Floral Tattoo Sleeve. Check!

Hello Again!

As you may remember from my 30 Before 30 goals, I had big plans to get/start a floral tattoo sleeve. And when I say “sleeve,” let’s be clear. I actually mean something more like half sleeve. But not even that. Maybe a cap sleeve/shoulder piece. Come on. I still work for the man. While the standards are ever changing (yea!), they still exist and I don’t wanna spend the rest of my career in blazers and pea coats.

I spent the weekend in Seattle for Emerald City Comic Con. Seattle was awesome, as per usual. I freaking LOVE Seattle.

My love chillin’ in front of Pike’s Place in plenty of Hawks gear.

Yup. That’s me sporting a Hunger Games tee and holding up the Space Needle.

And Comic Con was pretty great too. Here is me and my firend Allison with Andrea Libman. She voices for Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy of My Little Pony as well as on Strawberry Shortcake, Care Bears and Dragontales. All of those are big hits with S, so it was kind of a big deal. Thanks to Allison, I also got Andrea’s autograph on a Pinkie/Shutterfly poster for S. Yes. I am totally wearing the pony ears I bought for S that day.

Shortly after we decided to make the trip over for Emerald City Comic Con I came across an article about vegan tattoos. it listed out great shops that practiced vegan tattooing with vegan after care. This is how I found Damask Tattoo. I went to their website and facebook page and knew immediately that I simply adored it. After about 15 emails back and forth between myself and different artists there, I managed to score and appointment. My tattoo artist, Angela Grace had a few family emergencies and got a touch behind schedule. I did not see the artwork she drew up until the day before my appointment. Thank god I went ahead and trusted her because it was perfect. It still is.

Here are some of the images I was inspired by and send to Angela Grace.

I wanted something that looked complete event though it would really just be line work. I still wanted to have the option to color or add shading. I wanted the flowers to be meaningful. Roses: First flower my husband ever gave me and featured in my wedding bouquet. Plus, if I ever do color it, one could be a yellow rose of  Texas. Violets: The February birth month flower for Husband and S. Waterlily: For July and G. Poppies: Because they are wild and beautiful and my favorite. The mix seemed a little crazy to me. I guess that is what makes some forms of art really unique. As lovely as it would be, you really couldn’t have a bouquet of these flowers. The poppies would wilt in about 7 seconds with the violets not far behind. I don’t think water lilies would work either. A roses and wilted random flowers wouldn’t really be very cute. But in a tattoo, the can stay forever and look totally gorgeous together. I was truly blown away when she sent me the sketch. It was honestly exactly what I wanted.If you happen to ever want to be tattooed in Seattle, you need to go to  Damask. Between my husband and our friends, Kyle and Allison, who traveled with us, we have about 18 tattoos. (What a bunch on inked up freaks, huh?!) All three of them went with me to check in and get started. Kyle (a fella) said he had never been into a shop with such a gentle and beautiful atmosphere. I think he also called it “loving.” The art was beautiful, but so what the whole place. Just a perfect mix of elegant and edgy. My longest tattoo session to date was maybe an hour or a little bit more. This piece was a solid 2.5+ hours with not so much as a potty break. Even though I totally needed one for the last half hour. But honestly, truly, I was falling asleep it was that nice. And after my acupuncture my finished product was even nicer. Thank you, Ms. Adorable Angela Grace. Psst. If you wanna check out more of her work, you can go here.

 

Rock the Shoot, Part III: Posing, Props & Palettes

Welcome to part three of the Life Styled by Elle and Fairy Wing and Dinosaurs photography collaboration. We get to help you rock your next family shoot. Check out my previous post here and here.

Once you have your photo style, photographer and session set, you can start playing with the styling elements that you can bring to the shoot – posing, props and palettes.

 

Catch Ruthie from Fairy Wings and Dinosaurs thoughts on the same topics here!

Posing

Even the word posing sounds a little lame. Steer away from any poses that seem to embody “posing.” No ‘90s glam shots. You really don’t need to worry about exact posing and positions. Your photographer should be coming up with his/her own list of what should work for your family. What you can work on is coming up with are the details that are specific to your family. If you have little ones, they undoubtedly work better with a certain parent or sibling. Plan for that. Some toddlers may need to be held to keep them in one place. Some toddlers may think that means you are treating them like babies and holding could kick off a whole crazy-kid melt down. Think carefully about each of the family members and what will work for each one. Then go back and look up a few poses that could work with those notes in mind. Once in you photos session, keep an open mind. Something that seems awkward may be great. Let the pro be a pro. Just keep in mind that no one knows your family better than you. And when your sweet little lovies get a little more wild and crazy than darling and photogenic, roll with the punches. You will end up with better shots allowing the littles to be giggly and silly than trying to coerce them in to the perfect head tilt.

