These seemed like they took far too long, but part of that was because I had intended to sketch all the courts before starting any of the paintings.

That didn't really work. So since I had the pages and the knights sketched and the queens & kings were being problematic, I decided to go ahead and paint the pages and knights now and worry about the rest when they're done.

Pages are finished. Knights should be finished in a couple of weeks.

Considering I first sketched the Page of Swords (accidentally) in 2007 while working on sketches for Justice, maybe it just seems like these took a long time.

page of wands


( rest of the pages under the cut )

I was always going for a ballerina idea, but they ended up wanting to be circus ballerinas. All of them sort of echo the 2s a bit, as well.

Card meanings here:
Page of Wands
Page of Cups
Page of Swords
Page of Pentacles

Hi! I have been missing in action because June has been insane. And rainy. Really rainy. And dark. And did I mention the rain? There's light shining through my windows from some strange glowing orb in the sky, though, so that's something.

So now, here is a state of the phantomwise nation in bullet points, possibly with photos at the end:

• At the beginning of the month I started querying literary agents about my novel. The last few weeks have been an emotional roller coaster of requests and rejections and being in mortal terror every time Inbox(1) shows up on my Gmail browser tab. I've had a pretty positive response so far but this process is slower than the slowest slow thing so it's going to be awhile before I can relax about my inbox. And yes, this is consuming my life right now. I'm trying to work on another novel and paint and distract myself. Trying.



• Partially related to the above but also due to various uncontrollable circumstances, I'm not doing the Concord Arts Market with Wyrding Studios as planned. I'm not pleased, because I was looking forward to it, but between ink issues and mental health and whatnot I wasn't going to be able to properly prepare for it, so it's for the best. I'm sad I don't get to meet Kyth's crazy new puppy yet, though.



• The pages for the Phantomwise Tarot are on my workbench as I type. Swords & Pents are done save for final detailing, Wands & Cups still need a few more layers. I was hoping to be finished with them this week but early next week is looking more likely. The knights are also sketched, and I'll be starting those in the next week or two. I don't have sketches for the queens & kings yet, but I decided to go ahead and do the pages & knights in the meantime.



• Sometime over the summer I am going to be revamping the Ety Store to include more originals. I'm also going to be drastically reducing prices on all available originals (basically everything here or here plus all the Wonderland at Night originals except for the Cheshire cat, and any recently posted originals), so if there's something you've had your eye on and you'd like to get a jump on that feel free to e-mail me (phantomwise at gmail) for personal pre-sales.



• Someday I will have more postcards from the gods. Today is not that day. Deity suggestions welcome, since all the deities that talk to me have postcards already except for Hades, who insists on being saved for last.

And now, in lieu of new art, photos of stuff that is not kittens:


Top of a rain-soaked tomb during a post-rain cemetery walk a couple weeks ago.


Door knocker that I adore on Essex Street.

I had more 6"x12" boards so I thought it might be fun to do something vertical. You know, eventually.

But then I had this idea on, um, Monday, and sketched it that night. Painted most of it yesterday and finished the detailing today.

She ended up being something of a fairy tale-inspired cousin to the phantomwise tarot, with just a teensy bit of color.

rapunzel

6"x12" acrylic on board

She'll probably end up on Etsy eventually. I'll be overhauling the Etsy store later this summer to include more originals.

I keep fluttering back and forth between painting projects and writing projects and I'm just generally busy lately. Knight sketches are almost done, still contemplating the next postcard from the gods. Watch this space.

A quick note to say that portraits of children with forgotten names and button eyes are on sale on Etsy.

Previously $200 each, now $150 each.

And if anyone wants the whole set for a discounted price of $400, just let me know and I'll reserve them for you and adjust the prices.

I really don't know where I came up with the idea for these. I had 6"x12" cradled boards and I thought something panoramic might be fun, and I had four of them so seasons seemed appropriate. Had most of the photos except for Spring, but conveniently it's Spring at the moment (or was, when I went out photo-taking, now the season just seems confused again) so that was comparatively easy.

So, rectangular boards + fun with photos = panoramic seasons.


panoramic: spring

photo taken in Salem, MA


( rest of the seasons under the cut. )
All photos taken by me, and all in the past year, actually. Summer taken last August, Autumn last October, Winter this February and Spring about two weeks ago. Each photo was cropped and adjusted in PhotoShop (am all about the desaturation lately), printed and mounted on their respective boards. The "inlay" bits are the same photos adjusted to very high contrast black & white and set in to complete the image. Then they were attacked with sandpaper & paint and varnished within an inch of their lives.

