First Plush of 2010

yesh, I can has a new plushie for the new year. Another in the VooDoo series.

This one is actually even smaller than the first, which I didn't really plan for, but I got it together fine. I'm happy he's real funky with the one eye and such.

-MadArtisan

Wednesdays are Looooooooooong #1

Well internets, I have a  painfully long gap between my classes today. Its going to be anywhere between 3 and a half to 4 and a half hours, depending on if I have a meeting for my art history discussion, thus I'll be starting a weekly blog about the lackluster events of my Wednesdays and what I did or didn't accomplish, who I ran into and perhaps I'll do some sort of top arbitrary number list or something too. This may lead to me finally filming my "weekly Stuff I think it awesome" video series. Nevertheless this is a really long amount of free time and I'll have to find some way to kill it for the next 10 weeks.

So yeah, the start of today's loooooooooooooong Wednesday was enjoyable enough, at around 11 am I went to my car and ate my lunch, took a nice relaxing rest and got the bulk of a new VooDoo Plushie finished within the first hour (I don't have stuffing material or eyes handy), from there I wandered back onto campus, and sat down on my lappy and started watching Season One of Unfrogotten Realms again, I'm enjoying watching it on iTunes since its now a downloadable podcast, makes me happy. Ran into a couple friends and we were able to chat till their class started at one. I got to deliver This guy to my Homegirl Jolene, it was her (rather delayed) birthday/Christmas present.

After that I decided to take a walk, and circled the entirety of Aldrich Park on campus, I then worked my way towards the student center I there ran in to an associate I hadn't gotten to talk to much, Adrian was on his way to get some food, I offered to join him, even though I didn't need to, grabbed a snack, which was tasty and hung with him till around 2ish. From there I returned to nearly the exact same spot I sat in an hour earlier and started this blog. woo. well, now class is about to start wee.

-Mad Artisan

Fisrt Day of School First Day of school!

Its the start of my second to last quarter here at UCI, and I'm stoked.

Outside of the fact that I can has only a 50 min Art History Lecture on Mon and Friday, making for more time driving than I have to be on campus. Although I'm gonna be busy enough to keep me around on mondays and fridays. This comes from the fact that I have on heckofa rad schedule.

Besides Art history i'm Rawking Advanced Sculpture, Senior Exhibition, and an issues class on Popular Culture. I'm gonna have fun. Senior Ex is gonna be where the Pimp 5 Productions team does our first Gallery-Presented Piece, a Video Installation Re-hash of the GRANDUJ Project, I'll go into discussing that further on the Pimp 5 Blog after we've had our first Team Meeting or the quarter later this week.

I'm somewhat concerned in the sense that my Advanced Sculpture class is going to have a different professor than I expected, thus my whole plan as to the kind of pieces I make may very well go out the window.

anywho, I'm also kicking out the jams on some more plush work (Mostly out of fleece), and hopefully will have the Mad Artisan Labs Website up online by the weekend, and perhaps the Nonsense Monsters Site too.

Speaking of Mad Artisan Labs... I have a Spreadshirt Store up, and you can check it out here: http://madartisanlabs.spreadshirt.com/

I'll post about the designs on there some other time. Class is over, Later Y'all

-MadArtisan

"INK" messenger Bag Concept

I've spent quite some time bouncing ideas around my brain for like 2-3 messenger bags, each filling specific niches that your average on the market Messenger bag don't work so well for.

Thus, I present the first of said bag designs:

 The "INK" bag is rather large and designed specifically for the storage and easy transport of Ink/Wash Supplies, and up to mid-size drawing pads/canvas boards/watercolor blocks. That's the reason for the large size, the interior has only the single large pocket currently in mind, with maybe a single divider if anything. That's also because of the high number of pockets on the inside front.

I'm hoping to actually sit down and try to prototype this out this week, I just need to go to an REI to pick up the larger width webbing and strap adjusters/mounts (because very few Jo-Ann's actually carry 2in Webbing n such, and it should be cheaper at REI anyway) I already have the fabric that I'll be using for the prototype and hopefully the final version as well, which is this tough Vinyl/Canvas material I found of all places, at Wall Mart. The Water bottle pouch will most likely be made from either spandex or neoprene, I have both handy. Either way, I'm stoked.

I should not that this design comes with both kinds of ink I work with in mind. See, I either use India ink and Windsor-Newton colored drawing inks and do wash and nib based work, or I use Graffiti Mops and Chemical or Alcohol-based inks like Witches Brew and Oink Ink although, I'm usually using them to draw rather than do typical Graffiti-styled art.

-Mad Artisan

Ok, I know I had something to post about...what was it?

Seriously I know that earlier today I hopped on this blog with a purpose.

But I've completely forgot it.

Hrumm...

Ponder ponder


Ah Yes!

Website Building!

I'm finally sitting down and setting up my many websites. I was gonna talk about them more, but I'll save that for when they're up or something. This was a fairly useless blog post but whatever.

-MadArtisan

Doin' that VooDoo that I do.

so yeah, if you hadn't noticed, this is a rather prolific December for me, I cranked out this little guy about 50% on the ride up to my grandparent's house for my Family Christmas gathering. he was completely assembled before I hit the hay. Finishing touches like stuffing and all the external stiches were done this morning.

^So here's what he looked like around 10 last night

And here's how it looks now, finished:

I'm Pleased. I look forward to making a bunch more of these, they come together pretty fast, and look rad, I should be able to sell them a little cheaper than my usual fare too, which means more options for people who wanna get something from my etsy store. *note to self...actually post things to said etsy store*

Also... ITS CHRISTMAS EVE! Holy Cow!

Seriously Its amazing how fast December's gone by. I guess it was helped along by the fact that I've done a pretty good job of keeping myself busy even with this being a relatively slow commission season.

Merry Christmas y'all!

-MadArtisan

I have built a Rhinoceros and am ready to do some voodoo

I've nicknamed it crash:

You may notice that his noggin doesn't match the one from last week's liveblog, well that's because it isn't, i screwed up the eyes on that one and had to make a new one, fortunately I had enough fabric to do so, also it let me make a better, more accurate representation of a Rhino's horn.

In additional plush news, I have besides my Cavalcade of Chunks that are in progress, I have inspiration for a new series of Plushies. Like I'd mentioned last week, Princess and the Frog was excellent, and my favorite character was Dr. Facilier.

A few of my friends have brought to my attention that the Voodoo dolls in the film (which during the friends on the other side song Dance/Play drums, and are very bright colors) reminded them of my plushies. Well, that quickly inspired me to design up A Voodoo series. Yes, I'll be making some psychedelically wacky Voodoo dolls soon. Naturally, they'll still be in my style, but a lot more loose in design; exposed stitches and mismatched color limbs and all that jazz. Now, from a technical standpoint I won't be sewing any less cleanly, I'll just add aesthetic "stitches" over seams n' such using some needlework heavy thread and the like. which I picked a little up during my last trip to Michale's:

Is it sad that every time I think of the word Voodoo, I hear the opening lines of David Bowie's "Magic Dance" from Labyrinth?  

You remind me of the Babe

What babe?

The Babe with the power

what Power

The of Voodoo

Who do?

You do

Do what?

Remind me of the babe...

I am such a dork.

Right, so that about covers that. I still need to finish updating my websites and start uploading crap to Deviant Art, my DA page is really behind on things... sigh.

On a lighter note, I'm doing family Christmas with the bulk of my family today. And Family, delicious food, and presents are always a good way to take one's mind off lackluster performances.

-Mad Artisan