New pen and Ink illustrations

I admit that lately I have been a bit preoccupied with all the weird negatives and stresses as of late. I think the best remedy to this is staying busy, keeping tons of projects at hand so you have no time to dwell on all the crud in life. I have been doing pretty good in the keeping busy department lately. I find drawing to be perhaps one of the best forms of therapy for myself. I love to put on a good movie( lately been enjoying lots of Studio Ghibli films like Spirited away and howls moving castle) or listen to some music(a lot of Greatful Dead pod casts and danny's great collection of Reggae) while getting cozy on the couch by the window and then just drawing for hours on end. Here are some recently finished pen and ink drawings of mine:

This one I started drawing as I watched the movie Sleepy Hollow for probably the 100th time. I really love the costume work and the overall vibe of the film. I have always had a week spot for period clothing especially the elaborate women’s gowns. Corsets are still something that I cant seem to get enough of. I wear mine any time I find an excuse be it a renaissance fair, Halloween, costume party, tea time…whatever! I have recently started drawing more and more corseted women, along with fully detailed gowns. Im still trying to make up my mind on whether or not I should leave the above drawing as a bust portrait or draw out the entire woman and her gown…guess ill keep pondering for a bit on that one.
Here is another recent illustration I made of an earth/goddess spirit of some kind:

Sorry Aunt Char, its another “droopy boob” drawing as per usual!
I should have prints for sale shortly for both of these drawings.
Getting back to keepin busy with projects: danny and I are still experimenting like crazy with silk screening. The other night I created a new silkscreen using the drawing fluid/screen filler method again. I tried my first double blend color the other day using metallic pink and metallic purple. The screen prints came out great with a neat transition of color through it. I took pictures last night of the prints and some of the shirts I printed on too but I was too tired to post them. Tonight I should be editing and posting those pictures up for everyone to see, and they will also be up in our etsy shop very soon so stay tuned.
Danny and I finally bought a table of our own to use at art walks instead of having to borrow someone else’s, yikes! What’s really exciting is now I have a table in my little art corner of our apartment. Its inspired me to reorganize the area. I caught the spring cleaning bug. Over the weekend I scrubbed the bathroom clean and tidied up all over. I planted some wild flowers in pots and put those on the patio. Today at work I plan to clean out my desk and my inbox. Clean and organized makes for more breathing room= less stress time. Yay.
Also, i just recently noticed that our Lucid Optic Lab online etsy shop has now been "hearted" or "followed" by 200 people. Our audience is growing! The other day we got our first alchemy request( custom order request) through the etsy site. I am interested to see how all that pans out. Exciting.

Best wishes everyone!
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Alberta Art walk was fun!

So the last Thursday art walk on Alberta st was lots of fun. Thursday turned out to be a lovely day, boasting lots of blue sky. This time we set our booth up at a different spot, more within the climax of the art walk. We got there super early, around 4:30 to ensure a good spot. We set up atop a nice lot of grass in a spot that had a few mushroom circles and lots of lady bugs. set up was a lot easier this time, now that we have finally figured out how to set the canopy up effixcently.
We brought all sorts of stuff to sell inclduing new things like framed prints and silkscreens, new paintings and lots more. Here is a close up of our table:

We ended up just two booths away from a drum circle that was ongoing through the day and night sparked by a man who was making n selling them. Later on in the night we had a band set up right in front of us. Loved their music: singer on a partly metal guitar, a man playing a sousaphone, a woman on drums and accordion. Shauna Mama : www.mamasherbalsoups.com came and visited us! it was super fun to meet and talk with her and her husband. Im pretty excited, i believe Shauna will be sharing a booth with us for the Art Hop on Alberta st, which is coming up soon.
Met a lot of interesting people, had some amazing conversations. I feel energized and inspired from my experience and im looking forward to the next vending opportunity.
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Artwalk tonight! new screen print T-shirts.

So I am at work till 3 today while poor Danny is at home feverishly loading up our car with all our merchandise to sell tonight at the Last Thursday Art walk on Alberta St in Portland Oregon. Come check us out! We will have a booth set up with a bunch of stuff to sell: paintings, prints, screen prints, tie dye and much much more.

Here is the first of the Goddess in All of Us screen print shirts that i have released for purchase in our etsy shop, but there’s more coming soon:
This shirt is a women's Large and is made of super comfortable stretch material. I have 6 other shirts of various sizes and colors that i will be selling tonight at Alberta St art walk and soon they will be ready to purchase online.

I have been having some fun framing prints and artwork lately. here is an older watercolor and ink illustration that i just recently framed. I am not sure about the frame yet since it seems to cut some of the detail out:

So wish us luck for tonight!
Much love
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Screenprints: the Goddess in All of Us

So last week i did my first silkscreen experimentation using the drawing fluid method which turns out to be a pretty simple process. This is what i ended up with:



These are limited prints since i produced only 8 prints on paper and 6 prints on women's shirts. Tonight I plan on cleaning the screen and trying the drawing fluid method again to create a new design.

The drawing fluid method goes as such:
First you secure your silk mesh fabric into a wooden frame then you use drawing fluid ( you can get this from a few different manufactures but i using a bottle of drawing fluid that came in a speedball silk-screening kit) I used a small paintbrush to draw directly utop the screen mesh. Once i was done drawing i let the drawing fluid dry completely. Once the drawing fluid was dry i squeegeed on a thin and even layer of screen filler( which was a redish color).Once the filler was dry i washed the screen and found that The screen filler resisted on the parts of the screen that i had drawn on the fluid. This left me with a nice clean and crisp design to print with. Printing is fun but very unpredictable because of the way i am doing it. I do not have a proper screen press, like the professionals do. I am just holding the screen down onto the to be printed surface. i glob the paint across one end of the screen and then drag my squeegee across which pulls the ink over the entire screen. once that is done i pull the squeegee down the screen in the opposite direction using as much pressure as possible without moving the screen on accident. This produces a print but each print is individual in its thickness of line/clarity/detail and so on. i have to sayi am falling in love with silk-screening and i cant wait to try it more.
Danny is working on retouching the pictures we took today of me modeling the "Goddess in All of Us" shirts, so i should be posting pictures of those soon. the shirts and prints will be up for sale in our etsy store: www.lucidopticlab.etsy.com
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Stormy Monday Morning

Good morning,
I just got into work a few minutes ago. It was a stormy weekend, it would seem that the wind has died down a great deal but its still pretty wet outside. This weekend went by so fast, especially Saturday. Still, Danny and i managed to get a lot on our list done.
For instance we have been busy framing and matting a lot of our fine art prints. so far we only have one listed for sale on etsy: This is a 4x6 signed print framed and ready to hang, priced at $15.00 bucks.
Also, Danny has been busy cutting up individual lotus screen prints and popping them into glass paperweights. I love them, the thick glass seems to slightly magnify the mettalic lotus print so you can really see all the details of texture. Here is a goofy pic of me playin with two paperweights: there are more pictures of the lotus paper weights in the actual etsy listing: http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=22301729

Over the weekend i managed to do quite a bit of drawing which is good because its been awhile. I produced two new illustrations on this big huge pad of drawing paper Danny gave me. Now im just waiting for Danny to put the scans together. the paper is so big that we had to scan the illustration in parts and put it back together in Photoshop. So it might be lil while till we see nice finished scans...so keep checking back for newly released illustrations cuz there should be two comin soon!

Also, over the weekend i finally dared to try and put some dreadwax on my locks:
i have had a box sitting in my house for about a month now from Dreadhead HQ. I had ordered some wax awhile ago before my dreadies were crocheted but still just slightly teased pony tails covered in rubber bands. A lot had changed. by the time the box of dread wax got to my apartment i had heard so many horror stories of dread wax disaster I decided to just let my dreads be dreads and not use any care products. So far this all natural method has worked wonderfully and my dreads are already feeling nice and solid. However i have been somewhat annoyed by this large area of halo frizz that frames my head especially after washing. Today i decided to open that box of wax and see if perhaps it would help weight those stray hair frizz back down to the dreads and thus help the strays mingle and knot back into the dreads. I used the tinniest bit of wax on each lock and worked them by rubbing in circular motions back and forth along the dread starting at the root and going to the tip. After I was done applying thr wax I applied heat to my dreads with a blow drier to help integrate the wax into the dreads. This seemed to really make a big improvement with the general neatness of my dreads....they seem much more organized to me. I am also happy to report that they are not sticky yuck to touch either and they smell rather pleasant like brown sugar. This wax appears to be a bees wax and hemp oil based product . My scalp seems to be benefiting from the wax as well since it helps to moisturize. My skin is sensitive and my scalp gets dry when i dont use conditioners so I am not itchin as much. This wax has vitamin E that seems to be helping make the hair a bit stronger and healthier feeling, less brittle.
...as for danny we still have what seems to be a few more rows to go. We are puttin in very thin short little dreadies on his head....hes already got tripple as many dreads on his head then i have on mine. we are so close to being done....if only we had a weekend to dedicate to the completion of his dreads. Ah, well, its a slow and steady process. His baby dreaides are lookin great though.

....and as far as the silk-screening goes danny just cleaned his screen so no more lotus/crescent moon prints. im excited to see what danny will burn onto this screen next. stay tuned.

Best wishes!

