Martha Hull - Artist and Writer

So the disappointment of Portlandia is also the hilarity of Portlandia.  Look at my painting!  Loud and blue and half obscured and smack dab in the center the whole sketch!  I was relegated to "production value."  But they ended up going with poorly rendered, as well as bad-conceptually, art.  Not what they had asked me for, but Hollywood does change its mind and they find ways to get what they want.  

I am taking the central and visible (without being distracting nature) of my artwork, coupled with it NOT being featured (see below for the most highly mocked piece of all) as a total compliment.  Did I want to go viral and take the short cut to having the lifestyle of late-career Picasso?  Hells bells, yes.  But there is always the lottery, and then there is always good old fashioned hard work.  Stupid hard work.  But I guess it's what I'm good at.

I am thinking about working on a different picture book for a while while the edits for Death's Daughter and the Basket of Kittens gel.  This one is an existential story starring a can of hash.  It personally gives me chills.  In a good way.

I found this post while I was supposed to be pimpin' out my kitten (and other prints...)

I have had my kitten painting recently compared to the artist Margaret Keane from the 60s who did creepy, big-eyed children portraits - I think she was actually one of a few.  My favorite coffee house in Portland (Oblique, and I found them BEFORE Portlandia did, thank you very much!) has a bathroom with full surround of pictures of huge-eyed kids.  I think one may be dressed as a clown, and I think one is holding a giant daisy, and I think one has a puppy, or is a puppy, or something like that.  Too strong of a mocha and the kids and puppies all start to look alike.

Today, I went out and bought a sh*t-ton of new pencil leads.  I haven't been in a mood to draw and I thought it was the clouds and the day job but the Epiphany Train ran full-steam into my head last night when I was hating on my pencil...  Whoa.  And duh...

So I am an automatic pencil addict.  That being said, if the lead isn't very soft, well, it turns out - I don't want to use it.  Goes for any pencil, now that I've got my head out of whatever I had it stuck in.  Now I have to go through my large supply of roving pencils, most of whom have unlovable leads, and SCORCH THE EARTH!  Actually, I will give the leads away to my favorite student, who will use them to WRITE with.  What a dork I am to think I can make do with "whatever. " That is not how I roll when it comes to art supplies.

In "Kitten in Winter, as hopefully to be seen on Portlandia THIS FRIDAY NIGHT", news - I have decided to donate 5% of all profits of print sales to the Humane Society of the United States.  Hopefully, I will actually sell some prints so this can happen.  I used to work at the Humane Society of Greater Burlington ages and ages ago.  It's not even called that now, and their facilities and practices have changed for the better, I thing.  But I'll never forget some of the animals I saved (and didn't manage to save) there.  There is a reason animals factor so prominently in much of my work.  My dear own Kiki Diablo cat was rescued from a collector who lived in a trailer with 30 cats.  No wonder she has no teeth.

Thanks for staying tuned while I hype the bejeezus out of the Portlandia Kitten painting thing.  I wish I had the time and energy to make some nutty YouTube video to help it go all viral, but the time and energy and willpower I have aren't going to power me through that before Friday.  You know, I found out we have a limited supply of willpower?  Well, I feel better.

Read this if you have the time - it's a sales pitch/first chapter for a book called Switch -  if you get far enough down to the part about the Rider and the Elephant and the study about "food perception," it will be worth your while.  "What looks like laziness is often exhaustion."  Tahnk you, thank you.  Lighten up Martha, it's just how it's gonna be.  I am sadly no art superhero.  So no YouTube at this time.

I am, however, thinking of chucking it all to become a pirate.

So yesterday I picked up my painting, Kitten in Winter, from the image capture studio.  I've been pimpin' it out as much as I can stand all over the internets, after going through the day job wringer over and over...  This SEO (search engine optimization) thing is still so new to me, and overwhelming.  I just learned what it is a few months ago.  But that's not real the problem.  The problem is, of course, that the kitten is coming true.