I'm really pleased with them, even though they took far too long to finish.

Not for sale yet, they're coming to the Concord, NH Arts Market with me on June 27th, where I'll be hanging out in the Wyrding Studios tent with Kythryne. More details on that when it's, you know, June. (Kyth will be there every weekend, though, with various guests. Go buy shiny things!)

Have been missing in action, mostly because the paintings that I'm working on are taking forever and the knights have decided they don't like my sketches. Well, the knights of wands & cups are fine, it's the swords & pentacles that are being problematic.

Anyway, I've been working on these photopainting things for awhile now, they're kind of a larger-scale version of the same photo-based technique as the postcards from the gods. I like them, but they are slow and cranky in figuring out what they wanted to be.

They're done, finally, but they need to be varnished and I'm going to save that for tomorrow. Here, for those of you who haven't already seen them on Twitter, are a couple peeks at the process, one from the beginning and one from this afternoon.





It's a set of four, well, they're not even really paintings, they're more embellished panoramic photo collages but that's kind of wordy so I've been calling them photopaintings. There's one for each season. Second photo is a corner of the summer one.

Will post the finished versions on Thursday or possibly Friday depending on how varnishing goes. Varnishing is dangerous business.

Now that this is no longer stuck in UK customs and safely in its new home I can post it.

I haven't been doing a lot of custom work lately, mostly because of time. I have made occasional exceptions for friends, though, and this one was for my friend Nicola.


leaf dance


It's 10"x20" on cradled board, the edges are painted and some of the leaves wrap around:




It's mostly acrylic with paper leaves and a bit of white charcoal. I actually used a scan of a real Japanese maple leaf I picked up last autumn. I printed out multiple copies and painted them with metallic red acrylic. They're more textured and shiny than the photos show, my floodlights are still busted so the photographs don't really do it justice.

I got a few more (smaller) panoramic boards when I ordered this one, haven't quite figured out what to do with them yet.

I'm pretty much trapped in novel-editing land at the moment. It is going remarkably well but it is also slow and time-consuming.

I am also sketching the court cards, the pages are in decent shape and I have ideas for the knights. Am still contemplating what to do with the queens & kings.

Basically this post is just to say that I have nothing to post.

So here, have a photo of kittens doing what they do best: investigating a cardboard box.

Sale on Etsy gets a few extra days because my network connectivity is too lousy to do price adjustments today.

I've been attempting to have a spring equinox Etsy sale for days now, but my network is unhappy and I haven't been up for pages upon pages of slow loading edits.

Network is still not completely wunderbar, but it's better enough to have a hurrah, SPRING! Sale this week.

ALL originals on Etsy are reduced. Some of them already were, by quite a bit, and I've added the rest as well:

All three portraits of children with forgotten names and button eyes (one, two, & three) are now $160 each* (previously $200 each)

*If anyone wants all three let me know and I will reserve and relist them for you at a reduced total of $400 ($133 each).

Postcards from the gods: Athena and Ganesha are now $80 each (previously $100 each)

Sale prices valid through Friday, March 27th. After that everything will return to original prices.

I wasn't planning on having the tens done this early, but on Saturday night I felt like sketching them, and then with all the sketches done I figured I should just go ahead and paint them. So I did.

And since I have very few cards left in which to really bring the whimsy out, some of them are kind of silly.

I couldn't possibly resist one more bunny tea party, really.

10 of cups


( Rest of the 10s under the cut )

All, as usual, 5"x7" acrylic on board. They almost all harken back to the 6s, which wasn't entirely intentional beyond the bunny tea party, but I rather like it. And the pentacles remind me of the castles at the end of Super Mario Brothers. Which I think is oddly appropriate.

Card meanings here:

10 of wands
10 of cups
10 of swords
10 of pentacles

Bunnies, books & tea certainly say joy & peace & family to me.

Courts are going to take a bit, I want them to all be visually cohesive so I'm going to sketch all of them before I start painting. I'm guessing that means sketches will be done by May and paintings will be done over the summer. And then the deck is done, which is crazy. But still, 16 more cards (and possibly a Happy Squirrel) left before then.


In other news I got a ton of new boards in interesting sizes so I'll be playing with those soon. My Macbook died (hooray for having two computers) so it has an appointment at the Apple Genius bar this weekend. We're going to see Watchmen on Friday which I am uber excited about. And I'm still editing, in between everything else.

