Jeanine Henderson—It's Raining Love

Sorry for so many posts tonight! Just getting caught up- such a busy week so great to just have fun drawing tonight!

Jeanine Henderson—Unexpected Love, part 3

Within just a few months of dating, John & I traveled to Colorado, Maui, Vermont, the Poconos, Austin, and then to celebrate our first year took a road trip down the Pacific Coast Highway from Portland to San Diego (1400 miles in 8 days in a very small convertible without killing each—that's gotta be true love!) The adventure's continued ever since—and it's the best journey I've ever been on, with lots more to come! (I know, I know...cheesy! but true! haha)

Jeanine Henderson—Unexpected Love, part 2

Trying to catch up on overdue posts! :)
After John & I left the bar the night we met, he walked me to the subway, and gave me our  first kiss on the corner of 6th Avenue & 14th Street. Then he said "we should do this again—you have my card, call me sometime." I asked if he wanted my number...he said no! Ha! Talk about mixed signals! Lucky for him, I texted him the next day to say hello, and he asked me out right away. We pretty quickly fell for each other after that, and so the journey began...

Marc Scheff - Bitterness INC

Two weeks later, Choe flew back to San Francisco where I was throwing an underground party called Bitterness INC. I built a ten foot glowing heart in three dimensions to hang in the center of the warehouse, and Chloe brought her dancing shoes. I remember sitting inside the heart fixing something when Chloe appeared in the opening, smiled, and gave me a big kiss. I don't know when we said I love you, but I remember that moment as the beginning of falling in love.

Other notes: One of the guys who organized the scavenger hunt co-organized this event with me and is now one of our son's godfathers.

Further note: Chloe is six inches taller than me. This image makes sense, actually.

Scott Murphy - Skull Love

As far as i'm concerned, there's never a bad time to draw skulls. I was messing around with some charcoal dust for this one. 

Kristina Carroll - Cat Tryst

watercolor

For some reason on my morning walks lately, I've been coming across pairs of cats interacting fairly regularly. And whenever I do, it always seems as if I am interrupting something intimate. They immediately stop what they're doing and stare at me until I leave, and I walk away feeling slightly ashamed.

Jeffrey Alan Love - The Sword from Toledo

When I was 6 my father went to Spain for work for a few weeks.  When he came back he gave me a sword.  It wasn't just any sword, however.  It was a sword from Toledo, which as any child of 6 who is obsessed with knights, swashbucklers, and pirates can tell you is famous for its steel and the  swords made from that steel.  It was like a tale of old - my father journeys to a distant land to bring back a sword for his firstborn son (my brother also got a sword, but that's beside the point).  The sword seemed huge, larger even than me.  As I've gotten older and grown the sword has shrunk to normal size, but the immense magic that it sparked within me, the limitless places it took my imagination, still remain. 

Carly Janine Mazur - Car Rides

5"x7" collage and acrylic on masonite, in a car

A month or two into getting to know each other and building a close friendship, John took me to go ice skating. We were supposed to meet up with two friends of his, but they overslept. After John and I skated around for an hour looking like idiots, he suggested lunch. We ended up at a vegan place, tucked away in a back parking lot a few towns over.

As I got out of the car, he sat down on the hood, and after a moment of looking out into space, he asked me out. It caught me by surprise, but the moment was perfect. To this day I still think our friends flaking out on us was all part of the plan for John to woo me. Regardless, we started dating two days later. The rest is history.

Since then the car has been a staple in our lives. We have gone on so many adventures, whether they started off with a destination or not--sometimes the trips just resulting in the two of us driving around for hours for the fun of it. All I can say is I hope the adventures never end :)

Kristina Carroll - First Love Story: Part III

 Then one day, I waited for Chris to meet me after school and he didn't show up.  I was a little bit worried but convinced myself that he was just sick or something. However when I called his house later, he wasn't home and he didn't meet me the day after that either...

Later that week, I found out he had been walking Misty Powell home from School. He was no longer my boyfriend.

- The End -

Part I
Part II

Ricardo Lopez Ortiz- Love Triangle?

Hey guys! Sorry for going awol on everyone, I've been extremely busy this week and was unable to post anything the last couple of days. Here is one of the reasons. I have the piece above in a show at Bottleneck gallery here in Brooklyn. The show is called "Get a Room" and it is a tribute to the greatest "couples" of our time.

