Designing Women

There had been a lot of squealing coming from the ol’ sweatshop a month or so ago. A woman I was chatting with casually announced that she knew “someone who worked on Designing Women” might be interested in having a set commissioned. My mind immediately raced through the cast of the show I used to watch religiously after hours when I was trying to finish my myriad projects for class. Who could it be? I decided not to ask the woman who this mysterious potential customer might be and just be pleasantly surprised. But secretly I was hoping for Delta Burke. I loved Suzanne Sugarbaker and had stopped watching after she left the show.

And it was! She was very sweet and knew exactly what she wanted for her set. The icings on the cake? I got to make a wig, a pageant crown, and a pig!

This set was extra special for me because I have been dying to make a pig doll ever since I became a devout follower of numerous piggy Instagram accounts.

 

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The Hobbit Revisited

When I was asked to work on The Hobbit again with Smaug as the first doll, I panicked slightly. That had been a hard one to do but then I thought about how I wasn’t exactly thrilled about how the spines turned out the first time, I buckled down one weekend and allowed myself to get carried away. In order to be able to paint the dragon, one must first be the dragon. That’s my new motto, but only because dragons are known for sitting on piles of gold and I wanted to sit on a pile of cookies while I crank this set out.

This set featured three characters from The Hobbit that I hadn’t done before so I was more than pleased to have worked on it.

Since the set I was using had yielded an extra doll, I thought it might be a riot to remove it and stick The One Ring in as an Easter Egg surprise for the buyer. The Precioussss, of course, was most definitely not made of Elfin gold so I was half expecting it to disintegrate as soon as take it out of the packaging. It didn’t, of course, but it would most likely tarnish if it’s worn.

The buyer sent me the loveliest email after receiving it. He said the set had made him cry, and his words had made ME cry, a hardened and jaded former New Yawker who only cries in darkness after watching animal movies. I started painting these dolls during a very emotional time in my life when I had to adjust to living in a new country without any physical support from friends and family. Painting the dolls had been therapeutic and amusing, something I sorely needed then. It made me happy to learn that the photos I shared of these dolls also made other people happy, although the tears people shed after seeing them were always unexpected. I hope that’s a good thing.

Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious

Growing up, I thought Mary Poppins was the most magical movie I’ve ever seen. I didn’t exactly have a nanny, but I did have a baby-sitter named Ross who was in high school and had a mullet and a full beard and, upon discovering my mother used to be a piano teacher, made demo tapes of his drum solos and make her listen to it. This experience made me wish I had a magical nanny even more, especially after Ross took off on my brand new dirt bike for a test run before I even had a chance to. Looking back, he’s actually pretty awesome, but when you’re 8 and barely spoke English, you want someone like Mary to come home to after a long tough day at school with a song for every task and not an intense 20 minute drum solo on side A of a cassette tape.

Naturally, I’d want to capture a little piece of my childhood in the form of nesting dolls. Unfortunately, due to the pile and piles of projects sitting in my sweatshop at all times, I had the set boxed at the bottom of the stack for a year, then, after I got a chance to sketch it, it sat there for another year. Yet another year passed before I was able to sit down and study the hats the characters sported in Jolly Holiday and got it printed. The entire set took a shocking 3 months to paint from start to finish since I was only able to work on a tiny bit at a time. But it’s finished and tonight I will have cake to celebrate.

I’d thought originally that the toughest one to paint would be the carousel. It certainly took the longest, but I suppose, after a full day of painting, I daresay I was on autopilot and can’t really remember the entire process!

The Middle

There are so many shows out there that I haven’t gotten around to watching, and “The Middle” is one of them. I was asked to paint this set and was honestly quite unprepared to because I really like to know a show first, at least peripherally, before committing to a project. I never feel fully connected with a set if I’m not familiar with it. Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to watch this show at all and was feeling a bit unsettled by the prospect of starting this project until the buyer revealed to me why he wanted it in the first place.

I have painted a lot of sets for fans of the movie or TV show but I never feel like I have the right to ask them “why.” A lot of them share with me the reason, which is always a bonus so when I’m painting the pieces, I can think about it and hope I capture the essence that had made them fans in the first place. Most of the time the buyers’ connection to the show is a happy one, but this one story was quite sad. It was about loss and loneliness and “The Middle” helped bring this person out of whatever sadness he was experiencing at that point in his life. I can’t help but feel a little weepy while painting (but it may also be from the fact that my shoulder and elbow is now rebelling against all the unreasonable exertion I’ve been putting into them in full force), but I enjoyed every minute of creating it.

The Hecks is: Mike, Frankie, Axl, Sue Sue, and of course Brick. Apparently there are 9 seasons of this show…something for me to binge during my upcoming sojourn back to the USA!

The Twilight Zone

You are about to enter another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land of imagination. Next stop, the Twilight Zone!

The Twilight Zone is hands down my favorite show in the world. I used to look forward to New Years Eve where I could cover myself with fleece and binge watch every episode straight into the new year. Even when I was older and was expected to show up at events and parties, I still made a point to beeline for a TV and take in at least an entire season’s worth of the eerie tales from another dimension.

I have to admit I’m both a bit thrilled and saddened by the fact that all the Twilight Zone eps are readily for streaming nowadays and I can indulge in my New Year’s eve extravaganza at any time. But it isn’t the same, naturally. I did, however, jump for joy when I was asked to paint some of the old favorites from the show, though, and was grateful that I could watch dozens of episodes while painting it!

There is something so timeless about good ol’ black and white. But this set was done in technicolor.

