Daily Doodlez - Daily Drawing

Alright, so far it's been a pretty productive January.... I think I might dub this month: Paperwork January. My husband and worked hard on some immigration documents and of course there are applications to fill out for exhibitions and residencies too. Luckily I have the most amazing husband in the world and so that I can be more productive and creative next to my 3 jobs he is going to be my manager and take care of all the frustrating and annoying parts of the artist's life. YEAY!

What better way to start the year than with a drawing project that guarantees daily drawings for 1 year.
My dear Fiona had the brilliant idea to start http://dailydoodlez.tumblr.com which is an image blog where anyone who wants to participate posts a drawing a day for one year. Thanks to the iphone/ipad app Instagram, posting to the tumblr takes a second, and not 20 minutes. The project is in honor of our dear Racheal who passed away this past November. She always told us to draw more and doodle more, she was totally right!

Drawing everyday of course brings out new ideas for patterns for my paintings and prints. So I am playing with the new patterns in painted form as well.We will see where it leads me next. I am in the middle of 1 major drawing and 3 paintings right now. Will post finished works soon. :)

Sophie - Part II

Some more Portrait shots from the Photoshoot with the lovely Sophie. :)

Sophie

Did a photoshoot with the lovely Sophie yesterday. Here are just a few of many nice images.

Racheal Anilyse

I would like to take a moment and talk about my dear friend Racheal. I met her in Hartford Art School during my studies and we had been in close contact via writting old school (20 page) letters to each other and of course the internet. Racheal passed away on November 18th.

I don't have the perfect words to explain and describe what an honor and inspiration it has been to me to have crossed paths with her. Racheal was an incredible friend, artist, supporter and teacher to me.. She is going to be so greatly missed.

Racheal always send me Cds with music which are all stacked on my desk in my studio, ready to rock out to when I need it. She always had kind, constructive criticism or a lovely witty comment up her sleeve when it came to my art work. Racheal founded Underground Art School website and magazine, trying to fill in the knowledge gap between artschool and the real world. As so many of us she graduated with an incredible set of skills and talent but realized (as everyone else) that we never did learn how to survive with these skills in the harsh reality of life. So she decided to take matters in her own hands and don't just learn for herself but to share the knowledge with everyone who would listen and be interested.

Pretty much anything Racheal put her mind to she made possible against all odds. She wanted to be a children's book illustrator so she put all her time and energy into figuring out how to make that happen! Check out her beautiful illustrations! http://rachealanilyse.com/

One of many inspiring things Racheal did was motivate Fiona and I into a doodle competition, the doodle off. So for a few years we put on intense drawing competitions over a certain period of weeks, the winner in the end was the doodle master but most of all it motivated all of us to draw every day, improve our skills and to explore new ways of drawing.

In honor of Racheal, Fiona decided to create Daily Doodlez where anyone who would like to participate can add a doodle (drawing, sketch) a day for one year. At the end of the year we will put together a zine or a book with the best works in it, in honor of Racheal, the proceeds will go to the Racheal Anilyse Art Initiative. If you would like to contribute or participate please get in touch with me or Fiona.

I am so honored to have had you as my friend Racheal and I hope you know you will live on in so many hearts around the world!

(All images in this post are copyrighted Racheal Anilyse)

Anne-Marie Painting

Title: Anne-Marie
Medium: Acrylic Painting with printed fabric Linocuts on wood  panel
Dimensions: 36 inches x 36 inches
Work time: 1 Month and 3 Weeks. 

It's currently exhibited at the Square Affair Fundraising Exhibition at the McClure Gallery.

October, Fall and all such things

Hello!

Life has been busy. I am back to working 3 jobs.
1. at Click Imprimerie on Mackay, stop by and say hello!
2. I teach a LOVELY Drawing I course at the Westmount Visual Arts Center and
3. I carve and soon print linocuts for Francois Morelli.
AND of course I also make art. I am currently working on a large 36x36 inch painting for the Square Affaire (the fundraiser for the VAC at the Mclure Gallery) that is due November 14th. So as soon as it's finished I will post photos!

Scott is also working 2 jobs at the moment. So between the two of us we are busybusybusy again. But we balance it ok at the moment. A big highlight recently was our little Tea date. We discovered an AMAZING tea house in our neighborhood. It's the CHA GUAN Tea House on Monkland. The total experience was lovely. We did wish the owner himself would have been present since we heard he tells you more about the history of the tea and the ceremony. But otherwise it was truely a beautiful experience. We relaxed in a comfortable environment for about 2 hours enjoying our tea with the whole Zhong tea set ritual.
I had a fantastic Ginseng Wulong tea and Scott enjoyed a tea that was picked by Monkeys I don't know the name of it though. I was so tempted to buy a Zhong tea set right there because it seemed like there is no better way to enjoy a cup of tea!

Scott tried their "Healthy Sprint Bites" delicious shrimp, mango and cucumber in a spicy sauce inside this amazing edible rice paper shell. Beautiful presentation!

