I'm a little backed up, with some unscanned drawings sitting around that I can't post because, ugh, the scanner is all the way over at the library and getting from here to there is COLD WINDY BUSINESS.

Here's the Christmas card I drew for my friend Sophi:

I like it because you can write a very sentimental message on it, about valuing friendship or some such, or you can write something like "Let's Ditch Our Relatives And Get Drunk Together" and it becomes a kind of fun, cheeky card.

And here are some elegant ladies I drew while I was bored during my hospital orientation class. I have another class coming up at the end of January- expect more elaborate BIC-pen shading!

I got one of those strapless/backless bras for my New Year's dress. It works about as well as I should have expected.

From my long, long day of "processing" for starting a my new job.

This has been floating around tucked into my sketchbook for a long time. I think it might look better with a bit of the right edge cropped off but this is the whole thing (about 5 by 6 inches)

I have been going out in the evenings a lot, and so this sums up a lot of my mornings.

Here is a better scan of the Nutcracker Christmas card design. I'm still not thrilled with the washed-out colors...I have to adjust the saturation up as far as it will go on each image and this is still the best I can get:

This second design has the same problem; as you can see, some of the tree branches didn't even really scan as green and are totally washed out (this one has already had the saturation adjusted, too). I'm not totally thrilled with the composition overall. Originally the children were white, not red, and I think the whole thing would be better on a different background.

I waited over a week to post this because I was mailing it to the friend whose anecdote inspired it (all I can say is, it's a true story; he's about 6'4").
I realize this is smutty but that's kind of the reason I made a blog instead of continuing to post my stuff on Facebook.

Not much creative output over the last few days. I keep putting up old stuff.

This is how thanksgiving makes me feel:

From the night I went dancing in my very highwaisted, very stiff jockey pants:

Fr

From the week where I was waiting for the UMMC Neuro job I wanted to call me back:

From the week after I got the job, where I had no responsibilities and just hung around customizing my clothes.

This year I am ACTUALLY GOING TO DO IT. I am ACTUALLY going to have some of these printed as cards. This one, which I posted previously, obviously for anyone from Hopkins:

And this one for friends, I suppose. Not so much parents or professors! I feel like I'm renegging on my professed feminism by posting this, or even having drawn it in the first place...but perhaps the most ultimately feminist thing to do is draw whatever the heck I want, and give it as a Christmas card.

More of my attempts to do a comic (almost) daily as a journalistic thing. These two are from the day I got an interview on a Cardiac Evaluation Unit (going to be working on a Neuro unit it turns out, which I prefer, but this was my first interview) and immediately went into overdrive studying heart pathophys. Of course, for me, "studying" often turns into "drawing elaborate diagrams" and then further devolves into just plain drawing.
I think, of everything I've drawn, this is the most worthy of becoming a tattoo:

All my energy has been going into sewing projects, so here is another old drawing...As I recall I did it during a particularly boring School of Nursing lecture in the last semester over the summer.

This isn't a drawing or painting, but I made it, so it can go here. I was inspired by some wired-lined scarf/turbans posted by Garance Dore on her blog, from a Vogue Brasil photoshoot.

You can't tell in the photo but the stitching is kind of big and lumpy; I might do another one since this was a "rough draft". The funny thing is, I chose my "ugliest" silk oblong to experiment on and I ended up kind of loving the big clashing check pattern.

Sometimes my journal takes the form of comics or drawings...a lot of the time they are too personal to share, and a lot of the time (this is true here I think) they are sort of incomprehensible to anyone but me, sort of like inside jokes with myself. For a while I was trying to do a comic a day, since I write journal almost every day, but I didn't manage it. Still, I've got a few tracking my most recent dating dramas and job application adventures.

One of the challenges I find in this kind of comic-as-journal thing is to drawing something OTHER than just pictures of myself, with words narrating my thoughts. 

Here are two doodles from when I was hurricane'd in.

I made a thank-you card for my advisor, who is head of OB at the school of nursing and also directed the doula program (so, a total women's health/labor and delivery/neonatal buff).

I get in these moods where doing lots of little fiddly details is satisfying so stuff comes out looking real Victorian. Like these trains. Which I drew on a train, incidentally.

I've started scanning my drawings instead of photographing them. It looks soOOOoooOOOoo much better!

Anna Karenina

 When I was a little kid (and already obsessed with drawing), I took a lot of inspiration from the books I was reading. On lazy days, which I had a lot of because I was homeschooled and indoors-y, I had this kind of routine where I would read until some image caught my imagination and I had to draw it, and then go back to reading  until it happened again. I drew a lot of mice and medieval scenes because I was obsessed with Brian Jacques' Redwall series.

Anyways I was reading Anna Karenina about a year and a half ago, and would have similar surges of wanting to draw after reading certain scenes. It's a very visually inspiring book- and I'm obviously not the only one who feels this way: Vogue featured a stunning editorial shot by Mario Testino with Keira Knightly in Karenina-esque dresses, some of which are her film costumes.