Props

Ultimately your photos are your photos, but I wanna recommend that you forego props for simple sake of props. That doesn’t mean ban them, but if you are just shoving buckets and blankets, and chairs and chalkboards to keep up with whatever is trending, there is a good chance you will regret it later. Not only are trends trends (ummm…. they will look dated later), they distract from the subject of the photo – your family! Use props that add meaning or serve a purpose. In my son’s newborn photos he posed on both his daddy’s football and his great-great grand mother’s vintage luggage. My daughter’s 3 month photos didn’t have real sentimental props. I just set her up in a basket that I got at her baby shower. Not because I need to freeze that basket in time, I just needed a way to prop up my smiley, slobbery baby and that worked. For our most recent family photos we really didn’t use props. The only ones we had were to entertain the kiddos. Just the stuff to distract away tears. I know Ruthie has a most gorgeous photo of her daughter with her violin. That is lovely. It’s beautiful, it’s charming and it captures something significant about her daughter.

Palettes

Alright, so here’s the fun part. Anything you wanted to achieve with props – mood, theme, vibe, attitude – can all shine through colors. I created a few palettes inspired by things I love. Please, please, please do yourself a favor and put time and thought into your palettes. Choose complimentary colors – not matching ones. There is no reason to throw your hands in the air and default to khaki and white. Likewise, don’t pick just two colors and Gap out the whole fam.

Choose several colors. Colors with depth and interest and layer multiple colors onto each person. Try let inspiration come from varying sources. If you aren’t the kind of person who pulls a family portrait palette from a coffee art lattee, no fear, there is an app for that. I lie. I actually don’t know if there is an app, but there is an awesome website. Check it out: http://www.design-seeds.com/. You can find palettes inspired by nature, seasons, florals, food, or any darn thing you can think of really. You can also search by setting up one color and then the site will show all the palettes they have featuring that color. Cool, huh?

Vulnerability

There is something very vulnerable about art that I had not experienced fully in quite a while. Certainly I am an artist in my own rights, as is anyone else who claims the title. I  guess anyone who dabbles in any form of the arts can plaster that word to their forehead and wear it with pride. I have stuck to my own artsy meat and potatoes: writing,  very elementary photography and graphic design, my funky version of home decorating, and my personal style. From time to time I even sketch. Notice what didn’t make the list? Painting. Collages. Specifics like acrylic, watercolor or oil. Soooo here’s a question: Why did I sign up for 15 days of art on a 8×8 canvases to be submitted for public display, complete with showings and even facebook previews? No real answer.

My assumed retrospective answers: 

1.)The art co-op putting this challenge on is new and cool. That means I want it to stay in my town, ergo I should support it.

2.) I was still totally jacked up on that creativity workshop I attended. Creativity can be viral.

What I should really figure out is why I wrote down watercolor, acrylic, etc. when the registration form asked how I would attack the canvases. I think those may just have been words I know associated with painting. I now think they must have realized I was out my element. Thanks to Google Chrome and its red squiggle lines, as of about 27 seconds ago, I now know I have been misspelling “acrylic.” Apparently there is just the one L….

Friends. Let me throw you some knowledge. Watercolor painting, the good kind anyway, is rather like ice skating. Maybe that is a shitty analogy, but let me tell you despite however simple, smooth and easy it looks, one misstep and you land on your face wondering what the f went wrong. Moral of the story: you can’t just pin a bunch of pretty watercolors, borrow your kid’s yellow rectangle of Crayola paints and whip up something majestic. Yes, it’s obvious now. At the time, I was near tears. Getting on the art shop’s facebook page and seeing photos of work from the fabulously talented artists joining me in the challenge didn’t help so much.

I re-assessed my sitch. I started pinning and googling tutorials rather than just art by pros. I even went out and splurged on 5 new one-L, cheap-ass acrylic paints from Joann’s and one package of cheap brushes. Don’t worry, I didn’t buy the cheapEST; That’s good, right? I painted, I cried, I took care of a sick baby, I painted I glued, I went to work, I painted, I worked on Color by Amber, I took the baby who isn’t actually a baby to the doctor, I painted, I glued, and I worked. And then I finished. Working on a time crunch and specific guidelines, I had to turn in things I would have preferred to not. I don’t get choices. I don’t get to edit them. I  don’t get to stand there and tell every person who looks at them that I am new. I tried. It’s hard. I don’t even get to make jokes, or mock my own work. I just get them up. Displayed. For the public.