P.S

Thanks Mom mom and Pop pop and Aunt Char and Aunt Robin and the rest of the family who are taking the time to read my blog even though most the time my posts are filled with my wierd "droopy boob paintings" and other bizarre topics.
Thanks for the support, its always appreciated.
Much love.
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Friday the 13th, Dready Journey Update, plans for the weekend

Hello there, its Friday the 13th! I see this day as a potential good luck day. The Celtic druids considered the number 13 sacred. But latly i have been more and more aware how much power i have over what sort of day i am having. It really is a trick of perception and thought process so I continue to try my best at living in the now and staying positive with my inner thoughts.

Here is a picture Danny and I took yesterday afternoon while the sun was beginning to set:
Our living room window faces exactly west so we get lots of gold sunrays every day around dusk. Its been so cold lately that when i find a good patch of sun i try and soak as much of it up as i can before it vanishes.
The dready journey is going very well. You can sorta see Danny's baby dreads in this picture. We have been putting a few in every night before bed for about 3 or 4 weeks. We still have one more row to finish on his head. Once we are all done with his dreadies i am going to need some serious TLC on mine. I am experiancing some major frizz and loose hair but nothing that a good crocheting session can’t handle.

This weekend will be a busy one. i need to do my taxes, first of all. We have a few more newly screen printed shirts that are ready to be photographed and listed for sale. We also have a bunch of nicely framed signed prints that we have to take pictures of and list as well. I would greatly benefit from a trip to the coast. Since i grew up by the ocean i tend to periodically need to visit the coast in order to center myself. From what i have heard there are a bunch of really amazing forest/coast/cliff hiking trails all along Oregon so i will try and pinpoint one for us to explore come Sunday? that would be wonderful.

Best wishes to everyone!
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more screen-print shirts, a scanned watercolor painting, tidbits and rambles

Here is another screen-print shirt that Danny made last weekend. I really love how the waning moon and lotus print came out in metallic purple paint:
Posted this shirt on etsy already, so its ready for purchase! www.lucidopticlab.etsy.com

I made some use of my scanner, here is an older watercolor painting of mine:

I would love to get all my work scanned/photographed and digitally documented just so that i always have a nice high res copy somewhere. What i really need is a good fail proof backup system too, so i dont have to worry about misplacing data/picture dics.....speaking of things i need to do; taxes! UGHHHH. oh how i loath it.
Its been a fairly turbulent week, and so its gone by in a blink of an eye. Meanwhile Danny and i are busily preparing for the first vending event of the season; Last Thursday on Alberta st: March 26th 2009.
Last weekend we took the lightrail into the city on Sunday to see what the art market looked like down there( skidmore fountain Saturday market spot downtown Portland). It was a fairly cold day, randomly hailing/raining on and off so i was surprised to see a fair amount of foot traffic through the booths. Danny and i stopped to talk to a few screen-print artists. They said sales were pretty poor, due to the terrible weather but more largely the economic hardships of late. I am seeing that our economy, thus our ways of living, our consumer habits are all going to change. The trick is to find imaginative ways to continue to grow within such a negative spout of current times. I think its very important in these times of economic distress that people spend less time supporting the mega corps, but instead focus energy and funds on local small business. we have to pull together as communities and learn once again how to make do with local talent and resource.
The American lifestyle has grown so outrageously unsustainable it was only inevitable that the system would crash. Now that we are positive we have started to fall through the rabbits hole, we need to be conscious and use the power within ourselves to be the change we wish to see in this world.
Personally, more and more i seem to catch myself daydreaming of communal living. My good friend and fellow oneironaut Randy Tooth( www.randytooth.com ) has invited Danny and I to come stay a few days at WolfCreek, a spiritual, communal sanctuary that is completely self sustained. Wolfcreek is also home to the Radical Faerie movement. We will be going to visit for the celebration ritual of Beltane, but not until late April/early may. I really can hardly wait. Danny and I will drive up with only a few changes of clothes and our drums. I cant even begin to explain how much i am looking forward to escaping Babylon for several dayys. I fear it most probably will be a painful thing to come back to the daily drudge after experiencing wolfcreek.
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Ancient Gold Crescent Lotus silkscreen shirt by Lucid Optic Lab

Here is a new one of a kind silkscreen shirt by Lucid Optic Lab

The Ancient Gold Crescent Moon screenprint shirt:


Danny did a great job with this new batch of screen prints...i cant wait to show some more off!

This one i listed tonight on etsy so its now available for purchase!
www.lucidopticlab.etsy.com

...eggh this daylight savings time crap has my internal clock going completely wonky. Hopefully tomorrow will be easier.

