After months of anticipation I finally got my copy of Big Eye Art: Resurrected and Transformed.


I am thrilled to be one of 22 artists featured in this showcase of modern big eyed art.  They are now available on amazon.com   and barnesandnobel.com .

Here is my newest piece... Mario Wars


a nod to two things I love Nintendo and Star Wars. This was a comission piece and it will be shipping out in the next couple of days.

There are so many wonderful things going on in my life right now... where to start?

Tokyo........... A place I have dreamed of since I was a small girl. Recently one of my favorite stores in Los Angeles Japan LA planned a trip to Japan and opened it up to some of their customers. It is a dream trip with a trip to Sanrio Puroland , an alice in Wonderland theme restraunt, Studio Ghibli Museum and Harajuku. Add to that my love of Japanese food and I will be in heaven. I am currently trying to learn Japanese, altho we will have a translator I want to experience as much of Japan as possible and I feel understanding the language will make my visit richer.

Art..... My prints have been selling well and I have the possibility  of having another 8 bit print coming up.  I'll post here as soon as I know.

The Toys show opened on April 1st. to much publicity and a great crowd. I had 2 pieces in the show

Playschool Star Wars Sold during  the show!!!!!

and

Rainy Day still for sale


Tattoos....
Oh my god the shop is going so good. I have drawings about 3 weeks out, so I am going nuts trying to keep up with all the fun stuff I get to draw for my clients. also the shop is making t shirts designed by each of us artists.. my first shirt for the shop is Octo Pirate

To order a shirt contact Zulu Tattoo


The Book.......

I am so excited to be part of:   Big Eye Art: Resurrected and Transformed
To be distributed worldwide by Merrell Publishers, April 2008!

The book features a diverse menagerie of big eye works by twenty-two popular artists, as well as their biographies and contact details!

cover by Jasmine Becket-Griffith

I recently finished this commission piece for and old friend. It's his girlfriend with their cats as clown fish. The photo is a slight bit out of focus, I need a better shot of it. It really makes me happy and I am surprised how far my painting has come in the past couple of years. Here is the painting with a similar themed piece in my older style.

     

it makes me happy to see how far my painting technical skill has come and optimistic about how far I can continue to grow.

I'm out of town for about a week. I snuck back to Michigan to surprise my Mom for her birthday. Boy was she surprised! I took the red eye from LA to Detroit and it has totally screwed up my internal time clock. so I have about a week to recharge. I have very important plans while here....
* I must get to know my new nephew, who is so cute,
* I need to play many hours of video games with my parents, we ready played until 3am last night. (I am having such a good time with my parents. We have the best set up, each of the has their laptops set up to play FFXI and I am playing Wii on the TV. A good gaming house.)
* I have to play in the snow... It's melting, I think I brought the warm with me  :(  so that might not happen
* I want to have lunch with my mother in law
* I have a couple of friends I would like to see
* most importantly I need to get some rest and recharge myself so I can go home feeling better. I threw out my back last week so I am trying to baby it a bit.

When I return I have to finish 3 paintings by the end of the month. I will be posting progress photos in my next journal entry.

.

As I said in my last journal, my Print of Donkey Kong's Last Supper was pictured in the People magazine exclusive of Christina Aguilera's baby Nursery.  The Gallery and I have both been getting a stream of requests for prints. The initial print run of 50 has been sold out for quite some time, but get ready for the 2nd edition...which we're dubbing "The Genie in a Baby Room Edition!"

here is the info:
Misha
Last Supper (The Genie in a Baby Room Edition)
18 x 10 inches
edition of 75
hand signed and numbered by the artist
$75
This print comes unframed

This is just a pre order, as they will not ship for a little over a month, but with the amount of phone calls and emails we're getting - you might want to jump aboard now. You can call the Gallery  at 323-937-7088 or email them at gallery1988@aol.com to order.

Wow, I got a few messages today of people interested in my Donkey Kong's Last Supper.  One of them told me that she saw my print in the latest People magazine and that it was in a story about Christina Aguilera's new baby and his Nursery. I picked one up and my print is hanging over her changing table!!!
                                                    

here is the print
                                   

Yeah!  that makes it 3 celebrities now that own my work! Kevin Smith and Nikki Hilton also own original paintings of mine. I'm a bit of a fan girl so this stuff just give me a thrill!

I started writing in Livejournal because I saw a gallery site that had a blog page and thougth that would be a great idea for me. I wanted a place to do a quicky update on upcoming shows and to talk about art and it process. But instead this has become some what of a place for me to think out loud. I thought of making these posts private but I have nothing to hide and maybe some one looking a t my art might like to know what the heck is going on in my head.

So there will be notifications of the latest going on in my art as well as some personal thoughts and musings. There will be more pictures soon too. I am working on several projects right now and I am going to post up progress shots of what I am doing.

Well off to work on my paintings and a few tattoo drawings.

I haven't written in a week or so because I was on vacation in Vegas and then I got the stomach flu.  If you know me well you are asking yourself, "your sick again? didn't you just have a cold?" Yep I did. I seem to be getting sick alot lately. And i think I have figured out why.  I'm not getting enough rest.
When in Vegas I realized that I have no idea how to relax, I used to be able to do it, I seem to have forgotten how to.  As I sat in a deep tub full of bubbles I found myself getting anxious and figgity like I didn't know what to do. "Come on just relax your muscles and shut off your mind" I kept telling myself, but I was having such a hard time doing so. I felt guilty for not doing anything. I was in Vegas after all, Shouldn't I be Gambling, eating , drinking seeing things? Well I did plenty of all of the other things till my feet ached, but all I felt was more tired.

