Sorry to leave you comic-less last week. I had planned on driving to Sarasota to drop off some illustrated jewelry, GingerDead cards and prints at this really cool alternative shop called Rumor Has It and at the last minute we decided to make a little mini vacation out of it. Jim and I wandered around Sarasota, found a neat toy shop, ate crappy over-priced Thai food and shacked up in a cheap hotel. It was nice. Anyway, the semi spontaneous road trip won out over creating an update. I make them nice and fresh each week and don’t keep any in reserve for fear they might spoil…

So I owe you pictures from the ArtPool Muse show, don’t I? Our punk cabaret cupcake girl came out pretty damn cute. Our model Tammie’s patience and awesome bod didn’t make it too difficult.

Here’s our muse – photos by ArtPool owner Marina Williams:

Here’s a few of my favorites from the event. More photos by Marina…

Demi and I were having a hat party in the back of the shop when we met Mary Geraci, a documentary filmmaker and photographer who took the following photos. Before you ask, hell yeah I bought the military hat. The mask was already mine. Demi didn’t buy the Lady Gagaesque hat even though she rocked it.

Finally, one of my favorite photos taken by some random passerby that came out grainy and weird but I am in love with. I manipulated it in Photoshop. I love how we are all engaged in our own individual experiences of the same moment in time. I suppose this is always the case but it’s illustrated so beautifully here.

If you are thinking you’d like to try to body painting but aren’t sure how to go about it, it’s simple. Get some cheap non-toxic acrylic paint – NOT oil (yikes!) or Tempera (it turns to powder and falls off very quickly). Acrylic paint will crack up a lot but it stays on for the most part. You can mix a little moisturizer in the acrylics to help keep it from cracking…but it still will as far as I can tell. Oh, keep the acrylic out of hair. You can protect facial hair or hairline with a little vaseline. Acrylic washes off of skin with simple soap and water. Easy peasy.

Alternatively, you can be professional about the whole thing (lets face it acrylic paint isn’t meant for skin even if I’ve seen it used and have used it myself plenty with no problems) and invest in some body paints. If you have a good costume store in your town, you can find some I’m sure. It comes in pancake and liquid forms. I’m not talking about the crap they sell for kids at Halloween. That junk fades in about 3 minutes. If you have one of those big party store chains nearby, they sell a line of pancakey style body paint by the name of SnizzleSnazzle or RazzleDazzle or something silly like that and it’s actually really good. You just need to spritz it with water and apply with a sponge or brush and keep on spritzing as you work.

Finally before I go, let me show you my new bestest friend in the whole wide world. Her name is Millie and I adore her. I passed up a free ticket to Busch Gardens so I could stay home and take another stab at art doll making. She is, of course, Dia de los Muertos inspired because every day is the Day of the Dead in my studio.

Millicent - Art Doll by Calan Ree

That’s all for now. Haiku away. Use the comic or the body painting or little Millicent as your inspiration.

<3 calan

p.s.
in honor of this week's comic i created a zombie sock monkey pendant now available in the GingerDead Shoppe on Etsy…

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 24th, 2010 at 12:00 am and is filed under Comics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.