Do Your Fang

Today I called upon Michael Bucci to have some fun and brainstorm animal puns. Here is what we created:

1. Rock Mobster
2. beer froggles
3. I'm not one to boast or stag
4. I'm abstaining, I'm just a cuttlefish
5. Foul ball
6. Focus on the tusk at hand/multi-tusker/tusk manager
7. Old-fashioned roman-tick
8. Grouper Model
9. De-panda-ble
10. A-roar-able
11. Where there's a whale, there's a way
12. Koalaty time
13. If you wallaby me lover
14. If I kangaroo, I don't want nobody else
15. From the gecko
16. Full frontal newtity
17. Ewe reap what you sow (pig)
18. Do your fang
19. Squid Pro Quo
20. A lemur of hope
21. Centaur of attention
22. Wait a minotaur
23. Owl always love you
24. Owl about the benjamins
25. Sexual Eeling
26. You make me wanna snout
27. I'm yours and hermine
28. Do my breasts still look turkey?
29. Spun-taneous combustion (spider)
30. Plastic sturgeon
31. I have feelers for you
32. You hurt my felines
33. On a scale of tentacles, you're a solid 8
34. Cobra cabana
35. Porcupining for you
36. I think you're oppossum
37. It is im-parrot-tive that I see you
38. Canary me home tonight
39. If it's at all fossilble
40. Rape and Plumage: Pirates of the Caribbirdie
41. Don't be koy, I just fish you would squawk to me
42. From tusk til fawn
43. From duck til swan
44. I've heard whiskers about mew
45. Seaweed get along if you weren't so shellfish
46. I don't look at girls' eyes, just thorax
47. Rough giraffed
48. Big wedding or just antelope?
49. I think she handled that with greys and elephants
50. Panther no panth, I'm going danthing
51. I don't mean to hurt your pride, but you've been lion around all day.
52. I'm very fawned of you
53. You gotta be kitten me
54. Bison-tennial
55. Beeftween the meats
56. I don't mean to burrow, badger seeming a little brown.
57. Take her or beaver.... AND MY PERSONAL FAVORITE....
58. A-parrot-ly you won't answer macaws

Post Craft Fair

So I had my very first craft fair this weekend and it was much better than expected! I learned so much and  I am more than ready for next time. To my surprise, the keychains were the big seller. Even though they were meant to represent things like "the gay gene" and H1N1 (Swine Flu) and Avian Flu and such, little kids just thought they were pretty. I sold some big ticket items and got a lot of buzz for my series. Now that it is over I am ready to produce more pieces and build a more impressive display.

Hans

 Hans is available at www.ninaberetta.etsy.com

CanCan Update

CanCan dancers available at www.ninaberetta.etsy.com

Sculpey Update

Mythological Babies available at www.ninaberetta.etsy.com  

 Baby Cerberus

Baby Echidna

Baby Gryphon

Baby Kraken

Baby Minotaur

Steampunk Mask No. 1

What has happened to my blog?!

I haven't signed in for some time, and now it seems like everything is all funky.

Anyway, I just updated my Etsy shop with the baby mythological creatures, my steampunk mask, and Hans and more!

  www.ninaberetta.etsy.com

I have about 20 new zombies to photograph and post and GUESS WHAT! I have been invited to participate in my first craft fair! It will be the weekend after next in New Haven and I couldn't be more nervous and excited! I had big plans to build my collection and now I am getting down to the wire and I just don't have enough to show for myself. I have a few new cancan dancers and a few new oddities but I am worried my display will be bare. I have so much to prepare from business cards to flyers and hopefully a banner or a poster of some sort. I also need to get together a pile of prints, mat them and protect them. Before the show I need to figure out something interesting to do with my table. I will be so discouraged if people pass me by. I don't even care so much about making money, I just hate the idea of being ignored. Almost as much as I hate the idea of parents buying my pieces as toys for children, or unattended children touching my display!

Productive

I've been attacking my sketchbooks recently. At first I was doing watercolors in a park in NYC, but I decided, with the good advice of my muse, to do some regular figure studies from my nudie books. So the crappy crappy ones are from the books, but I wasn't focusing on anatomy as I should have. Today has been so productive! Most of the color sketches are from yesterday and the last week or so, but some I colored today.

Nudies from today

Inhale No. 1

I realize this is a poor quality photo, but I had just gotten the camera and just finished this giant painting so I was in a hurry to capture it. I believe it is 48x60" and the color is more mauve than the photo would have you believe. I've been showing it here and there and it's up for sale in my Etsy shop, NinaBeretta, but I am dreading the day someone buys it. I had such a great time working at such a large scale I finished the whole thing in no time (as far as oil paintings go). I have some ideas for others like it but Ferrari refuses to model for me, despite her otherwise loving to show off her perfect body.

Lots to See

Working On It

Hello world. I am a bad keeper-upper as you can see. I write checks with my mouth which my hands cannot cash. All the while I haven't been blogging, I haven't really been creating, except for a series of doodles my friend Maggie and I have been making based on office jargon. They are pretty hilarious in my opinion, but I am dedicated to keeping my blog classy so I will not post them here. Furthermore, I am in the middle of cleaning the bathroom but thought I would take a quick procrastinatory (word?) break and make a note that I am still alive and fully intend to return to art-making. Perhaps today after I finish these chores. I am in the market for a new book of nude figures so if anyone can suggest a good one, I would appreciate it.

Some of my More Recent Cards

Cards Pt. 2

Postcards!

I am addicted to making crafty postcards and I will be selling them in my Etsy shop in packs of 5 and 10 as soon as I have enough to go around. Some I like more than others and obviously as I go on my collection is growing. Ferrari thinks they are stupid and a waste of time but I really don't care. I have a mailing list longer than I really want and I expect less than half of these people will mail anything back but I really just like making them! My stamp collection is getting some much-needed use and my creative brain is getting itself some exercise while my painting is in its stage of "don't touch me, I'm ugly!" Right now my cards are in packs with themes. So far the themes are "Classy," "Wild Side," and "Whimsy" with upcoming collections entitled "Fresh Ink," and "Orient".

Fatty's Revenge, Seraphim and Stiff Little Girl

Today's doodles are a would-be me shedding my fat suit (if only), a little girl at a water cooler (who obviously needs Tinman's oil can), the sketch for one of my new angels and the transferred drawing on canvasboard. The wings don't quite show in the final picture, but they are there. I will be making this piece in oil and have since fixed the hand on the left. Even though I made it too big I am keeping it. I might thin out the bell of the trumpet. I am hoping to make this piece part of a tryptic where the other two paintings are half of a group of angels.