My illustrations came first, of course- these are over a year old. I had more scenes I wanted to do, but only got these three.

The first is Anna and Kitty at the ball, obviously.

Did anyone not have a vivid mental picture of these scene, of the black dress? Obviously not me and not Mr. Testino either:

This is the scene where Anna is at her dressing room mirror and Karenin is confronting her about her scandalous philandering ways.

And here we have Vronsky (who is always escribed as having a mustache, which completely ruins it for me) in the stable checking out the horse Gladiator. I love drawing horses, provided I can have some kind of muscle/anatomy reference to guide me. I think I looked up the musculature for this picture; I don't remember but I must have. 

This whole post makes me miss my childhood and all those days when I was free to loaf about reading and drawing whenever the fancy struck.

These are the drawings that I referred  to on my post on Sept. 29. Obviously this past year and my exposure to Hopkins and the great pharmaceutical romance of modern medicine is seeping into my art...

I drew this first, when I was doing Christmas cards last Dec. and then of course didn't give it to anyone, because who wants to get THAT as a holiday greeting?

These next three are a bit more recent...I first did some sketches of the man and woman on the syringe (which, I would STILL like to do another version of...I did a bunch of doodles and kept changing the perspective and realigning their bodies to suggest maximum abandon and exuberance...but the rainbow took so long to make nice n smooth that  I finally just reconciled myself with this version) and a friend of mine encouraged me to make at least three on the same theme. If you are in Seattle, you can purchase the originals from this art-vending robot at The Hideout, a bar on First Hill:

http://www.hideoutseattle.com/earl.htm

 Or perhaps not; perhaps someone has already purchased them. 

 

 

I like the last one best. I wanted it to look like a Tiffany ad, or something Kate Spade would come out with (btw how amazing would it be if Kate Spade's next crop of bags were covered with tiny stylish pills?)

My friend is getting married.

Not exactly a surprise, because we were roomies back in 2008 when she met this boy and spent two semesters mooning around in a constant crushed-out state. The cutest thing ever. I'm so happy for them.

A friend and JHUSON ex-classmate of mine asked me to make a poster for the clinic in Liberia where she is working. The idea is to promote these pregnancy centers...it is a little frustrating to be reminded of the work I WISH I was doing, namely nursing, but I also like contributing and on some level I'm aware that, at this point, talent-wise, I am more able to make a unique contribution with my paintbrush than I am as a totally inexperienced nurse.

The idea is, the licensed midwife (in the blue uniform) is welcoming the pregnant woman and her traditional midwife (who is wearing ordinary clothes, but is recognizable by her nametag). 

some of my favorite doodles

As hard as I try to draw things in sketchbooks or on nice paper, inevitably some of my favorite things end up being drawn in a lecture or on a bus, on the back of an assignment or an envelope. Often I give these away to whatever amused friend is nearby, watching me draw (or in some cases said friend was the inspiration for the doodle, as with this first one- my friend Erica was going on about her desire for a kitten in her no-pets apartment):

This is another one I gave to Erica; I'm sorry about the quality of the cell-phone picture, but the little caption reads, "As a preteen, she left her bra under her pillow for the Boob Fairy to fill":

Here's something I did on an envelope. I have this great Hello Kitty patterned duct tape so I thought maybe Hello Kitty could escape and wander across the paper...

This one I ended up giving to a visiting lecturer who spoke at my nursing school. Her research involved rats and I honestly can't remember much else, only that the friend I was sitting next to as I drew convinced me to give her the rat drawing at the end of the lecture.  I was nervous, because I didn't want her to think I was zoning out during her talk (because of course I wasn't; drawing really helps me listen by occupying my hands, but I don't always know if professors will get that) but the lecturer laughed super loudly when I gave her the drawing and I think she liked it.

two cartoons

This first cartoon was inspired by an expression my (very quirky) undergrad organic chem teacher used- I thought it was so weird and unique, I assumed he'd made it up, but apparently not.

This second one is part a...series? Ish? A baby series...of med-related cards and drawings that I've been making at a slow pace since my arrival at Hopkins. What can I say- the culture made an impression on me! There are 4 other images that I feel go together well, and this one is an early draft that doesn't quite fit. 

naked women on birthday cards

Recently I made two birthday cards/paintings featuring naked women. This first one was inspired by my friend's story of going to Scores (a local strip club) and being impressed by a dancer who could make her butt cheeks jiggle one at a time. 

This second one I made a few days later:

Inaugural Voyage!

In honor of my little bloglet's maiden post, some sailboats from this August:

This one is from the Port Madison dock (which, incidentally, is the place my soul will linger when I'm dead); I didn't quite finish it because a menagerie of college kids showed up and began making a ruckus.

This one bothers me because the jib is on the opposite side of the sail: