Neutrino-Enriched, Never Pasteurized blog of Katerina Friday

It Figures!

2011-12-15T19:00:00.000-05:00

I've been craving life drawing ever since my graduation. I missed it terribly for years, and finally at the end of summer I signed up for figure drawing at my local college.

It felt SO GOOD to draw from a model again even though I was super rusty. I hope I can keep it up and continue figure studies on my own!

(gestures are always my favorite)

(colored pastel on paper - my values are fortunately improving)

Encaustic ALL the things!!

2011-11-27T15:32:00.001-05:00

I've gone encaustic crazy. Any little drawing or print of mine I find - it must be drizzled with hot wax.

Oh well, at least it smells good!

A couple of Christmas Trees:

Eliza looking depressed:

And my favorite - Mr. Giraffe! Which is actually a watercolor painting mounted on birch and painted with encaustic:

Twins and Candy Corn Ice Cream

2011-11-27T15:21:00.001-05:00

It's no secret that I suck at updates. But I do try... sometimes!

My two pieces I picked up from the Day of the Dead show (which was great fun!) -

The top one is oil on birch panel which I christened "Twins" (who says twins have to look alike, right?...)

For which, my awesome boss built a maple frame.

And Candy Corn Ice Cream is a familiar one to many, though I "enhanced"(?) it with encaustic medium, and decided to make it a limited edition of 125.

Time for an Update

2011-10-05T21:02:00.000-04:00

Long time no see, my dear friends!
I will remedy that as soon as I get an extra minute or two.

For now, I leave you with this:

I have two pieces in Day of the Dead Show at Starkweather Arts Center curated by Heather Hansma.
Opening Friday October 7th - I cannot wait!

Chupacabra - the spooky goat snatcher

2011-04-20T14:40:00.003-04:00

(pretend shirt design)

...drawing while listening to Spring!

2011-04-20T14:36:00.001-04:00

--my favorite season!

I'm all inked out, and here's why:

2011-03-24T12:14:00.002-04:00

"Just Robots"

and

"How to Levitate a Llama"

Both designs were completed for a weekly shirt design contest on Woot (which explains the heather grey background texture!...) The yellow of the robot drawing is pretending to be gold ink. So please imagine that instead of yellow globs!

I have a confession to make...

2011-03-07T13:12:00.003-05:00

I'm in love with Hipstamatic!
For those who don't know, it's an iPhone photo app that allows to create vintage-looking photos with your phone.

This, of course could be easily accomplished with pretty much any image-editing software, but the magic is in the unpredictability!

If I'm feeling adventurous, I randomly change "lenses" and "film" (filters, really) by shaking the phone.
Or I just stick with favorite settings and let the globs, blurs, and color splashes to be scattered for unpredictable effects!

Not bad, considering these are taken with a phone camera -

Lost Greetings of Summer...

2011-02-19T21:47:00.004-05:00

(imaginary post cards long lost in time for those in dire need of summer glimpses)

...a girl lost in swampland and a doodle

2011-01-26T10:55:00.006-05:00

(trying out my new pens)

Trying something new

2011-01-19T19:39:00.006-05:00

For better or for worse, I decided to submit the girl fox character design to Threadless !

If anyone's over there and feels like giving it some lovin', here's where to find it:

more fox love

2011-01-18T11:56:00.004-05:00

...play nice!

2010-12-15T18:00:00.005-05:00

(more fun with ink)

Season's Greetings!...

2010-12-08T13:00:00.002-05:00

~"HI!"

lala la caaaaandy

2010-09-30T15:49:00.005-04:00

Continuing with Halloween theme, I give you....

Candy corn ice cream!!

Gauche on illustration board with some digital manipulation.

Day Of The Dead Chihuahua!

2010-09-23T11:14:00.004-04:00

I've been feeling remarkably festive lately. Even though summer is officially over, there is Halloween to look forward to! If I'm brave, I may attempt to carve out this little chihuahua on a pumpkin!

Watercolors on illustration board.

traveling light

2010-09-13T13:50:00.003-04:00

I just realized I never posted this either!
Also...INK.

starry night for two...

2010-09-13T13:47:00.003-04:00

INK.

welcome to SILVERBEACH!

2010-08-16T16:24:00.002-04:00

(these are indeed miniatures)

Here's something different

2010-07-14T22:54:00.006-04:00

These are my personal photographs, taken on a trip to Malta and France a little over a year ago.
Edited in PS for everyone's personal enjoyment!

The last one is Paris. More to come!

Watercolors activate!

2010-03-08T17:07:00.007-05:00

(^this one wants to become an oil painting)

This is for you guys (Jody and Chelsea), for bugging me to post shtuff

Bird~Sings~Song

2009-09-19T16:11:00.003-04:00

Linocut print in blue and gold
about Bird and his song

I exercise!

2009-09-14T16:30:00.003-04:00

With oils! Here's a little painting to prove it:

Two decoupage experiments!

2009-09-14T16:19:00.003-04:00

Based on Girl, Cat, Woman drawing ~

And Sophia in the Tub~

I'm thinking of putting these up on Etsy, after I finish varnishing them... wood is just great, BTW.

girl, cat, woman

2009-08-16T01:07:00.004-04:00

I feared my dipping pens and nibs will never be touched again...
How I love proving myself wrong!

About time I updated this thing!

2009-07-27T19:20:00.005-04:00

What's new? What's new... Let's seeeee.....lately I've been preoccupied with life things, and summer things. But mostly life things.
One positive life thing I've been working on is moving to a bigger house - meaning I can unleash my creative ADD and multitask myself into creative oblivion.

Also, I got infected by an obsessive thought to try woodblock printing. Naturally I had to drop anything and run to the nearest art supply store.
Woodblocks I did not find, but linoleum seemed to quiet my craving.
Here's the two experiments:

Sophia in the tub is actually printed with golden ink, which doesn't show well in the scan.
I'm thinking of opening an Etsy account to try and sell these. Maybe?

new year, new demo

2009-01-13T11:58:00.004-05:00

DEMO from Katerina Friday on Vimeo.

Also a new site: www.katfriday.com
Still working on it, as it's not quite finished...seems like it never is, really.

A snippet of Bird's Funeral

2009-01-09T11:18:00.002-05:00

out for a walk from Katerina Friday on Vimeo.

One shot [sort of] down, thousands more to go...

Hedgehog

2008-11-29T14:21:00.007-05:00

Meet Eddie, the handsome hedgehog

He is delightfully lopsided and adores wearing hats that make him look like a mushroom

good moose

2008-09-12T11:28:00.007-04:00

Just a brief Permutation update - a few film festivals have demonstrated their unmeasurable awesomeness by accepting our film:

GIAA Film Fest New York
Washougal International Film Festival Washington
Young Cuts Canada
POP Montreal Canada
Hell's Half Mile Film & Music Festival Michigan

sketchbook

2008-08-27T16:42:00.004-04:00

late sketches of no particular relevance...

except for i need a new sketchbook!

old new things

2008-08-14T14:25:00.010-04:00

At last! I have gotten around to snapping a few photos of work completed back in May. Without further blabbering [you'll have to deal with it later], I present the Amazing-Crowd-Spitting-Cactus-Girl (oil on canvas):

I started this painting about 2 summers ago, back when I first discovered Belgian painter James Ensor. He seemed like an outcast, a bit of a prick, and a totally cool dude, painting grotesque and sinister pictures, depicting bizzare subject matter. What's not to like?

.....

Moving on to the 2nd piece.. of 3 elements. It's a tryptich!

Norilsk (acrylic on canvas)

My life started and unraveled for the first few years, in one of the most polluted cities in the world - Norilsk, Russia. The tryptich's purpose was to convey the foggy memories and feelings remaining of my life as a Norilsk citizen. Ice creams in little waffle tubs, sausages, never-ending darkness occasionally interrupted by happy yellow bananas, and the monster staring at me out of the depths of the hallway, whose unblinking gaze made me quite uncomfortable.
The monster in the hallway that terrorized the little me, was merely an electric meter with mounted antlers above it. What a story.

.........

Finally, Little Ms. Chokey (acrylic on wood)

No elaborate story here. She's just tying a bow around her neck.. and possibly hallucinating from asphyxia.

happy little pictures

2008-07-13T18:55:00.008-04:00

Fun day at the flea market!
I found 4 vintage Walt Disney books:

They're really cheap on ebay too.
Pretty much every single page contains a lovely illustration! It's neat how they are done in all sorts of different styles and mediums.

animated treats

2008-06-28T22:40:00.004-04:00

It's wonderful to have friends. They show you things!

Such as MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU that Matt shared with me. Unbelievable!!
How on Earth did he pull it off?

Also, a human(?) named Seth, showed me a lovely-creepy stop motion film by Robin Fuller, The Ballad of Mary Slade.

I adore how the story is told through the bugs. What a haunting, but beautiful aftertaste it leaves.

demo

2008-05-22T21:23:00.001-04:00

the wonders of internet...

2008-05-22T00:10:00.006-04:00

I cannot be the only one who googles their name in vain, right? to my surprise I have found out that Permutation, the stop-motion film I co-directed is playing in festivals left and right.

well.. not left and right perhaps, more like a few.

Artsfest Film Festival

Three Minute Film Fest. From their online pdf brochure:

and although it's missing my name in the credits, I found it listed at another film fest.
it got seventh place, whatever that means, at Twin Rivers Media Festival

great, right?..
i'm just a tad sad that i have completely missed out on these, i wouldn't have minded a little morale booster during my last, most stressful semester of school.

*edit: found a couple more festivals since I've posted this entry

The 2008 Planet Ant Film & Video Festival

Tallahassee Film Festival

mermaids

2008-04-13T17:35:00.003-04:00

Purple Potatoes goes live!

2008-04-07T20:21:00.005-04:00

well...maybe not live, but it's on youtube!

it's wonky as hell, but what a neat experience it was trying to put together my first film with no animation and hardly any film-making experience, which feels like it happened decades ago.
i've been thinking of making a sequel... Purple Potato.....Chips!

Viktor Safonkin

2008-04-07T01:29:00.003-04:00

I figured I ought to start posting my inspirations once in a great while. I look up to quite a few artists, as well as chairs, boxes, and pigments.
These things I adore should make their way into this blog eventually.

Today, however, I'd like to share this gem of an artist I recently found - Viktor Safonkin

Isn't he a delight? Here is his website, although it seems to have some technical issues.

g ary + ice

2008-03-20T20:34:00.008-04:00

This is Gary. Gary Schwartz.
He is painted with acrylics on illustration board.

I simply cannot wrap my mind around the fact that graduation is in just 6 weeks. *cross my fingers*
I've been quite busy doing all sorts of unfashionable things. Such as ice skating with a freaking walker...I was like the slow kid on the block, embarassing my innocent friends:

Look at Tim go! Go Tim go!

Thanks to my awesome animation buddies for making my dreams come true and getting me on the ice!

booo-hoo another rejection letter

2008-01-02T00:57:00.000-05:00

Bummer.. No film festival wants to take Herpes Pie Super Star ('cept for one and only Evil City)! Can't imagine why, the title alone is so enticing, no?...

Afraid the actors of my marvelous film are gonna go unfed once again. All the back-breaking, joint-crunching, seam-ripping work they have put into the masterpiece that is Herpes Pie Super Star is unmeasurable by human standards! By stop motion standards they're so-so..

