WHAT WE SAW/WHAT WE THOUGHT 1/5

1/5
Love!C

THE HOOF AND THE HEEL/ THE F IN FRESH/ CINEMA L'AMOUR POSTER

My band! The Hoof and the Heel. :)
Love, C

Meredith Meyer Album Art

Here is some of the artwork I did for her album although it wasn't used. Hopefully I can use it for something else or it's just a stepping stone to something similar because I love it so!
Love! C

ANIMAL COLLECTIVE POSTER

Yahh! :)
Love! Christine

SLEEPY SKETCHES

Oh, I've only had a few hours of sleep last night (working working working!) but I'm having trouble falling asleep even though I'm so super sleepy. Usually I just start to draw, whatever, anything and it usually represents how I'm feeling at the time. Ha. Like above--super sleepy wanna be sneaky sleepy sleepy sleep.

I've been doing a bunch of illustrations with this japanese calligraphy brush lately. I still have to upload them! Soooo many. I love how very subtle and soft the brush is--slow shading with ink.
Love, C

I NEED AN ASSISTANT

"But, you see, I didn't see it so it doesn't count"


"It's in situations like these that I feel myself completely torn."


"Well the thing about us is that we don't roll that way."

It's so hard to clean these up for web because they are on cold press watercolor! Cold press watercolor is awesome for art on the wall but not for web. I'm going to have to get hot press from now on! Anyway, there are a few more of these but I'm going to scan those in later. So---now to find a good gallery in Montreal to set up a show and then I can buy some big big watercolor paper (sooo nice, the possibilities on paper, like the flat surface of dreams) and get to work making these babies huge! I do that with most of my gallery art---it starts out as a small illustration idea and then I blow it up really big. The bigger the better!
Like this guy below: he was just a tiny lil' thing and then I painted it on large paper and put it in a show. There is a whole series of these guys. This one I actually had in one show and then donated it to a fundraising event and all the proceeds of the sales went to the Bagavagabonds in LA ( they're this cool group that donates their time and effort for the arts and music). I love donating my art to charities. It's just wonderful that people buy that art knowing they are supporting a good cause on top of it. It makes me feel so happy that the art is going to a good place.


In other news: got asked to be an artist for a baby line in France! YAY! I love making kids stuff (still working on babylove!). And...I think maybe a poster in the works for a tour...? Not sure yet. And then I'm going to start branding a company in Arkansas. And...making some hats for a photo shoot...and illustrating a header for a food blog...and...got a project doing a few illustrations for a very cool magazine and...tomorrow is the very last day of working on the Sea Legs album. I'm taking it in a whole new direction!!! Super excited about it!! I'm excited about the art but also about FINALLY wrapping it up so I can get to work on all my other billions of projects! :) Ah, so many things! I need an assistant and maybe three more of me. I'm so so so so so so so so blessed and thankful that all I do is creative stuff all day long and it varies every day. Music wise: been meeting so many people to do music with and I'm steadily working on my first solo album. So excited. Thank you Love.
Love love love love love!!!
Christine

CATOPUS

I almost went to bed without posting but I really want to try to post every day as many times as I can so I whipped this lil' thing together. I LOVE this new Vector world I've entered only because I can draw a thousand times more quickly and in vivid colors. And I like building things up too--for example, all the elements in the cheeseburger are their own image. If you peeled it apart, it would be as if you were pulling apart a cheeseburger. I'm sure lots of people work this way but it's fascinating to think of creating in more than just 2D, because 2D is about the angle and the perception, whilst making this cheesburger was about making every part of it real and then laying them together.

Another advantage of working with vector is that I can work as fluidly and lucidly as I like with minor adjustments. The purpose of Catopus was just to make something for tonight, but I had no idea so I started off with just a doodle of a monster body and as I added each element, the story grew in my mind. In the end we have this Cat-octopus monster thing eating cheeseburgers from this creepy cheeseburger that makes cheeseburgers every time it opens its mouth. They're friends which is odd because the cheeseburger is making it's own kind to be eaten by his friend. But, I don't think the cheeseburger really cares, his reason for existing is to make cheeseburgers, nothing more and nothing less.

What else, I worked on some music today, and I slept A LOT, like a CATOPUS! In and out of sleep in the sleepy sun that shines between the buildings, getting up to make toast (I think it was my last day of Toastcapade), and then sleeping more.

Later Simon and I met up with Boris and we ate at a sweet little Italian place and then headed over to Drawn & Quarterly for Matt Forsythe's super cute comic book release called Ojingogo. Ah, Montreal why are you so amazing? Should I try to see what winter is like or just be a summer lover?

