What's up folks! Got some new stuff to show you. Plush toys!!! My everencouraging (I declare that to be a word) LadyFriend™ encouraged me to combine my screenprinting and my sewing and make up some cute plush toys, so I figured what the hell and gave it a shot! You might remember these two little fellows from the shirt I made for my cousin's kid a few months ago. It's a modified version of him, and who knows, if he proves popular I may make additional permutations of him in the future. He's easy to edit, and small enough I can make films of him at home.



And, so then, there's this guy, heh. He actually comes from a nightmare I had at my girlfriend's place one night: (I was on a camping trip with my brother and dad in the Linville Gorge area. We were contemplating our campsite when we heard a rustling behind us and turned to see the shape of a very large bird forming out of leaves and other detritus from the ground, swooping by the tree line. There was a crack like thunder and the form of the bird dissapated, and something fell, spinning, out of it. The spinning object slowed and hovered a few feet from the ground. It was a koala, a very ANGRY koala, with antlers, holding a scimitar. That's when I woke up shouting.) Erm, right, so anyway. I told Hana about the dream in the morning, and she laughed at my ridiculousness and insisted that I draw the koala nature god for her, but that he must be cute. Heh, so I drew him up, screenprinted him and surprised her with a koala-nature-demigod plushie for her birthday :)

These have really been incredibly fun to make, and I've learned a SHIT ton about sewing in the process. I'll definitely be making more of this kind of thing, as well as other soft sculpture things in the future. Heh, I sort of have a vision of getting a wicker basket, making a model guillotine out of cardboard and filling the basket with plushie severed heads. I think that'd be fuckin rad.

Anyway, while they may not always get along, these fine stuffed, printed gentlemen are available for sale, individually, through my Etsy Store :)

More soon!
-P.

So, also on Monday, Tim told me about an annual Day of the Dead art show at Pura Vida this weekend, and asked if I'd want to put anything in it. Fuck yes I would!

I'd had some other skull comps on the shelf I'd been trying to make something with for a while and decided to finish one of those. lol, and I realized, I had three days to do it.


The basic bits were done already; hand-carved rubber stamps done with oil based relief printing ink. I wanted to tea stain the whole thing (which I'd never done) so I went lookin for some tutorials. Of the ones I found, this one looked like it yielded the coolest results, and sure enough, it worked AWESOME. It wasn't quite dark enough the first time, so I gave it a second go.


I tried a couple different teas. I mostly used rooibos, because I had a bunch of it and I don't like it. It worked really well. Darjeeling on the other hand, didn't work well at all.

Going in, I figured I would put some color in with watercolor. The reality however, is that I suck at painting, and I really didn't think I'd be satisfied with the results if I did it that way. But, I suddenly realized that if tea stains paper, that tea soaked in india ink would also stain paper, in color!

So, I heated some water, poured it into containers, and squirted in some india ink. I then let some tea bags soak up the tinted water for a while. Then, I spread the tea grounds around the composition where I wanted them, and let them soak in. I let them soak a little too long, and the red bled out across more of the composition than I would have liked, but c'est la vie.



Here's the piece after I washed off the tea grounds:


And here's some closeups:



That's about it. After all that was done, I let it dry, sandwiched between some cardboard, and under some heavy weight to keep it from warping. Then I drew in the remainder of the banner with a brush and india ink, and wrote in the text with a calligraphy marker. I then took it outside and burned the edges with a cigarette lighter.

I feel like it's still kinda busch-league, but I'm satisfied with it :)

And here's me at the reception saturday night. HAHAHAHA, LOOK AT THAT STACHE, AAAHAHAHA!

They put me right above this incredibly well done sugar skull by a local tattooist, Chris Stuart. He's mad good. The top-right skull is done by my friend Tim, and I don't know who did the piece below his, but it's incredibly cool.

The show was low key, but really nice. Not a ton of artwork, but mostly quality. There were some cuban musicians performing and they were great. They played El Carretero, which was awesome :)

Anyway, enjoy! Feel free to comment!
-P.