Quite frankly I just needed an excuse to butt in with pictures of my semi-recent pupeeeeets. I've been nosing around in some lovely crafty sites and blogs, getting in the spirit of hand-made toys.. you know softies and them amigurumis! Mine are neither. They are about 75% sock, 25% armature wire, 15-21 % clay, 7% beads, 13% various junk. And if you were curious, I did pass math! I was simply ill on the day they taught all the cool tricks. Anyway, meet Cheese-Berry Danish:

And Mr. Diseased Cupcake; a friend of mine is convinced that the rotten desert is a nice person who never procrastinates, which must mean it is from a good family (Gus, you're nuts!)

It would be a real shame to go through *all* that trouble and not post any stills from Herpes Pie. Here goes it!

The scary-looking dude is Black Frock, sadly no photos of him or his replacement teeth...

a few more paintings

2007-12-20T10:13:00.001-05:00

In-class exercises:

The following is a copy of Waterhouse done with limited palette of red oxide, yellow oxide, mars black, and titanium white. No blue to mix greens and purples with! The dress is actually grey and grass is a mixture of yellow with black.

Here's the original

figure + b/g.....[ quick study in COLOR! ]

2007-11-21T02:44:00.001-05:00

acrylics.... tacky, yet cheap and fast. prostitue of a paint.

"skin"? soft sculpture installation

2007-11-21T01:37:00.001-05:00

in the past couple of months I have grown quite fond of nylons and tights. the tenderness I experience towards this stretchy, strong material is intense. like a rainworm bathing ecstaticly in a puddle tainted with oil spills and bird crap, counting its last minutes before the fatal meeting with truck's agnostic tires, I tremble. aghhhhhh. *nylons....*

dorky little sketches [ from bird's funeral]

2007-11-12T18:34:00.001-05:00

.....please allow me to introduce the main character from my senior film I am currently working on. she has not an official name, however sometimes I lovingly call her Retardina:

Retardina's older sister Marina. Marina was a boy in her past life:

mafia guys and their shitty little car "zaporozhetz":

and a self-portrait unbalanced by oogliness and more mafiosi's:

stay tuned!

charcoals + a painting! such joy.

2007-10-24T02:41:00.000-04:00

The painting study is done with a limited palette consisting of yellow oxide, carbon black, titanium white, and a red oxide. For the value studies we were limiting our values to only 3 keys. I am finally starting to develop some sort of value sense...Hallelujah!
Although I should probably not be all that excited about this newfound sense of accomplishment...... but how could I not be - it's finally clicking~!

Water-Sky Membranes Thin

2007-10-14T17:33:00.000-04:00

This is a hanging representation of organic forms inspired by delicate fluidity, transparencies, and soft fragility of water and air. It is a hybrid between the two elements, combining details such as petals, buds, and stems to suggest a plant-like creature. A self-contained organism. The materials used in the making of this piece consist of transparent, stretchy nylons for the skin; plastic embroidery canvas to act as skeleton, cartilage; plastic grocery bags as translucent petals; rare inserts of paper grocery bags; sewing thread; and stuffing. Interconnected with an umbilical chord, the piece is in tune with gravity, stemming from the sky and blossoming towards the Earth.

Interpolating..

2007-10-14T16:44:00.001-04:00

a word that I can't stop thinking about not even knowing the meaning, other than it being a math term of sorts. I may be drawn to the "inter-" part, as I have noticed a strange attraction to all words beginning with inter lately.

i n t e r

- mediate
- nal
- action
- connectedness
- loping

and other made up words like interphobiosis, interearing, and intersalutary

2 stuffed toys - a flowered bunny and a sad-eyed teddy bear, had been ripped apart by seams and streams then put together into the inter-creature featured above.
Both toy's souls merged!

Now that I think about it, that's all I've been doing lately - taking apart old patterns and rearranging them into new structures... Interlocking.

of girls and things..

2007-09-03T13:59:00.001-04:00

To commemorate and honor this newly existing blog of mine (and while at it, test this posting thing out), here's my summer sum of some sketches!

..and a giraffe.