Announcing my new Etsy shop, Crewel Sister!

It's a little later than I had intended, but I finally launched my second Etsy shop this week, called Crewel Sister. I will be selling original embroidery creations, based on nature imagery and concepts in folk horror, or general occult/gothic imagery, along with anything else that catches my fancy. The 1960s/1970s retro look is a big inspiration, but so is more antique embroidery.  We'll see what happens!

 

Here are the first few items that I have up for sale, incorporating some imagery that I found appealing. For instance, an all-seeing cosmic eye in a bare tree.

Some gothic poisonous flower imagery, incorporating an antique looking design with a skull and a violet or pansy.

And of course, I can't resist a nod to my gothic paperback book covers, with a lady with long hair traversing a moonlit night with a candelabra...

I'll be experimenting with some retro designs that make me think of the embroidery kits that I saw as a kid in the 1970s as well.

My favorite subjects right now are these little classic traditional embroidery icons, which nonetheless suggest something from a world of fantasy and magic.

I will also offer custom work and commissions, within my range of ability, and on similar topics.

Please check back to see what else comes along, and "favorite" my shop on Etsy for more!

Through May 1, 2017 you can get $5 off your purchase with the code 5FORFRIENDS. If you're reading this, you're a friend!

Sci fi surrealism, rust monsters, and a few more unicorns.

Aside from working on a lot of oil paintings recently, and waiting for them to dry, I have a sort of unthemed mixed bag of things to share for the moment.

 Earlier this month I contributed a piece, "The Sea Corridor," for a greyscale art contest at Jerry's Artarama in Houston. I got a nice set of oil paints for my efforts, and the painting (18 x 24 inch on a gallery wrapped canvas) is taking up a big chunk of art closet real estate here now, in case anyone within driving distance of Houston is interested in making an offer on it. :) Blurry photo with glare courtesy of my perpetually poor lighting conditions and lack of a professional grade photo studio.

The "fish-owl" was inspired by a couple of lines in the book "Babylon" by Rene Crevel, and there are tiny little fishes budding off of the branches that were inspired by lines in "The Goose of Hermogenes" by Ithell Colquhoun, unless I'm getting my surrealist novels confused. I tried to put some of my favorite elements in this -- woods, corridors full of billowing curtains, gliding down a passageway like the famous scene in Jean Cocteau's "Beauty and the Beast"...just some things that I like, blended into a sort of collage.

I also have prints available of a colorful, surrealist-inspired painting I did a few years ago and kept in my personal collection. This is a 5 x 7 print for sale but I can also make 8 x 10 (or 9 x 12, even) on request.

"Beneath the Green Sky"

"The Lair of the Rust Monster"

On a completely different note, I'm slipping an 8 x 10 print of another of my "personal stash" paintings into the mix this week -- I love D&D module covers from the early 80s, which was my formative era. I liked the art more than anything else really, since I rarely got to play with other people. In fact, check back for a post about those soon. 

"The Shadow and the Candle"

Back to surrealism, this oil painting is also in my personal stash, just a stream-of-consciousness piece I did, of whatever came to mind at the moment that I wanted to see. Subconsciously inspired by my love of Leonora Carrington, in ways I can't quite put my finger on. I'm keeping the original of this, but 5 x 7 prints are available at the link above, and 8 x 10 can also be made on request.

Finally, I have prints up now of a couple of the unicorn paintings that I did last week.

"Beneath the Purple Unicorn Tree" 5 x 7 print

"Groovy Unicorn Room" 5 x 7 print

And soomehow when Easter rolled around I think I neglected to post this picture, that I did for the season. But really, aren't moonlit bunnies suitable year-round?

Thanks for looking, and I hope that my next update will be a little more focused, but really, what's so great about focus?

Dark Hollow art at the Halloween Artist Bazaar

It's August! That means it's as good as autumn (even though it won't feel like it, for awhile) and I can get back to drinking hot tea in earnest. It also means there should be some serious pumpkinage going on in your local craft stores, to take the edge off of the remains of the summer.

The Dark Hollow concept we're exploring this year at the Halloween Artist Bazaar is close to my heart since I am involved with a record label called Dark Holler, and the entire aesthetic of haunted, out-of-the-way places, overgrown nature, and the depths of night, is kind of my thing.

I have two paintings so far up and running as part of this event, and I expect to add a third...storybook illustration-style images of rabbits and toads (and after a while, there will be a fox). Images for a Halloween story that hasn't been written quite yet.

"Cauldron in the Dark Hollow"

"Lost in the Dark Hollow"

Here are some works by other artists in the group!

Dark Hollow charm bracelet by Jynxx

Peste Corvino by twistedpixelstudio

"Light at the end of the Dark Hollow" by Twilight Faerie

Please visit us often though the season for more works of art! And visit the year-round Halloween Artist Bazaar shop!

