drawn again

There are few things in life that make me as happy as my dog does.

There are few things in life that make me as happy as art does.

Lately I'm finding myself dragging in dog tired and sitting down with the sketch book and reworking the same thing over and over again.

There's a freedom in doing something for the tenth time you'll never get the first time. The first version of this piece was a ghosty shell of a dog. One of my biggest artistic hang-ups is the fear of messing things up by doing too much too it. It's a mistake I've made time and time again. Take the same sketch and draw it and redraw again and again and more and more comes out of it. The ghosty version was followed by more intensely colored versions, inked versions, and swirly skies. I don't know about anyone else, but for me it takes a lot of comfort with a piece to be brave enough to start drawing swirls with a pen.

animal magnetism

Immanual Kant said

"We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals."

I'm pretty sure Dr A passes the test.

If you want a friend for life get a dog.

For me a house or an apartment becomes a home when you add one set of four legs, a happy tail, and that indescribable measure of love we call a dog. - Roger Caras

Art Hound Hooray

Goodness gracious!

One of my paintings was featured as a pick of the week on Art Hound!

(A couple weeks ago.)

Art Hound is awesome, and henceforth will be found in the List Of Blogs I Actually Read.

A Muir Inspired Doubletake

John Muir quote and the mountains take #1

Keep close to nature's heart... and break clear away, once in awhile, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean.

John Muir and the mountains take #2

How glorious a greeting the sun gives the mountains!

Let's get digital... digital. I wanna get digitaaaal.

Geez, la sha, paint birds much?

Photoshop artwork while Dr. A plays Smash Bros much?

Sell them on your Etsy page much?

Nope. not much... yet.

Blog weirdly in third person perspective much?

nerd.

Dawn at 8:00 pm

Tomorrow night I'm going to see this lady and also, this guy (Elvis Perkins in Dearland) at The Bell House in BK.

For well over two years I'd shake my paint and turn on some Bright Eyes (AKA any band Conor Oberst is in) or maybe some Iron and Wine, then get down to business. After a year Peter, who never really liked it much in the first place was sick of it.

Near the end of the second year, I pretty much was too, but I couldn't find anything else that was the perfect background music for creative contemplation... until we were out driving on a sunny day and Dawn Landes came over the radio doing an interview in her sweetness-drenched voice explaining how the song Little Miss Holiday is about an imagined meeting between a 12 year old Jane Fonda and the 15 year old prostitute she played in Taxi Cab. After we got home I bought her album "Fire Proof" then every other album she's made.

Happily, it wasn't long until I got to see her live at The Mercury Lounge, where she was so genuine and magical (and maybe just a little goofy) that cemented her spot a spot on the short short list of music I love so much, that I could listen to it all the time any time. You know what I mean... songs so precious, you keep actual physical c.d.s of it, just in case your computer crashes and your ipod drowns on the same day. My Bon Iver I could survive without, but not Sweetheart Rodeo.

Now, when the paint starts shaking, Peter knows who's about to start playing.

Post Edit: If you're in NYC, and you need an awesome way to spend this Friday night, why don't you come along? Buy yourself some tickets here, and get thee to The Bell House in Brooklyn.

100 percent chance of rain

I'm so ready for Summer

Sunshine and bright colors

sunburns and bug bites

the whole shuhbang

But tonight it's cold and raining, and I'm painting in a poorly lit little NYC apartment listening to Beatles.

Sun sun sun... here it comes.

I totally wish.

Post edit: By the way, if you're on your way out to Pier 1 to buy a crap crapp crappy piece of crap, please consider going here instead, or really, just annnny where else.

Friday night in the Ackercave

It's 2 AM.

Where are the Ackermen?

Base jumping?

ice cold.

reanimating dinosaurs?

Still extremely cold.

Carousing with celebs in the bustling Manhattan night life?

Sliiiiiightly warmer.

In bed asleep?

warmer! but not quite

On the couch looking at trail maps, reading icanhascheezburger and www.gotquestions.org?

BINGO!

We're awesome.

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

Gotquestions.org is one of the new sites on my fave list.

It's a good read.

Best when read with your spouse and a labrador.

photofail

I think you misspelled "see"... oh wait I get it.

Once in a while I'll sell a painting, then miss it a ton and try to recreate it.

Usually it doesn't work out and the finished product never sees the light of day, as it gets painted over pronto, but sometimes....

sometimes the second time around is better than the first.

That's definitely the case with one of the newest additions in my Etsy shop: I actually finished this last November for a show, but am only just now getting around to posting it cause I wanted to enjoy it for a while before possibly having to ship it of to a new home.

LOL Last November, when I got to the gallery with all my art, the curator asked me for the names of my pieces.

Names?

You mean "cute-square-painting-of-hands-making-a-heart-shape-in-front-of-the-ocean" doesn't work?

So this is what being put on the spot feels like.

Unfortunately, all I could come up with were weak puns.

Thus the name of this piece is "I'd Love To Sea You Again".

Also in the show was "You Are So Deer To Me"

And the smaller, but much loved "Wire we all just sitting around?"

Fortunately, the names weren't posted on the wall.

Unfortunately, I still can't think of good names for paintings.

The center of the stage is wherever you are.

"The theater is so endlessly fascinating because it is so accidental.

It's so much like life."

-Arthur Miller

I, for one, would love an encore!

Post Edit: We're prancing about here in the Naumberg Bandshell- a gorgeous relic of New York's 1920's opulence. It's hard to believe how widely ignored a place that has hosted everyone from Sousa and Irving Berlin to M.L.K. and John Lennon has become. Central Park is brimming with insanely gorgeous gems that inspire, nay, demand childlike play.

Q & A

Q: Where have I been and why have I not blogged a bit for 2 weeks (or so?)?

A: Working my fanny off and also... AcKeRpAlOoZa

Q: What, pray tell, is Ackerpalooza?

A: It's when the Ackerkids (Dr Peter, Nurse J., and meself) bend time and space to get together for adventures.

Verily, having time off and cash money enough to do stuff is a magical combination.

Q: Will I be recapping the adventures?

A: Absofrigginlutely! Let Ackerpalooza recap part one begin...

You know the party don't start till J walks in! The weather looked a little something like this: on day 1, so after getting settled in we went to Alice in Wonderland. Tim Burton is probably my favorite man in Hollywood, but Mr Depp seems to be slipping.

Day two was still rainy, so it was spent at Spa Castle where absolutely no pictures were taken. Absolutely none! Not one! Because taking pics at the spa is seriously not cool.

Day three was gorgeous, so we pulled out our compasses and other very serious hiking gear, and went exploring... in Central Park.

(By very serious hiking gear, I mean dresses with belts and cardis)

Random Things

Random thing I bet you didn't know about me #1

One time a couple years ago, a wanted murderer wandered into my apartment.

I offered him lasagna.

My friend kind of stole his shoes.

Then they played poker together.

mo MoCa

MoCa is THE BEST restaurant around.

(Around Forest Hills, that is)

The food is just sooo good. So I was really and truly shocked when I looked them up on yelp.com and found one bad review after another. I can't figure it out- everything is always so lovely there, from the food to the service to the ultramod decor.

Okay, maybe I could understand if someone is sensitive to the lights. The place does kind of have a Russian Disco meets Buddhist temple vibe. But personally, I find the effect combined with their gorgeous indoor water features completely enamoring.

The thing I just absolutely don't get is the complaints about the food. EVERYTHING there is so delicious! Especially their chicken pineapple fried rice.

It's served inside a pineapple.

Don't you love dishes served in fruit? I do.

I do sometimes have wonky food tastes, though, so I checked with Peter of the Red-Blooded-American-Man-TasteBuds to see if his picks all passed the normal tastes test and got an unequivical "it's awesome."

We went to MoCa for our last anniversary, and most recently, we went there for Valentine's Day after I found the surprise Peter got me (A Yudu screenprinter- WOOT!) Finding it involved solving complicated riddles and venturing out on the snow covered roof.

Because really, what holiday isn't complete without riddles and REALLY REALLY GOOD modern Asian fusion?

morbid snowbesity

Obesity. It's an epidemic.

Even the snow men are getting fatter.

This guy is going to take forever to melt- huzzah!

Also, I've updated the etsy shop with these two beauties.

Click here.

Introducing the Wine Flower

QUICK POST:

I made this.

Actually... I made these.

They're mighty purty.

You can get one here.

I'll be adding one a day for the next several weeks.

So if'n you like the concept, but don't fancy the color, then you just tune right back in tomorrow to see the next one I've listed.

Art!

Crafts!

Good times, whoohoo!

The Lost Mermaid

I was doing a full clean of my apartment today, and I found this painting.

I don't think I've seen it since the day I painted it.

Sometimes things get tucked away on the shelf and fall into oblivion. Books especially, or in this case, a painting on a book.

It might not my favorite, but it is much cuter than I remembered it.

Anyhoo, it has finally made it's way into the Etsy shop.

By the way, did you notice that my old store Loveaboveall magically became my new store Cleverish?

I'm still not sure if it's going to be a permanent switch.

If Cleverish doesn't earn it's keep, it might just die an untimely death, and loveaboveall will take over again.

We'll see.

Snow Day

Today, the weather looked a little like this...

Fortunately, I had the day off, so I played find-the exact-snowball-I-threw with Radar for a while. It requires very little effort on my part, because every time I throw a snowball (and it breaks up immediately on impact) Radar spends twenty minutes running around trying to find the exact snowball I threw.

Unfortunately, Mr A wasn't quiet so lucky- he had to work today, regardless of the weather.

He was counting on parking on his usual spot in the parking deck, but of course, the entire deck was full.

It wouldn't have been that much of a bother to have to park out in the snow except that it continued snowing while he was at work, so that when he came out in the evening his car was under a foot of snow.

There is a little known rule of weather that states that you will have a snow scraper in your car 100% of the time that it's unneccesary.

Today was no exception, so he scavenged around inside the car to find something to dig the car out with.

Mr Clean keeps his car pretty tidy, so his only tools were textbooks, scrubs, a Bible, sunglasses, jumper cables,....

and a big plastic vagina.

Because who doesn't have a big fake vah-jay-jay in their trunk?

giggity

(Actually, if you do, you better have just come from an I.U.D. lecture, or you got some 'xplainin' to do.)

I'll let you guess which one he ended up using to dig out the car with.