Martha Hull's Wicked Juicy Panfried Fluffpocalypse

The Fluffy Don't Stop

It has been a challenging last three weeks, trying to focus all my non-day job energies (which  sadly do NOT come from a bottomless well) into doing businessy things for my SBDC guided self-study, wherein I teach myself a DIY business degree of sorts.  Real business people will be offended no doubt that I compare my rather painful learning curve to their years of study, but considering I'm starting from Reverse to 60 mph, not just 0-60, I'm going to call it whatever I need to to make myself feel good that I'm really learning necessary things.

If you had told me as a teen I would be doing financial projections one day, I'd be sobbing into my Wheat Chex about what will happen to my soul as a grown-up.  Because although I still don't feel mature, I guess doing this "taking my art seriously as a business" thing means I've decided to grow up.  Boo.  

But the good news is, once I get the grown up parts of my day over with, (once I'm really and truly doing art as my job,) I get to be totally un-grown up for vast spans of time, too!  The hard part is that right now, there is WAAAAY too much grown up and not nearly enough silliness. 

And it is still raining.  I still prefer the crushing depression of the clouds to the shivery rage of the great white north, but it does not make it much easier.  The good news is, the rain is warming up and we see glorious pockets of sunshine many days now!

Do we ever not obsess about the weather?  I guess in Hawaii, where it is almost always perfect, you obsess about other things.

In exciting, less grown-up feeling news, I meet with the owner of a neato restaurant next week to see if he would like to hang some paintings of yours truly up as a show!  Woo hoo!  My first real Portland show!  I guess it is official - the years-long mild depression from the earth-shattering move across country during the Great Recession is over!  Now all I need to contend with is the normal amount of cloud moroseness.  I seem to be handling that.

And I am looking forward to this aspect of getting a handle on my business model soon:  I want to see Vermont again this year.  It's not "home" any more, but it is "the homeland."  Makes sense to me.  September seems cheapest - now I just have to figure out if it will become a business trip or just a social call.  Order up some extra humidity for me!

Is this Cat Trite?

Is this fun like an ironic trucker hat, or trite... like an ironic trucker hat?

It's more of a sketch really, so you don't need to point out the flaws in the grisaille palette or imperfect martini glass.  I'm experimenting with where my work is going to go next. 

Normally, my animals animal-animals, not people-animals.  I think this will not be a direction I am willing to go - critters standing on their hind legs, ha!  Maybe the cats are a theme though, rather than going down the road of (truthfully and sadly less-than-original) animals hanging out in cocktail lounges (hello, dogs playing poker!).  Still I also don't want to go all George Rodrigue on you, even if I would like his success, thank you very much.  It's been done, too

And if you don't know George Rodrigue, you should probably check out his very compelling blue dog work.  Talk about a man who was able to take one thing and own it.

Portlandia Sad-eyed Cat in a Basket in the Rain!

Will this "bad" painting of a cat in a basket in the rain in a puddle be humiliated on Portlandia?  Stay tuned this Friday night (February 3) to find out! I found out that Portlandia airs at both 7 and 10, PST.  Woot! This early show I was not aware of helps for those of you who either a) have a life and need to go out and party on Wayne, or b) don't have cable and can't manage to make it out of the house after 9 (Hello, me. Of course I don't have cable - I live in Portland. It's one of our "things.")

How can they not humiliate it? I mean, look at it! It is a giant kitten in a basket in the rain in a puddle... and what's that? I think it might be crying!

It's ridiculous, and it can be yours.

C'mon, you know you need a print of Kitten in Winter. Why not be the first kid on the block to have one? (5% of profits will go to the Humane Society of the United States, so no more cats need live like this!)  The humans in Portland are, of course, doomed to this existence- but only for eight months of the year. But this is not about me. This poor kitten needs a home. Won't you give it one?

Or at least watch Portlandia with me? How many seconds of fame am I allowed?

Portlandia Kitten T minus 96 hours plus I finally get off the All Kitten Channel for a moment

I found this post while I was supposed to be pimpin' out my kitten (and other prints...)

I have had my kitten painting recently compared to the artist Margaret Keane from the 60s who did creepy, big-eyed children portraits - I think she was actually one of a few.  My favorite coffee house in Portland (Oblique, and I found them BEFORE Portlandia did, thank you very much!) has a bathroom with full surround of pictures of huge-eyed kids.  I think one may be dressed as a clown, and I think one is holding a giant daisy, and I think one has a puppy, or is a puppy, or something like that.  Too strong of a mocha and the kids and puppies all start to look alike.