Coming true?  What does this mean, you may ask...  Well, I still prefer our soggy rainforest winter to the icy blast of my Vermont childhood, but there are consequences.  The clouds get to you.  Light deprivation is sadly not a joke, and I have been exhausted this week for no reason.  Again.  I've been taking my Vitamin D, but haven't been using the Happy Lamp I was so ready to be my salvation.  And it is taking its toll.  I guess I needed to get back in touch with my sense of S.A.D. since I am hoping to make a big breakout exploiting our communal feeling of hopelessness.  I laughed at Portland's #1 ranking as the most depressed city in the U.S., before I got here.  Ladies and gentlemen, the kitten does not lie!

The funny thing is that I knew when I painted it that I could not have created Kitten in Winter actually during wintertime.  That would have been unbearable.  And truthfully, it is too colorful for an accurate depiction of winter.  The color of a northeastern winter is white.  The colors of a northwestern winter are gray and green, depending on if you look up or down.  Blue is a mood, but it's a happier version of gray.  In the winter, I pull out the neon pigments.  In fact, I am so itchy to do so right now!!!  And yet, many hours of my day job, assisting administratively, stretch before me.  There is very little neon in my office, although I have more toys than the average office drone.

And yet, I am still excited for Portlandia's episode 5 (in a week!) - and am desperately hoping to be mocked brutally on national TV, in the hopes that indeed no press is bad press.  But there is no guarantee this will happen.  I feel confident the painting will at least appear on a wall as "production value," but beyond that, it's like playing the lottery.  And we all know that you can't win the lottery every week.  So I'm busting my arse on spec, which is hard to do... in winter.

So I'll dose up on the happy lamp like crazy over the next few days and report back.  I'm not going to let my inner sad kitten in a basket get the better of me.

So I went to Maui for Xmas.  As in, Hawaii.  As in, Paradise.  It was truly a beautiful place, with tropical breezes and rainbows (and double rainbows) every few hours.  I played in the ocean, SWAM in the ocean (for me with my lizard-like metabolism, this is nearly a miracle), tromped through tropical jungle, and drank in sunsets almost as glorious as those over Lake Champlain in Vermont.  I spent days convinced I had finally found a place I could be happy making tourist art, just so I could manage to live there.  Ian is looking into the graduate program in Honolulu for the future. 

Strangely, it reminded me of Vermont, albeit the most perfect summer day ever.  I realized that what I miss most about Oregon, besides my posse back east, is humid skies full of puffy clouds, smearing the sunset all over the place.  Here, the sky is usually grey or  blue, but seldom much of a mix.

I am looking for the chink in the armor, however.  I'm sure there is something wrong with the place.  I've never lived anywhere that didn't have its huge problems.  I suppose the small size of the islands and their proximity to nothing might become claustrophobic.  The cost of everything is considerably higher.  And then, there is the fantastic, laid-back spirit of aloha which is magical on vacation, but might wear on me eventually.  Aloha is not only the word for "hello" and "goodbye," it also means a spirit of brotherly love and well-being.  Which means people move slowly and peacefully and are happy.  Which also means they are a bit like the Portland slackers, if those folks could get transported to Paradise. 

On our way to the airport the last morning, we stopped at a locals' beach in the hippie town of Paia, and met a dude who was 25 going on 55, blazed out of his mind, who "bombarded us with aloha."  I wonder if too much aloha is bad for an artist.  I felt like my edge was slipping.  How can you write strange little stories about monsters in a land of so many rainbows?  I didn't see one mohawk on the whole island.  And for me, that was a bad thing.

The reviews of Honolulu are very love/hate.  I look forward to seeing it some day.  Right now, I am embracing the clouds and the moss, as that is my immediate future.  And I have some monsters to go draw.

Well, hello again. I've had an interesting break from posting, pondering the meaning of life and the economy and how to save the world. I wrote an economic fairness manifesto I'm still contemplating... to see if I should release it into the world, or do what the Art Business Gurus say, which is to buckle down and be on the all-art-books-channel.

