New Site!

Hi! If you are looking for the Month of love for 2015,  we have moved to a shiny new site on Tumblr:

The 2013/2014 years will remain archived below. Please enjoy!

Kevin Jay Stanton - 69 Love Songs

Super crazy late (it's not even the Month of Love anymore!) but I wanted to post it anyway! I chose Abigail, Belle of Kilronan because it is an incredibly beautiful song and I wanted to try something wistful.

Thank you for a great Month of Love! Here's some more Art!

Well that month just flew by! Just go back and look at how much terrific new art exists now because of it- wow. Thank you again to everyone who participated and followed along with the blog this Month!  The challenge and level of skill raised the bar once again.  It was a wonderful experience!

As always, we invite everyone  to follow along with our blogs and try the challenges on their own. We had some really great "write in" pieces this month. Here are a couple of our favorites:

Melanie Demmer's  #nofilter Valentine. She illustrated the Level of seriousness dating defined by meals.

Melanie Demmer
http://www.melaniedemmer.com/

And Here's Meredith Miotke's  take on the #nofilter Valentine. Caption:  It's complicated, ok?

Meredith Miotke
http://mlmiotke.com/

Jorge Mascarenhas - 69 Love Songs

Well, like many I've never heard of the Magnetic Fields. I gave 3 songs a shot: Boa Constrictor, Let's Pretend We're Bunny Rabbits and A Pretty Girl Is Like... I found the titles interesting and this will be growing into more illustrations as a personal project. It's been fun!

Kristina Carroll- 69 Love Songs

Queen of the Savages
Charcoal

When I listened to Queen of the Savages, it made me think of those ill-fated rebound relationships. You know, when you have a hard break up and end up meeting someone who seems perfect simply because they are the exact opposite of everything that is familiar. For a while the newness can devour your heartbreak but if you aren't careful, you can get completely eaten up by it.

She eats other queens,

she's very religious

She doesn't use a fork

I don't think I'll go back to New York

This was another quick drawing I managed to squeeze in among other work and deadlines this week. Whew! What a month! Thank you everyone for so much beautiful art, inspiration and motivation! I am so happy with how this month turned out!

Taryn Cozzy - 69 Love Songs

The Magnetic Fields' "Absolutely Cuckoo" is my favorite from their 69 Love Songs. Something about it sounds so rounded, maybe it's the repetitive beat and continuous string of words, or that it makes me picture a billion balloons or bouncing balls going down a hill... And the lyrics hit me right in the childhood, when you have a million crushes and a billion fantasies and a trillion friends that you think you love everything and everyone with all your heart and it doesn't matter to you or them how strange and crazy your mind may be. But the fun, rounded beat of life as a child is handy at masking all the gossip and terrors the world may present and some of that bubbly optimism never leaves us. Maybe that's not what this song really means, but that's my crazy interpretation :)

I had a ton of fun drawing this and it didn't turn out how I wanted it to so maybe I'll take this in later and fix it up - hooray!

Lee Moyer - 69 Love Songs

Tim Durning- 69 Love Songs

Punk Love

Like a few other folks, I hadn't heard much from The Magnetic Fields, so I just had the album on while I worked at sketched out some ideas. The "Punk Love" idea here stood out to me.

Had a lot of fun doing these pieces. Thanks for having me folks!

Carly Janine Mazur - 69 Love Songs

7" x 5" oil, acrylic, gold and silver leaf on board

The song I chose is "Long Forgotten Fairytale". The song (my interpretation, at least) is about abusive relationships and the Stockholm syndrome that often manifests in the abused towards their abuser.

That and I just love new wave. Don't judge me.

Lee Moyer - 69 Love Songs

Craig Maher - 69 Love Songs

I cheated a little and used my favorite Magnetic Fields song "Torn Green Velvet Eyes", from the 1994 album Holiday.

Did you go a little crazy working on Month of Love? In a good way I hope. Here is a Love playlist I made called "I Go Crazy" that accompanied me for some of the studio hours ...

1. Dirty Thing - Telekinesis - 12 Desperate Straight Lines
2. I Go Crazy (LP Version) - Flesh For Lulu - I Go Crazy (US 12 Inch)
3. Lights - Phantogram - The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
4. Torn Green Velvet Eyes - The Magnetic Fields - Holiday
5. Lies - Chvrches - The Bones Of What You Believe
6. Always Forever - Cults - Static
7. Love is to Die - Warpaint - Warpaint
8. It's Only Love - Ejecta - Dominae
9. Wait For Me - City of Glass - The Modern Age
10. Honey & I - Haim - Days Are Gone
11. Halcyon - The Paper Kites - Woodland & Young North EP
12. She Lit A Fire - Lord Huron - Lonesome Dreams
13. Hearts Like Ours - The Naked and Famous - In Rolling Waves

E-mail or private message me for your very own copy. Thanks Kristina and everyone for a great month!

Fetish - Marc Scheff

I confess, I've had some creative block this week, thus the late post. I have been turning to exercise, walks, and a well-timed call with my mentor to clear out the cobwebs.

This piece is, again, doing double-duty. It is a fetish, in that I seem to have one about painting women and wolves. It is also a very small (5.75 square) piece for the Mail Me Art project.

