Twins

drawn from an interesting ad for some designer fashion.

people in history

Paintings done on pages from an old book called People in History....

portrait

Katie

A painting I did for a magazine illustrating the story of a girl named Katie  in the 40s who wants to play on a baseball team--

Happy Holidays everyone, hope you're enjoying the beginning of winter so far

US mail

g r e e n

inside designing dresses, waiting for Sandy to come....

Mexico '68

if you look closely, you can see this piece of paper is quite old, it's a medal count for Italy from the 1968 Olympics, which I thought was really cool. the painting on top of it is fairly unrelated.

a good sandwich

+

 +

These are doodles of the ingredients of a sandwich I made myself--there should be some peanut butter there, too, but the drawing didn't turn out. 

It was honestly one of the yummiest sandwiches I've had, but also so rich that I couldn't actually finish it.......

People at the farmer's market

A few characters based on people I saw at the farmer's market yesterday.

It is, by the way, my birthday today. ☺

Cheers!

Pinned

I don't know how old, exactly, this collection is.

The insects inside are very dried up--to the point that half of them are missing legs (which are lying at the bottom of the frame.) I think that the small dragonfly's wings were probably colorful at one time. Now everything's fading away.

Kim Il-Sung

Trying to get better at painting famous people from photos.

Fairly recently I watched National Geographic's Inside North Korea, which was intriguing and really really sad at the same time. This is why I picked Kim Il-Sung to paint.

I recommend the video, it's about 40 minutes and you can watch it on YouTube here.

Flea market

Don't you love flea markets?
I am someone who loves flea markets.
There are people's scratched up videocassettes of The Little Mermaid and extensive collections of nail polish and stained stuffed animals and the boxes of "new" packaged stuff. Flyswatters! Socks! Knockoff brands of Sharpie markers! (They write the brand name in the weird cursive Sharpie font so you don't notice until you've payed your dollar fifty for them--you've actually just bought some Skerples or Shoupies instead! Surprise!)
It's not actually any of that stuff I really love about flea markets. The best part is the old stuff. The actual old stuff. It's once you've walked past the possibly-pirated DVDs  and broken Tiffany lamps and the weird stuff like underwear in giant packs and deodorant displayed on tables. (Why...?)
But once you have you can find the true interesting things. Old skeleton keys. Ancient crates of Coca-Cola bottles with sticky brown soda still inside. Written-on postcards.
And I was able to find, among some other very old things including someone's report card from 1936 (I will definitely be sharing that later), a color-in paper doll book--$2 instead of $10 because I wasn't a collector! Yesss!!

What I love so much about this paper doll book is they have these handwritten descriptions of what the dresses looked like in real life so you can color it in accurately. How could you not get excited about getting to paint "a white chiffon dress with cranberry, blue green, and lavender splashes of color"????

Princess Caroline definitely did have some snazzy outfits. Although I admit sometimes I was dying to change up the color scheme, particularly for the "brown blazer, ecru blouse, and tan skirt" which I hoped looked better in real life than my rendition of it.

 Fun, right?!

I hope everyone goes to a flea market and finds themselves some nice paper dolls to color in. Sometimes it's nice to have some instructions to follow. 

Although it would be pretty funny to have given the Princess a new stupid modern shirt. Like 

I ♥ 1D

or something with Angrybirds.

COMING SOON

Hi people.
Gosh I feel pathetic. Please try and believe me that I'll be posting something I'm working on soon. For real this time. This is so sad, I keep having to do apologetic posts with nothing but words! Patheticness!!!

Here is a drawing of Paul McCartney to help drive away some of the general patheticness....I hope....?

  AM I HELPING?
/

Oka-Loka

My watercolor of a box of Oka-loka candies. (These are really the same thing as Nerds, only from Costa Rica.)

Stages of the Strawberry

My chocolate-covered strawberry is consumed in four documented stages.

Watercoloring.....

This is the first time I have really tried black-and-white  watercolor, and it was tricky!

I'm going to keep experimenting with it, though....

Cheers,

Ava

Yes

Jelly Tots

Jelly Tots are probably the yummiest gummy (ooh, accidental rhyming!) candy. Especially the blackcurrant ones. 

Don't they look so nice and inviting and eatable?

-Ava♫

P.S. Lisa, this is kind of for you. 

Don't know if you'll appreciate it or if it'll just make you mourn the lack of Jelly Tots in D.C. ☺

Music

Cupcakes and Stained Glass

I'd like a plate of cupcakes like that. Right now. And maybe that hat to wear too.

Cheers!
Ava