Some details:

We’ve got the Mystic Seer from “Nick of Time” featuring a couple stuck in a small town restaurant and a pagan napkin holder; the Gremlin from “A Nightmare at 20,000 Feet,” The Kanamit from “To Serve Man,” and the little space man from “The Invaders.”

 

Reno 911!

This was, and always will be, my favorite show in the world. It also made me realize I would never A. Be an actor and B. Be an improv comic…not that I ever have aspirations to do either since I’m more of a “behind the scenes” kind of person. I’ve painted Reno 911! a long time ago and was happy I had some time now to revisit it. Painting this set brought up some really happy memories, such as while waiting for an ex-boyfriend to get ready for a night out on the town, I watched half an episode for the first time and knew right then and there I would be a lifelong fan; hosting a girl’s night in with my bestie and the two of us laughing so hard that mops and cleaning products had to be brought out halfway through the viewing.

Ghost World Theme and Variations

Back when I was a studious piano student (albeit not a good one), I was often tasked with learning composers’ many “theme and variation” compositions. At the time I often wondered why anyone would want to do that, write different versions of the same core theme, but now I get it. I’ve been asked to paint a few dozen Ghost World sets, which can get a bit monotonous, but I find that if I paint something slightly different after a long day, my sanity can be saved.

This one features Enid Coleslaw and her friend Rebecca who are attending Seymour’s record party.

And this one is simply all about Enid Coleslaw in a ton of retro vintage thrift shop (I’m assuming) clothes.

Some close ups:

It’s mad to think working on something like this can save my sanity, but it’s true.

This set was painted a few years ago, right around the time when I met Alvin, Buenaventura. He was a giant in the graphic novels/comics publishing and from what I heard about him, he was the force behind a lot of the successful comic book artists out there today (Think BoJack Horseman). I not only had the pleasure of working with him, but I was fortunate enough to break bread with him when the hubs and I were in San Francisco. He had offered to give me a gallery show, which I turned down due to my overwhelming work schedule. It was a gesture I appreciated to no end because it showed how much he believed and supported me. It was why I was really devastated when I found out he has passed away. Ghost World had been our connection and I am dedicating this set to him. May you continue to shine wherever you are, Alvin.

Wonder Woman is the 1000th Set

Nine years ago around this time I ordered two sets of blank nesting dolls—one was to be a gift for my hostess when I was in Japan a few months earlier and the other was a just-in-case-I-messed-up-the-first-one. I’ve never painted nesting dolls before and wasn’t sure how I would feel about repetition. I mean, that’s the reason why I never took children’s book illustration seriously even though that had been my concentration at SVA. The first set went all right and I wanted to paint another one. And another. And another. 1000 sets later and I’m still going at it.

For a few weeks I was low-key anxious, wondering which set would become the 1000th, as I normally work simultaneously on 4-6 sets daily. When it became clear that Wonder Woman, one of my favorite movies last year, was to be the one, I immediately decided to give up my sugar-free diet for the day and made some cake to celebrate. I’m regretting the cake now, but thrilled about how the set had turned out.

I started painting these dolls at the dining table, wondering if I could ever make a living at it. Turns out I can’t, really. But it does provide me an ample opportunity to meet with people from around the world and hone my craft to a very sharp point on a daily basis. To quote the friend who had gotten me on this path: “When you love what you’re doing, you got it all, man.”

Mean Girls Version 3 (Spring Fling)

Before I got started on this version of Mean Girls, I had to figure out how to rig up Regina George’s spinal halo and make it removable so the dolls nestled inside her can be taken out. It’s a good thing I suffer from a mild case of hoarding so after rummaging around a bit in a huge box of abandoned bits and pieces from the time when I was really into extreme scrapbooking, I managed to cobble together the spinal halo and made it functional.

Here’s the set of Mean Girls all gussied up for their Spring Fling.

Here’s the breakdown of the spinal halo I made, which, in mid-construction, I discovered my pliers were missing AGAIN and had to have a serious talk with the Hubs about returning things to their rightful place after use. It’s really my fault because I didn’t hide my tool box. I’ve already succeeded in hiding my snacks, now I’ll just have to figure out a way to hide my tools.

Mean Girls Version 2 (Halloween)

I have to admit that my high school experience is vastly different from ones portrayed in film, TV and movies. First of all, I had to take the subway to school (which was why “The Princess Diaries,” the books, not the movie, jibed with me), and a bus. Second of all, my high school was located smack dab in Manhattan, but in fact so removed from all the fun parts of the greatest city in the world that it’s pretty boring. If it weren’t for the Forbidden Planet and a few movie theaters nearby, I’d probably transfer to my local high school in Queens and used the time commuting to study for my SATs. No, I’m just playing with you. I wouldn’t be studying. I’d get my own teenage gang together and wreak havoc on the streets of Flushing.

So when movies like “Mean Girls” came out, I couldn’t really relate. There were some cliques here and there in my high school, but not so distinctive that people in those cliques don’t mingle with ones outside their own. I myself bounced from group to group. There weren’t any apparent bullying either, just a bunch of really focused teenagers trying to hone their craft. It might have a lot to do with the fact that I went to an art high school with a special concentration on architecture and commercial arts. From what I gathered, these fine people I graduated with are functional members of society, most of us still pursuing our dreams of being an artist or have attained that near-impossible goal. So, “Mean Girls” is a largely fictional piece of entertainment in my book and I genuinely feel bad for people who DID have to deal with horrible people in terrible situations because I myself have been spared of such trauma. Still, I did have fun painting this version where the girls were all slutted up to go to a Halloween party except for Cady, who didn’t get the memo. And also Janis, the only voice of reason in the high school jungle.