Typography

Is anyone else as interested in the type faces we use as I am? I love different fonts, I love trying out different fonts and making up new ones. Typography is a lot like color to me, and everyone knows I love me some colors. You can express any emotion you want with your font. You can make it three dimensional, colorful, blurry, smooth, rough, big, tiny, inverted... anything you want. If it is readable it works. A lot of graffiti artists don't even bother doing that half the time.

I want to redo the banner for the blog, but I don't know what I want to do yet. So I've been doodling all over my notebook at work. The boys are impressed that I can print perfect bubble letters almost as fast as I can write normally.  And they marveled at my lightning fast cursive that none of them could read. I might as well have been rapidly scribbling lines on the paper for them to gape at.

It's been a while since I have thought about my handwriting. I used to be one of those girls that tried to change their handwriting every few months. I was constantly on the search for the perfect penmanship. I've frequently switched between the different ways to write a lowercase A, giving my Bs and Ds littler and littler tails, I even tried to write a G with the hook thing on it like Times New Roman for a little while. All the bipolar mind changing about what looked good has actually made quite an impact on how I write now. You can look at a single note to someone and find contradictions everywhere in my text. I can't write the same way twice! I often switch between cursive and print and something I like to call "lazy cursive" all in the same paragraph.

I'm an admitted note writer. All my friends know that because probably all of them over the course of our relationship have received one. My addiction is farther reaching than notes though, I love lists too. You guys know this, you can find my random lists scattered in posts and an occasion one will pop up on my art page. I'm just a writer in general. I have to get everything out of my brain and on paper or I feel like I might lose it forever. Or change the idea in a way I can never get that original one back. My thoughts are like photographs and my brain is like photoshop out of control. I can't stop thinking and rethinking things, and it's hard for me to get back to my first idea sometimes.

I don't know if any of these random doodles are going anywhere, but at least it's out there now.

Sketch

is how I have been feeling lately. Sketchy... not fully right. But I've managed to get quite a lot accomplished in the past week or so. I paid some bills, and got new supplies. Tody and I have been hard at work experimenting with shirt making. Some went well while more are interesting works in progress. He's been so patiently photographing everything I ask him to, even if the wait for getting the pictures online can get long. But we are finally current on all my finished pieces being documented. That includes my new ones I have yet to post. I've been playing with ink lately instead of painting. It's a lot more kid friendly, so the boys don't feel the need to make a mess everywhere with my expensive supplies. But I have discovered the joy of paint pens, so we'll see where that takes us.

I've also been hard at work on the blog for Our Sunflower Gallery! It's still a work in progress. I have a lot to do with it before I'm truly happy with is as a good website for our art. I'm also going to be manning our Twitter account and perhaps updating the Facebook too. Next month is creeping up quickly and everything seems to be falling together quite nicely. Forms are being filled out, insurance was gotten, venues are being booked, art should be getting framed... it's getting down to the hard stuff now.

So naturally I have been hard at work. I'm stressing a bit about my framing. I'm low on funds and resources but I have a growing collection of pieces that are not sellable if they aren't completely finished with a nice frame. But my output is still going strong. I'm gathering advise on how I should price, I was even going to post about pricing tips on the gallery blog. I feel it would be helpful. But I have a lot to do before I can start doing silly stuff like that.

I thought I would share some doodles I have been collecting over the years. I have just started photographing all my journals and drawings from before college and while I was going, because I'm curious about what I am still attracted to and interested in. I find these pictures are a good source of ideas for new projects or techniques. I am still drawing the same things even years later, I just have slightly different ideas.