We Want Your Arts!

The Owl needs owls! 


Actually The Owl wants any and all fun art pieces you might have to offer: cute animals, robots, zombie fish, platypuses... platypus.... uh, hmm... How do you pluralize platypus? I googled, and didn't find a proper answer. I did find a fellow blogger that is also facing this puzzling platypus plural, take a look at her ABSOLUTELY ADORABLE baby platypus picture! (This paragraph has way too many Ps...) http://desperatelyseekingseersucker.blogspot.com/2011/02/what-is-plural-of-platypus.html


ANYWAY...


We've acquired two super cool beauties to hang in the dining room already, and we want more! Besides art for the walls we're also interested in art for the tables. Pieces will of course be credited, and (if you want) they can even be listed for sale! If you're interested in either selling us some awesome art, or displaying art to sell to our customers, please get in touch!! You can (obviously) do that right here, or on our Facebook, or Twitter, pages. You can also get me on Google+ or by email. Just put Owl Art as the subject or hash tag :)


We'd love to have a constantly evolving decor, so art sold to our customers, or on loan for a limited time would be fantastical. That said, I'm sure there are pieces (like the ones posted here) that we will fall too in love with to ever part from. 


Here's the two permanent paintings (again with the Ps...) we have so far:

This beautiful triptych is by Jenalea Johnson Check her out on Etsy

And here we have Aaron modeling a Horned Owl by Etsy User Keena






If you want to get in on the Owl Art early we'd love you to post samples on our Facebook page! Just tag yourself as the creator. This would also be great for digital art or (my personal fav) MS Paint style creations. You'll get exposure to our growing audience, and we'll get to see a preview of art we might like to buy. A little disclaimer, we can't buy all the art we'd want for our permanant displays all at once (we're just starting out and we don't have unlimited monies); so don't despair if we don't pick your piece right away! We just might want it in a few months ;) 


I can't wait to see what y'all got in store for our walls. We hope we can display lots of local art from here in Greenville, but indie creatives from all over will get an equal shot at The Owl. In furtherance of that goal, prepare to see me repost this randomly to get the word out ;)


Hoot. 

abandonist: On Being Sold Out of Things and Why Consistency is...

abandonist: On Being Sold Out of Things and Why Consistency is...: Set the scene: It's 9:45 on a thursday night, the restaurant closes at 10. Someone ducks in to get a late dinner. I'll have xyz, please. "So...

Help Me Celebrate Becoming Self-Employed by Helping a Dog in Need!!!

http://gulfcoastdachshundrescue.chipin.com/sweet-rose

I'm addicted to owls.

I've been trying to draw an owl to go along with my updates about our-soon-to-be restaurant The Owl, but apparently my hand hasn't been connected to my brain. After several attempts that were fated to the trash bin this was the best I could come up with:

It's an owl. Sort of. That was a few days ago. I kinda like his eyes, but the rest of him needs a lot of help. He doesn't even have any feet! And are those feathers or a rockin' headband? I really need a non-track-pad method of drawing. Anyway...

I'm feeling super antsy (What does that mean? It makes me think about ants in pants. And that makes me think about pants on fire. And that makes me think about stop drop and roll. Rolly Polly. I used to play with rolly polly bugs aka pill bugs when I was little).

What was I talking about?...Oh yeah... I'm feeling super anxious to be done with work at The Bookstore so that I can really start getting stuff done for The Owl. Since I can't devote much time to Getting Stuff Done yet I've been soothing my nerves by buying any-and-every owl related item in sight. And some non-owl items that I've justified as "office supplies." Here's some of the owl items I got:

A pencil case, good for keeping a wide variety of small and/or rolly items; A giant eraser, good for mistakes made with a pencil; A hang-on-a-doorknob note pad, good for telling folks 'I'm busy interneting so don't bother me;' And metal owl bookends, which are in great need of some books to end.

This is Sebastian. He has a face, it's just hard to see in pictures. His eyes are very owlish, so it seemed appropriate to include him.

Here's some of my "office supplies:"

Those are Smencils. They are awesometastic. The highlighters are fruit scented, they are not as awesometastic as the Smencils, but they are still pretty yummy.

This giant pack is actually supposed to be for teachers to use in classrooms, but it was full of so much owly goodness that I couldn't resist it!

After posting all my fun photos I decided I'd try to draw my owl one more time, and this time I tried a less realistic approach. 

So she's blue and purple, but still only vaguely owl like. Oh well.

Dry Ice is Not a Toy

But it is awesome.

Towards the end you can hear Aaron explain what happens if you try to make a dry ice milkshake in your blender without accounting for the pressure increase involved.

My Love Affair with the Stick Figure

My love of stick figures began at a young age. I'm pretty sure I didn't come out of the womb drawing them, but as far as my memory is concerned I may as well have. The first type of drawings I can remember making looked something like this:

Giant heads with appendages exploding out of all sides, accompanied by artistic squiggles. Probably with less accurately placed faces. And if I'm gonna put my honesty hat on, it was still pretty fun to draw this way today. 

I went through a brief phase when I thought I might learn to draw things in a more realistic, less stick-like fashion. It didn't last. In the end I couldn't give up my simple stick figures. They're my favorite way of expressing just about anything. 

Since I'm a crazy person who never throws anything away I have some older stick people to share with you! The oldest one I know I still have (you never know what might turn up in an unpacked box) is this:

This masterpiece is on the backside of a Denny's placemat. I know that all the people depicted are friends, and that most of them were there that night, but none of us can exactly recall who's who. We have some pretty good guesses, but to protect the innocent I'll leave the names out. 

Another activity I'm very fond of is labeling things. 

You might have noticed that none of these people have faces. I can't really explain that.

Fun Fact: The girl with the exclamation point is NOT fond of snakes.

Fun Fact #2: That Denny's waiter has hair, I don't know why I drew him bald. He is wearing a hawaiian patterned coat thing. I know it doesn't look like that in the picture, but that's what it is. Trust me. 

After my career as a placemat illustrator, but before my venture into paint blogging, I had an interim position as a white board artist. This piece was commissioned by my friend Katie. Yes, that is a mailman delivering a cup of pee. I can't exactly say why because we don't even remember how this became a joke. My love of labeling is evident here.

This one was a note I left for my husband over at abandonist. There were a few things he needed to do and I felt that a stick drawing would really help him to remember them. 

This is actually two notes in one, which is why it was labeled NEW at some point. I'm pretty sure the part about calling the doctor came first, and when I wanted him to feed the cats the first note still applied so I didn't erase it. My cats are named Kitsu, Maybe, and Sebastian. Maybe and her dirty butt is a story for another blog. 

So, as you can see, I really like stick figures. I even already had a love of MS Paint from back in '95 when I played with it on my Compaq Presario. (I'm on a macbook pro now and I'm using a free app called Sketchbook Express, if anyone has a better app to recommend please comment!) I've also always fancied myself to be something of a writer. I think I might be better at fiction than blogging, but hey, I'm just getting started. 

So it might seem like it was inevitable that I'd find myself here, sitting on my couch for hours on end, drawing and writing, but that's actually not the case. It would never have even occurred to me to do this if I hadn't stumbled upon the blog Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosh. It is the funniest most amazing little piece of interweb I've ever found, and I just wanted to make sure that if anyone ever actually reads this they know how crazy inspired I was by her work. It's about a billion million million times better than anything I'll ever write and if you've been living in a cave with no wifi for the past few years you should go read everything she's ever posted right now. 

So you went, right? I know, it was awesome. You're welcome. 

Reason I quit My Job #2

I'm awake right now. The sun is not. That's all the words my brain can handle this early. Here's a picture of some shapes: