Lotus Triskele is an exclusive custom design for my client, please do not use for yourself.
I really like how this one came out. I don’t have much to say, except that Lisa wanted something elegant and not clunky, and that we both were excited about the mock 3-D look when I tested it on one of the sketches. Can’t wait to see a photo of the real thing!
So, some of you might be aware that I have two little boys and that my youngest just turned one. I was chatting a few days ago with my friend Pierre Carles and he asked me to document everything in photos for the creative folks like him. So I did, and this post is written specially for him.
As usual I started thinking of a theme, because that helps me focus and choose a palette. For my first child I chose pandas and a palette based on three colors, and we had a lovely party outdoors. Since my little baby’s birthday is in winter, and what a winter we had this year! we had to do everything indoors, and our apartment is smallish, so I would not have a lot of room to play. Because of this, I decided early that I was going to use the food itself as decoration and to bring in some color to the place (we rent, our walls are too white).
So the theme was frogs, my kids love frogs and they are fun, right? And then I thought “hey, frogs and lily pads go together!” so frogs and lily pads it was. I spent some time looking at cupcakes online and deciding on what colors to use. I chose green and light blue (because of the water).
cupcake tower with #1 candle.
So, frog cupcakes: my design, easy stuff, I used glace (confectioner sugar and water) and green food coloring, I used green Wilton candy melts for the eyes and candy eyes that I glued with royal icing, I cut a red candy melt in half for the mouths.
Happy frogs (next time I’ll get better quality liners)
For the lily pad cupcakes I followed the instructions here, I made my own yellow sugar using these instructions (beware, you do not get edible glitter, just colored sugar!) I used blue icing instead of white, to give a water look, green would have worked for the leaf idea.
These impressed all the moms!
Then I made flower lily pads with a flower cookie cutter and a large circle cookie cutter, I took a segment off of it. I later decorated them with royal icing, and placed the flower on top of the leaf.
place one cookie on top of the other to give a dimensional effect!
As I was doing all this, my dad was helping blowing balloons, I asked him to make groups of three balloons and use curling ribbon to give a dynamic effect. The added the tableware in matching colors, and voila! The place was ready to party!
The palette was cool, I thought it gave a nice effect in the winter time.
I am by no means a professional, so things did not look super polished, but the kids loved them!
It is a common misconception that Christians hate gays. It is also a common misconception that gays hate Christians. I have a revelation for you, many gays are Christians! Shocking! Actually I happen to know a few very good Christian gay guys. Now, keep this concept in mind for a moment… I will come back to it.
Every year I make my Valentine card with my husband in mind, when the card is not too personal I also offer it to the public in Zazzle. One year I used a quote from 1 Corinthians, which is one of the readings I included in my wedding, a beautiful reading about what love is not, and most importantly what it is. Later that year a friend of mine, Alejandro, married his partner, Chris; In Argentina same sex marriage is legal, and I thought I would love to give him a card for his wedding, most of the cards that are geared to gay people are funny or naughty, there are very few that are tasteful and even less that are Christian. It was with Ale and Chris in mind that I redesigned the card I had made for my husband using the silhouette of two males. I kept the quote, though, because regardless of faith, that quote from 1 Corinthians is beautiful and perfect.
Every year this card sells for Valentine’s day, and it makes me so happy and proud, that I get giddy each time I receive a notification saying that I sold that design. It makes me very happy to think that somewhere some guy browsing through countless tasteless cards finally smiles warmly thinking that this is the perfect one for his partner. Because in this world of loud words and seemingly “them against us” mentality, me and the people that buy it know that Love is Truth, and Jesus was all about that.
This blog was a little outdated. The gallery now represents more of my current art, I have taken down very old pieces that do not show the skill or themes I am working on now. The links have also been weeded out and updated. I hope to keep up with this blog a more now. I do still have a lot of things to say, and it seems that I might be starting to get some time to put into it.
Thank you for still being here! Thank you for paying attention to it!
I’ve never been a fan of just portraits, I like art that has a twist to it, a bit of fantasy, a lot of beauty… but I have to admit that I am working on portraits at the moment, and I am enjoying myself so much!
