Hey, it's Sylvia Plath! Can I pee in your Bell Jar?

dear friends, it was recently a's birthday which means I had to get her a gift. Because I am cheap or we're creative or some such, I made a few paintings for her and now I'm showing them to you. The first photo is the three paintings for a grouped together. The big one was her special request :Dia de los Muertos Hello Kitty. The painting is titled "Dead Cat," or at least I think it is as I looked up dead and neko in an online kanji dictionary and tried to copy them (for all I know they could say "Totoro, to-toro" or "Silly white girl playing with samurai swords" because I don't speak Japanese). Pretty straight forward really, acrylic on cardstock after a few rough sketches in my book. The flower is my take on the imperial chrysanthemum which is really hard to draw. It occurred to me this afternoon that I maybe could've tried cherry blossoms or the tokugawa holly hock crest, but a is happy so I am too. I like the mix of kawai and momento mori. The second painting was supposed to be an attempt to figure out if a technique would work for the third painting and practice with flowers or rather roses for something kicking around my head. Instead it actually turned out. The black rose is a relatively new anarchist symbol, but an elegant one, which is why I tried it. Again, pencil on cardstock and paint over the pencil. The new thing I tried was a silver wash over the whole thing. A wash is prepared by simply watering down acrylic paint until it is supertranslucent and, well, watery (at least that's how I do it). The concerns with the technique were a: how evenly would it apply and b: since I'm using mostly paper to paint these days, how much water curl would I get. I was able to make sure it was even by dry brushing after application and limited curl by mounting it to a piece of cardboard (thank you case of coke in the recycling, you died so I could be caffeinated and for DIY). It's one of the things I've done that I think is actually beautiful and not clever. Very happy with it. The third painting was the one I was trying the silver wash out for, but it didn't go quite like I wanted it. It is supposed to be a day of the dead skull representing the title character of one of a and my favourite b movies and MST3K episodes, The Brain that Wouldn't Die. It ended up looking a little robotish, and the basin that reads "Neck Juice" in Spanish ran. It ended up all right but not quite what I had hoped. The final thing is a birthday card I made for my Mom. Hand painted on paper, it is a sprig of lily in the valley, as her birthday is in May. She liked it and I thought it turned out well.