I decided to go with the amazing "Love Triangle" of Buster Bluth and the two Lucilles in his life. If you're in the area swing by the opening tomorrow. It's a great little gallery.

60 Broadway
Brooklyn, NY 11249

Get a Room Valentine's Day Preview Sale

 8PM-10PM Eastern

Click Here: Preview Sale

Upcoming Exhibit:

Get a Room

Friday, February 15th - Friday, March 8th

Opening Reception: Friday February 15th from 7pm to 10pm 

Online Sales Begin Saturday February 16th ~ 12 noon est.

Cheating: My 29 Year Love Affair

Today I should be posting my 3rd in a series of my love story "challenge" which I planned to do related to the current love of my life. However, as she well knows, I've never really given up my lover of 29 years. She's smooth, sleek, always available, and SO responsive to my touch. I fear I'll never give her up. This Valentines post goes out to my well worn, but dearly beloved Staedler Mars-780. <3 She gets some special dark chocolate almond bark today. 

Love story coming this weekend. (sorry all)

Marc Scheff - Long Distance Love

Chloe went back to Boston. She was a law student and I was the Creative Director at a t-shirt company in San Francisco. We both spent a lot of time on our computers. We said that the distance was to great to commit, but we sure committed a lot of time to instant messenger.

Alice Stanne - Love Inventories (Pt.2)

In this book we decided to cover the first time my boyfriend came to visit me at my parents house. This was a pretty big deal for us; his parents didn't approve of our relationship and he had to say he was going somewhere else. But we had the most wonderful weekend going around to all my favorite places. Seeing how excited he was by the places I loved I knew he was the guy for me. (Again he drew the covers just like the first time.)

The middle section reads:
I took you to all my favorite places at home, including the Bistro for breakfast, where you didn't bat an eye at my carb intake.

Scott Murphy - Love Quest Part 3

Having been together for nearly four years thus far, Lis and I have been going as strong as ever. I can only hope we continue to grow and learn and love and adventure for a long long time. Here's what our future looks like:

This was also the valentine I gave to her today...she loved it. It encompasses pretty much everything we enjoy (except illustration, but I guess it is an illustration..so that counts). I wanted it have a similar feel the album covers by our favorite band Manowar! Who's original covers were done by Ken Kelly, they're ridiculous and awesome. Also, that's our future dog when we don't live in New York and have space for it.

Happy Valentines!

Scott Brundage- Present Day

After college and some years more, I finally wore her down. It didn't hurt that my awkward stage finally ended at age 28. We had our first smooch on a dock near her folks' house.

Jeffrey Alan Love - Valentine's Day

Carly Janine Mazur - Coffee Talk

7"x5" collage and acrylic on masonite, shot on location!

While my brother was off in California, John, a coworker of my brother's, would take me on late night trips to our 24-hour diner. Up until that point I had only spent time with him in the company of my brother and his group of friends. I always felt like an add-on, and not truly integrated.

At the diner we would sit for extended periods of time until the wee hours of the morning drinking cup after cup of coffee, getting to know each other better and better. We talked about video games, books, movies, television, art, anything and everything. Slowly but surely, a mutual love was brewing...

Scott Murphy - Love Quest Part 2

So Lis and I became official after dating for about a month or so. Ever since, we've been nonstop in our seeking out quests and adventures.

Over the years we've managed to travel to Canada, Spain, Turkey, England, Scotland, Norway, and countless places in the US. I couldn't ask for a better travel partner in the whole world. 

Kristina Carroll - First Love Story: Part II

Chris and I talked on the phone a few times.

 

He even came over once to play on my jungle-gym with me.

When he gave me a big, purple ring from a cracker-jack box, I knew it was serious. I mean, our names were sort of the same so it was clearly meant to be.

And for two whole weeks, he continued to walk me home. This was pretty much a record relationship in 6th grade and I was very proud.

( Part I here. )

Alice Stanne - Love Inventories (Pt.1)

I asked my boyfriend to help me with this project since he is the source of the inspiration. We made a little book cataloging all of the most important parts of our first "date." So I asked him to design a pattern for the cover of the book, while I did the insides.

The middle section reads:
You told me you had a joke, "There is a penguin on one shoulder..." and you wrapped your arm around me. "That's the end of the joke."

Kate Feirtag- Love at First Site, Part 2

On the other side of the screen.  Colin and his standing desk.

