Attention my Loyal Followers...

Due to the "OVERWHELMING" comments and suggestions for my website layouts and ideas, I'm going to change......drumroll please......ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!!!!!! Muahahahhahaaa!

I've handed the images off to Mike and he'll be working on making them web pages over the next couple of weeks in between work and hanging out with me. He's a good husband that way. I'll be sure to let ya'll know when it is up and running so you can check it out and tell all your famous friends to hire me for freelance work. ..........Bwahahhahaa...( I just couldn't keep a straight face!) See you kids around the interwebs!

Cas

Just A Little Bonkers...

One thing I really miss about school is our critique sessions. I learned so much! We were able to get our points across by drawing, making weird sounds and motioning with our hands. That's kinda hard to do on blogs... Well! My friend Adam Sevy posted a little sketch that I suddenly fell in love with, so I colored the lil guy. Then I colored it again. Then I critiqued it, but with neon lines to get my point across. It was really cool and fun to do. So if any of you feel the urge to go crazy and do this with my stuff, I'll post it and then I'll show the improvements you suggest! Wouldn't that be cool? Just like school again!

Thank you Adam for putting up with my Crazy! Be sure to check out his blog too. http://theadamsevy.blogspot.com/

So Professional!..... muffled laughter...

       This is for my website..... I seem to draw this pose a lot, but hey it works. Confession. My hands are not that long and luxurious, but I don't think potential employers will mind. Haha! I suppose I'm tentatively asking for critiques. I'd like to do any minor fixes by this Friday so I can hand it off to Mike (my husband and programmer) to turn into a real life website. I don't need this thing to be perfect, but I do feel like I need it to be up. Do you know what I mean? I've never had a consolidated place to show my work. And how lame is it to say, "Well, uh, I have a blog...?" I think having an online portfolio will help give me the confidence to really start going after jobs! 

Ps. I actually printed some of those business cards I made a little while ago and I've actually had people as for them!!!! It felt so good to be prepared and all "professional"!! I only printed 5o, so that when my website was up and running I could add that info to it too!

Eggs?? You say!

Ode the the natural Egg

By Cassie Grace

Egg, Oh how I love your brown shelled tones,

'Specially without all those Hormones.

You are so tasty in my pound cake.

Just eight of you it takes to make

If only store eggs were more like you,

except for the eggs covered in poo!

As you may notice, none of the eggs here are brown. I found that often, my brown eggs were being mistaken for potatoes, so thus the iconic white egg. 

The design behind the red-head is supposed to be Mucha-esque, but most folks seem to think its a fancy plate.....sigh....

I seem to have lost this middle one in my move to Texas. I'd really like to display it with the others. It is a play on the painting called "Circe" by JW Waterhouse 

This one is patterned after some of James C. Christensen. The long neck, profile woman and the checkerboard are some of the characteristics I borrowed from his work. All of these pieces were an experiment. I painted acrylic on particle board then finished with oil. I wanted to try on other artist's motif's the way little girls try on their mother's clothes. It was fun, and now FINALLY done. 

Because I Can......

My sister Sam is on a religious mission in New Jersey for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. I try to write her letters about twice a month as well as e-mail weekly. In her letters, I try to include little comics or drawings. I didn't have any good ideas for comics, so this kinda popped out. 

I haven't done this painting method in a while (acrylic washes) so it was fun to prove to myself I could still do it. I'll admit these little mushrooms aren't gallery worthy, but I enjoyed doing it just the same. 

So I love writing and getting mail. Would anyone want to be pen/illustration pals with me?

St. Patrick's Day Party

My friend Angela and I threw a St. Patty's Day Party on Saturday and we had a blast. She asked me to create a poster with a leprechaun on it so we could play a variation of pin the tail on the donkey. So I did a quick google image search to see what leprechauns looked like and this is what came out:

Pin the Shamrock on the Leprechaun

I think my nerd was showing at the party, with my knowledge of celtic music and counting to ten in gaelic. I was obsessed in high school with my irish heritage. I listened to the music, read the folk tales, learned some Irish language phrases on Microsoft Encarta and fantasized about red headed boys. Haha! 

The party was a success and the shamrock game was a hit! I knew I got that degree in art for a reason!

I love Webcomics.....sigh....

I just wanted to do a little shout out to some of my favorite Web Comic Illustrators. These folks are seriously skilled storytellers. I obsessively check for updates daily.

These are my top Six.... I have about 25 bookmarked, but that'd be rather tedious to list them all....

1. Cucumber Quest by Gigi DG
    Amazing! Adorable and a fun story. The humor is light and silly, which I love. But the color kills me!!!!! So good. She doesn't use any line either, just like Samurai Jack.
http://cucumber.gigidigi.com/

2. Friends with Boys by Faith Erin Hicks
    It's about a young lady who was previously home-schooled going to high school for the first time with her three older brothers and her adventure. Its all black and white, but the line is RIDICULOUS!!! I love the style of her characters. They actually look like teenagers!
http://www.friendswithboys.com/

3. Scary Go Round and Bad Machinery by John Allison
     I'm not sure on the age of the characters, I think they're young teens and british. So they say funny things and wear uniforms. Anywho, these kids solve mysteries and are funny in the process. I love the way he draws these funky kids. The sharp angles and flat shapes are so engaging. sigh.... awesomeness.
http://scarygoround.com/

4. Cleopatra in Spaaaaaace by Mike Maihack
     I stumbled across this one because I read through his Cow & Buffalo Series (I highly recommend as well!). Cleopatra has been cloned in the future and she fights bad aliens while attending high school. So...  ya know... totally awesome!
http://www.cowshell.com/cleopatra/

5. Johnny Wander by Ananth Panagariya & Yuko Ota
     It seems like mostly a comic journal for the writer and illustrator, but they through in short stories every once and a while, but they always make me smile.
http://www.johnnywander.com/

6. Sarah and the Seed by Ryan Andrews
    While this webcomic is finished, I still look at to remember how much I have to strive towards (aka remember how much I suck!lol). Its a black and white, but crazy elegant. Such an unusual story that just kept glued to my chair until I finished it. So Good!
http://www.ryan-a.com/comics/sarahandtheseed01.htm



So that list should keep you busy for a while. Seriously. Check these people out. None of them know I exist, so I'm not getting some sort of kickback for this promotion...though that'd be cool! I just know I love looking at these images and I can't wait for the next page in the story.

Crazy Piecing

I don't really know what this kind of quilting is actually called, for now its just "Crazy Piecing." My genius twin sister taught me how. It's kinda like paper piecing without the paper. It's a kinda of like a fabric puzzle.  I'll try to be sure to show you kids the finished product! 

Apple of my Eye

My darling husband snagged the nice camera for work today, so you get a photobooth snapshot. This is the last of this little series. At least until I use up the rectangular canvas first....I think I have six or seven... So I need to paint on those before I invest in more square ones.

I am on to the next painting! It is a portrait, but on panel. It's stalled for the moment because...well...the drawing is pretty good and I don't want to ruin it by painting on top of it. Haha! How silly is that?

First Round o' Cards

Now that I've been asked for a business card three times, I felt like it was really time to make myself one. All I need to do now is print it. It's black and white because....well... I'm cheap. I think I'll only print 25 or 50 for right now, because I'm working on getting a website up in the next few months and I'd like to add that to the info listed. I'd also like to create one with a little more color and personality, but this'll work for the time being. I'll take any pointers for my next set!