Today, I went out and bought a sh*t-ton of new pencil leads.  I haven't been in a mood to draw and I thought it was the clouds and the day job but the Epiphany Train ran full-steam into my head last night when I was hating on my pencil...  Whoa.  And duh...

So I am an automatic pencil addict.  That being said, if the lead isn't very soft, well, it turns out - I don't want to use it.  Goes for any pencil, now that I've got my head out of whatever I had it stuck in.  Now I have to go through my large supply of roving pencils, most of whom have unlovable leads, and SCORCH THE EARTH!  Actually, I will give the leads away to my favorite student, who will use them to WRITE with.  What a dork I am to think I can make do with "whatever. " That is not how I roll when it comes to art supplies.

In "Kitten in Winter, as hopefully to be seen on Portlandia THIS FRIDAY NIGHT", news - I have decided to donate 5% of all profits of print sales to the Humane Society of the United States.  Hopefully, I will actually sell some prints so this can happen.  I used to work at the Humane Society of Greater Burlington ages and ages ago.  It's not even called that now, and their facilities and practices have changed for the better, I thing.  But I'll never forget some of the animals I saved (and didn't manage to save) there.  There is a reason animals factor so prominently in much of my work.  My dear own Kiki Diablo cat was rescued from a collector who lived in a trailer with 30 cats.  No wonder she has no teeth.

Here's an old picture of Earth Pig to spice up the visuals:

Thanks for staying tuned while I hype the bejeezus out of the Portlandia Kitten painting thing.  I wish I had the time and energy to make some nutty YouTube video to help it go all viral, but the time and energy and willpower I have aren't going to power me through that before Friday.  You know, I found out we have a limited supply of willpower?  Well, I feel better.

Read this if you have the time - it's a sales pitch/first chapter for a book called Switch -  if you get far enough down to the part about the Rider and the Elephant and the study about "food perception," it will be worth your while.  "What looks like laziness is often exhaustion."  Tahnk you, thank you.  Lighten up Martha, it's just how it's gonna be.  I am sadly no art superhero.  So no YouTube at this time.

I am, however, thinking of chucking it all to become a pirate.

Bring on the clouds... I mean palm trees!

Aloha! I have become "that guy" who can't ask anyone about holiday plans without sounding like a total DB, because when they ask me what I'm  doing, I have to say that I'm going to have the Christmas of my dreams by going to Hawaii!!!!!!!!!

Commence hating me... now.

I don't care what the weather does here while I'm gone, of course, as long as the cat doesn't suffer, but I am fed up with our current freezing weather.  The folks who get to go outside during the day are all happy about the sun, and while I will probably eat my words, I today said that I hope the clouds come back soon so that it will warm up.  Nothing inspires looks of horror and shock like wishing the clouds to come back. 

I never want them to lock in in the fall, but if the only way to get it back up near 50 is to have them, I'm ready.  Its so dark anyway...  I am really counting on this sun lamp working, you see.

Remember how I told you Death's Daughter and the Basket of Kittens was complete?  So, when you show your writing to a writer, you sometimes get constructive criticism.  Stupid constructive criticism.  Thank you, Brigid.  So it is NOT done, although I have had my epiphany about how to solve the huge gap in motivation about why this nice little girl is psyched to have a fluffpocalypse happen -"because I said so" didn't work for me as a child and I can't pull do that to my readers now.  This thing is going into Ver. 3.0 (1.0, 2.0, 2.1 being previous iterations) and I think it is finally getting ready to kick ass out in the world.  As soon as I draw about eight new panels and chuck some of my favorite existing ones.  I think 3.0 will no longer have conjoined twins in it.  Sorry.  I will need to bring them in in a later book.  But Death will be watching TV or some other silly activity, so there is THAT to look forward to, gentle readers.

Meanwhile, please continue with the hating of me being in Paradise for the Baby Jesus' Birthday.  and Bobofest, of course!  I think it was warm in the City of David, so is this not the most approriate celebration?  I know Santa likes him some hula from time to time...

Aloha and may you have warm holidays.  Happy Bobofest, all!

