new winter coat

My winter break project was to build a coat from this beautiful teal wool that I purchased from B.Black & Sons while in grad school. It was on super clearance...I vaguely remember paying no more than $20 for all 2 1/3 yds of this amazing wool. Anyway, 5 years later, I finally decided to make use of this material and test my coat-making skills once again...

It turned out beautifully--a lot better than I ever expected. My goal was to finish the coat in a week, which I ended up almost doing, except the button holes proved (once again, same thing with my first coat in school) a PAIN. My sewing machine wouldn't take the thick wool, so I ended up trying it for 2 days, and seam-ripping everything out, and doing it by hand. It looks okay, and no one can really tell.

These are pics of the process, final coat pic to come. The only thing I didn't document was the mock-up that I had to do the first day, since I re-designed the pattern and had to change a lot of things about the coat in order for there to be enough fabric. Then it was a couple hours of laying out the pattern and cutting. The pictures probably are from Day 2.

Congrats to D & A! :)

As I've been getting to explore more digital painting on my own, I find that I want to paint whenever possible. So I got on a roll this weekend and painted this for D & A's wedding. I'll be printing it out and framing it for them. Their wedding color was a muted green, so I thought I'd use that for the background. Also, the clothing wasn't as detailed so I decided to blur it on photoshop, so the focus could be on their faces. As I was finishing, I also played with the composition, and decided that I liked them on the left side of the frame.

Anyway, it was fun and I'll be doing more exploratory paintings...

D & A, we wish you the best and congratulations on your recent marriage! =)

Happy Anniversary...to us. :)

I painted this on photoshop from a picture of me & craig for our 4th year anniversary...it's my first digital painting so I struggled a lot with it. Took me almost a week (or was it 2?) working at nights. I think I learned a lot from it. Hopefully it'll get a little bit easier as I keep doing this. He doesn't ever check my blog so I think it's safe to post it today...:)

first figure paintings

This was the last painting I did from the painting class

It's been ages since I've done any blogging...well, aside from the figure drawing classes that I have been attending religiously, I also started a figure painting class with Randy Sexton, an artist who has taught a lot of my co-workers at Pixar. He's a brilliant painter, and a great teacher too. I was a little embarrassed to post my paintings, but now that the 8 weeks of classes are done (we didn't get to paint every week, so there aren't 8 paintings), I felt like it's worth sharing. I see improvement in my work, and although I'm far from where I want to be, I'm proud that I took the first step in taking this class.

Hope to continue with this in the Long pose nights...
week 1

week 2

week 3

week 4

seeing double

it's been a while--I've been busy sewing actually :)
So I finally DID finish the dress I started posting/blogging about for the last 2 months. Then I had enough leftover fabric to make a top! I actually like wearing it b/c it fits me well and i didn't pay for it!

forgotten sketch

I think this was from last month...keep forgetting to date my drawings. Honestly, lately I've been throwing a lot of my sketches away out of frustration. But I took a shot of this one a while back, and just got it uploaded. It's ok...for now. : \

dress update

I finally put the zipper in the dress that I've been making for many months now...I guess now that summer's pretty much over I don't feel too motivated to finish it...but the zipper took a little while to set in b/c I'm used to the invisible zipper, and this one required a different technique. Well, I'm just out of practice, if you really want to know the truth..

There's not really much left on the dress! Just hemming it up and putting in a hook and eye...why is it taking me so long?!