It all started when I was thinking of what to give my mom for mother’s day (in Argentina we celebrate it in October) and since it is usually a struggle to find her a present followed by a fight (you needn’t buy anything, don’t spend money…! etc.) I thought that giving her a portrait of her grandsons would be a better idea than buying her something. I am not very confident in my realism skills, especially working traditional, so I went for something a little unusual, a bit modern. I liked them so much that I made a set for my mother in law, and then an idea started to form in my head.
Portraits of my boys that I made for my mother (I really need to learn to photograph art).
I actually had missed doing traditional art, and here I was working on paper, with a brush, with pigment (for me traditional art is a sensuous experience), actually relaxing while working; and I thought that every mom should have a portrait of her children if she so wants. I worked out a fast and easy technique so I could offer this kind of art for a very affordable fee in my neighbourhood (anybody that saves me the stress of shipping art gets a discounted rate from me!), suggesting it to be purchased as a present for grandparents who say that they have it all already, and it was a hit. A lot of moms asked for portraits, some of them multiple copies to give to grandparents and keep one for themselves, one of them even left a special empty spot in a photo wall she was making to hang her son’s portrait! They started thanking me for providing “such a great service”! I have very few times felt so loved as an artist as in the last two weeks.
This is being a great experience for me as an artist, I love sitting with my tools, drawing, painting, and thinking that one happy mother is waiting for a portrait of her child that I will have the honor to paint.
I still have slots for these to be ready for Christmas, so if you are thinking of commissioning one, please drop me a line, I will be happy to talk with you about it.
If you didn’t know, I have a two year old, and I am a little paranoid about my little child being in touch with chemicals… Okay, I know technically everything is a chemical, but I don’t like not to know what he is in touch with. Some day I will just buy stuff, but for right now, a period in which his organism, his neural system, is undergoing such a rapid development; a time in which industries just dump substances of dubious effects in everything, I am making a lot of things myself: play dough, paints, and today we did some home made plaster to make some Halloween decorations.
Cute ghosts and Jack-o-Lanterns to decorate your home.
The recipe was simple, I took it from a website:
Two cups of flour
One and a half cup of boiling water
One cup of salt.
Dissolve salt in boiling water, mix everything, knead, voila!
… Except that it didn’t work, I was left with a mess of very thick bubbling salt. It looked like some prehistoric swamp. So I went ahead and started reading about making brine, and it so happens that different salts occupy different volumes so you should actually work with weight. Since I don’t have a scale, I had to eyeball it, and since I don’t know what kind of salt you will use I cannot give you an exact recipe, so I will tell you what I did and you can work things out in your nook in the woods.
In a bowl add two cups of flour. Boil one cup of water and start adding salt (I started with 1/4 cup) stirring to dissolve, stop adding salt when the water cannot take any more. Add this water to the flour, mix with a spoon and once the mixture is cool enough, knead with your hands as if it was bread.
Cutest little helper
Cutting shapes
Before doing this, I separated the dough in three and added some food coloring. I used orange and purple to evoke Halloween colors. As I kneaded to integrate the color and make it uniform, the plaster took a good smooth and elastic consistency.
Then I took the rolling pin and stretched the dough thin, as if making cookies. We used cookie cutters to make shapes: pumpkins, ghosts, and just because my son loves them also hearts and stars. With the help of a straw I made holes to pass string. We put the cut shapes on cookie sheets covered with aluminium foil (the tray and the cookies) and put them in the oven at 200 ¤F for three and a half hours, I turned them half way through. Poor Ignacio, he truly though we were making cookies, it took a lot to convince him that the plaster is not for eating.
Before baking, nice pastel colors
The dough baked, and even at such a low temperature the colors became muted and dry. I didn’t much care because I wanted to evoke fall, but if you want vivid colors, which I will want for Christmas, I would suggest to use a lot of coloring.
After baking…. 
After the shapes cooled off we proceeded to decorate them. I didn’t have a lot at home that was toddler friendly, and my other baby was napping, so I wanted to be quiet, therefore I took pencils and crayons. You could use markers, paint and brush, anything you want. We also used stickers…. because stickers are awesome.
I used pencils for simplicity, but use whatever you fancy!
The last thing was to pass some string through the holes and hanging the shapes.
We made holes with a straw before baking, then we passed some red yarn through them.
While these are definitely not pinterest perfect, we enjoyed making them, especially since I could keep my child quietly entertained while the baby was napping. And he loved picking where to hang them.