Robots, Harmonicas, and Nose Theory

I have completed Hoff's robot doll harmonica case.  What a terrible tease that I do not have a photo of it ready for you yet.  It is too dark in the evenings for photography.  It's my first bi-color 'bot.  She is silver and black and has blue eyes and mostly blue glittery bits.

The oak trees are starting to turn color outside the windows of ye olde day jobbe.  It is spectacular to live in a place where the color is still revving up.  It never reaches the velocity of Vermont, but then again, we cannot compete on the frozen air particle front, either.  We kick arse in clouds, though, but not this week.

It has been a challenging week, trying to juggle all of life's demands.  Was there ever a time when life was simple, or do we like to just pretend people in rosy olden days had things better?  People are so complex, I'm sure we can manage to take any situation and make it as complicated as possible.

I started work on the new batch of finishes for Death's Daughter and the Basket of Kittens.  I am giving Belladonna a nose, once she reaches child age.  I had gone through a no-nose phase back in the day, but then realized that noses represent worldiness.  A face with only eyes is a watcher.  A face with large eyes and a mouth is an innocent doer.  A face with eyes and a mouth and a nose knows something about the world.  It's unspoken visual language, but I think it crosses beyond my imagery and into something more psychology-y.  Or maybe I made it up.

Either way, Belladonna is getting a nose.  She embarks on too great a journey to be noseless.  Some days, it would be nice to be noseless in this context, but actually it does not mean you are any less in danger.  So that is an insight into how my fictional (?) worlds are created.  Can I make it more complicated?  Allright, let's go!

Although sometimes, Mr. Freud, a cigar is really just a cigar.

Horror!

First off, happy birthday to me.

Second off- so I've been getting up before God and his minions (well, if I were a god, I'd sleep until 7 or 8 or a hella lot later if I'd had a fun night)... so it's been EARLY as I'm trying to: 1. research ways to let people know about my picture books on the internets, and 2. get a full half-hour dose of my happy light each morning.  Finally, I made a shocking breakthrough.  I somehow didn't realize that my work bleeds (yup, I said it) into the genre of horror.  Not overly gruesome horror, but, well, people get eaten and burned alive and stuff like that sometimes.

How could I have been so obilvious?  I was thinking I'm all goth-y and lo and behold, I realize I have more in common with the horror bloggers than the kitten bloggers.  (If you recall, the book I'm working on now is Death's Daughter and the Basket of Kittens.)  Okay, I knew I shouldn't bother the poor kitten bloggers, although not a kitten is harmed in my work.

So that is exciting, non?!

Also exciting is the imminent cake with espresso poured on top (thank you, Portland, via the Pied Cow on Belmont), and a James Brown dog from Zach's Shack. 

I think it's time I finally pull my head out of me arse and go visit my pals down at Occupy Portland, too.  Sure, I'm disturbingly busy, but maybe I'm not too busy for history.

By the way, it is also the late, great Divine's birthday. 

The honor is truly mine.

It's raining colors

I am realizing we have a second bloom here in the rainforest.  It almost makes up for the clouds.  The gray coupled with all the flowers has really amped up my palette since I moved here.  My paintings almost vomit color now.  I bought every neon I could find in my new media, acrylic gouache.  There are a bunch.  I can't wait to do a picture book with these new paints- maybe Ponyhunter, a tragic love story between a young man and a pegacorn named Sparkleana. 

I tried the HappyLight today- even got up early to do it, and I am SOOOO not an early morning person.  And I haven't had this much energy (at my day job, no less!) in, well, memory.

I'm slaving away prepping paper for an entire picture book's worth of paintings.  I buy ink soon so I can mix enough purple/black to do the entire book...  I'm about to be a painting fiend.

The colors in Death's Daughter are sedate, mixed with intense hot pink.  I think the pink will carry me through.  I do love working in ink. Ink comes in an entire palette of colors, too.  Including lemon yellow and hot pink.  Just sayin'.

I'm not sure if those are crocus or tiny lavendar tulips I see all around town...  and the roses are coming back for one last hurrah.  At some point there is a lull and then the Camelia, a bit like roses on giant, leafy bush-trees, starts blooming in late January or early February.  Portland Freakin' Oregon, ladies and gentlemen.  The land where anything will grow.

If I prep my papers fast enough, I may start drawing unicorns tonight.  I think they'll be hard at first, but I'm also pretty sure they are going to be fun.  Unicorns are not generally a downer.  Off to the studio!

Drive fast, take chances!