Monthly Archives: December 2011

Goodbye, 2011!

Another year down, another few paintings, another couple books. It has been a good year. There were some worrisome bits, Kevin was out of work for awhile there, but we’re ending the year in better shape than when we began, he loves his new job, and they provide health benefits to domestic partners. I can […]

Owl Mask

I’ve got a styrofoam head on order, but in the meantime, the bobcat head will continue her internet modeling career. Lessons learned from this one: Never paint anything white. Horrible awful color, lousy coverage, brush strokes stand out in sharp relief, needs to be touched up ten times over. We Will Not Be Doing That […]

Beard Not Included

Gonna have to figure out how to photograph these…   …and if anyone has any tips, I’d be very grateful! (Other than “Use a decent camera, idiot.”) Kevin is obviously being very patient, but…well…y’know. I made the shape curve in along the side of the head a little too tight on this one, I think, […]

White Jackalope III

The end of the year has apparently kicked off a mad desire to paint more vaguely-voluptuous white animals on collaged paper backgrounds. TOTALLY NORMAL BEHAVIOR. 6 x 12, mixed media on collaged papers sealed to board. I really like how the intensely patterned black and white fleur-de-lys paper works there. The pages are scraps from […]

Rivet-Bird Mask

Red ink, black paint, and a combination of Quinacridone gold and Van Dyke Brown for the cere. (Thanks again, Dragonlaady!) Whatever material is dying the brads stains the red leather immediately around it, but I actually don’t mind that at all, given my love for rust and mottling. I’m actually pretty pleased with how this […]

In Progress…

This is my next mask, in progress. The design is actually based on a mask my mother made when I was quite young–she made these gorgeous felt bird masks for Halloween one year, one of which I kept. It’s based (very loosely) on a monkey-eating eagle. I had to stylize it down even farther for […]

My Crude First Attempt

Well, here we go, my first stab at it. I suspect that every person who plays around with leather masks probably makes some variation on this design first. I learned a number of things, like “Punch the holes for the strap BEFORE you mold it to a form, dumbass!” Acrylic ink—I used the FW Daler […]

Mask-Making

So my first attempt to make a leather mask kinda failed spectacularly, mostly due to the bit where I tried to carve everything on the wrong side of the leather. Then I decided it was scrap and started trying various tools out on it, and wound up gouging right through the leather a couple of […]