Jeanine Henderson—Unexpected Love, part 1

As a single gal in NYC, I dated all walks of life, entertained friends with my ridiculous stories, and even filled sketchbooks inspired by the hilarious losers I'd encountered. And after 7 years of online dating and set-ups, I met John one very random night at a bar. I'd spent that day dreaming about places I could move where dating might be easier, and he'd been on a bad match.com date just that afternoon! We were both just having dinner & drinks with friends—so not in the least expecting to meet someone we'd fall in love with that night. Maybe it was just all the beer...but who says love doesn't happen the old fashioned way anymore? ;)

Cynthia Sheppard - Eleven Blue Roses

My Love pt. 2

Brendan and I had known each other as friends, and later as band mates, for almost 7 years before we went on our first date. I took the train into NYC to meet up with him in December 2006. He bought me a bouquet of blue roses from a street vendor, but removed one rose and gave it to an old woman. She smiled. I smiled.

Scott Brundage- High School

In high school, Bonnie and I were good friends. I drew her many many pictures.... to be fair, I drew a lot of girls pictures, but Bonnie's were the best ones.

I still got shot down every time I asked her out.

(I never really drew a picture of her in a steel bra riding a unicorn, but that sort of thing would have made her laugh. That was usually the goal.)

Jeffrey Alan Love - Sleeping Muse

Kyle Smart - Meeting Amy

Amy was the first person I met when I went to university. We made a pretty bad first impression of each other. I had a thick northern accent and spoke way to fast for her to understand, and she was hungover. We lived in the same halls of residence together. Its weird how things turn out. 

Scott Murphy - Love Quest Part 1

Back in 2010, after much difficulty trying to meet females of a like-mind in New York City, I decided to ask a few pals about my options for meeting a quality mate. A good buddy said, "Well there's this online site, it's decent." I thought to myself, "Online dating! That sounds extremely desperate and ridiculous!" But being too much of a wuss-face to actually talk to anyone in real-life anyway, I decided to give it a shot. It was free anyway. The site was called OkCupid. So I signed up for an account and made a profile just for the hell of it. It wasn't so bad, and I could actually search for people who shared the same interests as myself. After going on a few dates with people from there, I narrowed my search down to only those which most closely matched my own interests. Eventually I sent a message to Lis who was the most interesting of all the people I was closely matched with. After some emailing, we decided to meet in person. I was excited and terrified.

I decided that we could meet for dinner and followed that up with some tickets to the Upright Citizens Brigade. For some reason we met at 3, even though the show wasn't until 7. We met in the city (meeting a person you've only seen pictures of a few times before can be quite scary), but my fears were cast off as she was as beautiful as ever, and we went off and got dinner at a nearby diner. Actually, as a side-note, we had our first dinner next to Carson Kressley (from Queer Eye, I hadn't seen the show, but she knew him and I recognized him) and discussed how crazy that was. In any case, we finished with dinner within about an hour and thus realized we had at least 2 hours before our comedy show would begin. Not knowing what to do, we walked over to Madison Square Park and sat down on a bench. It was as awkward as it always is when talking with someone whom you've never met at length, but I found that we had so many things in common it became fairly easy to talk forever. We chatted about art, tattoos, traveling the world, our love for skulls and the grim, and lastly our love for heavy metal. The remainder of the date went well, and we would continue to see each other thereafter.....

Kristina Carroll - First Love Story: Part 1

watercolor

In 6th grade Chris started walking me home from school and became my first boyfriend.

Carly Janine Mazur - M'AIDEZ!

7"x5" collage and acrylic on masonite

After I graduated from college I made the decision to move back home to Connecticut. I had left my college friends behind, and the friends I had in Connecticut from high school were elsewhere, living their own college and post-college lives. In essence, I was marooned.

Within two months of moving back, my brother, the only person keeping me sane and entertained at the time, went to California. I was bored, lonely, and needed someone to rescue me from going insane! (to be continued...)

Kate Feirtag- Love at First Site, Part 1

 

Tim Paul - Series I

Since this is a narrative series challenge, I shall let the piece speak.

Scott Brundage- Middle School

I've known my fiance, Bonnie, since 6th grade. 7th grade Spanish class was our first class together. I spent much of the year like this, figuring out various and increasingly creative ways to get shot down by her.

Jeffrey Alan Love - My Favorite Figure Drawing Model

Marc Scheff - I left my heart in San Francisco

Vday Challenge, Day One

My wife and I went to college together, but never met there. We have all the same friends, but didn't run in the same circles, if that makes sense. We both moved to San Francisco, and she quickly sped back to New York. She came back to visit a lot, and years later we met and knew each other in our circle of friends.