In this age of technological wonder where everything is made to make our lives easier, we are all doing more than ever. Funny but if I look at my life 5 years ago heck even 2 years ago I am so much busier than I ever was then. All this extra technology means that I am having a harder time separating my work time from my personal time. And my job doesn't help either. I bring Tattoo drawings home some times to work on them, as well as commission paintings that I am working on and paintings for shows. Having an art studio in my home means that work is never far.

Our bodies need some things to work properly Food (fuel), Exercise and Rest. .... In this fast paced world we are feeding our bodies crappy quality food. Have you ever tried to run your car on crap fuel? sure it will run but not well and you'll need a tune up or repair it often. Well same goes for the body, if you don't take the time to eat a good healthy meal you will be constantly craving food (calories that you don't need) because your body is running low on the important nutrients. We are also living in our cars at least here in LA and have very little time in our schedule to move our bodies around. How well is that body going to work if you never get it moving? And lets not forget the rest part... How is your body supposed to work when it is over tired? I've noticed that rest has become sort of a guilty pleasure or in my case I have even lost the pleasure of it. We are so in the mindset that we have to get this done and that done and constantly adding to our to do lists that we never make time to stop and just breathe. Those who do know how to rest are sometimes looked upon as lazy.


Where is this all coming from you ask? well I have been made to rest by being ill. I was so sick I couldn't even concentrate to draw or go online. So I just had to stop. It was so strange to be still and to actually hear my own thoughts. I had forgotten how that felt.Maybe getting ill wasn't just my immune system not working, but my body making me stop. My body just hasn't had enough healthy food, enough exercise and not nearly enough rest lately and I am now suffering from it. My immune system doesn't seem to be able to fight off the slightest thing,my thoughts are scattered.,I don't feel I can focus on any one thing because I have 50 other things in my head. Like I said in my last journal, I am the overflowing tea cup.

What am I going to do about it?
-now that I am back on solid food again, I am going to try to think of food a little more like fuel and give my body what it needs to run properly.
-I'm going to start increasing the time on my exercise bike to get my body in motion and once my physical therapy for my knee has progressed enough I will start piliates again
-I'm going to schedule an hour a day to do nothing.. I think that this will be the hardest one yet.
-and schedule playtime. I need time to screw off and play video games, go have coffee with a friend just fun.

This feel s like a New Years resolution and since it is the beginning of the Chinese new year maybe it is. So lets hear it for the Year of the Rat!

Funny but do you find that just when you need something it's there? I have really been drowning in a sea of possibilities lately. So many opportunities and I don't want to miss one of them so I take on too much.  The other day I was tidying up my living room and putting things away, when on my bookshelf I saw "Every Day Sacred" by Sue Bender. I read this book years ago and loved it so much I gave it as a gift to several people. So I pulled the book down and started to read it again. WOW that was just what I needed to read! The first chapter of the book the woman has the same problems I am having. Too many possibilities, too much clutter in her mental and physical space and a thing for writing lists that are way too much to ever all get done.
here is a version of story she recounts in the book:

 “Overflowing Tea”

A young student sets out on a journey seeking wisdom. He makes his way through an unfamiliar land, on a voyage that is long and hazardous, to seek out a revered teacher. When he finally reaches his destination, his teacher invites him in for tea.

The eager student wants to sit at the masters feet, and absorb all that he can. However, the master has other plans. He asks the young student to pour him a cup of tea…and to not stop until he tells him to.

The student begins pouring the tea. The tea fills the cup, touches the rim, and begins pouring over the cup and onto the saucer. The student exclaims:

“Master, can’t you see…it can hold no more.”

The teacher replies:

“And so it is with you my son, you mind is too full. It can hold no more. Only when it is empty will you be ready to learn all that I have to teach.”

I think that in many ways my life is like that cup of tea. I am taking on so much and my cup is full but I continue to pour more and more into it.  I need to empty some of my cup before I can put anything else in it.

I am a bit of a control freak. And the more out of control my life feels the more I yearn to control all the little things in my life. Funny thing about that, as an artist I have to let go a bit. Paint has a mind of it's own. Sure you can learn how to manipulate it but it will always do things unexpected, like drying darker than planned, blending colors in ways you didn't think would happen or your brushes with age won't work the way they used to. But if you learn to work with these unexpected "happy" accidents and use the chaos of things to your advantage you can end up with much better artwork than a carefully planned piece would ever have been.

Now if I could only learn to let go a bit in my life so that the little whirls of chaos in my life wouldn't trip me up and send me running for a piece of paper to nail them down and control them. How can I use the bits of chaos in my life to  propel me forward in my life to adventures and opportunities that I would not have had if I had planned my life carefully? This is the big question.. how to learn to let go a bit and not let it stress me out?

I have been doing way too much lately. Trying to take on every opportunity, afraid if I pass something up I will miss out. Well I am missing out, on life that is. So I have a few days to spend by myself. I will paint and work on a couple of projects, but I will also make time to read a book, play video games or knit. Balance is so hard to find in life, I always feel as if I am taking on too much or not doing enough. I need to find my "Just Right".

Right now I have 4 pieces for shows to work on.. 4 commission pieces in various stages that need to get done, a website that need updating and even more pieces that I have sketched but not finished yet.  That isn't even counting all the stuff I have to do for the tattoo shop, luckily I am doing that stuff at the shop.
here is a piece I finished a few weeks ago... no show for it yet, but it had to be painted
                                 "Gilded Cage"

The Feed on G4 has featured "Under the Influence: A Tribute to Stan Lee art show from earlier this month at Gallery 1988. I am one of the artists interviewed.