© me

i've sold hundreds of paintings over these last few years and this one is really the only one i've ever regretted selling (and the chicklet painting this year, but that ended up getting stolen by some jerk anyway, so i suppose it doesn't count. ironically, both pieces were purchased by different employees at giant robot in different parts of the country!)

at the time, i saw it as some kind of self portrait, even though i only have one cat and he's at my parents house, and i look nothing like this painting. if i were to do a self portrait today, it would probably be similar, only i'd be covered in finches.

speaking of which, i have excellent news:
we found out what was causing the unexplained deaths of our beloved finches. the vets had missed it the previous two times we brought the now late fred and sam in, but all the finches had protozoa, a microscopic parasite. we don't know how they got it, possibly in their and our water? poor finchies. francis and pokey are being treated right now and will be ok. thank you everyone for all your kind words during all the recent sadness.

funfact 1: you will notice that i paint cats a lot, but they never have legs.

funfact 2: once i had an illustration for a magazine on the subject of veterinary assistants, and although my cat had no legs, the illustration was deemed medically incorrect because of the placement of the stethascope! i re-did it, but the cat still had no legs.

© me

this week's illustration friday theme is "blue" - once again, i've pulled out a way to reference a bird. this was the last miniature i made this weekend for dec. 10th's poketo wallet release party and art show at receiver gallery in san francisco and i just couldn't get the blues right. so i scanned it in and brightened everything up altering all the colors until the blue was BLUE.

funfact about the new poketo wallet series: i curated it!

funfact about bluebirds: i saw one during my cross country drive around 6am in a hotel parking lot, i think it was in kansas. also where i saw "the world's largest hand dug well" (aka the "big well") and the dalton gang hideout. bluebirds are this blue. the most blue thing i have seen naturally occurring in nature, i guess.

this week's illustration friday: digital


© susie ghahremani/boygirlparty.com

this is a variation i just whipped up this morning on a cover i did for mike doughty's record "rockity roll" back in 2003 - a digital robot with an analog cassette boombox head. i first met md about ten years ago when he played in his band soul coughing, and ever since i did his solo record cover, i kinda picture him as this boombox robot. if you've seen him recently (and i recommend you do) let me know if this hypothesis is true. you can see the original cover + listen to his music here: http://www.mikedoughty.com/music/

this week's illustration friday: aquatic

© susie ghahremani/boygirlparty.com

i decided to do the three forms of water (liquid, solid, gas - yes i know rain isn't gas, but it's in transition and rain is way cooler than steam. besides, cats hate water and that's kind of fun to draw)

this week's illustration friday topic: "ambition"

sometimes i put a branch of millet on the floor of the cage for my little birds to peck at. and ever since they've been building their nest, even though the millet is often twice the size of the finches themselves, they insist on carrying it up to the nest. this usually results in fred getting an inch off the ground and then falling back down over and over for about an hour + he gives up, or he and sylvie start eating (gorging, really) enough of the millet that it's becomes light enough to be brought up to the nest. it's the fincholympics.

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in other news:
i've entered the recently redesigned shoppe in a site-of-the-month contest hosted by dreamhost, my unreliable+expensive webhost that seems to always knock my site offline. there's no prize and i'm actually not completely sure why i even bothered, but if you're a dreamhost customer, please vote here!
(the full site is also in the running and has been for a very, very long time, you can vote for that one over here)

this week's illustration friday theme: daring



p.s. is anyone out there in charlottesville, va?
p.p.s. last chance to grab the paper airplane painting cause i'm taking it down shortly! i'm also thinking about taking down the school kid pouch. yes/no? new stuff going up on the shoppe hopefully over the weekend! wait, am i talking about the shoppe too much? am i boring you? do you even read this anymore?? well, do you??

back when i was in art school, i really rejected a lot of the principles of illustration. i hated it: the commercialism, the marketing, the way teachers would force you to work in their style. i hated painted back then. mostly, i sewed and drew on scraps of paper and combined weird found materials to create little quilts of drawings.

i used to encorporate the theme of "travel" into a lot of that work, which coincidentally is this week's theme for illustration friday. so, i present to you this totally ancient piece. i think i traded it to someone for a set of photographs of suburban houses that look exactly the same.