After what seriously must be years of considering it I finally ordered supplies for ACEOs. They will be mostly an experiment for now, but expect them to show up here & on Etsy in the next few months.

The next postcard from the gods is likely going to be Cernunnos, if I can figure out how to best photograph the antler that's sitting on one of my bookshelves.

I am mostly in book-editing land right now, though I'm also contemplating the 10s for the tarot deck. It's difficult to fit 10 of something in a 5"x7" space, didja know?

Catherynne Valente's new novel Palimpsest comes out today. More info & icons & fun stuff on her LJ, here. I just ordered my copy from Amazon and am impatiently awaiting its arrival. If you haven't read any of Cat's work you should, really. Her prose is something otherworldly, like nothing else I've ever read. (Remember the polar bears and pirate ship? Those were for one of her books.)

Now I'm off to crawl into a cup of tea and try to edit some more. Tedious process this is, but I'm getting somewhere, slowly but surely.

1. I caved and joined Twitter awhile ago, I don't recall if I've mentioned that here. I enjoy it probably more than I should, though the high point so far was definitely the "Stephen Fry is now following you on Twitter" e-mail. I'm on there under erinism and don't tweet all that much but I will mention what I'm up to there more often than here.

2. I have another website/blog, didja know? It's the very cleverly named erinmccauley.com. It is mostly blog right now, and mostly writing blog with lots of photos and such. It will likely be more writing blog in the future, since this year is the year I will more likely than not actually move into the publishing side of things rather than just typing blissfully along in my own fictional wonderlands. It should be interesting if you like writing, books, or pictures of kittens.

2a. That blog may eventually replace this one, but that is likely a long ways off unless LJ decides to implode.

3. I still have snow even though we opened the windows yesterday to let in the tropical 50 degree heat. So there is still a sale on Etsy. You can also probably still get The Lovers or Rainy Day Lovebirds in time for V-day if you order today or tomorrow.

4. We went to see Coraline this weekend and I absolutely adored it. It is gorgeous and creepy and full of wonderment and buttons, as it should be. The artistry of the animation is astounding. Highly recommended.

5. Am pondering the 10s, things to do with silk transfer paper, something involving all the fortune cookie fortunes I keep finding around the house and new postcard designs since I'm running low on old ones. We'll see.

Nines are done! Nines are done!

They took a little longer than I'd expected. I was on track to finish them on Friday but then I needed to walk away from them for a bit, so I mostly finished them yesterday and did finishing touches today.

When I started I had no idea what to do with most of these, and half of them evolved from sketches based on that fact that I had to fit 9 whole somethings in each card. I'm pretty impressed with myself that none of them look too cluttered. Hopefully I'll be able to manage the same with the 10s.


nine of wands


( Rest of the nines under the cut )

All, as usual, black & white acrylic on 5"x7" board. I tried to emphasize the mental/nightmare factor on the swords with the transparent swords, and I needed to get obscene amounts of wine in the deck somewhere and this seemed a good cup card to do it with. They're all more or less riffs on the Rider Waite designs, some moreso than others.

Card meanings here:

9 of Wands
9 of Cups
9 of Swords
9 of Pentacles

I am going to try to finish the 10s say, before the equinox. That seems reasonable. And then I'm going to take a break and ponder the courts for awhile to make them all visually cohesive, but I should be working on them over the summer. So the whole deck might be done by the end of the summer, early fall maybe? We'll see.

In other news, I am thoroughly sick of snow.

Next purchase on Etsy will be sale #100.

Sale #100 gets a free print of their choice along with their purchase.

I'm just sayin'.


ETA: Sold! Y'all are fast.

100 sales! YAY!



Also, Etsy sale in general is being continued until mid-February and I might make additions next week.

I have all the Phantomwise Tarot 9s sketched. I'm transferring the sketches to their boards today and will likely start painting tomorrow. They should be finished early next week.

And since I haven't done this in awhile, here's a sneak preview of the 9 of swords sketch:



I'm pleased with all the sketches, though I think the cups might end up being tricky painting-wise.

I'm going to try to have the 10s done sometime in February, and then take a break while I ponder the courts.

I'd meant to have this finished earlier but my printer decided to be problematic. After a great deal of troubleshooting, giving up to watch the inauguration, going back and troubleshooting some more, I finally figured out the problem and managed to rectify it.

(Most of the problem seems to be the fact that Tessa likes to chew electrical cords, including the USB cord for the printer. I am still tempted to credit the fixing of the printer to Obama, too.)