Down the Mountain

5.75x5.75"

acrylic and pen on envelope

Jenna Kass - 69 Love Songs

I Don't Believe in the Sun

Given that I know the feeling, I wish I could have done this little painting more justice - but it's been a rough month. The funny part is, turns out feeling like this isn't limited to heartbreak. Sometimes it's just life.

Amanda Atkins - 69 Love Songs

I chose "The Book of Love" for my Magnetic Fields love song. The line "I love it when you read to me, and you can read me anything" has always struck me as one of the most romantic lines in any song ever.

Jason Cheeseman-Meyer -- 69 Love Songs

The Sun Goes Down and the World Goes Dancing <-->  Nothing Matters When We're Dancing

I thought I didn't know the Magnetic Fields "69 Love Songs" -- but through various mixtapes (or their digital descendants) a good handful of the songs had already come to me, and gone back out again.

I set to painting, inspired by the song (and lets be honest, the title) "The Sun Goes Down and the World Goes Dancing."  But in the back of my head, and frequently spilling into the foreground was "Nothing Matters When We're Dancing."   Because "Nothing Matters When We're Dancing" is the first Magnetic Fields song I really fell in love with, and gave to my beloved on multiple mix cd's.

Lee Moyer - 69 Love Songs

Lee Moyer - 69 Love Songs

You don't know anything.
I don't know anything.
About love


Magnetic Fields week continues with some classical (and pop) allusions. Who can tell me what the letter in the heart mean?

Michelle Dickens- 69 Love Songs

When I first heard "Zebra," the sweetness of the melody and use of accordion reminded me of carousel music. Invoking Victorian-themed imagery, I set out to capture the fleeting, dream-like quality of this song with this fantasy illustration.

Kyle Smart - 69 Love Songs

'I think I need a new heart'

Somehow 2006 passed me by without this album, what a lovely set of songs. Again, using this as an opportunity to try some new digital techniques.

Elisabeth Alba - 69 Love Songs

 I uh... don't listen to Magnetic Fields and had no idea what their 69 love songs were! So I looked through all the song titles and "Abigail, Belle of Kilronan" caught my eye, since it sounded like it could be historically based. The lyrics tell the tale of a young man off at war, imagining how his love, Abigail, will someday be the beauty of County Galway. I decided to paint Abigail, praying for her love to come home.

Tried something new... painted it all first with my favorite matte ink (Dr. Ph Martin's Black Star) then layered the color on top. So here is the black and white version... (scanned it in case the color didn't go well)

Daniel Nyari - Favorite Love Story

Yo Month Of Love, I’m really happy for you, Imma let you finish but Yeezy has one of the best love stories of all time!

Lee Moyer - 69 Love Songs

Kristina Carroll - Fetish

Pasiphae
graphite on paper

Taurophilia - The love of bulls.

Oh those Greeks. So much bestiality.

 I've been enamored of the Labyrinth and Minotaur story ever since I can remember. So naturally I had to give a nod to poor Pasiphae who was cursed by the gods to become obsessed with a bull and give birth to the Minotaur as a result. This was a very quick drawing experimenting with different ways of using graphite. I've had bulls on the brain a lot lately because I am working on a full Minotaur illustration right now. Here's a teaser:

Daniel Nyari - Fetish

Apotemnophilia: The Sexual Arousal based on the image or fantasy of one's self as an amputee.

Taryn Cozzy - Fetish

Gerontophilia - sexual attraction to the elderly

Winona Nelson - Fetish

A little-studied fetish: Narcissism, or autoeroticism.  It's a sexual and romantic attraction to oneself and preference for single-player sexy times over sex with a partner.

Scott Murry - Fetish

People do some weird shit out there. We all love our pets, but somewhere you gotta draw the line—Keep that peanut butter to yourself!

Lee Moyer - Fetish

Jorge Mascarenhas - Fetish

Just another Formicophilia illustration.

Chris O'Neill - Fetish

I'll let this one speak for itself....

Angela Rizza - Fetish

Did my piece on formicophilia, which is when you're sexually aroused by insects crawling on you.

Richie Pope - Fetish

Pygophilia, the love of butts. Enough said. 

Carly Janine Mazur - Fetish

5" x 7" oil and acrylic on board

Formicophilia - having sexual interest in being bitten by and crawled upon by insects. Among other things... but that can be deduced with your imagination.

Lee Moyer - Fetish

Craig Maher - Fetish

My fetish? Absolutely nothing at all (on).

Amanda Atkins - Fetish

MFK Fisher's passion for food and her ability to describe the pleasure it can bring in writing is what led me to paint this little portrait of her for Fetish week. 

Consider the oyster.

Stacey Lee - Fetish

FURRIES.  

I mean, whatever floats your boat...

Tim Durning- Fetish

This may or may not be a thing people do, but is sure grabbed my attention:
Oculolinctus, also known as "worming" or eyeball-licking fetishism, refers to the alleged paraphilic practice of licking eyeballs for erotic gratification. In mid-2013, it was reported that this alleged fetish was popular in Japan, where it was referred to as "Gankyū name purei." A new "second base" when kissing got boring.

Turns out this can also lead to a lot of eye infections! I wondered, is pink eye just the new hickey to some people?

Jason Cheeseman-Meyer - Fetish

Female pubic hair is coy by its very existence.  It simultaneously conceals and calls attention to.

Lee Moyer - Fetish