Saturday, March 29, 2008

Unfinished thoughts and total failures

After cleaning my place all afternoon I finally feel ready to spend time on my art again. To get me in the mood, and to follow the "spring" cleaning vibe, I present to you a collection of things that didn't work. (I say "spring" because it's fucking snowing).



















I actually kinda like the ring lady, she's got a nice fat butt and big hair. Maybe someday I'll make her bigger and better.

I keep trying to do the reading lady and I think I've finally given up on her...

Third is a drag queen. Hot mess

Fourth was drawn before my show in a moment of pure stress and agony.

Aww this one turned out blury, but she's a doodle from school
This was the beginning of something that went nowhere. she's the same as the book girl above.

Sometimes I try to draw men. And fail.

First in a series of mad and unsuccessful attempts to transfer my style to watercolor.
More failed watercolors
This looks like 80s fashion watercolors...
Sometimes I just take a magazine and try to draw the models in my style. Sometimes that results in a mess.
Sometimes I can't draw feet that are proportionate...
Anywho, that was fun, I'm ready to do some new stuff finally so maybe I'll have an update with those things soon!

Thursday, March 13, 2008

New Hobby

www.cheiler.blogspot.com

Check out Steve and I's new hobby/blog.

Lovely things...


I want to go see this oh sooo badly:
http://www.pnb.org/season/dc2008.html

I've seen this guy dance once w/ ayako at Bumbershoot and I was thoroughly in love afterwards....

Tuesday, March 4, 2008

Sexy Sexy


So last night Steve and I finally rented and watched Lust, Caution- the Ang Lee movie which has the reputation of an NC17 rating for violence and lots of naked Tony Leung.

Highly recommended. Maybe not at the level of In The Mood For Love, which caused me to forever fall in love with Tony Leung, but it was so intense and lovely that I keep thinking of it all day at work. It also makes me want to go back and watch In the Mood for Love again because he is much younger and far less creepy :)

I felt that Ang Lee's lengthy use of subtly in this movie worked much more powerfully for me than his approach in Brokeback Mountain. It's still a fairly lengthy movie, but it moves much much faster. Also, very importantly, the chemistry between Tony Leung and Wai Tang is intense. INTENSE!

Aside from all of that, it really really made me want to do my hair up in pin curls and wear hats that slant over one side of my face. Wei Tang's wardrobe in this movie is absolutely delightful. Carefully detailed blue trench coats and black velvet hats, red lipstick, and many many skin tight silk mandarin collared dresses which oh so boobed white girl me could never ever wear. I wish I could pull something like that off.

Anywho, I try to make my 'movie reviews' fairly vague. Living with Steve has caused me to be overly sensitive to the fact that many people don't want to know anything about the plot of a movie before they see it. So, I guess what I can say is this movie is powerful, sad, beautiful to look at... And there is a ton of "doin it" as Steve would say.

Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Weekend delights

So life has been in full swing. This weekend was pretty low-key, yet fulfilling. Friday evening Steve and I met up at the Stumbling Monk, which was ever so gym-sock smelling as per usual, with Tracy Lin, Elena and Daron. After perusing the selection of various board games that are tossed around this old man’s basement of a bar, we settled on Scatergories, which is probably my all time favorite game. This is a family favorite, because unlike Monopoly, this game didn’t lead to WWIII levels of family fighting. My second all time favorite game would be Apples to Apples, similar reasons. So after many rounds of scattergories, quite a few heavy Belgian beers, Elena making inappropriate suggestive selections, while my mind went for the four year old humor (yes, I put down “poop” for “something sticky”), we walked across the street to the B&O Café. After not being seated for quite some time, whilst staring at four open tables in the bar, we finally spoke up and said “You know, we’re all 21….” I am by far the youngest at 22, while the rest of the group is in the 24-25 range. Sad. After hours of desserts (best bread pudding in the city), we all stumbled home. Or, that is, Steve and I stumbled home and the rest of the gang drove back to the east side. Suckers!

Saturday was stunning. Pure blue sky, kinda chilly still, but I went for a walk without a coat. Went home, pulled down the shades and Watched Graveyard of the Fireflies, which of course, after watching, made it necessary for me to go outside and take another walk… Then after grabbing some Jai Thai take out, went back home to watch Thirteen on tv. Woah intensely depressing movie day. Overall it was pretty nice though. I went on a third walk, stopped off at Café Vita to do some reading, then walked through Cal Anderson Park (many puppies and bums running about). It was a good day, because it forced me to get back to that place where I enjoyed slow paced days spent alone. I took a quick stab a cleaning, but didn’t get too far.

Sunday morning went out to Dim Sum with Beth and Matt at Purple Dot in the ID. They had never been, so it was especially exciting. Steve usually has to cut me off, but this time Beth and Matt both wanted to try as many delightful little dishes as possible, hoorah! Various dumplings of the pork and shrimp variety were enjoyed by all. I really wanted to undo the top button on my jeans after that meal. We briefly walked around the ID in the same stunning sun/cool breeze weather that I had enjoyed the day before. After parting ways, Steve and I drove over to Fremont to visit Yako-monster at the music shop. We brought her some bbq pork humbao (is that how you spell it?) some calpico, and a little custard treat. After distracting her from various customers, making a rukus on the various keyboards and bizarre sound machines, we headed to Queen Anne to go see the Opera. Steve’s mom has been taking vocal lessons for quite some time now and went to go see Tosca the night before. She enjoyed it quite a bit and wanted us to check it out so she generously bought us tickets for Sunday’s matinee. I’d never been to the Opera (tending to be more of a ballet or symphony person), so I did feel a little underdressed in my jeans. I left my coat on the whole time because it was quite a bit more formal than what I had on underneath. Glad I wore heels. Steve of course ridiculed me for caring, but such is life as a girl. Aside from the Opera being really enjoyable (sadly, the tenor, who I thought was the strongest singer, had to be swapped out for the understudy half way through the show due to ‘upper respiratory issues’), I found it quite delightful to people watch. All the old ladies in their purples and feathers and shiny bejeweled handbags, several bean poll blonds wearing barely cooch covering dresses hanging off the arms of clearly rich men, then the tourist who look as underdressed as I do…. I’d gladly go again, I thought it was a pretty fun way to spend an afternoon.

We decided to thank Steve’s parents for the tickets by cooking them dinner. I just made sugar cookies for dessert, so while Steve cooked dinner Steve’s mom and I watched the Oscars. It was pretty fun because she just wanted to look at the dresses too…

Overall pretty delightful. A great way to cap off a super stressful work week. Next weekend it’s off to the cabin!

Thursday, February 7, 2008

just like the inspirational posters at the professional development office.

Right now I want nothing more than to go sit in a postcard-beautiful place, like the middle of the woods, while slightly raining and just breath for a half hour... I think maybe I should take up a yoga class.

Saturday, February 2, 2008

Congrats Dude!




A tribute to the future Mrs. Raley