1 december 2004

all the new stuff is freelance assignments this time! there is a frog-zapping villainess and a bored princess in the black and white section, along with some jingly starpeople that were used for chapter headings for a holiday article in the austin american-statesman magazine, XLent. in the color section, there are more jingly starpeople and a lonely lady at spiderhouse.

9 september 2004

i returned from a gigantimous party in the middle of texas at my friend alex's farm and was lonely for it, so that's where i put the mad tea party. also, i'd wanted to do a yellow painting for a while, and his family's perfect yellow house got me thinking. what did i run out of space for this time? big yellow-striped spiders, a geodesic dome, a lemon tree, and a kiddie pool with a hose. also, we found a yellow snake in my bathroom in berkeley and i wanted to put him in too because he gave me such a fright. maybe one day i will do a painting of everything i ran out of space for in other paintings. oh yeah, the tag on the hatter's hat reads "à la mode". that's french, you know. don't forget to look at some girls under duress in black and white: stress and zits.

7 may 2004

there are some really crazy organisms in malaysia, so i thought i'd make a painting of some of them: pitcher plants, orchids, a scuttley blue beetle... i really wanted to paint a rafflesia, but i ran out of space. what's a rafflesia, you ask??? why, it's an orange plant three feet in diameter which smells like meat and eats bugs and small, furry animals. maybe there will be space in the next painting. so here's alice curiousing in a hallway as she runs after the rabbit. oh yeah, i added some ferns so my dad wouldn't feel left out (ferneyhoughs represent!). the hallway is in a house my parents lived in in france. it was haunted by a white snake. i didn't have room for the snake, either.

1 april 2004

i made some beetles yesterday. someone told me they look like they'd taste like fancy european flower-candy, and now i keep picturing them scuttling out of a candy dish in the lobby of a french hotel.

17 march 2004

oh yeah, i forgot to say: i have another illustration out in new moon magazine this month. it's for a story about a girl who wants to be a mermaid.

11 march 2004

a painting! finished! it's alice in the pool of tears. there are many entomological / botanical / biological / hydroponical discrepancies, to which i reply, "a pox on you -- little girls aren't really five inches tall, either!" the orangey moths are hyalophora euryaluses, by the way. my sister and i stared at one for a long time one day in truckee a couple summers ago.

24 february 2004

i fooled some more people into publishing my work!! the illustrations from the december 2003 and january 2004 issues of cricket, let it snow and bugsicle, are now up. from the january/february 2004 issue of new moon are lockerdragon and grosslunch -- middle schoolers i put under duress. i pored over my wizened sketchbook and dredged up whatif i'm a mermaid and i feasted on luxury muds. then i threw in flying is easy and million miles from home just because.

30 october 2003

it's a scattery update for you because i am scattery. i just moved to berkeley and haven't had too much time to work on new stuff, but so much is going on! the best news is i finished some illustrations for cricket magazine in august, and they'll be out soon in the december and january issues. i'm also working on some black and white drorings for new moon which should also be out in january. new things on the website: i changed the about me section so that it includes a rambly little bit about "how i wrrk." there are a few new letters up, and one measly sketchbook page for an alice painting which i will never finish. skreeee...

4 july 2003

so, i got unexpectedly distracted from my alice in wonderland ambitions. it's okay, kids, because many interesting things are afoot! i illustrated the cover of the july/august issue of new moon magazine. the painting in its entirety is now in the color section. do you want to see how it all came together?

24 march 2003

"down, down, down. would the fall never come to an end?" eegad!! i thought this painting would never come to an end! it's definitely the most complicated one i've done yet. it also looks more like my life than most of my paintings. if you look carefully, you will find: mignon, our white hauskitty; merilee's creepy cat clock and mirror; my nasturtiums; rachel's fish; a malaysian butterfly, the raja brooke's birdwing; a wooden frog i bought in kuala lumpur; chinese lanterns like in the hanging out room; the dummy the monkeys stole; etc., etc., etc.!! i was really happy to be living in such a decrepit house while working on this painting. it provided lots of inspiration.

7 february 2003

i need a spring project, and all this alice-talk got me thinking. i'm planning on doing 12 paintings, one for each chapter, and several black and white drorings. all i have right now is idle speculation, but i have a painting half-done that i'll hopefully be able to show you in a week or two.

26 january 2003

bonne année! bonne mise à jour! corbies, a droring i drored whilst in berkeley, zodiackal, and, yes, alice is a drunkard.

12 november 2002

here is a nice, juicy update for you: at last, the elusive snowbeetle! this painting happened because i've been looking at a lot of lisbeth zwerger books lately. i like how in most of her paintings her characters just end up standing in puddles of watercolor wash that aren't loaded down with unnecessary details. i raided my sketchbook and came up with the air-headed blonde, slow conquest of land, some scribblings on pippi longstocking, and some scribbling on coraline. i also wrote 'stine a long birthday letter.

20 october 2002

snow white redux, blanche neige, or what-have-you, on view now... and you austinites may recognize spider house-- but the greenboy really only hangs out in la casa de la araña.

13 october 2002

meeting lynda barry the other day inspiraled me to try my hand at sumi ink painting. my dad kept buying me chinese brush and ink sets when he worked in taiwan and i was too intimidated by their perfect intactness to ever give it a try... until now!! please view the creepy results, snailytea and snailypo.

3 october 2002

oh my! what a skinny skinny apple-eating dwarf-housekeeper! it amused me to make everyone the same height. only one more snow white to go...

26 august 2002

here are my rejected cover idea for a certain moony magazine, my most recent self promotion postcard, and my most recent attempt at brandon's comic, @.

19 august 2002

okay, so it's been awhile -- but here are three more things for you to look at: jack, figgie, and the last greenboy painting for a long, long time.

7 may 2002

two new sketchbook pages up: "poppies will make you sleep," and "pinned." thanks to richard, the haus classicist, for helping me with the latin...

22 april 2002

two new sketchbook pages up: "plumbelly or plumb'ly for short," and "one side to make me taller."

21 april 2002

no more laziness! the arthur book is finally wrrrking. here is the story in text. it is very silly. i wrote it in 1997, you see.

1 april 2002

three new sketchbook pages up: "mothra lepidoptera," "tut-tut, it looks like rain," and "hi ho, hi ho."

12 march 2002

it's my mom's birthday, but you're getting the present! my webified alice book is up on the black and white page after much toil on my programmer's part.

6 march 2002

new-to-stellarbaby painting up in the color section (i actually finished this one back in december and just got around to scanning it). it's witch baby from francesca lia block's slinkster cool weetzie bat books. those books helped me survive los diablos-- er, that is, los angeles. they forced me to consider that maybe some of l.a. could be beautiful, much as i was inclined to think of it as a 40-mile festering blot on the rest of california. i wrote francesca a fan letter. i'll tell you if she writes back. also, the black and white section is a little easier to get around, and the color pages should flip through in the right order.

4 march 2002

i've updated the sketchbook section with thirteen new pages. click? click? brrt? no more webby web! it is a beautiful day outside.