I spoke to my Mom mom and Pop pop today. They are doing very well and Mom mom’s Hibiscus flowers are blooming like mad in the desert sun. Missing family and friends. You are all seated in my heart.

Peace and Love
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New painting, new silk screen shirt, new news

whoops...its been awhile since i have made a blog entry so here we go.

just opened up a twitter account: www.twitter.com/lucidrose

I finished a painting i have been working on over the weekend:


Here is another screenprint shirt danny made:
we have more coming but this time it will be a crescent moon with a lotus resting upon it. here is Danny's design: we took pictures in the two shirts that he printed thus far over the weekend. Hopefully sometime this week we will be able to have the pictures ready and list them for sale on etsy.

I had a lovely weekend. A dear friend of mine, DR. BOB (whom was once my manager when I worked at Art Supply Warehouse) dropped by my house to say hello with his friend Lisa. They are lookin to move up here, hopefully soon...as soon as they find a job. It was super nice seeing him. Its funny how different we both look and feel only after a year....but change is healthy and is always a good sign that an individual is on the right path. We all compared and contrasted our impressions/experiences of Portland Oregon thus far. They went home today. Dr. Bob seems especially inspired to make the move. We were talking about how many of our friends/coworkers that we met through art supply warehouse all seem to be intent on marking the move up here. So it would seem that the tribe is gathering!
...seeing Dr. Bob reminded me of just how much I miss those that i left behind in the move. But good and true friends, no matter if you never see them again, always have a speical dewlling space within my spirit. I am just happy that i was able to meet/interact/collaberate with those souls in this lifetime...
It snowed/hailed today in the morning which was sorta cool because Dr Bob and Lisa got to see that before they took their flight back to the deserts of LA. I really love the snow, its so soothing. The snow didnt last very long and just as soon as it stopped it began to rain down little tiny pellets of hail.
Took a trip to the 99 cent store and found some super functional headband things that are pretty sleak...perfect for wearing at work for a more conservative look. 99 cent store rocks forever and always.
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Lotus Print Silkscreen T-shirts

So its another manic Monday,

Danny and I got a lot accomplished over the weekend. We were able to do a shoot of the newly silkscreen t-shirts that Danny has been working on. So far we have the pictures finished for three shirts out of the 5 finished. I will post the rest as they are completed. Here are the results so far:


check out our etsy store: www.lucidopticlab.etsy to see the shop listings for these new one of a kind Lucid Optic Lab apparel.

Strangely enough over the weekend i set up another modelmayhem account only this time i created my profile as model not photographer. I did this in hopes of generating some more freelance revenue possibilities. I have lots of modeling experience from being the subject of a lot of my own photography + i have been doing so much modeling as of late for Lucid Optic Lab apparel/tie-dye i thought id give modelmayhem a shot. I honestly didnt expexctmuch would come from the creation of my model account but so far i have had some great success and i am pretty much all booked for march! This may very well become an important part of my freelance work equation. www.modelmayhem.com/lucidrose

I am excited about tonight. my massage therapist from my chiropractic doctors office has invited me to a group shin-dig that sounds super neat. I guess its a spiritualist group that meets together every monday at a house in tigard oregon. This monday it is Shamanic Drum night. Everyone gets together and pow wows with percussion instruments( lots of rain sticks/rattles anything earhty sounding) using the scared drum beat: the rapid eagle beat which i think is 100 beats per minute. This rhythm will be used to create a trance where we will be able to contact father sky and mother earth and if we are lucky have some powerful intuitive visions/insight granted to us. I have been to pow wows before...it seems everyone has their own ritual and i am excited and interested in participating with these folks tonight on their shamanic journey. I will write of my experience tomorrow.

Dr.Bob, a friend of mine from my old Art Supply warehouse days( worked there for a year and then quit to run away to the woods of Portland Oregon) is coming up this week to visit. He is coming with a friend to job hunt. They are hoping to nail a job so that they can move up here while still having a nest of stability. I have met so many fellow California refuges, as i call them, up here in Portland. LA has especially gotten out of hand in the ways of vice, over crowding, pollution, violence,...the cost of living is just psychotic and the level of police brutality is unforgivable. Many people are ready to leave behind the confused chaotic life styles of LA living and retreat to more natural, cost effective living.

I think its important for people to realize we are never stuck in whatever situations we come across. There is always the option/possibility of leaving behind our personal/material bagage and moving on to better things/new potentials. Change is good but it tends to manifest its self in my life in very strange ways that sometimes seem negative but in the end everything seems to work out and i often find myself in awe of the way this universe works. I must say that i am certainly paying much more attention to the cosmic/karamtic happenings in my life. I am making an effort to push positive/prosperous thoughts into the universe and i can certainly say that energy is being echoed back at me 3 fold.
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