So I did, indeed, manage to finish the next postcard from the gods today. Happy day all around.

postcards from the gods: athena


( Reverse behind the cut )

As I mentioned before, I didn't know which deity the next postcard would be from. I've done most of my personal pantheon (save for Hades, who gets to be last) so I figured I'd ponder awhile and see if anyone came around to say hello.

And then there were owls. Everywhere I turned I ran into owls, in books and paintings and jewelry and I'm pretty sure one even started hooting outside our living room window. So it became pretty obvious that Athena wanted to be next. But I didn't have an owl of my own to photograph, so I found a teensy little black-glazed ceramic one from The Runny Bunny on Etsy and photographed him in front of this leafy hurricane candle holder in our living room.

(He's actually balancing on Season 4 of LOST on dvd. OMG S5 premiere tomorrow so excited! Have my numbers shirt and Dharma shot glasses already to go! Will stop babbling now, but my love of Michael Emerson shall endure forever.)

Adjusted the color a bit in PhotoShop, had printer issues, rectified printer issues, printed & mounted it on 3.5"x5.5" repurposed "post card" board, splattered it with some sepia watercolor and brass metallic pigment, distressed it some more and then varnished it for durability.

It is available on Etsy for $100.

Again, not sure who will be next. Might try to find someone in a Celtic or Asian pantheon, though.

I have this big box of vintage buttons. Buttons have a tendency to show up here and there in my art, though never terribly extensively. Someday I will do a piece that is all buttons, hundreds of buttons. Today is not that day.

About a month ago, probably when the boy was listening to the audio version of Neil Gaiman's Coraline something in my head put two & two together and figured out that since I have obscene amounts of buttons, I should probably do something Coraline-inspired.

It took awhile to come up with something. And longer to get all the buttons to stay in place.

portraits of children with forgotten names and button eyes, a set of three mixed-media paintings


portrait #2

( two more and details beneath the cut )

They are available on Etsy for $200 each.

If anyone wants the entire set for $500, just let me know and I'll re-list them for you. (Offer null & void if any of them have already been purchased, of course.)

Each painting comes with extra coordinating buttons for your own nefarious purposes.

I'm not really big on Valentine's Day, though I fully support chocolate-centric holidays. Usually the boy and I just watch Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

But I'm all about the sales this month anyway, and it seems a good time to have something Valentine-y.



From now until February 14th, two of my lovey-dovey prints are on sale.



rainy day lovebirds, normally $25, now $21.

the lovers, normally $33, now $29.

Prints will be relisted as soon as possible if the current listings sell out.


More sale things at the end of the month, if I can pull the mystery project together.

There is Coraline-inspired art drying on the workbench. I need to varnish the heck out of it to make sure all the buttons stay in place but I should have them up (& for sale on Etsy) by the end of the week.

I'd wanted to start this closer to the 1st, but ah well.

January is Sale Month over on Etsy. I'll be doing several different sales over the course of the month, some will last longer than others so check back here for details.

For starters, all originals currently listed are on sale. Here's the breakdown with convenient links:

old stories & old ghosts 1 & old stories & old ghosts 2
Both were $70 each, now on sale for $50 each. If anyone would like them as a set just convo me on Etsy or comment here and I'll reserve and relist them for you at $40 each, $80 for the pair. (Offer void if one is purchased already, of course.)

love letters from the queen of hearts to the king of hearts and vice versa - a set of two moody mixed media paintings was $300, now $200 for the set.

hidden things was $185, now $100.

vintage was $185, now $100.

lost things: paths & time was $155, now $105.

hauntings caught on film was $70, now $50.


Ganesha is staying at his regular price, but I have added another original that's actually been on my wall for awhile, and I think he's ready to fly to a new home:


grounded. The original painting. Was up on phantomwise.com for $300, now on Etsy for $175.


All sale prices good through January 31st.


More sale stuff to come over the course of the month.

***
Also, I am very close to my 100th sale on Etsy. Sale #100 gets a print of their choice free of charge. Just mention it with your order if it happens to be you (unless I contact you first!) and I'll find out which print you'd like before I send out your order.
***


That's it for now! Most of the weekend has been all about getting into the swing of 2009 with lots of cleaning and reading and playing with the Wii Fit which is my new best friend. Also, I've been reading Pretty Monsters by Kelly Link and I adore it so far, am trying to take my time and savor each story. Apparently she teaches short story writing at Smith, I wish she'd been there back in my day.

Hope 2009 is treating you all well so far!