All 15 pieces by all 30 artists will go on sale for Small Business Saturday for $30 each right after the Showing and Wine on the night of Black Friday. I am scared that mine will just linger and linger. All of them as the others get wrapped up and taken away to new homes. My art, sad little pound puppies.

So what is the difference between this and any of my other art and self-expression forms? I have more control over each of them. I don’t take photos of myself, family or home looking a hot mess and plaster them all over the internet. I choose carefully, edit and post where I please. I write, I edit, I write, I edit, and sometimes I delete. I create, I edit, I decide. That is the general work flow of my arts. In this challenge, I created. I kind of edited, or at least as much as my talents and time allowed. And I let go. That is when vulnerability blooms.

For what it’s worth, I think this is good. I spend so much time creating my reality: editing my photos, touching up my make up. It is okay to just let something raw out. It may be judged. It may be judged harshly. I may not want to even attend the showing, but I wouldn’t take back this experience for anything. I know the feeling of creating something new and feeling proud of it. I know the moment my mind switched to seeing art and inspiration as applied to painting.

If you dabble in any artistic form, you probably know that mind’s eye that develops. From what I can tell, it happens in all forms of art. When I see beautiful elements that would show great texture and still allow for great lighting my mind will sometimes envision that place as a back drop. My mind constantly converts my daily experiences into bloggable writing. I know an interior designer who actively has to restrain her vision else she mentally (perhaps harshly) completely redesigns every home she visits. A dancer I knew used to generatechoreography or even an entire music video for songs she heard. About 11 days into the 15 day challenge, I looked at a particular bridge and saw it as a painting. I took in the background landscape, architecture, and negative spaces of the bridge. and I saw it all. I transformed from someone who ignorantly just tried to mimic art far above my level to seeing my own inspiration. I developed a greater appreciation for the talent and skill of others. And I did it. I committed to something new for 15 days. We’ll call that winning. 

My art, Left-Right, Top-Bottom:

Untitled, Cups, Girl on Fire, Cup o’ Joe, Hipster Belle, Pink Dogwood, Crush City, Adventure, Fancy, Master of the Universe, Untitled (2), S, Birdies, Horned Sunflower, & Put a Bird on It.

Push Creativity

A couple of weeks ago I had the incredible opportunity to attend a workshop on creativity and design thinking. One of the most memorable tings discussed was the instructor’s retelling of an experiment conducted. I can’t remember exactly how it went or where it was conducted, but the basis went something like this: an art professor was teaching a pottery class for a semester and split the class into two halves. The first half was told that their overall class grade would be based on the quality of a single piece. Those students made only one, or very few pottery pieces and put painstaking effort into their works. The second half of the class was told their grade would only be based on how many finished projects they could complete in the semester. Every piece counted no matter what it looked like. Att he end of the semester, the professor (and I) were surprised to find that the latter half of the class had significantly better work to exhibit than the former.

This story weighs so heavily on my mind. I know I fall somewhere in the middle — Which is worse because that means I am neither mass producing and continuously practicing my arts nor am I working diligently at one  masterpiece. I just truck along, never fulling pushing myself. Rarely bettering my arts. Maybe it gave be a bit of a high, but I have changed my tune and probably waaaayy over estimated my artistic talent. I am trudging along weight for a breakthrough. Creativity is creativity. I think (hope) that pushing myself creatively in a way unlike I have have ever done previously, will spill over onto other creative efforts.

I joined an Art Challenge with the local art co-op in my town. I paid my $30, picked up my 15 canvases and committed to covering one each day in art. Any medium I choose. The scary part is that after the 15 days is up, I have to bring them all back to the art co-op. And then they host a showing. And THEN they go on sale to the public on Small Business Saturday. Eek. I happened to see some of the other participants’ names when I picked up my canvas and let me tell you, I am so friggin’ far out of my league, it’s rather embarrassing. I am making up shit everyday and spewing it onto a canvas. Monday I almost started crying. After “Art Time” I was pretty sure I really liked S’s watercolor better than mine. I have a feeling if a 3-year-old has more skills than, I can only cross my fingers that they have the decency to not place my “art” near that of the talented women with M.A.’s in  Art History…

Yet, creativity-building this experience is. I am writing more. Thinking more and feeling more inspired. I will take nice photos of my work sometime soonish, but in the meantime, if you care to follow along on my overshot art challenge, follow me on instagram (search ellesmith104).

There is no way I can commit to writing everyday on top of doing this art challenge, but I would like too. I hope that making time to be creative will become habit, no matter the creative outlet. As we have all heard, being creative is not a hobby, it’s a lifestyle, and that is how I want to style my life.