off that particular TV, and I stood there as my things were drying and remembered two fun things I did this month.

Radiohead [best]

and

The Room [worst movie ever made-- so bad that it has a cult following of folks who watch it every month with relish at the Laemmle Sunset 5].

Then I came home, put away my clothes, cleaned my bathroom, was feeling productive and made this. [SEE BELOW]

Now I'm gonna plug in my amp, test out my bass that I just got back from the shop, and pretend that I'm awesome.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

After months of swirling about, having adventures, rearranging furniture, and having no home-internet connection, I am triumphantly planted on my own two feet, completely unpacked, and back on line-- as is clearly illustrated in the image above.

Pictured: me standing on my exercise ball chair holding my laptop, connected to the outside world.

Not Pictured: The bottle of wine from which I was sipping and the sage I was burning during my 30 minute conversation with AT&T tech support. (it must be mentioned that this company's tech support staff at 10pm on a Wednesdsay night are very helpful and all issues were ultimately resolved in a peaceful and satisfying way.)


To those who check this space: greetings! As per usual, my "sorry I got off-track but let us move forward, onward and upward" speech applies here.

Let this be Fresh Start #97.

respectfully &etc.,

M. Farrar

Hello!




A new card for sale. Letterpressed! [click here!]

some comix inspired by the workplace...

The red one is a drawing Matt O'Connell did of a cuttlefish. The drawing just below it in black is my response drawing.



The next one is dedicated to Emily Nordwind who co-wrote the dialogue. It touches upon an important issue regarding the capacity of one's handbag.



ps. the copyright logo on the bottom right is dedicated to Greg Miller.

It's pretty cool in LA again. Perfect for my long vest!

Today at work we got an email informing us that boot camp was going to be offered on site. Below was inspired by a conversation with a coworker about what that might be like-- were I to sign up. These days I'm almost too fragile for yoga let alone anything else...

And so it is that I find myself flying solo this weekend. The boys are in the woods and I will spend Saturday in the exploration of alternative healing methods. And maybe the farmer's market near Venice on Sunday. I've got a hankerin' for organic apples, nectarines and grapes.

This weekend, Me, myself and I and... all the rest of us:

On the up-side: I managed to avoid Jury Duty this week. Thank you to the LA superior court automated phone service for never requiring my presence at the actual courthouse.

Today's ink-pen lineup: (can you find the homage to Matt O'Connell?)

March 2008

Getting back to the process...

At the end of '07, I shelved this place. I tried to implement change, but I only went half-way and then got turned around and distracted.

So, today I shall subscribe to "everything old is new again" and head back to my ol' artblog.

Updates are coming. I can feel the stirrings of something, trying to take root in my brain and bloom-- sprouting out my ears. Spring has officially come again.

Here's the first big catchup post.

Below, a few little scribbles. I figure I might as well get all the crap drawings out first. (these were drawn during my detox diet. The colored one reminded me of peanut M&M's. I'm pretty sure I was craving a snack...)











For eastertime, I initiated a little egg-dying project. Photographic documentation follows. (I will not confirm nor will I deny any rumors of these being raw eggs and me dropping and breaking the first in mid-dye-dunk-switchout)






Here are the irises I purchased at my local Trader Joes to honor the 64th anniversary of my mother's birth on March 7 and 3rd anniversary of her untimely death on March 12. Bonus points to anyone to can bring me a suitably beautiful design of this flower that I may get tattooed on my person in the near future.





This concludes our broadcasting day.

Very exciting! I've already sold over half the valentines I made. Granted, it was a very limited run... I'm just testing the waters right now to see if anyone actually wants what I can make.

Have you checked them out yet?

Check out my online store at www.melindafarrar.etsy.com now and again to see what's going on!