Lovely Zhong tea set!

TINY cup of tea. :)

Asima - Painting

"Asima"

24"x30"

Medium: Acrylic paint on ricepaper mounted to canvas
Process: I used one of my pattern linocuts printed on ricepaper as a starting point and attached that to the canvas with gel medium. Then I alternated between painting her and the additional pattern in the background.Between each pattern layer parts of the pattern were accentuated with gel medium for more three dimensionality.  The final piece was spray-varnished for protection from UV. 
Timeframe: I began this painting in July and finished it at the end of September.
Price: $1800 (CAD)

 Close-ups

A new Sketchbook

This time I made myself a sketchbook out of some paper I had lying around and used an old proof of a silkscreen as the cover.
Work has gotten a lot busier, less time for drawing. And I am also preparing myself for my Drawing 1 class that I am teaching at the Westmount Visual Arts Center starting next week Thursday. I am quite excited to meet all my new students!
The big painting I have been working on all Summer is slowly but surely nearing it's final stage. So as soon as it is done I will post it on here as well. :)

Annual Watercolor

Like clockwork, as soon as summer begins, my fingers itch for my watercolors, this year it was my first little project since the wedding. So since we couldn't go on vacation I decided to paint a place i would like to go to right that moment. A stairwell in a small town in Southern France.

Summer Sketchbook-ing PART III

Finished this small sketchbook.
I'm going to go through older sketchbooks and see if I find a few more that need finishing. :) I'm on a roll and I love it! :) These are all pen and inks!

Summer Sketchbook-ing PART II

I have continued with my sketch-adventures, here are the newest ones!

Summer Sketchbook-ing

Since the wedding my fingers have been itching to draw again and what better way to start than to fill up a sketchbook. I had a thin moleskin one lying around and thought I'll share where I am at up to now. I filled it half way so far. There is no specific theme it's really just about getting back into a drawing routine, and not overthinking it but drawing anything and everything.
When it is not busy at work, I draw what is around me, or from a photograph.
They are mostly pen and ink.

MY BRIDESMAIDS

Fiona, Anne-Marie, Maria and Patrica

I have been thinking about writing about my bridesmaids for a while, I think it's time!

My Maid of honour was my best friend since Freshman year University: Fiona Clark. She is kind of like my female soul mate, we don't need to tell each other things we just know what's going on. She is by far the MOST important friend I have ever had. She means the world to me.
Many many people pulled together and helped us during the six months before the wedding but no one was there for me like Fiona. She lived up to being everything one can hope for in a best friend and maid of honour! She came up from New York several times through the 6 months before the wedding to help me try and pick out a wedding dress, print invitations, print fabric, print the napkins, make the decorations, she designed every bit of typeface that one might need and she did a TREMENDOUS job on the wedding programs. She took the pattern and text we gave her and just turned it into yet another BEAUTIFUL part of our amazing day! The programs are tokens people took with them that they will remember the wedding by in years to come and it meant so much to us that she designed them!  Fiona organized one amazing and fun bridal shower with a CRAZY bachelorette party... yes we did get picked up with a stretchcar limo in the middle of the woods and got to see some BEAUTIFUL male 'dancers'... ;) ). We had a lot of fun! Fiona was my lifevest through out the preparations, she kept me going the night before the wedding when i just wanted to curl up in ball and sleep at midnight but we were still not finished setting up. And when I still hadn't written out my vows so I can read them off during the ceremony, she painstakingly copied them word for word for me in three languages at 2am, so I could go to sleep and get married a few hours later!  Anything I needed she made it happen and I can't thank her enough for it.
I wish every bride out there a maid of honour like her. And every woman out there a best friend like her. THANK YOU! I love you, Fi!

Bridesmaids:
Anne-Marie and I met in Montreal a couple of years ago and connected and have become close friends since, she now lives in Ottawa, so Scott and I go to visit them (her and Matt) whenever we can, or they come to us. Whenever we hang out it seems FOOD takes center stage. We have crazy elaborate breakfast feasts! So naturally Anne-Marie was in charge of helping me with researching food and coming up with ideas for the buffet, two weeks before the wedding she came to visit me and we baked all the quiche and olive and ham bread for the wedding, we then froze it until the day before the wedding.  It's crazy but we did it and it was amazing! THANK YOU ANNE-MARIE!

Patricia McCarthy and I met during our studies in Hartford,CT, we lived together for a while and bonded very much over all the allergies we both have! We have stayed close friends since and Trish was a great source of help, information and inspiration during the 6 months before the wedding since she has attended many weddings before. Trish almost didn't make it to the wedding, she was supposed to fly in the Tuesday before but ended up in the ICU at the hospital because of her allergies and I had almost give up hope when i got a text message from her on Friday right before the rehearsal dinner that she was now going through security at the airport and would be there in a few hours! It was quite an adventure and I am SO happy she made it afterall! THANK YOU TRISH!