SEELING MY CAR: If you live in LA, I'm selling my car for super cheap, like mere handfulls of rubies!

Speaking of "lover", I wrote a new song (and now I have recording equipment that I borrowed from JP) about the moon being my nighttime lover and the sun as my morning.

OTHER NEWS: OH! I fell off my bike today too in front of a windowful of people. Whoops! It was really funny, like in slow motion. I was talking to someone and leaning up against my bike and then the bike fell back, slowly, slowly, and then I fell back slowly slowly on top of it plop.

ZZZtown now because I have too much work in the morning and I want to go to Quebec City in the evening.

Love!
Christine

SOCK DOG

...is a lookin' for his pups. Oh oh!




Oyasumi!
Love, Christine

WATERMELON MONSTER

and mustaches! Crazy!


Well what a good day! I ate 5,000 pieces of toast with marmalade, cleaned my fish's bowl, drew some things, and then started my path down to Vector Village. Super duper fun and my WacomWonderTablet is overjoyed at all the attention I'm giving it.
What else...a couple of my poems are going to be published, one of the albums I'm working on is finally going to print! Yay! I have to tweak some of the artwork again and then it's party time. Just got my new illustration assignment from The L.A. Record: MOGWAI and SIAN ALICE GROUP!
RADICULOUS!

Ahhh. I want to draw every second of the day---it's hard to pull myself away sometimes. It's just super fun and I have a thousand ideas for paintings and illustrations every time I close my eyes! It's like if I take a break from looking at the world (and I am always always looking at every little tiny thing all the time) then crazy art takes advantage of me when my eyes are closed. I just did an experiment. I closed my eyes for one second and I saw:
A pink dog with blue ears and big eyes wearing a frenchy hat swing it's head to and fro, slobbering all over the darkness. Isn't that a little crazy?! I mean, it's super fun, I see cartoons all the time. I really don't have any complaints, I just wonder if anyone else see's that? The same thing happens with music sometimes---especially while I'm falling asleep I can hear an entire symphony and point out every instrument and note. Oh the brain, the wonders of the brain and the wonders of the unfamiliar familiars.

Sleep tight.
Also, listen to This American Life #361 Fear of Sleep. The very first story told by a comedian about sleepwalking is very funny.
Love,
Christine

DOGS AND TOAST

I am totally obsessed with toast.
Toast is obsessed with butter.
Dogs like talking to toast with butter on their tongues.

I don't know why I haven't been drawing more toast! I've been eating toast with marmalade like a million times a day. MMM! I haven't had toast in such a long time (years and years and years of a toastless life!) so now me n' toast are hanging like every second every day. Toast. What a weird word when you think about it. If you didn't know what toast was, you might think it was a cousin of FROG.

DOGS DOGS DOGS!

DOGS DOGS DOGS! I've been neglecting my dog obsession for a while, but, now that I have a new medium, the lil' pups are ready to take back the stage. AWW!
This is totally different from the folky/baby designs from earlier today, dawg.
Love! C

I LOVE CUPCAKE

I have SO SO SO many patterns and textiles that I don't have uploaded online!

But this one is new. It says "I LOVE CUPCAKE" in cyrillic because "cupcake" is the new "mochi" ( I used to make a comic strip, a little book, some jewelry all about MOCHI [ a japanese confection made of gooey rice], and even met with the Mochi Ice Cream guy about making plush mochi dolls and t-shirts). A lot of people call me Mochi, actually. Isn't that strange and amazing? Some people ONLY know me as "Mochi". Wow. I like it. Nicknames are endearing, they take an extra effort to remember.

OH! I won a contest today!!!
I won HOOD ART by INFECTIOUS.com by submitting a really crazy picture of me that I just happened to have lying around of me with a mustache and a unibrow drawn on my face...if you dig deep into my Flickr, you might find what I'm talking about. Haha. I'm going to submit my own hood art as well! Maybe you might see someone driving around my with illustrations on their car! Crazy! :)




I can't decide whether this is a cat-cupcake or a cat crawling up on a cupcake. I like the idea of a super happy cat with a mustache (bien sur) crawling up a giant cupcake he found saying "I love cupcake" in Russian. That's the winner. :)

Love! C

L'EPHANT JARDIN

Ahh! Yay! I made some major progress today with my website.
Well, I just put this splash page up, but I've been meaning to make it for years and years! Today I got a lot of compliments on my "2D3D" style. I've been doing it for a while and I love it so much. It's like my dioramas but, all 2D. I love the idea of allowing people better access to another world, to look at a picture and feel like they are there. I did this for David Labruyere's album: Farrago Dance Mix ( you can find it and me in Wikipedia too!) and for some other things, but, oh it would look so nice as a book, an animation, and I have whole landscapes planned out for possible gallery stuff as well! I can't wait to create more and more intricate worlds that people feel like they are peering into! Here is today's "2D3D" and some older work that fall into the same category. Enjoy! Love, Christine
P.S. So art usually reflects the artist and this is what I think it is saying: I am fat and happy elephant eating ice cream. Hahaha. Well, I have been eating a lot of sweets lately and feeling a lil' rotund. ;)