Rabbits I have known

"Carrot Cottage" 8 x 10 acrylic on canvas board.

I realized recently when my friend who maintains the blog Painted Lady Fingers got a little pet bunny, that I haven't painted rabbits in a long time.  I used to do quite a few paintings with rabbits in them though they were usually focused around spring time, as I posted earlier this year at Easter time.

Most of us have a lot of bunnies in life early on if we ever came across Peter Rabbit, Brer Rabbit, Winnie the Pooh, the Velveteen Rabbit, uh...the Trix Bunny...it goes on and on!  But they also have been wonderful silent mysterious moon creatures to me, inspiring things like Kenneth Anger's Rabbit Moon:



Or haunted the book that delighted my childhood with the promise of gold and jeweled riches, "Masquerade" by Kit Williams (I still have positively no idea how anyone ever solved that puzzle). (...and here is a nice blog post about rabbits, below, I found in my search for an image for that book).

Or, perhaps most significantly, in "Watership Down" by Richard Adams, the unforgettable novel that introduced us to Fiver, Hazel and the other rabbits who spoke their own language (yes, I memorized snippets of it in sixth grade) and had epic struggles and battles in the English countryside. 

This book was so emotional for me around the age of 10-14 that although I read it at least three times then, I haven't been able to go back and read it again because I know I'd cry too much.  The same thing happened with the Duncton Woods books about moles.  I drew pictures of each of the rabbits for a little project in school around sixth grade, but of course they all pretty much looked the same...still, I think that is where my basic idea of how to draw a rabbit came about.

So in realized that I have been gravely short on rabbits in my art lately, I'm going to start trying to incorporate more of them, as evidenced by my little Halloween rabbit painting up above, "Carrot Cottage."  Some will be naturalistic like thee little bunny you see above and some will be anthropomorphic and cartoonish but I will try to include them more often than Easter time as I remember how important they have been to me throughout my life.

Easter bunnies, spring flowers

"Alice's Tea Party"

I realized in looking through my listings that I don't have any art with bunnies in it for sale right now! Which is kind of insane, because they've always been a favorite topic for me to include in my paintings.

So I thought for Easter weekend I would include a little gallery here of some spring, Easter, egg and rabbit-themed art that I've done over the years. I seem to have a lot more cephalopods and badgers in recent years, but I still love bunnies, so I will look to maybe re-doing some of these or similar paintings in the future!

And yes, I think a jack o' lantern is appropriate even for the Easter time tea party you can see above in my favorite "tea party" painting!

As creatures of the moon, rabbits seem to go naturally with night themes, but also have a silence about them that adds a touch of serenity and surrealism to any piece of art. Although wild animals at heart they seem naturally domestic -- gentle, quiet, unobtrusive, in a strange place where they are at once symbolic of the wild natural world and the home hearth. Yet at the same time, isn't there something just terrifying about the Easter Bunny?

The images I've collected here were all painted before I had access to a scanner with a high enough resolution to make prints from the scans, and unfortunately they are all long since sold -- except "Rabbot" (the rabbit with rainbow wings) which I do have high resolution scans of, for print-making purposes.

I have some of these images in my little online art gallery, http://www.artbysarada.com, and as always I can repaint any image in any size, with any variations -- I would love to do some more colorful spring and summer art, when I'm not busy with my gothic castles!

And yes these are all copyright Sarada, etc., so please do not use the images without permission. :)

"April Shower"

The title for this one is lost to time but let's call it "Easter Egg Tree" for now!


This also I don't have a title for bit let's call it "Night in the Springtime"

And a third without a surviving title, that I may have just called "Easter Fairy" at the time.

Ah one more without a title! "Mistress of Spring" sounds good!

Detail of custom art I did for someone a few years ago

"Kingdom of Wings"

"Rabbot"

"Summer Garden"

new scan of an older painting

This surreal dream rabbit is actually from a couple of years ago but when I first did it I was limited by my painfully old scanner and computer at the time and couldn't get a good image of it. I've had him in my home for awhile but I thought it was a good time to bring him out for another romp. I don't know why exactly he has parrot wings, but I called him "Rabbot" because he's...well, a combination of a rabbit and a parrot.




And because I haven't posted any photos in this blog yet that I can recall, one of my main hobbies in life -- this summer, at any rate -- is photographing mushrooms in the woods. I've always gone for woods walks on pretty much every day of the year that the weather allows, fitting them in after work before I go home if I can, on weekdays. This year the tremendous amounts of rain have meant just a ton of mushrooms. Everywhere. So I've taken several hundred photos of them. I'm not really a photographer though and my cheap camera recently broke, but I think mushroom season is almost over. I found a lot today though...some orange jellies...many delightful and beautiful things are in the soil.