Well, for now, I'm back at the art. It is, after all, what I live for. Thanksgiving weekend was swell. The Thai food I had was not super inspirational, but the other three days of getting to be me, well that was superfantastic. I really got back into Death's Daughter and the Basket of Kittens artmaking again. I am remembering the mixed joys of working with colored ink and gouache on paper.  On the one hand, it's beautiful.  On the other hand, it leaves little room for error.  It's both super easy and super hard. I think for my next book, I'll try something more forgiving, like acrylics (but how will they scan!? They are kind of shiny!) or my new acrylic gouaches, which I've never taken out for a true test.

I have made what I believe are final, final, final revisions to the Death's Daughter text.  Of course, this means more drawing.  I can't take the easy way out, now can I?  I realized that the complex concept of exactly how "death absorbing kittens" unleash their powers probably needs a bit more explanation. But the Muse gave me some fantastic edits, once I finally had time to sit down and listen this last weekend.

And speaking of Muses, David Mitchell is my new human muse.  David has been a good friend for a godzillion years, and is my first cash investor in my new business.  I do have patrons who have been helping me with my tech side for forever (don't know if he wants to be named or not) and people have bought my works, for which I'm hugely grateful.  But David has coughed up, unasked, some startup cash, and to thank him, I figured I'd let you know.  And I should also mention that he's single, straight, awesome, and lives in Vermont.  Let me know if you want his number.  To thank David, I think I will name a character after him, perhaps either the main human character in Ponyhunter, a book in its early stages about an ill-fated love affair between a pegacorn and a human, or else I will write a book to honor him- I'm nearly ready to write a book about a cannibal, anyway.  Not that David is a cannibal, but this is my world and I get to make things up around here.

We shall see.

In other news, I am going to Paradise for Christmas.  If you never hear from me again, it will be because I am selling bottles of sand to tourists in Hawaii and living in a hovel, basking in the eternal sun and warm breezes.

P.S.: Watch NBC's Grimm.  It's good, and Portland is one of the main characters.  She looks so pretty and mossy... but the palm trees are stunted here and it's too cold for comfortable hovel life.

P.P.S: I took pictures for you, but they are at home and I am not.  I owe you a visual feast soon.

Ripped from the c

I have completed Hoff's robot doll harmonica case.  What a terrible tease that I do not have a photo of it ready for you yet.  It is too dark in the evenings for photography.  It's my first bi-color 'bot.  She is silver and black and has blue eyes and mostly blue glittery bits.

The oak trees are starting to turn color outside the windows of ye olde day jobbe.  It is spectacular to live in a place where the color is still revving up.  It never reaches the velocity of Vermont, but then again, we cannot compete on the frozen air particle front, either.  We kick arse in clouds, though, but not this week.

It has been a challenging week, trying to juggle all of life's demands.  Was there ever a time when life was simple, or do we like to just pretend people in rosy olden days had things better?  People are so complex, I'm sure we can manage to take any situation and make it as complicated as possible.

I started work on the new batch of finishes for Death's Daughter and the Basket of Kittens.  I am giving Belladonna a nose, once she reaches child age.  I had gone through a no-nose phase back in the day, but then realized that noses represent worldiness.  A face with only eyes is a watcher.  A face with large eyes and a mouth is an innocent doer.  A face with eyes and a mouth and a nose knows something about the world.  It's unspoken visual language, but I think it crosses beyond my imagery and into something more psychology-y.  Or maybe I made it up.

Either way, Belladonna is getting a nose.  She embarks on too great a journey to be noseless.  Some days, it would be nice to be noseless in this context, but actually it does not mean you are any less in danger.  So that is an insight into how my fictional (?) worlds are created.  Can I make it more complicated?  Allright, let's go!

Although sometimes, Mr. Freud, a cigar is really just a cigar.

First off, happy birthday to me.

Second off- so I've been getting up before God and his minions (well, if I were a god, I'd sleep until 7 or 8 or a hella lot later if I'd had a fun night)... so it's been EARLY as I'm trying to: 1. research ways to let people know about my picture books on the internets, and 2. get a full half-hour dose of my happy light each morning.  Finally, I made a shocking breakthrough.  I somehow didn't realize that my work bleeds (yup, I said it) into the genre of horror.  Not overly gruesome horror, but, well, people get eaten and burned alive and stuff like that sometimes.

