I’m super late in posting this, in fact it’s from 4 months ago! Happy (belated) Halloweeen! ??

Spider vs. the Living Dead was made by Threadwood the creative partnership of my husband Scott DaRos and myself.We bring unique design sensibilities to clay, stop motion, and 2D animation projects. (Click through to see more about our team).

One will catch you in it's web…
The other will stalk you until you’re dead...
Who will get the last bite in a battle between the world’s most terrifying, flesh-craving beasts!?

Special thanks to my father in law, Ron DaRos, who designed the title lettering.

aaaaand a little Behind the Scenes from my instagram of us setting up the space (and you can peep the start of the scenic painting for the background)

Unfortunately, it seems the Stoopid Buddy Art Department segment got mostly cut for time - BUT there's a cute little cameo of a welcome sign put together by one of my fabricators Melody Palisoc and Tyler excited about the real textures on our house's roof. Click for the episode. It was a delight chatting about all of our miniatures, his love of fire opals and seeing someone explore "the mezz" (our prop storage) for the first time is always a nice reminder of how cool it is.

"The Burbank Channel" hosts a show called "The Mayor's Show" and during that show the current Mayor (Bob Frutos), will visit local businesses, cover interesting topics or major events in the city. The Mayor hosts interviews to connect the people in the City of Burbank with what makes it special. 

This episode Mayor Bob Frutos toured Stoopid Buddy Stoodios where as an active in house Art Director - I represented the Art Department portion of the interview (starting at 58:31). 

Seeing how the new school year is now well under way I found myself waxing nostalgic for the art building at UConn and the promise of new and exciting projects. It made me want to create what I'm calling my "Art School Nostalgia Series" dedicated to my experiences and appreciation for my Fine Arts professors at the University of Connecticut. I find myself thinking of each of my professors often and wishing they knew how very much they helped to shape the way I think, work and talk about art as a professional artist. Especially because it's very difficult to soldier on in the face of rejection and finding your voice as a professional artist. It's important to carry those you've found to be the most helpful for guidance and critique when you get stuck or blue. That way you remember that you're capable and talented and can get this piece of art done! 

I've also always been seriously terrible at writing thank you cards in a timely manner (or ever at all) and thus these thank yous are about 5 years overdue and I wish to remedy that! 

Post #1: Advanced Figure Drawing (circa 2008) with Patrick Earl Hammie:

This was one of my favorite semester long projects in college. I had the tremendously talented Patrick Earl Hammie as my instructor. He set out for us to develop a cohesive body of work outside of class over the course of the semester - and we could choose any figurative subject matter we wished. He challenged what we used as drawing materials and how we were drawing with them. I remember one exercise in particular where we put our 4' x 4' drawing boards, roll paper and chunk charcoal on the floor, took off our shoes and socks and drew with our feet. It sounds bizarre but it was incredibly liberating, and resulted in looser and more gestural (but still successful) drawings. Drawing with my feet made me reevaluate how to translate all of my art making thoughts to a motor skill I had less control over, it was difficult but successful in that it ultimately influenced the way I approached the pieces above that I was working on outside of class (even though I did those with my hands).

As for my subject matter, I chose to work with the "Figure in Repose" I really loved the idea of the dreamlike, trailing off moments that you experience in waking or falling asleep and also the heaviness of deep sleep. It became even more exciting for me when I started incorporating 2 figures and the use of negative space.  Each drawing is from the same 4' wide paper roll, and ranged in height from 4' - 7'. I used chunk charcoal, sand paper and pastel which let me develop rich blacks, touches of tone and color and offer a loose and ethereal feeling to my drawing style.

Thank you Patrick!

I'm super pumped I successfully sold my first gallery show painting at the Robot Chicken DC Comics Special 2 Charity Art Show ! As a plus the proceeds went to OPCC's Turning Point a great cause benefiting the homeless here in LA. Good vibes all around. I even met the couple who bought my piece and they were very sweet - I couldn't be more pleased that it went to a loving home!  

I'm hopeful this is just a start to the awesomeness to come :)

I'm feeling super jazzed this Yahoo article announcing the Robot Chicken Xmas Special has a video preview featuring the sketch I built the sets and props for!

Here's some close ups of my miniature guitar for Adam Sandler (I'm super proud of this thing).

I made an illustration of happy critters for my cousin's baby shower and it found a doppelgänger friend on the gift table! 
Hooray for serendipitous coordination! They even have complimentary snout twists :)

I made it just in time to post for this week's Illustration Friday challenge "Storm". My guess is it's in light of the storms in the North East - I drew some inspiration from the pictures folks back home have been posting. 

Illustration Friday topic "Wool" 

llama llama llama...

Having some fanciful fun with Mermaid hair and fins.

It feels great (albeit a little pathetic) to have tackled my first gouache piece since college! I'm also looking forward to more now that I've dusted off most of the cobwebs. Hooray!

See the sketch for this below in my More Mermaids blog post!

I decided I wanted to draw some cute little birds today... The cheeky little guy below felt good without color and then I decided I wanted to have a free for all with crazy bird colorings in the badass-skateboarding-parakeet and snarky-parrot - or as my friend Brian referred to him as "mosh-bird" haha (I was totally unaware of this mosh-girl phenomenon but it's hilarious) Thanks Brian Dunnigan for illustrating that so perfectly!

I had to draw the smirky little look from this guy... 

Also I think this could be a fun coloring book page.. New project idea???

Working out how I want to draw them. The more the merr(maid)ier!