Ladies

Playing with paint tonight... These are fun to do, because I have no idea how they are going to turn out until I am done. Plus they are on paper so I feel less pressure.

Another painting for Art Unleashed

Since there is still time, I did another little 6" x 6" art to donate to this year's Art Unleashed.

Best Friends Forever for Art Unleashed 2009

I finally got a chance to work on something for this year's Art Unleashed . This one is going to be donated for the silent auction which benefits The Humane Society of Greater Kansas City.

Vote For Softee!

Our band Softee is nominated as one of the best pop band in KC by the Pitch music awards! If you like us, please click here and cast your vote before August 6/this Thursday (once you get in that page, go to the second page and under #18 you will find us). You can only vote once with each email, but you can use different emails. You can vote from anywhere in the world! We really appreciate your votes!

We will also be playing on August 6 at McCoy's. Stop by and watch us if you are in KC! Click here for more info about the show.

Lunchie

The weather is great outside and it's Friday! Donna and I went to eat Vietnamese food at the River Market during our lunch break... It's the best!!! So yummy!

Free bookplates for you!

I have a little something for you; it might come in handy if you have lots of books and like to lend them to your friends. I've created some bookplates for you to download. They are free, but they are for your own personal use only, so please be nice ok! :)

To download the bookplates, click the photo above for the larger file. Print it out and trim each bookplate following the crop marks! Voilà and enjoy!

Today's Doodles

Shy Girl. And another quick one before I took off work...

It's the same old question every single day. We ended up having corn-on-the-cobs and Palermo's thin pizzas (available in U.S. supermarkets) for dinner. They are really good pizzas... yummy!

Two new inspiring blogs for you to visit

I am very lucky to be able to work with many talented artists everyday. Two of them, Donna Van Hooser and Jon Kelly Green, just recently started their own blogs, and I would love to share them with you. (Hint: Bookmark and subscribe to these two blogs. You will be so inspired by their working process and many artworks to come! I promise!)

The first one is Donna's SunDog Mosaics. At work, Donna sits one cubicle away from me, and we are very close friends. She has been a designer and illustrator for Hallmark for 21 years and a mosaic artist for 18; she is a well of knowledge and I learn from her everyday. Donna makes the most amazing mosaics and she is lightening fast! Right now in her blog, Donna is showing the progress of a mosaic piece featuring her cat Edwina. (We all love to see an artist's working process, don't we?) She also has an on-going project of making 101 doodle mosaics (all of them are 12"x12" in size) based on the doodles found in our friends' sketchbooks. Donna also has a Flickr site where you will find more photos of her works.

Above: "Emily and Oscar" (ungrouted) mosaic by Donna Van Hooser

The next one is a brand new blog: "Action Art by Jon Kelly Green". Even though Kelly's blog is brand new (born just yesterday), for years he has been running Studio-Rama with fellow artist Jen Rarey (Hint: if you love designer plush toys, you have to visit Studio-Rama and click Jen's plush page). Kelly's works are so much fun and full of energy, and he creates the best character designs, as you can already tell by the header he made for his blog! Kelly doesn't have a Flickr page yet, but if you follow his blog, you won't miss any great artworks coming your way in the near future.

Today, I...

...doodled during a morning meeting and unexpectedly got bangs during an afternoon haircut session.

I am learning Spanish.

I use Pimsleur's Comprehensive Spanish system to learn it at home. It requires no books, only by listening and repeating, just like the way we learn our first language. So far I am having fun, and I highly recommend it. : )