How could I have been so obilvious?  I was thinking I'm all goth-y and lo and behold, I realize I have more in common with the horror bloggers than the kitten bloggers.  (If you recall, the book I'm working on now is Death's Daughter and the Basket of Kittens.)  Okay, I knew I shouldn't bother the poor kitten bloggers, although not a kitten is harmed in my work.

So that is exciting, non?!

Also exciting is the imminent cake with espresso poured on top (thank you, Portland, via the Pied Cow on Belmont), and a James Brown dog from Zach's Shack. 

I think it's time I finally pull my head out of me arse and go visit my pals down at Occupy Portland, too.  Sure, I'm disturbingly busy, but maybe I'm not too busy for history.

By the way, it is also the late, great Divine's birthday. 

The honor is truly mine.

Ripped off from my Typepad blog

It's raining colors I am realizing we have a second bloom here in the rainforest.  It almost makes up for the clouds.  The gray coupled with all the flowers has really amped up my palette since I moved here.  My paintings almost vomit color now.  I bought every neon I could find in my new media, acrylic gouache.  There are a bunch.  I can't wait to do a picture book with these new paints- maybe Ponyhunter, a tragic love story between a young man and a pegacorn named Sparkleana. 

I tried the HappyLight today- even got up early to do it, and I am SOOOO not an early morning person.  And I haven't had this much energy (at my day job, no less!) in, well, memory.

I'm slaving away prepping paper for an entire picture book's worth of paintings.  I buy ink soon so I can mix enough purple/black to do the entire book...  I'm about to be a painting fiend.

The colors in Death's Daughter are sedate, mixed with intense hot pink.  I think the pink will carry me through.  I do love working in ink. Ink comes in an entire palette of colors, too.  Including lemon yellow and hot pink.  Just sayin'.

I'm not sure if those are crocus or tiny lavendar tulips I see all around town...  and the roses are coming back for one last hurrah.  At some point there is a lull and then the Camelia, a bit like roses on giant, leafy bush-trees, starts blooming in late January or early February.  Portland Freakin' Oregon, ladies and gentlemen.  The land where anything will grow.

If I prep my papers fast enough, I may start drawing unicorns tonight.  I think they'll be hard at first, but I'm also pretty sure they are going to be fun.  Unicorns are not generally a downer.  Off to the studio!

Drive fast, take chances!

Welcome back!  I am wishing myself this as well as you.  I am getting double-dog-dare-serious about making and selling my subversive little picture books for unconventional adults and teens.  So I will start keeping you all in the loop about how that is going- and I am sure there will be other delightful anecdotes too.  Stay tuned!

I am super excited about this.  Recently I met some art business counselors at a Hello Etsy event here in lovely Portland F*cking Oregon and they helped me, well, "see God."  In an art business sort of way.  I am reigning in the robotmaking and large canvasses for the sake of my most beloved childern, my picture books.

I have pulled out my Death's Daughter and the Basket of Kittens final drawings and the treeworth of paper I have been hoarding to do the paintings on.  I have picked the name for my own publishing house, Fluffpocalypse, and will have that url pointing to a real website once the books are ready for you to purchase.  I'm shooting for soon on that.  You might not want to do your Xmas shopping yet.

I am now debating giving Belladonna a nose- back in the olden days, I did not give children noses to make their wide-eyed innocence more prominent, but I'm kind of into making faces look a bit more like real faces- stay tuned on this front. 

So welcome back to the wild world of me.

There will be lots of stories to tell.  Oh, yes, there will.  (And pictures!)

Thanks for finding me.

This blog is duplicated at:

http://marthahull.typepad.com/marthas_hull_on_wheels_bl/2011/10/guess-whos-back.html

So the Universe gave me a huge gift last week.  A picture book in its entirety.  It came all in one sitting, unbidden, and it even fits perfectly on the pages.  And it's rated G.  Yes, that's right, my first picture book that is apparently a "children's book."  (WTF!)  I'd better go cuddle with some spiders now to make up for it.  Actually, I'm not going to look a gift book in the mouth.  It's called Brigid in the Word Clouds.  It's a little story about happiness squishing gloom.  I guess it's a summer story.