In the time of the longest day, the dark shadows of monsters recede. Enjoy the light!
Happy Lunar New Year!
The Year of the Pig promises to bring luck, fortune and pleasure if you stay in charge of your own urges. We all need a little bit of money and good luck to achieve what we set out to do.
Especially a woman who is in the middle of a production of an animated feature project, animating 29 speaking and over 200 non-speaking characters, a project surely testing her abilities and limits, could use a little lift from the Year of the Pig. Overworked and stressed out she would love some relief from of that strain.
So, lets celebrate all of our hopes for 2019!
I made 4 cards for you in celebration of the Year of the Pig:
You can download the cards and share them with your friends.
If you would like to support my animated feature film “My Love Affair With Marriage” and feed an artist in the Year of the Pig, you can do it HERE. Every little bit helps to move the project towards the finish line.. I am grateful for your LOVE and SUPPORT!
Thank you!
Merry Winter Solstice!
Doctors say that Winter deprives you of sunlight and your bones go brittle because of that. But they don’t tell you that the inner light never dies. Forget about bones - you stay alive because you have hope.
I made 4 Merry Winter Solstice cards to cheer you up during the longest of the nights. You can download them and share with your friends.
Merry Winter Solstice!
Signe
Happy Summer Solstice!
Celebrating Solstice in an urban environment is a bit of a challenge. First of all, with buildings so high one can barely see the sky and tracking the path of the Sun while walking on a sidewalk can cause one fall into a pothole.
Then there are all those distractions - deadlines, Facebook and people who want to get together.
And of course, the tragedies around the world that happen to other people caused by other people make one's sky gazing and Sun-tracking seem indulgent and selfish. Why instead one doesn't call her local politician demanding to improve the matters of the World?
But the Sun is a powerful magnet that makes seeds forget the forces of Gravity and pull away from Earth towards LIGHT to greet the Sun with blooming flowers. The thought of light wakes me before dawn, full of inspiration and hope.
Without light like without hope one cannot live.
If we all purge our inner demons with a beam of light maybe that alone can make the World a better place?
Lets celebrate the longest day!
Welcome, Light!
Happy Summer Solstice!
Happy New Year of the Dog!
The Year of the Dog has started and it promises to be good, if you stay loyal to your friends, true to yourself and innovate. Lets compare notes at the end of this Lunar Year!
Happy Valentine's Day!
Today's Valentine's Day! My sweetheart is away, so I will wash my studio floors tonight.
The part of my brain in charge of words have been asleep lately. I can't think of any clever lines to say to other people's jokes, I am pretty bad explaining tasks to my workers and I cannot write well (that's why rarely write on my blog). Maybe because in the last few months I worked mainly with images?
So, to express my love for you on this special day I used images and made some Valentine's Day cards.
Love is like a straitjacket - when you can't flail your arms around you may learn to accept your destiny of being crazy in love.
When we climb insurmountable mountains we always bring a flag with us, to claim our victory on behalf of the country we are from. How about a flag that represents all humans able to love and be loved in all countries?
Love doesn't compete. Love wins.
Would you rather jump the Triple Axel and win the gold at Olympics or cuddle with your sweetheart tonight? I know the answer to this one.
Happy Valentine's!
From My Sketchbook: Bucket
Every day I sit at my work table and try to produce or to shadow as many drawings as I can. At the end of the day I maybe have drawn 70 drawings but have no satisfaction of accomplishment - finishing the project is still 2 years away.
To remedy my satisfaction blues a year ago I started a sketchbook that I draw into after work, on subway. The rules are pretty simple - don't be afraid to fail, draw any lines that hand wants to draw, then make a finished drawing of that mess. Show to no one.
I filled one sketchbook and started another one. But a nagging thought kept creeping into my head: if I make a drawing in my sketchbook and no one sees it, does it really exist?
To assure the existence of my sketchbook, I am bringing one drawing outside of it, for you to see:
Now, there. It exists.
Happy New Year!
It is clear now - the 2017 was like a drunk gift-delivery driver. You watched it with hope and anxiety: will it run me over? will it remember to give me gifts? Running away from being hit while trying to get closer to the gifts was quite a task. But we managed it, somehow.
Now we wake up in the middle of night with a new anxiety. It has become obvious that 2018 is not going to be the same as 2017. The needles have moved, the accustomed points of references discarded. New piñatas are craving the abuse. Will I avoid suffering? Will I succeed to eat, work and be merry?
Facing my old fear in front of uncertainty of future, I drew 4 cards for happy 2018:
Happy New Year!
With love and gratitude
Signe
Happy Winter Solstice! (with failed cards) →
Every 6 month there is a major Solar event that I dedicate a great deal of my thoughts and efforts to: Solstice. Solstices punctuate my bipolar nature swinging from too much darkness to too much light. To celebrate this awareness I make greetings cards, sometimes more than just one.
This December I drafted 8 of those Merry Winter Solstice cards, 6 of them you can see HERE.
But 2 of them I had doubts about and consulted with my Inner PR person.
- Too phallic, - she said about one. - In this political climate golden balls attached to a golden penis is the last thing people want to see.
- This is too dark, - she said about the other. - And what are those little hairs between the legs? Too suggestive of pubic hair. It will upset parents and will ruin your reputation. If you publish this you may never be able to run another successful Kickstarter campaign.
So I didn't publish them when the Solstice took place.
But the effort that went into making them kept nagging me. Now when my Inner PR person sleeps on her soft nest of laurels I am publishing the drawings for you to judge if they are too dark and too suggestive. What do you think?
Birthday!
After all night of hard labor on a morning of August 7th, 1964 my mother delivered a baby in a small town's hospital. The first thing the midwife noticed about the baby was that the baby was extraordinarily fat. She put the newborn on a scale and her empirical assessment was confirmed with cold numbers. The baby weighted 4 kilograms and 500 grams. The baby's skin inflated with fat like with air, organized itself in beautiful folds and creases, accenting the daintiness of the baby's fingers and toes. Inspired by the beautiful sight of such wealth, the midwife took the baby around the hospital showing it to other women in various stages of labor as a standard of how a baby should look, as if through this example they could will themselves to a similar achievement.
The moment I learned I to balance my fat body on my dainty feet I started to walk, the moment I got good at walking I started to run. Soon I lost my fat and my feet grew larger and more crude. From time to time my mother would look over my skinny body with ribs showing and would dreamily say:
- You were such a beautiful fat baby.
And would continue to recount the story of my birth that she was trying to turn into a legend, while I felt she was trying to embarrass me.
Now I start to think that being born fat may have made an impact on the rest of my life. A fat baby is feeling sure that it can survive and may not be as greedy as a skinny one. What if that early contentment of having a source of energy stored all around my tiny bones affected my decision later in life not to hoard wealth and possessions, but focus on more etherial, fleeting things like Love and Success?
And how much of my personality is affected by being born in August, under a Zodiac sign of Leo? Ambitious, self centered, passionate, driven and strong. Here's to all babies born in August - HAPPY BIRTHDAY!