The above "Hands up Yeah Yeah" was published in the first Penny-Ante book ( where I had an interview and tons of art in it right in between Devendra Banhart and Daedelus. T'was neat. :)

This was the inspiration for David's album: Whisp of the Wheat Whipporwhills

JUPITER

Tonight was so perfect: the temperature, the moon, the the smells of flowers and dinner and cinnamon. I walked to the grocery store, made a new friend, walked home and decided I was going to stay outside the rest of the night. My sweet roomies had supper outside at this lil' restaurant on Mont-Royal and then jammed over to the Jupiter Room. Ahhhh! Simon and I went soul dancing for hours and hours and hours. I love love love love love it. I could dance forever to old soul: getting all sweaty, drinking water like nectar, big smiles, crazy moves, craziest moves and dramatic exits...haha. Also: I made up 2 new songs today! One is has a very pretty lullaby old sad soul feel- and the other is a blues jammaroo!

Below is something I painted I think in the winter when my hand was broken. I am probably the pig drinking tea. But, maybe I did this in the spring, reflecting on being a pig drinking tea. Either way, it's my new/old "la bonne idee" contribution: une doodle finally worked on tonight.

In a few hours I'm going to wake up early, make super yummy cookies for a picnic avec my roomies, meet up avec my french friend Ben and go to to the Italian market to get some fresh veggies and check it out, and then to the island for a picnic avec mes bonne roomies! What a package deal: a room, a garden, and wonderful friends. Ah, j'adore ma vie en Montreal maintenant , I wish it would stay summer forever so I don't have to leave. We'll see, we'll see, we'll see. It all depends on how much work I get done. So many things. So many many things.


Love love!
Christine

LA BONNE IDEE

Oh, so sleepy today! I didn't do very much. Played the guitar for a couple hours, sang so loud, so loud.
Woke up early, went hiking and running, found out about the pool (!!!!), read a book in the bathtub while the thunder rumbled and the rain dripped on the flowers out the window. Tonight I went to the CUTEST french restaurant off Park Ave (Oh lala, there is one here! I am always near a Park Ave! I stayed on Park Ave. when I was in New York too!) with Simon (Simon, if you didn't know by now, is my super duper cute gay roomie that I just love so much) and some of his girlfriends and ate yummy poisson et couscous, talked about art, working, with bits of french here and there (practice, practice, j'adore!). The sky was beautiful: pink to purple and later the moon was shining against the clouds against a deep, sea blue. A little chilly, a little chocolate, a homeless man told me I had really nice hair, and this strange man stalked me down the street after I went to the Couche-Tarde (obsessions: dark chocolate with fruit and tropical gum---also, Couche-Tarde is this 24 convenient store with a sleepy owl with only one eye open).

But the night is ending with: LA BONNE IDEE ( THE GOOD IDEA!)!! :)
I want to try to make something every day but I wasn't in the mood today, so, before I left for M, I scanned in hundreds of pages of doodles and artwork and inspiration to add to my website. So, when I haven't drawn anything, I will put up something that no one has ever seen. It's new, new to you and new to me because I start to work on it until the idea has come to fruit.
There are other things to talk about, like music stuff, but I'm just super sleepy right now. More tomorrow!
I love it here. I really do.
Bon nuit! Love, Christine

CHEESE DREAM UMBRELLA

Cats, cheese, and plants. All of Simon's favorite things.
LC

MONTREAL!

I've been here for a couple days and so far:
I've made a poster,
wrote a new song,
slept a lot and had really weird dreams (one of them I ran into John Mayer at a chic hotel by the beach and I was wearing all white and he made a joke about it, but then I looked at him and pointed out he was wearing all white too!),
given away a bunch of jellyfish comics,
walked around the city and bought cheap mangos and apples,
got asked if I wanted to be a nude model, sing backup for a country band, and play bass and sing for another band,
ate the city's best Pho,
sang songs for my roomies under the stars,
and last night decorated an umbrella with cats and cheese and wrote "cheese dream" in Korean all over it. ( Will post pix later!)

Right now there are rainbows all over my room because the sun is shining in from the courtyard garden through my little crystal I put in the window.
I'm off to climb the mountain now! More later.

Love,
Christine

Posters below:

Special Montreal comic: