Poison Poison Tasty Fish!

My studio has been set up to accommodate painting of the dolls so it’s been pretty hard to transition to flat paintings. I need a sloping desk top and some bits and pieces to hold my paints in while I’m working. It’s a bit of a nightmare, really, trying to paint on paper, but I’m making a go of it. I’m painting on top of a dinner tray that I can tilt up or down and since I don’t use palettes I’ve been taping pieces of cardboard on top of the actual painting I’m working on to mix the colors. I’ll figure it out soon. In the meanwhile, I am having some fun practicing new techniques and working on projects that I never got around to doing.

This is the latest, inspired by my Dad’s penchant for fine and sometimes dubious cuisine and an episode of The Simpsons. My Dad had an insane zest for life. He loved trying new things. When Colorado legalised a certain green thing, he happily drove me to the nearest dispensary and went in with me and paid for my “goods.” And when he drove me to my first gynecology appointment, he repaired to the nearest sushi bar while I was getting checked out and ordered himself a plate of fugu to calm his nerves, as my appointment, he had claimed, was more traumatic for him than it was for me. Fugu, if you are not aware, is deemed both a celebrated and notorious cuisine in Japan and selected countries. The difference between eating this dish and the garbage they serve in the “wet markets” of Asia is that fugu is only legal if it is prepared by a highly trained and licensed chef. As ambitious as my Dad was in his epicurean endeavours, he wasn’t about to make his own fugu in the kitchen.

Later on in his life, he more or less stopped eating fish. He hated seeing fish struggling to breathe when captured and then slowly asphyxiate, and that man LOVED his seafood! After he passed away I went through his files and found that he had been making substantial contributions to the WWF and other animal charity groups. And so this painting is not so much a study of an obscure Asian cuisine but more of a celebration of the life of a man who truly lived his own to the fullest.

The earthenware pot and the sake set are replicas of the ones my Dad owned! The pot is a representation of all the fun family dinners we’ve had to mark a special occasion. Shabu shabu is one of our favourite meals, even for me, who would not voluntarily eat 5/8 of the stuff I painted here, but I always sat around with everyone for hours on end as the pot bubbled and boiled with a seemingly never-ending array of food. At the moment, when visiting families is now either forbidden or a huge ordeal, I’m glad I have plenty of memories to hold onto.

My Favorite Murdery Podcast

As I’ve mentioned before, I like to watch my stories and/listen to audio books while I’m in the sweatshop, toiling away. One of my secret indulgence is putting on one those tawdry made-for-tv Lifetime movies, a habit I developed back in my college days when I used to watch them while trying to crank out painting assignments for classes. In those days my brother and I had lived together in a very hip and happening part of Greenwich Village so there would always be a stream of people coming in and out of our place so until my parents very kindly bought me a little TV set for my room, I hadn’t been able to watch movies like “When No One Would Tell” starring Fred Savage and DJ from Full House and “Face of Evil” starring a very blonde Tracy Gold, without interruptions. Imagine my joy to find such gems on YouTube now, pretty much doing the same sort of work as I did back then, but now I could watch these movies in peace. Naturally, with the amount of time I put in at the work table, I pretty much exhausted the entire library saved on my YouTube watch list in a few short months’ time and was low key freaking out about how to keep my sanity in tact whilst painting.

Thankfully, my illustrator friends came to the rescue and recommended some podcasts they thought I would be interested in and I am addicted. My favorite by far is My Favorite Murder, featuring two gals discussing murders with a comedic overtone. Listening to them have gotten me through some seriously harsh hours at my work table and, in my spare moments, I cranked out these two lovely ladies, Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark.

If you’re familiar with this popular podcast, you’ll recognize Elvis the cat and his cookie as well as a nod to Karen’s vocal styling at the beginning of every show. Just for fun, each doll is filled with various murder-y weapons including little bottles of poison.

As much as I enjoyed listening to them discussing a variety of murders, the subject matter does tend to get a bit intense, so I would switch on over to “The Baby-Sitters Club Club” podcast featuring two young men in their 30s talking about the seminal classic pre-teen books penned by Ann M. Martin. That particular podcast is not something I can listen to while painting detailed stuff because I’d be too busy doubling over laughing.

New Updates

I’d been looking at some older sets I’ve done years ago and haven’t had a chance to do it again and was hit with a sense of nostalgia. Some of those sets were painted in a corner of the dining table, or at my parents’ house when I visited with my little bulldog Bo snoozing at my feet. Those had been simpler, pleasant times and I decided to have a go at it again, and also to see if my skillz have improved over the years.

The first of the revivals was of course, “Small Wonder,” a very strange little sitcom about a man who secretly built himself a Roomba/Rosie Jetson the Maid  in the form of a little girl.

Vicki the robot “slept” in a little cupboard in the boy’s room and her existence was solely to clean up after the Lawson family as well as complicating their lives when caught doing un-little girl like things such as lifting up the couch so she could hoover under it. Harriet the neighbor was often seen eavesdropping and making inappropriate advances on little Jamie Lawson so that he can now rightfully #metoo on all conceivable social platforms. A show like this would never ever exist in today’s society so maybe that’s why I still love it so much.

These next updates were long in coming. I was never entirely happy with the first versions. The Mighty Boosh is a difficult one to configure because of the enormous cast, and also two of my favorites were basically a moon and a head with tentacles. But I figured it out.

This smaller version features Howard Moon and Vince Noir from season one, with Old Gregg with his Bailey’s and watercolor, Naboo the Shaman and Bollo the ape.

This deluxe version also features Howard and Vince but in different togs, Bollo, Old Gregg, Naboo, Tony Harrison, and, since there was still room for one more, the Moon, who is my favorite character on the show after Tony Harrison.

Mile High City Shenanigans

Well, the time has come for me to pack up my brushes, put away my paints, and head on back to the Down Under. Contrary to what people think, I didn’t take two entire months off from work. Far from it! My family aren’t exactly thrilled that I’m holed up in my temporary basement sweatshop, toiling away the entire time, emerging only now and then to feed and sleep and walk the Bo. I have been compared to a prairie dog, of which there are plenty of here in Denver.

But my truly awesome friend Po’Trowski made an effort to come here and see me all the way from New York and get me away from my work table for a few days! We took her to Lucile’s, a creole cafe with an awesome breakfast menu that features the most amazing beignets this side of Louisiana, and a breakfast beer for under $3!

We also did what New Yorkers do best: Shop.

No, we didn’t buy the Swaglash specs, but the lady at Claire’s Accessories tolerated our inability to keep our mouths shut as we made fun of all sorts of nonsense in the store that’s clearly designed for people at least 20 years younger than us.

We also did some sightseeing, one of which was the Stanley Hotel, which I’d only caught a glimpse of during my first visit to CO years ago.

One of these days I’ll have time enough to go inside and indulge in a ghost walk. Until then, I’ll just watch “The Shining” again!

Of course, it’s not all play and no work here. Po’Trowski was pressed into service, temporarily taking over Shane’s job as my sweatshop helper.

Here she is, prepping the doll sets at my niece and nephew’s craft table. I’m a little disappointed that they’re too young to be working for me, but give it a year or so and I’ll really have something going here!

See you all back in Oz! My etsy store reopens 4 May with brand new items including the Grand Budapest Hotel and some new and improved Breaking Bad and mini Big Lebowski! Watch out also for some real nostalgic trips down the 80’s memory lane!

Practice Makes Perfect

It seems like these days I’ve been painting the same things all the time. It’s fine since I’ve got the system down and I can more or less crank out a set in a few days’ time instead of a whole week. There’s less time for reading and Angry Birds, but I’m usually the happiest in my sweatshop.

All right, the picture above is not so much a system as it is me showing off my ability to correctly label and arrange the paints by color, but still…

The only reason why I’m not whining about how I’m always painting the same sets over and over is that I’m a firm believer in the fact there’s always room for improvement. Painting isn’t exactly my forte…I’ve always been a pen and ink kind of gal since it’s so readily accessible and you can do far more damage with indelible ink than paint.

So I’m pretty happy that, while looking through the archives of the 335 sets I’ve done, I can see some improvements.

This was the first ever Royal Tenenbaum set I’ve painted. What with it being the first one, I didn’t get a chance to refine it. I’m a bit embarrassed to see it plastered all across various websites and tumblr and other social media outlets, actually.

The other ones have gotten slightly better, but it could still use some fine tuning. One of the major addition is Mordecai, Richie’s pet bird.

Lately, the Tenenbaum sets have gone through some transformations but I’ve been too busy to photograph them all. All right, most of you are probably saying to yourselves, “What are you on about, Irene? They all look the same!” Not so! Richie Tenenbaum’s got on a pair of sunnies now!

Kumar Pallana, the actor who played Mr. Pagoda and other bit parts in Wes Anderson films has passed away recently. In honor of him, I’m now including a mini Pagoda in the newer Royal Tenenbaum sets.

Here is another addition/subtraction to the set: Mordecai is now replaced by “Three Plays” by Margot Tenenbaum.

This new set of six will be available at the Pygmy Hippo Shoppe in February.

But how cool is that background?

It’s done by Max Dalton, who did an excellent depiction of the Tenenbaum house. I’ve been looking for something new to hang on my studio wall…think I’ve found one! All of them are sold out, but I am fortunate enough to snag the one he did of all of my favorite horror movie villains…and then some!