Some of these friends organized a big scavenger hunt on a weekend she was visiting, and placed us on the same team. With our paper tickets in hand, we wandered the twistiest streets of the city searching for obscurities. We found them, but we also found each other.

Kristina Carroll - Bakery Love

Due to a long teaching day and a Migraine when I got home, I didn't even touch my sketchbook or computer yesterday.  So here's my make-up art. This is a quick interior sketch of Fornax- the bakery in my village whose buttermilk biscuits make life worth living. I really love this place- it's charming and home-y and every restaurant in the neighborhood buys bread from them. I often stop by after my morning walk to grab a coffee and sketch when I have time, it's one of my favorite parts of the day.

Jaime Zollars - Food Love

So, I always get called out on Twitter for talking too much about food and all the horrible stuff I eat when on deadlines or working...so I thought I'd take inventory of some of my favorite foods, if they can all technically be referred to as such.

Terese Nielsen - Love my MtG Fans

This is my day of love to my most awesome fans. 

Sorry, this post gets messed up with the east coast/west coast time-frame. I still have another couple of hours here on the west coast to post for day 11.      : ) 

This is a quick bit of fun for the love and appreciation I have for my "Magic the Gathering" fans! Thank you all!! 

Anyone that posts "something" here on this "Month of Love" post, qualifies for an (in a hat drawing, on Feb. 14th) to win this (quickly altered playable) "Force of Will", or a second prize, limited edition of 50 print (of your choice)  or third prize, limited edition of 500 print (also of your choice).  Thanks for looking!

Big February loves! <3 <3

------------------
It's the evening of February 13th. Thanks so much to everyone who came over and left such amazing comments and looked at our "Month of Love" projects.

Just so you know the cutoff for making a comment is 9 a.m. pacific standard time. At that time we'll print whatever names are listed, cut them, throw them in a hat, and we'll do a little video of me picking the names. We'll put that video here within this blog post, and on my FB page "The Art of Terese Nielsen" announcing the winners. We'll post it in the afternoon tomorrow (14th) on Valentines day. Good luck, February loves, and spread the love. : )

---------------
And the winners are...

Sorry for the blurry close-ups. We just did the quick unedited Flip camera version. For the 3 winners please contact me at terese@tnielsen.com so we can work out addresses to mail your goodies out to, and in the case of #2 and #3 winners, which print you'd like. Oh and to view which prints I have available please go to tnielsen.com .

----------------------

March 5th UPDATE:


The "Month of Love" giveaway was great fun. Thank you all for participating!
Joe Klesert selected a 13x19" "Angel of Jubilation" print, Kaja Federowicz picked the large 17x22" "Enter the Infinite" print, and the *first place winner for the drawing* "Tanarin" who posted here *won*!

HOWEVER-- I can't get in touch with whomever this is! If anyone knows them by all means let them know. There's been no response thus far and it's been over 2 weeks now.  I'll wait until March 14th and then post another quick video of me drawing a new name. I saved them all in the hat just in case this happened.

Please check back here or on my FB page to find out who wins this next time. : )

-----------------------------------

March 15 UPDATE:

A new name has been selected for the 1st place altered Force of Will! Here's a quick video of me drawing the name.

For the record I had NO idea I'd be so wiggly in the video... swear to god I wasn't drunk. Plus, on the teeny flip video I "thought" it was in focus, but no. Anyway, long way of saying the video is lame and I would have redid it but then the drawing wouldn't have been legit, so we're stuck with a crappy video. Sorry about that.  : )  Now please contact me so I can give this away!  : )

Scott Murphy - Monster Love

I must confess that today I am cheating a bit because I've got a major deadline coming up and have been working like crazy! 
Today I present an illustration I did almost exactly three years ago which I made as the first valentine I gave to my then, and still girlfriend, Lis. It's quite different than my normal style, but to this day it still hangs on our refrigerator because we both enjoy it. He's some sort of abominable snowman who's extremely happy being filled with so much love.

Adobe Illustrator

Cynthia Sheppard - Gamer Love

I think my Minecraft addiction is trying to tell me something...

Alice Stanne - Little Birds

One of my favorite poems by e.e.cummings begins with the lines:

may my heart always be open to little
birds who are the secrets of living