My dad was visiting one day and we were talking about not much really when the topic of Tchaikovsky came up, and how he was dislike by his colleagues. We are all big fans in my family, I am not in love with his ballet pieces, but I am with his concerts. We were talking about the Violin Concerto, which is my mom’s favourite, and he said something like “He was not liked because that it is his only concert!” to what I immediately replied “No, dad, he did write other concerts, I have a beautiful rendition of his Piano Concerto!”. He then said (and I don’t know if this is a true fact) “Well, but you know…. That is the only one that he composed out of inspiration, the others were commissions”. I chuckled and answered “You have no idea how inspired I feel when I have a big pay check in my bank account.” He smiled “Yeah, me too”.
Sadly, there is a pervasive idea that the artist is only happy and truly a creative genius when is doing personal pieces, when there is no money involved, as if the Muse was prostituted to the client for money. I think I have written about this before, but nobody can deny the creative and technical genius of Michael Angelo and Leonardo however they too were paid to make some of their most memorable pieces. Not wanting to compare myself with any of the masters, I do find inspiration not so much in the money that I am being paid but in the challenge of bringing to realization the idea of the client, getting involved in the conversation that takes part when I am trying to get into their minds and be their hands to create a unique piece. Actually, I could say that some of my best pieces have been commissions. And while the payment does not necessarily inspire me in itself, it gives me the drive I need to keep going until completion instead of abandoning the work because I have another great idea, because I have n agreement to honor. I guess the money helps the over inspired artist to keep focused.
Life how it was Before Children and how it is After Children.
My two year old finally fell head first into the fish pond. He is fine… we were not.
How many times do we get an email saying “I love this piece, can I use it for *insert reason here*”. I got one of such emails last year around December, and like many times before I rolled my eyes, most especially because it was for promotional and or commercial purposes. I have the habit, however, of not leaving unanswered emails and of incessantly try to educate people, I assume most people are not trying to take advantage of the artist but are under the wrong impression that we will work for free because ah, la boheme! This idea is spread by the popular culture and, sadly, many artists themselves…. As if accepting money was prostitution.
So I promptly and politely explained that art is my livelihood, and having to care for two children I really can’t afford not charging for it. But if they wanted they could commission me to work for them. I was surprised when a mail did follow up, very honestly expressing their disappointment at not being allowed to use the Crow Triskele for free but willing to hear about me working for them. Soon we were going back and forth about possible ideas but there was a lack of enthusiasm from their part, they really loved the original piece as it was.
A much better and professional looking image for them.
After a few emails and a good night sleep it finally occurred to me that if they liked the piece as it was then I could refine it, since the original was little more than an advanced draft and very old. My main concern was that the piece they liked is one I offer as a tattoo for free and it is my most popular piece, which brings me business, therefore I was reluctant to let it go. So we decided that I was going to rework the piece to refine it, and that we were going to share commercial rights while I still could continue to offer it as a free tattoo.
Lessons learned :
Do not disregard possible commercial opportunities. While most of the times these kind of mails lead to nothing, this one time not only I got a commission out of it but also I got to forge a positive and amiable relationship with my client.
Be honest but polite. Explain art is your income, people can understand that. Keep the sarcasm to yourself, it is not professional. Expect honesty in return and respect it, this is a possible client, respect is fundamental in your relationship.
Be willing to find a creative solution to keep both parties happy. You might find out that a little thinking can solve a conflict where a flat “I’m sorry, but no” seems the only answer at the beginning.
Remember that a happy client is a returning costumer and can refer you to others, do your best to offer the best quality possible.
I keep thinking I want to post about my ongoing projects, however I not only am busy working on those projects and therefore not having time to blog about them, but since they are in progress I cannot show them yet. Nevertheless keep finding myself wanting to share with you guys the stuff I am working on! I want to show you all so much!
I guess I could blog about some past projects, I do have one I want to tell you about, which has been finished soon before Santiago was born and I found it to be a great learning experience from a business point of view, but I guess I will have to wait a bit to tell you about it, since I need to go work on my newest project which is wedding stationery… who would have thought I was going to do anything like that! So off I am now to try to learn about that kind of design…. see you all later!
Old sketch, but fits the wedding theme 🙂
Faerywitch World. 