Eva DeAngelis and I have been friends since Highschool in New Jersey and I was so happy when she agreed to be one of my bridesmaids! I haven't seen her in a long time and was thrilled that she would be there for such an important day!  Unfortunately it wasn't meant to be, just two weeks before the wedding she was laid off from her job in New Orleans which made it impossible for her to join us, I missed her greatly and wish she could have been there!  She did help a lot with the wedding dress research and she made my veil which arrived (despite the postal strike) last minute the night before the wedding. THANK YOU EVA!  I hope that she has found a job in the meantime and things look up! The few weeks before the wedding I definitely started to have the sinking feeling that it was bad luck to be my bridesmaid!
Veronika Luther was an old friend of mine since 5th grade in Germany and I really wanted her to be my bridesmaid but unfortuntely the trip from Germany was a bit much. Despite the fact that she declined the offer she assisted tons with helping to translate everything into German for the wedding website, the programs and of course the ceremony. THANK YOU VRONI!

Honorary Bridesmaids:
Suzanne Kennedy and Alice Wong are two friends of mine I would like to mention as well, as I said before there were lots and lots and LOTS of people who helped us tremendously over the last 6 months. But there were a few that put in so much energy and enthusiasm and support that I would like to call them my 'honorary Bridesmaids'. Alice traveled all the way from San Jose, California to attend the wedding, we were friends in Hartford during our University years and have stayed in touch on and off for the past 5 years. She was there for the entire wedding week and she never tired of helping with ANYTHING that needed to be done. If it was doing the dishes or putting up decorations she was always helping. THANK YOU ALICE!
Suzanne and I met over the past 2 or 3 years but started hanging out a lot more the last 6 months. Her and her boyfriend Alex arrived on Thursday and from that moment on Suzanne was helping out! When we had to go to the rehearsal and rehearsal dinner on Friday she stayed in the tent and continued decorating relentlessly! THANK YOU SUZANNE!!!
Thank you for EVERYONE else who helped with the million details! Our family was very supportive for such a fast last minute destination wedding and did their best to be part of it and help out as much as possible! THANK YOU! As mentioned before tons of friends helped out and Scott and I will never forget it! THANK YOU!

Our wedding decorations and details

My hand painted signs were spread out through the ceremony and reception sites.

Silk flower petals all along the aisle. We gave people little pouches with blue and orange petals which they tossed during our recession.

My brother Martin build this BEAUTIFUL cedar box for us, it has our wedding pattern laser engraved in the lid and 2 locks with two keys on each side. We used this as our unity symbol, Scott and I wrote love letters to each other prior to the ceremony and locked them unread inside this box. Each year for our anniversary we will add another letter. If one day we should come to a rough patch or on our 25 wedding anniversary we get to open the box and read the letter together.

Our wedding programs. More photos of this one to follow in a later post.

Orange Cala lillies were my wedding flowers my maid of honour and I made the bouquets and the boutoneers ourselves the night before. For the bridesmaids we mixed orange and white cala lillies since their dresses were Orange.

 

Little fabric - flower  garlands showed you the way to the bathrooms.

Seating Chart

 

I made TONS of these fabric flag buntings, with orange, blue and white fabric on which i printed my orange and blue pattern, there are all held together by blue and orange satin ribbon.

I printed the napkins with the orange as well as the blue pattern.

The little favours were handmade fabric pouches filled with our own mix of Chrysantheum and Green tea. The label was also the seating card.

The I sewed 8 blue and 8 orange table runners each about 10 feet long.

The center pieces were more than 30 herb plants, we had everything there from different types of parsley to lemon balm, basil, rosemary and many more.
I also had different kinds of glassjars filled with candy, dried peaches and oranges.

The table numbers where all handpainted onto different shaped and sized pieces of wood.

There were mini-flag buntings around the dessert table.

 The wedding cake was made by our AMAZING friend Nicole Grinstead, with a beautiful caketopper made by the wonderful Marigold Santos. The two of them incorperated our colors and wedding pattern into the cake design. It fit breathtakingly into the entire setting. The cake was a vegan and nut-free moist chocolate cake with raspberry filling, buttercream and fondant on the outside.

There were many more details of which I haven't found any photographs yet. They might follow in the next post!

Photographer: Kes Tagney
Except for the cake and the boutoneer photo that was taken by Martina and Kirkor Cinarli. 
Wedding cake: Nicole Grinstead and Marigold Santos
Design of any printed writing and the program: Fiona Clark
Wedding pattern, printing, sewing and making of mostly all the decorations: Maria Doering
Assistants: Scott Fisher, Fiona Clark, Suzanne Kennedy ... and MANY MORE! 

We did have a TON of friends and family help us throughout the last 6 months with production of decorations, invitations, set up, etc. EVERYONE pulled together during the last 4 days before the wedding to ensure that it would be the MOST beautiful day of our lives. THANK YOU to ALL!